Remember that easily-scammed new feature over at Amazon.com?

The one where people could recommend not only books "in addition to" or "instead of" other books, but CDs instead of books, DVD players instead of books, and sofas instead of DVD players...

Well, good riddance to bad rubbish! The feature quietly disappeared over the weekend!

Unfortunately, I think the publicity for this scam has opened a Pandora's box that isn't so easily closed. It has exposed Amazon as an exploitable system of technologies to a worldwide community of desperate authors. At least some of them will continue poking around for other ways to scam the Amazon systems, even if this feature never returns.

As I said before, the bigger problem here had nothing to do with technology and everything to do with the ability of writers to behave ethically.

So yes, the king is dead! Le roi est mort!

Mais, vive le roi aussi.

"When they finally / put you in the ground / I'll stand on your grave / and tramp the dirt down" -- Elvis Costello

The CIPA -- the Child Internet Protection Act -- is dead. At least for now, anyway. Further appeals may push it up to the Supreme Court.

The collection of confusingly-acronymed child/Internet laws has become bewilderingly vast, so let's review. The CIPA is, in my opinion, one of the most ridiculous and ill-advised of the lot. It would have made use of Internet-filtering software compulsory in any library that accepts federal funding.

It's the rare library that can subsist without federal subsidies, so this would in effect have made Internet censorship mandatory in public libraries.

The limitations and failures of such filtering software have been widely demonstrated, most notably through demonstrations of their tendency to block safe sex information, breast cancer information, and other useful health information.

However, even smut has its place in a library. Erotic fiction and photography have entered the pantheon of legitimate scholarly research topics, and consequently, I would find even a filter that didn't block health information to be more restrictive than should be acceptable in institutions that are dedicated to collecting, archiving and organizing our culture. Our whole culture.

As recognized by the three-judge panel, there are other ways to manage children's access to the Internet, ways that do not consequently limit the availability of relevant information to adults.

So, dance on the grave of the CIPA! Tramp the dirt down!

The site finally made its appearance on Google today. Woohoo!

Traffic is running at the low, but steady pace of about 12 not-me visits per day.

I know you're out there.

I just want to say welcome, thanks for reading, and feel free to leave comments on the articles, or in the Shoutbox at the lower right.

Feedback is what separates pixels from paper, so tell me what you think, tell me what you feel, tell me what you had for breakfast.

Cheers!