Dangerous times for free speech

Two disturbing articles on the future of freedom of expression.  First, the Saudi government is proposing an international body for network censorship.   

The Washington Post has an OpEd on this topic with the following quote:

Our entire society is being treated as a crowded theater, and talking about whole subjects is now akin to shouting “fire!”

Countries which we have assumed to be historically free either are not free, or are curtailing that freedom.  According to the Post piece, Ireland finds it self in good company with Russia in criminalizing speech that offends the religious.  

Corporate control - how sad

Popular TV show Mythbusters had planned on doing a show dedicated to RFID.  In fact, at some point, Kari Byron had an RFID capsule implanted in her arm to test how it would act during an MRI scan.
The team had planned on doing additional work on RFIDs to test the reliability, trackability, and hackability.  Unfortunately, major credit card companies decided it was best to suppress such investigation.

Copyright / Patent trolls - its the zombie apocalypse

Sad news on the "information wants to be free" front.  Time zone data may not be the most sexy thing, and probably is something most people don't ever think about, but there is a data base of worldwide timezeons. 

The full story is on Stephen Colebourne's blog. 

The short story is that a company called Astrolabe has filed suit against the open source timezone project claiming copyright infringement.

First off, I didn't know you could copyright facts (see 1st question), but what is really insulting is that this company offers free products: a free birth chart (aka horoscope).

Really?