News.Com: Studios nearing anti-copying tech for TV. They say they'll have a standard ready by the end of the first quarter of the year. That's an ambitious timetable for an issue that has caused considerable tension between Hollywood and electronics companies--and even between studios themselves--over the last year. [Tomalak's Realm]

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Breaking the law as a system of government: A group of Venezuelan congresspeople, representing the ruling MVR party, presented today an illegal recording of a telephone conversation between former president Carlos Andrés Pérez and the president of the National Worker's Federation (CTV) Carlos Ortega which, according to them, proves the existence of a destabilizing plan to overthrow president Hugo Chávez.

In the telephone conversation, nothing more than a friendly chat criticizing the current government, Ortega asks former president Pérez for advise regarding the then upcoming elections to determine Congress' "board of directors".

It seems, however, that the ruling party's representatives ignore the Venezuelan Constitution which they themselves wrote.

Article 49 of the new Constitution states that any evidence obtained without due process is invalid. Article 48 guarantees the secret status of private conversations in all forms. Prison terms for violating these articles range from 3 to 5 years.

Last year, in the famous General's Panties case, the then Defense Minister made public several private e-mails from a journalist's confiscated computer. No case was brought against the Minister.

On Novermber 29, 2001, president Chávez stated publicly that he had Fedecámaras (the Venezuelan Private Business Association) "infiltrated to the bone".

You decide...

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