Helprin makes the same mistake that many make of thinking that just because the linguistic convention is to call such things "intellectual property," it really is the same thing as property. His entire argument is based on this simple point -- and it's why he's wrong. It is amusing to note that some are already pointing out that Helprin's argument is a blatant copy of Mark Twain's -- and yet we doubt he paid the descendants of Mark Twain for it. However, the key to Helprin's problem is his total and complete misunderstanding of the purpose of property as well as the purpose of copyright law.

The key point here is that in pretending (or simply ignorantly claiming) that intellectual property is the same as tangible property, Helprin completely misunderstands what rights copyright law gives him. It is not the same right as he has over his own property -- which, after he sells it, he no longer has control over it. Instead of "property rights," copyright gives him a monopoly right (which is what Jefferson preferred to call it) to control how his output is used even after it's sold.

Internet radio station Atlanta Blue Skye LLC has warned Radu-Cristian Fotescu, a Romania-based technology enthusiast and prolific blogger, that his Beranger.org blog has been "copied" and turned over to its lawyers. The issue stems from Fotescu's posting of a widely known workaround for bypassing JavaScript functions that try to disable a mouse's right-click context menu functionality, and the posting of information gathered from the Properties function of Windows Media Player.

In an attempt to prevent copying the stream URL into another music player, Atlanta Blue Skye LLC Web developers employed an old JavaScript trick to prevent users from accessing the context popup menu by disabling the ability to right-click on any elements of the radio stream's Web page.

Bypassing the right-click disabling function is arguably as old as the function itself, and is well-documented on the Web. By using the Esc key workaround, Fotescu was able to access the Web browser's context menu and discover the new stream URLs and posted both the addresses and the one-sentence procedure for bypassing the JavaScript right-click disabling function on his Beranger.org blog.

During the incident, which happened last August at Unit 3 of the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant, operators manually shut down the reactor after two water recirculation pumps failed.

An investigation into the failure found that the controllers for the pumps locked up following a spike in data traffic -- referred to as a "data storm" in the NRC notice -- on the power plant's internal control system network.

"Conversations between the Homeland Security Committee staff and the NRC representatives suggest that it is possible that this incident could have come from outside the plant," Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Subcommittee Chairman James R. Langevin (D-RI) stated in the letter. "Unless and until the cause of the excessive network load can be explained, there is no way for either the licensee (power company) or the NRC to know that this was not an external distributed denial-of-service attack."

When Firefox launched in beta release five years ago, it burst on the open-source browser scene like a young Elvis Presley -- slim, sexy and dangerous.

But, with Firefox 3.0 poised for release this summer, the "IE killer" is in danger of morphing into an early Fat Elvis, if increasing numbers of die-hard fans turned reluctant critics are any guide.

The alleged culprit: bloat, the same problem that once plagued Mozilla, the slow, overstuffed open-source browser spawned by Netscape that Firefox was originally meant to replace.

In our poll, readers rated Firefox's mysterious habit of gobbling up every remaining scrap of a computer's memory their No. 1 gripe about the browser. Complaints of slow performance and instability ranked highly as well.

In an effort to stamp out incompatibilities between extensions, the Firefox team has slowly been adding standard features that were previously available as add-ons. Firefox 2.0, released in November 2006, saw the addition of an inline spell-checker, an RSS reader and a new search engine manager.

The latest beta release of SlySoft's AnyDVD HD program can apparently be used to rip HD DVD discs that use AACS version 3. Although these won't hit store shelves until the May 22, pirates have already successfully tested SlySoft's program with early release previews of the Matrix trilogy.

The hacker collective continues to adapt to AACS revisions and is demonstrating a capacity to assimilate new volume keys at a rate which truly reveals the futility of resistance. If keys can be compromised before HD DVDs bearing those keys are even released into the wild, one has to question the viability of the entire key revocation model.

After the last AACS key spread far and wide across the breadth of the Internet, AACS LA chairman Michael Ayers stated that the organization planned to continue clamping down on key dissemination, despite the fact that attempts to do so only encouraged further dissemination. In a monument to comedic irony, the AACS LA has elected to put out the fire by pouring on more gasoline.

The U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority, which formerly governed Iraq, accidentally published Microsoft Word documents containing information never meant for the public, according to an article in Salon. By viewing the documents using the Track Changes feature in Word (.doc), the author has been able to reconstruct internal discussions from 2004 which reflect the optimism, isolation and incompetence of the American occupation.

The editors kept pulling text from a document titled "Why Are the Attacks Down in Al-Anbar Province -- Several Theories."

E-mail solicitations that use graphical images of text to avoid filters are not new. Recently, however, they became more sophisticated and account for roughly 40 percent of spam today.

The spammer's challenge, then, is to deliver something that the filter hasn't yet learned is spam. Eventually, the filter incorporates the new derivations into its list of spammy traits. Then the spammer changes convention again, and on and on.

Spammers have made image spam really effective by using not just one but multiple filter-thwarting techniques. Some confuse optical character recognition filters, some automatically alter images to create randomness, and some even buffer against defenses that don't yet exist but that spammers anticipate will be built in response to image spam.

Details of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, will criminalise "attempting" to infringe copyright.

It means that you can go to prison for one to 10 years for trying to copy a music CD and failing. In another move you could get life in prison for using a pirated copy of Windows on your home PC.

It will be possible for the FBI to get a wire tap to see if you are using pirated software. Anyone who uses counterfeit products who "recklessly causes or attempts to cause death" can be sent down for life.

Homeland Security will be allowed to use its terrorist search powers on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It would notify the RIAA when its sniffers detected "unauthorised fixations of the sounds, or sounds and images, of a live musical performance" are found.

Other copyright holders will not get the benefit of this service.

Today was the deadline for that compliance, as Wired's Threat Level blog points out. Universities have been especially vocal in their opposition to CALEA, arguing that it will prove incredibly expensive to install, monitor, and maintain all the required gear and software. In an effort to make it easier and cheaper, the federal government has allowed schools to route all of their traffic through a Trusted Third Party who will take care of all the monitoring issues.

The government sees this as a mere extension of its existing wiretap authority to a new medium. Criminals shouldn't get a free pass, so the argument goes, simply because they're smart enough to switch to Skype.

Judicial oversight of the taps remains in place, and a judge is still required to sign off on every wiretap, though this may come as cold comfort to those opposed to the CALEA expansion; in 2006, no judge turned down a wiretap request.

A terrified dad was held by police for 13 hours after they mistook a dummy of Lara Croft for a gunman.

He was pinned to the ground, handcuffed and quizzed - after officers spotted his life-sized model of the gun-toting Tomb Raider star, reports The Sun.

He had called cops, about nuisance phone calls he'd received, but when two officers arrived, one saw the limited edition 6ft statue, worth £1,000, standing in the darkness of his living room window.

Fearing it was an armed crook, the officers called in support - and David was held at gunpoint.

David, who runs a computer games store, said: "The back-up cops burst in through the back door and knocked me to the ground. One jabbed a gun in the back of my neck and said, 'All right - where's the gun?'"