Are you being allowed to read Al Jazeera's English language service? Or any of Al Jazeera?

Check and see.

Doc just got a note from a friend who's getting a 401.3 error, which Microsoft explains here.

I'm getting nothing.

A traceroute doesn't go anywhere. Nor a ping.

Anybody know what's up with what's down? And if it's censorship (as the 401.3 error suggests), who's doing it, how and why?

Nope, can't see it. I get a 401.3 as well.

I *can* see there traceroute and WHOIS entry:

Name Server: ALJNS1SA.NAV-LINK.NET

Name Server: NS3.ALJAZEERA.NET

Status: ACTIVE

Updated Date: 27-mar-2003

Creation Date: 30-aug-1996

Expiration Date: 29-aug-2010

[Later...] A writer points us to www.aljazeerah.us, which works just fine.

[Source:The Doc Searls Weblog]
10:34:05 AM    

Warblogs and Tomorrow's Journalism. Baltimore Sun: Weblogs cover the war without mainstream restraints. The best blog writers hew to the Mike Royko-Herb Caen style...

[Source:Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
10:26:04 AM    

But instead of the few hundred downloads Fleishman expected, the book was downloaded about 10,000 times in just 36 hours. And because he's charged incrementally for bandwidth, Fleishman estimates he could be billed $15,000 at the end of the month -- possibly a lot more.  "It's a financial catastrophe," said Fleishman.

[Wired]
10:23:01 AM    

Mexico to abolish the public domain (but at least honestly). The Mexican Congress is about to consider a revision to its copyright law. Among it many changes, the law will extend the term of copyright from life-plus-70 comments to life-plus-100. (And no doubt thus beginning yet another cycle of “harmonization” around the world.) Worse, at the end of the copyright term, the government has the right to charge royalties for works in the “public domain.”

This is apparently something new for government regulators. Usually governments nationalize first, and then (and as a result) kill the industry nationalized. Mexico plans to innovate on this pattern: kill the public domain first, and then nationalize after.

The insanity in this system is astonishing. But here’s the message Mexico has got to understand: it will be easier for Mexicans to consume Hollywood content over the next 150 years than it will be for Mexicans to cultivate and preserve their own culture. Is promoting Hollywood really what the Mexican Congress is for?

[Source:Lessig Blog]
10:19:18 AM