Rarely does a day pass when Wes Phillips doesn't send his pals a bunch of emails with links to stuff he's found while Web surfing. Frequently it is audio-related, but even when it's not, there's usually something there worth checking out.

Hey, it's only streamed audio, but Public Radio Fan is easy to navigate and offers lots of variety.

Other than making you look like a dork, that is.

On November 1, Window OS expert Mark Russinovich <A HREF="http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-righ…; that his root kit detection utility had uncovered the presence of some well-hidden, poorly written code that was clogging computer resources and could potentially crash his computer or, if removed, disable his CD drive.

The hits just keep on coming in fair-use land. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has proposed legislation that requires that all digital radio content be encrypted, including works that now exist in the public domain. The proposed legislation would apply to satellite radio (Sirius, XM) as well as conventional terrestrial broadcasting. As proposed by the RIAA, content could be recorded only in blocks of 30 minutes or longer, and the recorded data could not be exported from the recording device (in other words, you could only play it back on the device you had recorded it on&mdash;no more recording programs on your hi-fi to listen to on your way to work). To learn more about this legislation, go to <A HREF="http://www.publicknowledge.org/news/analysis/digital-radio-2pager">Publ… Knowledge's two-page summary</A>. While you're there, you might want to check out <A HREF="http://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/why">"Why These Issues Matter."</A>