I attended the Unix Users of Minnesota [http://www.uum.org/] meeting this evening. Mike Jacobs, an assistant to the Minnesota Attorney General, was supposed to speak and discuss the Microsoft Antitrust Suit, but apparently had to pull out of the talk. We still had a talk. In particular, it covered the Tunney Act comment period for a Judicial swipe at Microsoft. In addition, discussion eventually led to the creation of a mailing list for the purpose of putting together an Intellectual Property summit, to strike back at the Legislative movements that have been taking place over the past several years. Chris Hertel, an employee of the Networking and Telecommunications Services at the University of Minnesota spoke instead. Chris has talked to people in the Attorney General's office because he is a member of the Samba development team. It was repeated over and over that people should try to read through the tentative settlement between the Department of Justice and Microsoft, and comment on it if at all possible. There is a 60-day comment period running now in accordance with the Tunney Act. The settlement was tentatively agreed to on November 6th, so it appears that we're about halfway through the process. Read through the documents at http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms-settle.htm and write some coherent comments. If you have trouble with that, get a computer or a friend to do spelling and grammar checking. Avoid ellipses (...) and other e-mail shorthand. Apparently the legal documents are pretty poorly written, so you'll probably want to have large quantities of your favorite stimulant-laden beverage available. Submit your comments to microsoft.atr at usdoj.gov with `Microsoft Settlement' as the subject. There are snail-mail and fax options as well, but I wouldn't send it via USPS these days.. It's recommended that you CC the Minnesota AG. A good e-mail address to send to appears to be attorney.general at state.mn.us. Other contact methods are available at http://www.ag.state.mn.us/Contact/Default.htm Also, you may wish to CC a media outlet. Minnesota Public Radio and National Public Radio are likely some of the best options, but it wouldn't hurt to send a copy to the Pioneer Press, Star Trib, MN Daily, or any TV/Radio station. Toward the end of the meeting, the Minnesota Intellectual Property Rights Summit mailing list was created. Information about the group (how to subscribe, etc) is available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mnipsummit/ The intention of the list is to pull together people from different groups in Minnesota (Linux user groups, fair copyright groups, etc.), and to put together a summit where some intelligent people in technology and other fields can get together with US Representatives and Senators (and their technologically- and scientifically-minded advisors) to discuss what can be done to pull back on our country's laws, and make sure that they serve the best interest of the people, and not the nation-states that pass as corporations these days. -- _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ ___ _ _ __ A living example of / \/ \(_)| ' // ._\ / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__ Artificial Intelligence. \_||_/|_||_|_\\___/ \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __) [ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088 at tc.umn.edu ] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20011205/4c26bc2d/attachment.pgp