Accord­ing to Reuters, FCC com­mis­sion­ers voted 5–0 today to pro­ceed with craft­ing a “net neu­tral­ity” rule, send­ing the cur­rent lan­guage (which would strip tele­com com­pa­nies of the right to con­trol how they use their own prop­erty) to the print­ing office for pub­lic com­ment. Com­ments will be accepted until Jan­u­ary 14th. The Notice of Pro­posed Rule­mak­ing is avail­able online here [PDF]. You can upload your com­ments using ECFS here, using pro­ceed­ing num­ber 09–191. You can read oth­ers’ com­ments on ECFS here. I’m writ­ing com­ments to sub­mit right now. I’ll post my com­ments here when I fin­ish. I encour­age every­one who loves the Inter­net and [ . . . ]

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Via Prawfs­blawg, a story from Reuters India reports that a British offi­cial has asked Cal­i­for­nia Gov­er­nor Schwarzeneg­ger to shut down a Web­site that she says encour­ages pros­ti­tu­tion in the UK. Pros­ti­tu­tion is legal in the UK. Quoth the offi­cial, Surely it can’t be too dif­fi­cult for “The Ter­mi­na­tor” to ter­mi­nate Pun­ter­net and that’s what I am demand­ing that he does. Patently, Ms Har­man is not acquainted with our First Amend­ment, which is pre­cisely what pre­vents “The Ter­mi­na­tor” from “ter­mi­nat­ing” such a Web­site. The Website’s owner responds with a brief les­son in free speech, then thanks Ms Har­man for the ben­e­fi­cial effects of her igno­rance: In clos­ing, I would [ . . . ]

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Just remem­bered I for­got to com­ment on the recent cap­ture in Switzer­land of noto­ri­ous inter­na­tional fugi­tive and child rapist Roman Polan­ski, who appar­ently also has directed a num­ber of quite good movie-​​​​films. Lessons Polan­ski should learn from this affair: Don’t rape chil­dren. Don’t skip bail. Don’t plead guilty if you aren’t will­ing to do the max. DON’T RAPE CHILDREN!

A town in PA has decided that trick-​​​​or-​​​​treating, some­thing chil­dren look for­ward to all year, is too unsafe for chil­dren. KDKA, via Pope­hat, via Over­lawyered. The Pope­hat arti­cle title sums up my thoughts pre­cisely: “To Save Child­hood, It Is Nec­es­sary To Destroy It.”