At first thought, Henrik Anderson seems crazy for doing something like this, but he's actually attempting to force clarification of the contradicting laws by bringing them in front of a court. He's doing this after his attempts to contact the Danish anti-piracy Antipiratgruppen, their lawyers, and the Association of Danish Video Distributors and discuss the issue were blown off, so he's definitely not just randomly deciding on an extreme approach.

So far no actual arrest has been made, so we'll have to wait to see how the whole thing plays out. Either way, Anderson's protesting an entirely paradoxical set of laws in a pretty ballsy way. [Torrent Freak via Boing Boing]

Passed after a texting driver killed two scientists, the law would put texting while driving in the same legal category as drunk driving if any crash happens. It's a far stronger law than most of those already existing in other states; California's, for example, punishes offenders with a tiny fine, usually around $20.

In Utah, if you were to crash while texting, the punishment could be extremely severe—up to 15 years in prison. It's a harsh law but we can't deny that texting while driving is incredibly dangerous. [NYTimes]

Due to certain materials used in consumer electronics (especially in batteries and displays), gadgets are some of the most toxic consumer items out there, capable of leaking dangerous chemicals into the ground if they're not properly disposed of. New York, and 13 other states, have thus passed laws to create specific, stronger rules for these products. Unfortunately, in NYC, that means the members of CEA would have to go door to door to pick up products like televisions and monitors, at their own expense.

CEA is claiming that this pick-up service would clog the city's streets with smoke-belching trucks, which is bad for traffic and bad for the environment, and that the laws are unfair to electronics manufacturers. A spokesman claimed that it's "an unreasonable and unsustainable burden on manufacturers."

The CEA's argument isn't totally unfounded—it certainly would be a financial concern, even if we're not sure their environmental point about trucking is all that accurate. But the fact remains that somebody's got to take care of this stuff: It's either the state of New York, that needs to spend far more money extracting these gadgets from the trash, or the manufacturers that create the harmful products in the first place. And the fact remains that many other states and countries (Japan, South Korea) have enacted similar laws. So we're siding with New York on this one: We think it's worth a little trouble to get these products conscientiously recycled. [Wall Street Journal]

The NY Times Bits blog says that Transportation Secretary David La Hood will announce plans for the September 15th summit on Tuesday, which will address methods of "combating distracted driving." This conveniently lines up with the US Senate's recent introduction of a bill to outlaw texting while driving, which is the first such effort on a national level. [NY Times Bits]

Showing favor towards the MPAA, President Obama also appointed Jon Leibowitz—former vice president of congressional affairs of the MPAA—as the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year. As you may recall, former president Bush signed a bill last October, creating the intellectual property czar position to lead the fight against piracy and intellectual property violations. [ArsTechnica]

Under the plan, the music and movie industries would have been empowered to analyze the downloads of individual Internet users to root out instances of piracy, and to report violations to a newly created agency. The agency was to send warning letters to violators; after the third letter, the Internet service provider would have been required to sever service.

The voting down of the bill is seen as a big loss for President Sarkozy, who promises to have a revised version of the bill ready in the coming weeks. [NY Times]

For one reason or another, the phone dialed 911 and picked up a conversation he was having with his friends about stealing a Cricket phone and a car stereo (An impressive haul...if it was 1985). A snippet of audio from the 911 call is available courtesy of Phoenix New Times. It is is difficult to make out what is being said, but the interesting portion is as follows:

"It was bolted down — I had to rip it out," a voice can be heard saying on the recording released by Peoria cops. "It took all my energy to lift it out of the car."

After the signal was triangulated, an officer was dispatched to the scene where he found the suspect holding the car stereo in his hands. He was written up for felony vehicle burglary, but it will be up to the juvenile courts to decide his fate. [Phoenix New Times via CNET via Fark]

• To win the case, the prosecution has to provide proof that copyright infringement has happened, and so plaintiffs gave examples of piracy that they committed using The Pirate Bay.
• The prosecution couldn't get powerpoint started at one point.
• The Pirate Bay isn't technically being charged for infringing copyrights, since they don't host any files. Instead, they're being charged with, ""Assisting in and preparing to committing copyright infringement." They pleaded not guilty.
• The prosecution couldn't tell the difference between megabytes and megabits.
• It isn't believed that The Pirate Bay organizers will have severe penalties brought against them.
• That's the bus the defendants, "Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (aka Anakata), Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi (aka Brokep) and Fredrik Neij (TiAMO)" drove up in.
• Seats in the court are being scalped!

I've got mixed feelings about this trial. [Wired and Torrentfreak]

The bill states that "Congress finds that children and adolescents have been exploited by photographs taken in dressing rooms and public places with the use of a camera phone," a fact which I doubt many would challenge. What many will challenge are the notions that the main purpose of silent camera modes is to perv on Kindergartners and that banning these modes would stop anyone from doing so.

There is a practically unlimited supply of existing, silent-mode-enabled cameras that are available to anyone who wants them, not to mention the fact that many cameraphones have video modes, which present a problem that couldn't really be solved short of requiring handsets to scream "HEY NAKED KIDS, I'M TAKING A VIDEO RIGHT NOW SO YOU SHOULD PROBABLY GO GET YOUR PARENTS" on loop for the duration of the recording.

