The anti-spam spam

Unsubscribelist.com looks like a legitimate spam-fighting Web site. It has a recommended reading list that includes "Stopping Spam," Simson Garfinkel and Alan Schwartz's well-known 1998 tome. It offers links to other anti-spam hubs, including Junkbusters, and its "removal" service seems legitimate. Simply type in your name and e-mail address and the site claims that it will tell direct marketers to leave you alone.

"We feel confident that, at the very least, we can try to decrease the amount of junk e-mail you may normally receive," the site reads. "We work closely with various direct marketing companies to ensure that those who do not wish to receive solicited and/or unsolicited e-mail can be removed from their master lists."

But just how "closely" do they work? Several details puncture holes in the site's apparent sincerity. First off, the site came to our attention through a spam, which linked back to the site. Second, an email to the site's webmaster bounced back, undeliverable. And third, a database on the site containing information on who registers domain names lists Blade Blade as the site's owner, yet Mr. Blade's supposed Southern California phone number seems to have been disconnected.

So is Unsubscribelist.com for real, or is it just a scam site that's not run by some ingeniously deceptive spammer who want to add names to his database? We're not sure. But we'd like to know. -- Damien Cave [3 p.m. PDT, June 8, 2001]

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Does the Constitution protect the right to talk about how to foil copyright protection?

Princeton computer scientist Edward Felten wants the music industry to leave him alone. He asked a federal court Wednesday to rule that he and his research team have a First Amendment right to publish research on weaknesses in the music industry's copyright protection scheme, SDMI.

"I don't think it's a good thing that we've had to do this, but we feel this is an important enough issue to fight in court," Felten said, speaking from the San Francisco offices of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a legal nonprofit that will bankroll the case. "We want to make sure that we and our colleagues have a right to publish. We believe that the people being asked to buy into this technology -- musicians, songwriters and the public -- have a right to know if it works."

The lawsuit comes just two months after Felten announced that he would not publish his research because the music industry threatened to sue. Leaked copies of Felten's paper can be found all over the Web, and the industry backed off from its threat soon after making it -- a stance a spokesman repeated Wednesday.

"We have unequivocally and repeatedly stated that we have no intention of bringing a lawsuit against Professor Felten or his colleagues," said Cary Sherman, general counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The lawsuit, he noted, "is inexplicable."

Still, Felten's lawyers argue that he sued in order to hold the industry to its word. The case aims to fully protect Felten -- to ensure that he will not be sued when he presents his research as scheduled, in August, at a computer industry conference -- and to establish a broader legal precedent about free-speech rights as they relate to copyright protection technology.

The lawsuit, filed in New Jersey's Federal District Court, aims to legally bar the music industry from suing not just Felten, but anyone who seeks to publish research on SDMI. And Felten and his lawyers didn't just sue the RIAA and other arms of the music industry involved with SDMI -- they also sued the U.S. Justice Department.

The EFF and Felten are asking the court to invalidate an aspect of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act -- an "anti-circumvention" clause prohibiting the distribution of anything that undermines copyright protection schemes, such as SDMI. This is the law that music-industry lawyers invoked when they threatened Felten, and it constitutes a violation of the right to free speech, according to Felten, his lawyers and many other people on the Net.

So will the court actually tackle the constitutional questions surrounding the DMCA? Not necessarily. The judge can rule simply on Felten's case and ignore the rest. But Felten has put the anti-DMCA forces on the offensive for the first time, and some believe that the tide has turned in their favor.

"When scientists are intimidated from publishing their work, there is a clear First Amendment problem," said EFF legal director Cindy Cohn. "We have long argued that unless properly limited, the anti-distribution provisions of the DMCA would interfere with science. Now they plainly have." -- Damien Cave [12:35 p.m. PDT, June 6, 2001]

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Day laborers throng JavaOne

Chants of "Open Source! Open Standards! Open Architecture! Open relationships!" -- open relationships? -- greeted the thousands of geeks leaving the JavaOne conference at San Francisco's Moscone Center on a late Monday afternoon.

