And this, of course, has been the point all along:

the WikiLeaks disclosures *are* significant precisely because they expose government deceit, wrongdoing and brutality, but the damage to innocent people has been deliberately and wildly exaggerated -- fabricated -- by the very people whose misconduct has been revealed.

There *is* harm from the WikiLeaks documents, but it's to wrongdoers in power, which is why they are so desperate to malign and then destroy the group.

Yet another study has been released proving that watching Fox News is detrimental to your intelligence. World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, conducted a survey of American voters that shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. What’s more, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation.

According to an article in the Guardian:

Illegal downloading of music cost the UK industry nearly £1bn this year, the BPI claimed today, as it produced research showing online piracy is still growing.

…

It based that calculation on an assumption that every track would have sold for 82p, the average price of a digital single, although it conceded not everyone who downloaded tracks illegally would have paid for them if they had been unable to obtain them illegitimately.

Also, last year thousands of people rode on the same bus as me. This cost me thousands of euros. I base that calculation on an assumption that they would each have paid me €1 to keep them company, though I concede that maybe not all of them would have paid if they could just have gone along anyway. As indeed they did.

The United States has announced plans to host World Press Freedom Day in 2011 as part of its efforts "to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age."

Well, the free flow of information not embarrassing to the US, anyway.

The chairman of British Airways [Martin Broughton] has launched an attack on "completely redundant" airport checks and said the UK should stop "kowtowing" to US demands for increased security.

...

Mr Broughton said no one wanted weak security, but he added: "We all know there's quite a number of elements in the security programme which are completely redundant and they should be sorted out."

A Fox News contributor and former state department adviser has accused WikiLeaks of conducting "political warfare against the US" and called for those behind the whistleblowing website to be declared "enemy combatants" so they can be subjected to "non-judicial actions".

In addition to Google's own app marketplace, Amazon, Horizon and Vodafone have all announced that they are creating their own app stores for Android. So there will be at least four app stores on Android, which customers must search among to find the app they want and developers will need to work with to distribute their apps and get paid. This is going to be a mess for both users and developers. Contrast this with Apple's integrated App Store, which offers users the easiest-to-use largest app store in the world, preloaded on every iPhone.

Not to argue with The Steve or anything, but if a single app store, controlled by a single corporate entity, is better than many, then I guess we also need only one web site, and only one newspaper, and only one political party. Apple's classical "1984" commercial is getting more and more ironic.

Furthermore, it quickly became apparent that [IFPI lawyer Magnus Mårtensson's] evidence consisted only of screenshots. When asked if he had any network equipment logging exactly what was going on ‘behind the scenes’ of any of his sample downloads, he replied that he didn’t.

When asked if he verified in any way during the download process that he had any contact with The Pirate Bay’s tracker, again the answer was negative.

Defendant Gottfrid Svartholm questioned Mårtensson on his evidence gathering techniques. The following questions are particularly interesting as they show that the prosecution has no evidence that the Pirate Bay trackers were actually used.

Germany's working group against censorship, AK Zensur, has analysed a few recent Scandinavian blacklists, allegedly meant to block sites containing child abuse material. Our less-than-surprising findings:

* From 167 listed sites, only 3 contained such material. * Two of them were listed on different blacklists since 2008, obviously without the authorities trying to take the sites offline. * All three were taken down by the hosting providers within hours or even minutes after receiving an AK takedown request by email.

So what were the reasons again that made access blocking an essential weapon in fighting child abuse?

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday it's too early to say when aviation officials can lift a ban on liquids on board flights despite international officials saying it could come as early as 2012.

Still good news though. I hadn't heard they were even considering ending this "if you bring toothpaste on a plane, you're helping the terrorists!!!1!" nonsense.