The measure wouldn't be effective at solving the problem it set out to, but it would certainly be effective at stripping a useful feature from phones for regular, law-abiding users who just don't want a tacky fake mirror slap every time they take a picture. Update: This kind of thing has been happening in Japan for some time now, so make of that what you will. [Crave]

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, the Justice Department has sent back evidence that law enforcement officials can use Triggerfish pretty much whenever they want, without consulting the phone companies. This looks like the use of was could most charitably be called a giant goddamn loophole: secret Triggerfish deployment is OK because it only provides its users with rough location data by pairing serial numbers, phone numbers and other identifiers to a particular tower, rather than the actual content of conversations. The moral problems here are multifaceted, but the practical ones for, you know, fugitives, are easily solved: turn off your phone. You're welcome! [Ars]

They've joined up with a lawsuit challenging the National Animal Identification system, which requires livestock to be tagged with an RFID chip. The government says the chips help them track livestock disease. The lawsuit says that the RFID chip is in fact a "Mark of the Beast," as foretold in the book of the Bible that set up one of Arnold's worst movies ever, End of Days:

"Use of a numbering system for their premises and/or electronic numbering system for their animals constitutes some form of a 'mark of the beast' and/or represents an infringement of their 'dominion over cattle and all living things' in violation of their fundamental religious beliefs."

It's a serious enough violation of their religious beliefs that, if enforced, many would not be able to farm, even though they maintain a bunch of heirloom crops and livestock—which they note could be genetically handy if disease or a terrorist attack seriously batters our food supply. Personally, I'm not quite ready for Armageddon, so maybe the government should back off, just in case. [Threat Level via Fark]

Texas has a new law that makes it mandatory for computer repair technicians in the state to have private investigator licenses. This is being contested by at least one advocacy group that's suing, as many techs don't know they're being criminals by doing their jobs. The strange new law comes about because sometimes in the course of repairing a computer some investigation is needed, and in the great state of Texas that's a felony without a license. It can take up to three years to get one, so this whole thing is messed up. Hopefully no poor minimum wage Windows jockey will wind up in jail over this, but stranger things have happened in Texas. Looks like those Geek Squad guys will get real badges, though. [Gear Log]

"Congress is calling this the grassroots campaign of the year," he says. "Office staffers say they have never received this many emails and inquiries on any issue in their congressional careers. The whole fax infrastructure of Capitol Hill was jammed for two days." (Ah, those crazy faxers.) If any of you doubts your ability to make a difference in DC, by all means keep reading.

Westergren says that the groundswell is really evidence, like the Digg riot of 2007, that people are more in control of messages thanks to the Web. "Information is becoming decentralized—now people are getting to participate. You can't mess around anymore with consumers or artists—they've got a huge megaphone. This is really the power of the people here. But this kind of power needs to be thoughtfully wielded."

I asked Westergren what it was like to find support from such unlikely allies as arch-conservative Sam Brownback. Although I assumed the cause was relatively liberal, Westergren says you can't pigeonhole net radio that way. "There's no correlation," he says. "This is not a partisan issue."

Unless something changes, July 15 will be the day that webcasters are presented a bill covering all of owed royalties dating back to the beginning of 2006, calculated using the current, oppressive rates. "Starting then," he says, "every webcaster is bankrupt, except for a couple."

The only answer, says Westergren, will come from the Capitol. "We are 100% focused on bill passage. Call your congressman or senator and ask them to support these bills. Bug them until they do it." He adds, "We're not a well-moneyed lobby, we're a young industry. There's no K Street presence here."

Well, what are you waiting for? Get to them faxes!! You may even try one of these newfangled systems for communicating with congresspersons—I'm told this "E" mail works pretty good. – Wilson Rothman

Internet Radio Coverage [Gizmodo]

Since the CRB's new rates go into effect on May 15, let's hope that the bill can make its way through Congress more quickly than legislation typically does, so Internet radio broadcasters don't get slammed by the CRB's exorbitant fees. Here's an easy way to get a hold of your representative to tell them to save Internet radio and get the legislative juices flowing. – Matt Buchanan

Bill Could Save Internet Radio [Broadband Reports]
Press Release [House of Representatives]
Image via Flickr

Chinese workers can be forced to work up to 36 hours extra a month without Inspector Knacker of the Peking Yard raising an eyebrow, but Foxconn's 80 hours is well over this maximum.

Not only did they flaunt local laws, the Foxconn spokesperson said Apple sent a team to investigate and didn't find any problems. Uh oh. That's not going to go well for either Apple or Foxconn. – Jason Chen

Foxconn Admits Breaking Labor Laws In China [China CSR via The Inquirer]

While this "article" actually sounds like someone making something up, apparently Canada the Canadian AAA is trying to pass legislation against DWI (Driving While iPodding). I probably won't happen, but it will make for some great news affliate coverage ("Some people say that iPods are harmless fun, but our neighbors to the North think they're weapons of mass terror. More after the break.") – John Biggs

UPDATE - A reader writes:

About your article "No iPods While Driving says Canada" The original article states that "Canadian Automobile Association is urging all provinces to ban their use in cars.". CAA isn't a branch of the government, they aren't even a lobbyist group. Its a tow truck company, they offer yearly memberships for roadside assistance. Slightly less interesting story. But might as well help you get it right where I can. ^_^
No Driving While iPodding [TechDirt]

This could damage the retail-heavy Akihabara district that thrives on the sale of electronic goods of all types, including second hand. If this law does see the day of light in April, I wonder what kind of restrictions and enforcements will be placed on the resell of goods via eBay and other online outlets.

2nd hand electronics sales will soon be illegal in Japan [Akihabara News]