One more warranty scam

These have gotten routine:

Honda Notification
Dealer Services
100 Mall Parkway
St. Louis, MO 63385
...
Our records indicate that the factory warranty on your 2004 Honda has expired or may be expiring soon. As a loyal Honda owner, you qualify for extended vehicle coverage of up to six additional years or 100,000 miles. Only your vehicle qualifies for this program.
...
Call immediately, 1-866-847-6655.

"Dealer Services" has no connection with Honda, and the notion that they've set up a program only for my vehicle is so ludicrous I have to wonder what kind of mentality they're aiming at. I bought my car used and have no factory warranty on it. If you've found this entry with a web search on the phone number or address, please follow my advice and don't be conned.

Here are some related links:

• Missouri AG Nixon sues car extended warranty companies
• Rip-Off Report: Dealer Services
• Another report on Rip-Off Report
• Update: One more on Rip-Off Report, this one reporting outright fraud in the warranty expiration notice

CMLP legal guide

The Citizen Media Law Project has put up a legal guide for people who publish online content. It's still incomplete (for instance, clicking on New Hampshire in the map provides no information), but it provides a lot of information on where you have a good chance of standing up to the government and where you can get into trouble. As an example of the latter, if you record illegal actions of cops in a public place with audio and don't get their consent or make it plainly obvious, in Massachusetts you could be the one who's prosecuted.

This looks like a useful reference.

Electronic Communications Preservation Act

A bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives to put more teeth into the requirement that governmental electronic records, especially those of the White House, be preserved. This bill, HR 5811, is called the Electronic Communications Preservation Act (PDF).

This bill would "require the electronic capture, management, and preservation" of "electronic communications that are records." This appears to apply to all government agencies. The stored records would have to be searchable, and record management software would be subject to certification. The bill would also apply, "to the extent practicable," to records other than communications. A statement by Linda Koontz for GAO (PDF) discusses some of the issues involved.

This could be ambitious. There is the issue of defining which communications are "records." Putting these records in context (e.g., an exchange of e-mail over a period of time) can be tricky. Attachments can come in an unpredictable variety of formats. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) would be put in charge of implementing this mandate over a four-year period.

Something desperately needs to be done to prevent future administrations from repeating the convenient sloppiness of the Bush administration, which has reportedly lost millions of pieces of e-mail. Working out the technical details can be both messy and exciting, not to mention laden with politics. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

In searching for links on the bill, I came upon the Open House Project blog. It looks worth following.

Online protests against Chinese repression

An online protest against the Chinese government's repression of its people has taken the form of an international poem relay in support of a jailed journalist. As the Olympic Torch has passed from country to country, Shi Tao's poem "June" has been translated into local languages and posted to the Web in both text and spoken forms.

Today the torch begins its so-called "Journey of Harmony" across the Chinese mainland, so it's time to turn up the heat further on the government of China. The Chinese government has been trying to portray the protests as an insult to the Chinese people, rather than the defense they actually are. Using a bit of Chinese culture as a tool of protest helps to defeat that lie.

I'm not particularly impressed by the English version of the poem, which probably just hasn't survived the gap in cultures and languages. The Chinese language is strong on ambiguity, so there could be any number of layers of meaning that didn't make it into the English version. The German version, which I find more expressive, refers to "the sixth moon" rather than June, suggesting it means the sixth month of the Chinese calendar. However, June is consistent with the Chinese rulers' brutal actions surrounding the Tiananmen Square protests.

Other sites for the PEN Poem Relay:

• English PEN
• PEN American Center
• International Pen (UK)