Welcome to Reason Express, the weekly e-newsletter from Reason magazine.
Reason Express is written by Washington-based journalist Jeff A. Taylor and
draws on the ideas and resources of the Reason editorial staff. For more
information on Reason, visit our Web site at www.reason.com. Send your
comments about Reason Express to Jeff A. Taylor (jtaylor@reason.com) and Nick
Gillespie (gillespie@reason.com).



REASON Express
January 24, 2000
Vol. 3 No. 4


1) Waco Civil Suit Wants Military Answers
2) Low Power Radio Cleared for Broadcast
3) Voters to Vote, Polls to Poll
4) DVD Case Pushing Copyright Envelope
5) Quick Hits


 - -  Shot in the Dark - -

Lawyers for the Waco survivors' wrongful-death suit against the federal
government keep getting interesting answers to what should be uninteresting
questions.

The basic question is whether anyone associated with the U.S. government fired
shots at the compound during the April 1993 standoff. The quick, official
answer is of course not.

But the Justice Department refuses to put that in writing for the court. In
addition, recent sworn admissions by two Army Delta Force technicians who were
on the scene at Waco make for interesting reading.

The two soldiers said in depositions that one Delta Force combat expert
disappeared while the compound burned and later appeared "tired, somewhat
disheveled, and red-eyed."

The Pentagon has repeatedly said that no military personnel were actively
involved in the FBI's assault on the compound. But so far only lawyers from
the FBI have sworn to the court that no FBI agent fired that day. Lawyers from
the Defense Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the
Justice Department have yet to follow suit with regard to personnel from those
agencies.

The government has also been dragging its feet in handing over documents and
photos related to the siege.

http://dallasnews.com/texas_southwest/19754_WACO19.html

*************************************************************

- - Guerilla Radio  - -

The Federal Communications Commission wants 1,000 flowers to bloom, or at
least a whole bunch of new radio stations to sprout. Reacting to complaints
that the radio spectrum--the FM band in particular--has grown homogenized and
stale in the wake of mega-broadcasting consolidations, the FCC voted to allow
a new class of low power stations on the airwaves.

The plan would allow noncommercial licenses for 10-watt and 100-watt stations
to serve "local interests" of the public. Commercial FM stations pump out from
6,000 watts up to 100,000 watts and reach hundreds of miles.

A 100-watt station might reach out for seven miles, while a bedroom 10-watt
broadcaster might cover a 4-mile radius.

The catch, of course, is there is still a FCC license involved, and with that
come a host of requirements and mandates. For example, just how does a micro
station define its "community" and who decides if it is serving it? Or if I
don't like my neighbor's 10-watt output of 24-hour Turkish martial music, can
I sic the FCC on him, call the sheriff, or just grin and bear it?

Stay tuned.

Check out the Reason Online Breaking Issue on low-power radio at
http://reason.com/bi/biradio.html

*************************************************************

- - Big Vote (Yawn) Today - -

Evidently, the people of Iowa will huddle in fire stations tonight to select a
new president for these United States. The rules of the contest are somewhat
arcane to outsiders, however.

On the Democratic side, Al Gore will win not just because he'll get more votes
than Bill Bradley. Bradley will lose primarily because he tried to win, by
spending money on TV ads and the like.

The Republican side is similar, but a little more complicated. George W. Bush
will come in first, but only wins big if he gets 40 percent of the vote. He
wins with 37 percent or more, and he could lose with less than 35 percent.
John McCain gets to come in second by not competing in Iowa no matter where he
actually finishes.

Steve Forbes can win if he comes in second by less than 10 points behind Bush.
But this is also counted as a partial win for McCain because a Forbes win
means McCain will do better in New Hampshire. (This is a peculiar transitive
property at work.)

The other potential winner in Iowa will be whoever finishes third, Gary Bauer
or Alan Keyes. However, because Bauer was expected to do well, it could be
more of a loss for him.

So in their perpetual search for a surprise, big media could spend the next
few days catching up with the campaign of Keyes, should he in fact finish
third in Iowa.

His appeal to conservative Republicans shouldn't be a mystery. He has
recovered the lost art of giving coherent, powerful speeches, while jabbing
red-hot pokers into the hot buttons of abortion and morality.

