This afternoon, Robin Gross from the EFF called me with some disturbing new information for anyone interested in DVD litigation. The MPAA has filed two lawsuits against three defendants in two separate states for the "illegal hacking of the DVD encryption system 'CSS'." The plaintiffs in the case are Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros.. UPDATE: The complaints are available online. See below.

When Judge Elfving handed down the rejection of the DVD Copy Control Association's temporary restraining order on December 29th, the Open Source community knew that they had won a battle in the war. The preliminary injunction hearing on the DVD Copy Control Association case that was originally scheduled for this Friday has been pushed back to next Tuesday, January 18th, and the Free Software community will be there with bells on.

Yesterday was a historic day for the Net, for better and worse. AOL/Time-Warner plans to be the world's largest corporation and content provider (if Microsoft was an anti-trust threat, get a load of this one), and IBM adopted Linux. Why the merger should be stopped:

The United States loves to see itself as the cradle of liberty, but when it comes to sex, America mostly demonstrates its prudishness and hypocrisy. Sex is our national taboo.The Net, our new national taboo-buster, along with a spate of new laws and court rulings, have all taken this national phobia to meltdown. Are free speech and the online liberation of sexuality incompatible?

On November 10th 1999, Ramsey Electronics of Victor, New York, was raided by the United States Customs Service for allegedly manufacturing and distributing 'Electronic Surreptitious Intercept Devices' as defined by Title 18 USC, Section 2512. We spoke to both Ramsey Electronics President John Ramsey and Joel Violanti, the federal prosecutor on the case, to find out exactly what happened, and why. (Click below for more.)

The big Y2K news was that there wasn't any. What happened? Was this a catastrophe averted or invented? After several years of sustained computing industry, media and political hype, could anybody could have imagined that there would be no serious Y2K problems at all in the developed and non-developed worlds? That no city in the world turned dark, no bank shut down, no phones were cut off, no planes fell from the sky, no dearth of food or water cropped up anywhere? In fact, as of Monday no human being was known to have died or been injured - or truthfully, even significantly inconvenienced - as the result of any computer-related problem at the end of the century.

Who gets to define the future as technology becomes one of the most important social concerns in the world? In Tomorrowland, H.G. Wells, the father of science fiction, squares off against the Imagineers. (more)

Every year I pick a new years resolution and ever year it doesn't come true. This year I've opted to set my sights low so I can greatly increase the chance of suceeding for once. This year my resolution is to continue converting oxygen into carbon dioxide. Read on to learn what resolutions RMS, ESR, Jon Katz, CowboyNeal, Mandrake and others have for the year 2000.

"Man In The Moon" may be the best holiday movie of the year so far, even though Jim Carrey is already much more of a comedic legend than Andy Kaufman, the man he portrays.

Here's Round One of the Holiday Movie Thread. First round: Oliver Stone's MTV-style look at the NFL, and Matt Damon's stylish and creepy portrait of outsiderness. Round Two: Man On The Moon, Magnolias, and Cradle Will Rock. This is open source reviewing -- join in.

Well its a slow day, and since I saw GalaxyQuest last night, I figured I'd pop up and write a quick review of the film. The quick summary is that it stars Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman, and it is a sort of parody/lampoon of Star Trek, Trekkies, and the whole Trek phenomenon. The quick rating is that if you've got a sense of humor, you'll enjoy it. Read on for more stuff, and hopefully with minimal spoilers.

Thanks to a rather interesting string of e-mails (Thanks Evan!), today's feature writer is none other than David Brin. Brin's bio is after his piece, but suffice it to say he's one of the most interesting writers, IMHO, out there today. This piece, one of his essay's, deals with why George Marshall should be Man of the Century. (Another one of Brin's essays that many of you will remember is his work dealing with Star Wars, Episode One.)

This week, Time Magazine chose Amazon's Jeff Bezos as its "Man Of The Year," a choice that overflows with symbolism about the U.S. and the Internet - none of it good. I've made my own picks. Feel free to make yours. (more below)

Last week, The Bazaar, an Open Source meeting and exhibition, was held for the first time in New York City. It was not a well-attended event, with fewer than 3000 registered visitors, and the view from the show's main floor was downright dismal because most of the people there spent most of their time in tutorial sessions, not cruising the (sparse) display booths. But it was still an event many found valuable. Here are some "show tales" from Slashdot readers who were there. (click below)

Robin William's "Bicentennial Man" is a rare Hollywood offering, a mainstream sci-fi romance. Syrupy and a bit circular, it's true to the Isaac Asimov story that inspired it, and is actually thoughtful about some of the issues humans may have to confront if -- as so many futurists predict -- AI machines evolve into some sort of species in the 21st Century. Like "Toy Story 2," this movie has an absurd plot, but is sometimes graphically dazzling, showing how computer animation is becoming an art form of it's own.

Corporatism isn't capitalism. It isn't old American can-do business savvy either. Since the late 80's, when de-regulation, marketing and technology fused to create a new kind of company, we're confronted with a virulent, greedy new kind of force that's pushing the individual to the margins. And responsible for the filing of patent injunctions all over the Net, from toys to one-click software. This is just one of the things the protesters in Seattle -- left and right -- were trying to point out. Get ready for the brawl of the 21st century.

Chris Johnson writes: "When you think about PalmPilots or the new crop of wearable computers or, perhaps, even computers themselves, you could sum it up with a single nonword - Borgification. By this, I refer to the way computers can extend a person's abilities, in the same way that wearing clothing can extend a person's ability to survive hostile climates, or standing on ladders can extend a person's ability to reach high-up things. This is a central theme of computer use, and the development of GUI speaks eloquently toward how far a computer's interactions can be bent to make them look like human interactions." Keep reading (below). Chris has lots more to say, and it's all good. He'll get you thinking, whether you agree with him or not.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are cover boys again -- this time in Time Magazine, which discloses the contents of some home videos they made before the massacre, and which again graphically links the killings to gaming. This meme rocketed all over the Net, and as e-mail from the Hellmouth suggests, it touched some brutally raw nerves.

It seems the 1997 movie "Gattaca" wasn't science fiction at all, but an early documentary of the 21st Century. Geneticists are hard at work on the Humane Genome Project and want to map the gene pool of Iceland. They also claim they've found the essence of life in Maryland and hope to create a completely new species -- after a full and public debate, of course. If we're creating life, doesn't that raise some loaded questions about history and religion? And where, exactly, is this debate (which Victor Frankenstein's monster started 200 years ago) supposed to occur? Slashdot's Threads? Congress? MSNBC?

You may remember a few weeks ago when we posed the question What is the greatest hacks. Well Derek Glidden has compiled the most popular selections from that discussion, and he presents below the winners. I was pretty surprised by some of the choices, but I think its a great list, with hacks spanning all sorts of areas of human creativity. Enjoy.