Outside the convention hall a dozen out-of-work programmers along with assorted other merry pranksters brandished signs proffering their wares: "Database driven Web-sites for a latte grande!" "Will code for mesquite grilled asparagus, shiitake mushrooms, yellow fin potatoes, lemon aioli and nicoise olives" and "$1 a K java code." You can see the goofy spectacle for yourself here. One man, dressed like a cross between a job candidate and an undertaker in dark sunglasses, a white shirt and tie, carried a mock tombstone with the sobering inscription: "R.I.P. Your Company Logo Here." Another wag, who bragged "I know RDMS and a lot of other acronyms," handed out copies of this "Income Tax Return for Recently Laid Off DotCom Employees with No Real Experience or Talent," while another dressed as a "code warrior" complete with a foam sword and a cardboard shield, gave out copies of his actual resume.

While most conference-goers reacted to the spectacle with disbelief or shy smiles, one tried to use it as a way to make a drug connection. One demonstrator, a blue-haired waif with half his mustache and beard inexplicably shaved off, wore a signboard promising: "Will code for drugs." So, a fluorescent-yellow-haired JavaOne-goer from Vancouver, British Columbia, figured this might be a good person to hit up for local drug connections. But he came away with nada, muttering: "Fucking Americans!"

The JavaOne day laborers stunt was cooked up by Shane Knapp and Jon Ross, two -- you guessed it! -- out-of-work Java programmers and San Francisco roommates laid off by Livemind.com when the company recently folded. Decked out in corporate schwag from their defunct dot-com, the two coders explained that their inspiration came from the lines of itinerant workers who gather along Cesar Chavez Street in San Francisco looking for work by the day. Why shouldn't the same strategy work for coders?

Ross says: "We're unemployed. We have nothing better to do with our time than come up with pranks." -- Katharine Mieszkowski [1:30 p.m., PDT, June 5, 2001]

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Now, live online: California's energy crisis!

Kudos to the scrappy scientists over at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Just when you think there's nothing new to say about the mess we call the California energy crisis, they've come up fresh way to gauge what's going on.

It's an electricity ticker -- a real-time chart of the state's daily electricity market. Lines correspond to the projected use for the day, the actual use, the imported supply that comes from other states and the system's overall capacity, among other tidbits. Every 10 minutes, the California Independent System Operator updates state statistics. The chart refreshes, giving an current picture of how the state is doing.

Sounds boring, right? Well, there's more to it than that. Because electricity is a form of energy that can't be stored, the consumer demand for electricity must be balanced in "real-time" by just the right amount of supply from generators. This alone adds a level of suspense: If a power plant breaks down or there's a rise in energy use, will the generators make enough electricity to avoid rolling blackouts? Will users cut back on their use in time?

Thanks to the chart, you can watch it happen, more or less live, on the Web. You can also see if Californians are conserving, using less electricity than projected. Of course, none of this may be quite as exciting as the debate over Jenna Bush's drinking habits, but for the electricity-obsessed, it's not a bad way to pass the time. Add a betting line, maybe a few bookies or a Las Vegas online gambling outfit and this chart could even become an addiction. -- Damien Cave [1:15 p.m. PDT, June 5, 2001]

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The $50 million nerd girl

Ladies, start your Bunsen burners.

Congress is currently considering a bill that would funnel $50 million to programs to inspire girl math whizzes and computer geeks.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., is officially called "Getting Our Girls Ready for the 21st Century," but it's better known as the "Go Girl!" bill. It would amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to provide $50 million for programs encouraging girls to study math, science, engineering and technology.

A Net e-mail campaign is rallying support for the bill. But similar legislation lost by one vote in the House Education Committee last year. The "Go girl!" act is currently in the House Committee on Education and the Workforce awaiting congressional action.

During the recent high-tech boom when there was much hand-wringing about the shortage of technology workers, women's groups argued that if girls went into computer fields at the same rate as boys, they could help fill the gap. Instead of the short-term Band-Aid of issuing more H1B visas to import tech workers from other countries, why not solve the problem longer-term by bringing girls into the tech industry?

Isn't it just like Congress to get on the ball after the market has cooled and the techie labor crunch has passed? -- -- Katharine Mieszkowski [2:35 p.m. PDT, June 1, 2001]

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The frothiest severance package

Guilty employers on the verge of mass layoffs: Direct your gaze to Dundalk!

Recognizing the long and storied relationship between beer and unemployment, a Guinness plant in Ireland is offering its newly "separated" employees a severance package that would be most welcome in dot-com land: two pints a day for the next 10 years.

What's more, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports that employees voted by a 4-to-1 ratio in favor of this arrangement. Is Anchor Steam hiring? -- Amy Standen [12:50 p.m. PDT, June 1, 2001]

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