Commerce, Research, Ego

Amazon's new Search Inside feature—which allows you to full-text search some 33 million pages from 120,000 books in the Amazon catalog (and, "We plan to widely expand our Search Inside the Book offering and continue to make more books available to you")—struck me first as a super way to shop for books. Then it hit me what a nifty, free research tool this potentially is (see the Search Inside results included in searches for "trespass to chattels;" "work for hire;" "internet jurisdiction; "DMCA;" "digital rights management."). Finally, of course, there were the samoyeds (not me, though we had one when I was little).

Today's New Blawg (And A Bonus)

Elaine Cassel writes Civil Liberties Watch [via Blawg.org], keeping an eye on "The War At Home." Elaine is casting a wide net, blogging about "the physical autonomy of a woman's body," "Web sites on the terrorist watch list," various civil liberties issues on deck in the Supreme Court's current term, and much more. Elaine sounds like a firebrand, I'd love to meet her some time.

Speaking of women whose company you'd be well advised to keep, a big welcome to misbehaving.net: "a celebration of women's contributions to computing; a place to spotlight women's contributions as well as point out new opportunities and challenges for women in the computing field."

Today's New Blawg

Dispositive is written by a law student somewhere north of Manhattan [via Blawg.org], who ably identifies one of the high ironies of law school:

After you learn to determine the economic theory or public policy which the professor assures you lies just underneath the surface of every case (if you look just a little harder. . .), exams come. And exams only test you on the rules you stopped looking for because your professor didn't seem to think they were very soundly reasoned anyway.

As for making "the process more open and less shrouded in mystery" (see the end of that post), my sense is Dispositive's author is on the right track.

The Internet Tax Non-Discrimination Act and VoIP

The Cox-Wyden Internet Tax Non-Discrimination Act passed the House last month, and will go before the Senate as early as next week. As c | net reports today ("Senate to ponder permanent Net access tax ban"), this could be more good news for the VoIP industry: "In a nutshell, information services and telecommunications services are beginning to look alike, leaving many parties trying to figure out the benefits and consequences of an unregulated Internet." Kevin Werbach, former Counsel for New Technology Policy at the FCC, has an informative post analyzing the VoIP-related issues confronting the FCC. A sample:

If the legal requirements change when an end user swaps a computing device labeled "phone" for one labeled "computer," the rules will fail. The real issue here is that basic voice service is going to be deregulated. There is no way to put the VOIP genie back into the bottle without destroying it.

"It's Super-Fabulous, Would You Like Some Shiraz?"

Eek! I don't know if my doctor would approve of my laughing this hard in the 33rd week. Have you seen the Metrosexual episode of South Park?