Free Dmitry! Russian software engineer Dmitry Sklyarov may become the Amadou Diallo of the software freedom world. His plights seems to be generating lots of attention, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation organizing protests around the US. Join in.

RIP Napster The record industry could have made a friend of Napster by simply converting it into a subscription service that, when activated, let you download an entire song instead of the first 60 seconds. Customers would have open access to unlimited music, those who wanted to buy CDs could still use it as a sampling tool, and the record industry would get money for nothing, as Napster runs off its users' servers. Instead they shut it down. When Napster reopens, it will try and use a proprietary .NAP format instead of MP3 and fail. As folks seem to intent on creating standards monopolies, I'll run on story next week on how to do that.
Update
A little new journalism at its best. This Boston Herald piece was put togther after the author spent a good bit of time on the free-sklyarov email list.