At one end of the spectrum, Columbia Law School professor Eben Moglen is touting low-cost devices, called Freedom Boxes, that can act as encrypted, network-independent routers for news and information sent via cell phones to loosely-federated social networks.

At the other end of the technological spectrum, the owner of a Kuwaiti television station and newspaper, Sheikh Fahad Al Salem Al Ali Al Sabah, is trying to create a network of international satellite TV channels “dedicated to building bridges between civilizations so as to permit greater dialogue between worlds, culture and religions.” According to a statement provided to Digits, “The objective is to utilize citizen journalism and new technologies (i.e. mobile phones) to compile content from everyday citizens acting as ‘reporters.’”

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The technology already exists to make this happen, he says; the problem will be in making it simple enough for ordinary people to get the most out of the product.

The device, which he has dubbed the Freedom Box, will be a combination data storage device, wireless Internet router and communications platform–all of it encrypted, so that only its owner and authorized recipients could read the data it contained or transmitted. Users will typically plug it into a simple wall socket, but it could also run on two double-A sized batteries, meaning it could be used even during a blackout.

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“We as members of Congress are never inclined to censor testimony in open congressional hearings,” Rep. Zachary Space, an Ohio Democrat, said when introducing the professor, Eben Moglen. “But Congress tries to foster highest level of decorum. I would ask you to avoid personal attacks against any companies or company employees.”

The hearing focused on the possibility of legislation requiring data companies and Web browser makers to provide a “do not track” tool allowing people to opt out of having their Web surfing tracked.

In written remarks submitted before the hearing, Mr. Moglen did not mention “do not track” but talked generally about online privacy. He criticized Facebook Inc. extensively, describing the social networking site’s privacy settings as “mere deception.” Facebook “has uncontrolled access to everybody’s data, regardless of the so-called ‘privacy settings,’” he wrote.

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“On my birth certificate, under my father’s occupation, it says cowboy. So I will admit to being a cowboy, but not sue-happy.”

– Former SCO CEO Darl McBride, November 2003

Looks like Darl McBride, SCO’s “sue-happy cowboy” CEO, has seen his last roundup. In a new 8-K filing with the Security and Exchange Commission, the company reveals that under the order of a bankruptcy court, it has eliminated the chief executive officer and president positions and consequently sacked McBride.

Which means SCO’s seemingly endless legal campaign may have finally found its end. For though the company says it plans to pursue litigation against IBM (IBM) and Novell (NOVL), there seems little promise in it now. SCO is mired in bankruptcy. It’s evidently still unable to prove that Linux illegally contains its UNIX System V source code. And now it has fired the guy who devoted the past six years attempting to do just that.

And, frankly, SCO is better off for it. As Free Software Foundation General Counsel Eben Moglen once said, “As an amateur scholar of constitutional law, Mr. McBride is longer than he is deep.” And this does appear to be the case. Because despite vast swaths of evidence to the contrary, McBride always appeared certain that SCO had successfully defended its intellectual property in court.

“We’ve obviously overachieved on that objective,” McBride said of SCO’s efforts to defend against IBM’s alleged intellectual property infringements in 2004. “If I had to make this decision [to sue IBM] ten times over, the decision would be the same one ten times. Big Blue is no doubt a formidable opponent and we still expect to win. Keep your eye on the [court] filings. Over the coming year, one of the things that you’re going to see is that Big Blue has got big problems.”

Obviously, Big Blue wasn’t the one with the big problems.