But it would also be fun to hear national scriveners and talking heads explain
Keyes' economic plan. In addition to eliminating the capital gains tax, he
would abolish both the federal income tax and the Social Security payroll tax
and replace them with a 23 percent federal sales tax.

Never mind the feasibility or the desirability of such a sales tax plan. It
would be nice to get something so outlandish in the mix to stave off the
green-eye shade accountancy coverage that has already made this presidential
year insufferably boring.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/IOWA_monday000124.html
http://cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/01/24/iowa.wrap/index.html
http://www.keyes2000.com/

*************************************************************

- - DVD'd to Death  - -

For the past few years, during the debate on how best to extend copyright
protection to the digital realm, content owners have harped on the need to go
after pirates and people who try to make money from stealing copyrighted
works. Honest people like Internet service providers had nothing to fear we
were told. That turned out to be a lie.

In New York, a district judge sided with the Motion Picture Association of
America, granting a preliminary injunction against programmers who developed a
DVD-encryption descrambling program, DeCSS, as well as the owner of an
Internet provider who had the offending file on one of his servers.

The MPAA argues that DeCSS violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of
1998 because it circumvents DVD's security measures.

So, down must come any copies of DeCSS, which was developed by programmers in
an attempt to build a DVD player for the Linux platform. Notice that no one is
claiming that the program was written to rip off content owners, merely that
it "circumvents" certain bits. That position essentially would outlaw backward
engineering of software, a key element of the open source method of software
development.

Better still, lawyers for the media guys are arguing that ISPs are responsible
for everything--even a tiny piece of code like DeCSS--that transverses their
far-flung networks.

The content producers have yet to come to grips with the fact that the wired
generation they would so desperately like to sell things to is not a passive
bunch. They are going to buy something, take it apart to see how it works, and
re-arrange it in new ways. If that is criminalized, why bother?

http://www.charlotte.com/click/wiretech/pub/dvdpiracy.htm
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/22/040l-012200-idx.html

T-Shirts with the source-code of DeCSS printed on them can be found at
http://copyleft.net/cgi-bin/copyleft/t039.pl?1&back


*************************************************************
QUICK HITS

- - Quote of the Week - -

"A large number of voters, especially minority voters, lack computers or
access to the Internet. Our voices will not be heard like others," said Olivia
Lizarraga-Bussey, one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by the Voting
Integrity Project that seeks to stop Arizona's Democrats from holding the
nation's first Internet presidential primary in March. Traditional paper
balloting will still take place at over 50 polling places statewide.

http://www.charlotte.com/click/wiretech/pub/internetvote.htm


- - Blair Switch Project  - -

Residents of Burkittsville, the rural Maryland town made famous by the spooky
movie set there, are fighting plans by AT&T to build a fiber optic boosting
station on some farmland near a Civil War battlefield.

http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/24/108l-012400-idx.html


- - Fire Drilled  - -

Officials in Charleston, W.Va., spent over $1 million on a new firehouse that
cannot pass muster with the fire code. A firewall is improperly installed and
the sleeping quarters lack fire alarms.

http://www.dailymail.com/news/News/2000011921/


##############################################################
REASON NEWS

For the latest on media appearances by Reason writers, visit
http://www.reason.com/press.html.

On 4 February Adrian Moore, RPPI Director of Economic Policy, will give an
opening address to the annual meeting of the Association of Metropolitan
Sewerage Agencies in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  He will be speaking on
competition and management challenges in addressing the nation's wastewater
treatment infrastructure needs.


ARE YOU fascinated by innovation? Do you love new ideas? Would you like to
stimulate your creative thinking? Do you want to explore the connection
between freedom, enterprise, and progress?

Don't miss the 2nd Annual Reason Dynamic Visions Conference
http://www.reason.com/dynamic/dynamic2000.html

"On the Verge: Creative Mixing on the Frontiers of Business, Society, Art, and
Technology," takes place February 19 - 21, 2000 at the Santa Clara Marriott in
Silicon Valley.

