Wait? It's December?!

As a great philosopher once said, "time keeps on slipping, slipping into the future." Or maybe it was the lyrics to a song played through millions of dorm room windows in the '80s. I can't remember.

But, what I can remember, albeit barely, is the many tech policy relevant occurrence and blog-worthy thoughts that ran through my head in the past few weeks that never surfaced on this dear site. If your last few weeks was also a blur, here is a review (in no particular order)...

• The tragic Lori Drew cyberbullying/suicide case turn an even sadder turn in it saga last week when a court found Drew guilty of computer fraud. As many, many Internet wags have pointed out, the rule that was broken here was MySpace's terms of service (Drew misrepresented herself). The New York Times looks into the implications of this. And, Mike Masnick points us to a object lesson in how unworkable this precedence is.

BTW, here is a case where Facebookers -- while not exploiting this incident -- are happy to bring it up in the context of how their service enjoys relative protection against anonymity.

• Andrew Noyes culls through the Obama-published list of donors to the transition committee and picks out the tech donors. Eric Schmidt gave the max ($5,000). But, I still don't understand why he didn't give to the Obama campaign in the general election. Maybe the president-elect asked him the same thing on the campaign plane in the waning week or so of the battle.

• Obama made many more transition appointments with tech policy implications.

• Speaking of Google, that was some NYT article this last Sunday about who (if anyone) should watch the Google gatekeepers as they make decisions on what content should and should not be made accessible in the face of conflicting international laws, customs and moral standards.

• CNET is running a special section of their site called the White House Reboots. In this case, I don't think it's hyperbole. (Though, too much space is paid to the ubiquitous CTO speculation that bothers me so). One notable point about CNET these days: I think their new tech policy hire Stephanie Condon shows a heckuva lot of promise and impressively immersed herself in this strange niche. There are far too few full time tech policy reporters these days and it is a valued service that CNET provides by having someone cover this space on the ground in DC.

• One recent Condon item was an interview with CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro on free trade that is worth reading. When you have the drama of the aforementioned MySpace case and the spector of Internet censorship to ponder, techies tend to forget about the importance of free trade on their real live paychecks.

• The free, porn-free wireless "broadband" plan that is being pushed by FCC chair Kevin Martin will be discussed again on December 18 says today's WSJ. Adam Thierer is not a fan: "It still just kills me that Martin is going to so much trouble for such a pathetic plan. We are talking about essentially a glorified dial-up service here! I think the title of Tom Evslin's piece over at Circle ID today really says it all: "Free, Slow, Censored Internet: A Bad Idea."

• Roy Mark breaks down the realities behind all the false shockiness about Microsoft's lobbying against the Google/Yahoo deal that died a couple of weeks back.