Senator Fritz Hollings introduced the "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act" today. the bill sets into motion a one year period for technology companies and Big Content to agree to copy protection technology standards. if it sounds familiar, it's because it was once known as the Secutity Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) (thanks Cory).

given the demands coming from the executives in charge of Vivendi Universal, Disney, and News Corp, there can be little doubt as to how much freedom individual consumer will be afforded under these new standards. especially since Big Content's shovelled nearly $7 million into the political money machine.

now might be a good time to get that EFF membership.

after numerous user reports that the Scientology protest site Xenu.net was no longer showing up on Google the search engine finally confirmed to Xenu.net's Norwegian webmaster that they had removed a number of links to their site at the request of Church of Scientology International (though the related entities Religious Technology Center and Bridge Publications Inc). the Church filed its complaints under the auspices of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

this is an excellent example of the erosion of free speech by overextending copyright protection, as i've mentioned before. and, again, the DMCA provides a new weapon to an organization that's hardly been reticent to pursue its critics under previously existing legislation.

it's also interesting to note that the coverage of this (admittedly new) story has primarily come from technology publications, like c|net and Wired News, and blogs. since blogs seem to be a part of Google's page-ranking strategy, what happens if the blogs covering this issue all point to Xanu.net? if i use Google's custom search for blogaritaville, what happens to searches for "Xanu.net" or "scientology" on my site?

as an aside, here are some organizations that haven't carried this story yet: New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and LA Times. (via bOingbOing)