Founded by Reason Editor-at-Large Virginia Postrel, author of The Future and
Its Enemies, the conference offers an opportunity for creative people from a
variety of backgrounds to cross-fertilize, discover new ideas, and gain fresh
insights into their work, home, and civic lives--and their futures. At
ordinary conferences, people are exposed to a narrow pool of industry-specific
expertise and concepts. At the Dynamic Visions Conference, attendees and
speakers from biology, technology, management, ecology, media,
public policy, education, design, and other fields converge, sparking brand
new ideas--ideas that propel them beyond the traditional boundaries of their
own disciplines.


The conference program and registration information are available at
http://www.reason.com/dynamic/dynamic2000.html or by calling Erica Mannard at
310-391-2245.


Confirmed speakers and their topics include:

Jhane Barnes, designer - "Mathematics, Computers, and the Art of Textile
Design"

Gregory Benford, UC-Irvine astrophysicist and author of Timescape, Deep Time,
and Cosm - "Thinking Long in the Millennium"

Daniel Botkin, UC-Santa Barbara ecologist, president, Center for the Study of
the Environment, author of Discordant Harmonies - "The Future of Nature: How
to Have Both Civilization and Nature in the 21st Century"

Charles Paul Freund, senior editor, Reason, "Dark Verge? The Case of Vienna
1900"

Neil Gershenfeld, leader, physics and media group, MIT Media Lab, author, When
Things Start to Think - "Things that Think"

Nick Gillespie, editor-in-chief, Reason - "Popular Culture on the Verge"

Lisa Graham Keegan, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction -
"Innovations in Education"

Grant McCracken, Harvard Business School, author, Plenitude and Culture and
Consumption - "Verge of Verges: Sir Francis Bacon at the Gates of Gibraltar"

Christena Nippert-Eng, sociologist, Illinois Institute of Technology, author,
Home and Work - "Home and Work: Drawing the Boundaries"

Dan Pink, Fast Company contributor - "Free Agent Nation"

Steven Postrel, UC-Irvine Graduate School of Management -"The Geek and the
Dilettante: Sharing Knowledge Across Specialities"

Virginia Postrel, editor, Reason, author, The Future and Its Enemies, - "On
the Verge: Exploring the Frontiers of Creative Encounter"

Adam Clayton Powell III, vice president, technology and programs, The Freedom
Forum - "Culture and Collision"

Richard Rodriguez, author, Days of Obligation and Hunger of Memory - "Some
Thoughts on the Burrito and the Browning of America"

Lynn Scarlett, executive director, Reason Public Policy Institute - "Can
Industry Save the Planet? The Rise of Industrial Ecology"

Michael Schrage, columnist, Fortune, senior associate, MIT Media Lab, author,
No More Teams! and Serious Play - "Serious Play"

Robert Zubrin, author of The Case for Mars - "Mars Direct: Humans to the Red
Planet within a Decade"

For full descriptions and speaker information, see
http://www.reason.com/dynamic/speakers.html

To register, see http://www.reason.com/dynamic/dynamic2000.html


On 24 February Wade Hudson, RPPI Economic Policy Analyst, and Adrian Moore,
RPPI's Privatization Center Director, will be in Orlando, Florida, speaking at
an all day session on managing employee transitions during privatization. The
session is part of the 2000 World Outsourcing Summit.

##############################################################

Reason Express is made possible by a grant from The DBT Group
(http://www.dbtgroup.com), manufacturers of affordable, high-performance
mainframe systems and productivity software.

Current Circulation: 5322
We encourage you to forward Reason Express. If you received this issue from a
forward, please subscribe.


Previous issues of Reason Express are available at
http://www.reason.com/re/re.html

To subscribe visit http://www.reason.com/re/subscribe.html

Or:

To subscribe to the TEXT version just send a TEXT ONLY message to
Majordomo@free-market.net
with this in the body of the message:

subscribe Reason-Express youremail@yourdomain.com

For the HTML version the TEXT ONLY message would be:

subscribe Reason-ExpressHTML youremail@yourdomain.com

Your email and your domain would be something like gillespie@reason.com.
To unsubscribe, use unsubscribe in place of subscribe.

• Crazy Atheist Libertarian
• Government Snitch?????
• David Dorn
• Fat Blond Guy
• Crazy Atheist