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What's the best way to attract a pile of threatening lawyers' letters from Microsoft? Sell pirate copies of Windows? Write a DRM-busting program? Londoner Jamie Cansdale has just discovered a new approach. He had the temerity to make Redmond's software better.

Oh wow! First they give him an award (the Most Valuable Professionals MVP award), and then they threaten lawsuits. Classic Microsoft.

DVD Encryption will never work. Ever.

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The companies are trying so hard to make it impossible for people to copy DVDs, but hackers continue to prove that they're wasting their time. Just one day after releasing new keys for their copy protection system, a hacker posted the key on his website.

The AACS LA is not happy about these Processing Keys being released. When previous keys were leaked, the organization vowed that it would remove the keys from the Internet with cease-and-desist orders. Predictably, this only encouraged people to post them more. The whole series of affairs evokes memories of when DVD decryption was all the rage, and the DeCSS code wound up being printed on t-shirts to express the futility of trying to sue anyone who used or even knew about it.

The key thing here is that hackers are working for free and there's a lot of them. I don't think this is a battle that copyright holders will ever win.

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Wired.com recently did a survey among major Internet providers to see how well they support privacy. Of the few that responded at all, many of the answers were vague or evasive. Some of the questions included:

• How long the ISP stores the unique IP address that the customer used (which can be used to track actions to you individually).
• Whether they keep information on all the URLs (web sites) that customers visit).
• Whether they sell customer data to third parties.

Out of the companies, only Cox was forthcoming and actually had policies that were close to good.

Apple Corp.

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Apple music files can now be purchased without DRM, but it seems that they hide information in the file with your name and account information.

Now the question becomes, what do they do with the information? Ars Technica theorizes that this might be a new form of identifying file sharers since the file itself will blab who the original owner was.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

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When the former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was caught violating the law, he was charged with two misdemeanors. When the former director of China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) was convicted on corruption charges, he was sentenced to death.

I don't know. I'm thinking that the Chinese version makes the next guy a little more responsible…

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A new service from Google is taking their maps program down to the actual street level. You can browse around the streets of locations they've mapped like in a 3-d virtual game (though it's just pictures so not as smooth as an actual game… yet). What happens when they combine it with Fotowoosh?

The implications of this are currently unknown. For one, I suppose it gives you the opportunity to browse around a location before you actually go there so you can plan your trip better. Or if I was a terrorist, it makes it really easy to pick targets and become familiar with the neighborhood before the actual event. Another possibility is making game modifications like this one. Nothing like being able to wander around in Counterstrike blowing people away on your very own virtual street!

Don't get me wrong, it's neat technology and certainly better than live cameras. People and license plate numbers are all obscured at least. Then again, maybe not.

Gas

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For a friend, we aren't being price gouged says at least one consumer group:

In a past life we were asked to prove that local gas stations were price gouging New York City residents. We knew this to be false, and found the proof we needed in a meticulously researched report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

And more importantly:

Despite popular misconceptions, price gouging almost never occurs as prices rise. Instead, price gouging occurs when dealers keep prices artificially high in order to gain a little extra profit or recoup costs, even though the DTW price has declined.

Which means that a fairly good sign that you're not being gouged is when the prices are going up.

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The Consumerist has a large list of "executive service" contact information.

Executive customer service is a firewall team that keeps your complaints from disturbing busy executives golf games. Very often, they do this by actually solving your problems, possessing superhuman powers to command all parts of the company to action, from billing to technical.

If the company you need isn't on the list, they have a method for finding the executive customer service contact information for just about anyone as well.

Social Networking Sites

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Ars Technica reports on a proposed law in NC that will require parents to sign up for social networking sites (like MySpace) and become age verified before their kids would be allowed to sign up.

This is probably the best way I've heard of to prevent under-age kids from signing up and had the added benefit that the parents will have to know that their kids are using the sites. That way, parents are held accountable too.

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Some of the consumer groups have published a new report documenting some of the marketing practices aimed at kids. Like this one:

KFC used a high-pitched tone as a promotional "buzz" device for a recent "interactive advertising campaign." The MosquitoTone™ was embedded in TV commercials to launch KFC’s new "Boneless Variety Bucket™." In its press release, the company explained that the popular cell phone ring tone "is too highpitched for most adults to hear because most people begin to lose the ability to hear high frequency tones starting at age 20. This is a fact not lost on young Americans who seek the sound for clandestine ring tones that don’t turn the heads of nearby adults."