Quick Roundup

Sleepytime Dept: I've been waiting for a product like this... an Internet wireless clock-radio alarm clock. I wanna be able to fall asleep to commercial-free trance music instead of my current clearly inferior classical music station. Unclear whether it has a sleep button though.

It's Monday, News is Lite, Let's Run an MP3 Blog Article! Dept: Yet another one of those major newspaper reports on Mp3 Blogs which of course quotes Oliver Wang. Here's a quoteoid:

It's all quite remarkable for a fledgling medium that barely existed a year ago, is open to just about anyone, and at root may be, not to put too fine a point on it, illegal. Only a few sites, like the group blog Music (For Robots), bother to get permission to post songs. So, technically, most audiobloggers, and those who download from them, are recidivist breakers of copyright law.

But so long as MP3 blogs remain small-scale and noncommercial, both they and their users may be in the legal clear, according to Urs Gasser, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

''It seems likely that [users] can often make a reasonable argument that they used the MP3 songs for sampling or other noncommercial personal use only," he says.

Gasser warns, however, that only the courts can decide whether a particular case of posting or downloading music meets the legal standard of ''fair use." And considering the cost of litigation and the bigger danger posed by organized piracy, audioblogs look like small fry.

Tech Gloat Dept: I want my petabox

Hoisted by her own (XL) petard Dept: And this is funny, obnoxious pretentious (and probably senile) White House reporter throws a hissyfit after she gets quoted - her epitaph: "we all say stuff we don't want printed":

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash3ht.htm

HELEN THOMAS ANGRY AFTER 'KILL SELF' OVER CHENEY COMMENTS
PUBLISHED

White House press doyenne Helen Thomas is plenty peeved at her
longtime friend Albert Eisele, editor of THE HILL newspaper in
Washington, D.C.

In a column this week headlined "Reporter: Cheney's Not
Presidential Material," Eisele quoted Thomas as saying "The day
Dick Cheney is going to run for president, I'll kill myself. All
we need is one more liar."

Thomas also said: "I think he'd like to run, but it would be a sad
day for the country if he does," according to Eisele's column.

But Thomas said yesterday at the White House that her comments to
Eisele were for his ears only. "I'll never talk to a reporter
again!" Thomas was overheard saying.

"We were just talking -- I was ranting -- and he wrote about it.
That isn't right. We all say stuff we don't want printed," Thomas
said.