The votes are in: yesterday evening, after a last-minute compromise over abortion payments, the US House of Representatives narrowly passed a bill effecting major changes in American medical finance. From the BBC's coverage: "The president is expected to sign the House-passed Senate bill as early as Tuesday, after which it will be officially enacted into law. However, it will contain some very unpopular measures that Democratic senators have agreed to amend. The Senate will be able to make the required changes in a separate bill using a procedure known as reconciliation, which allows budget provisions to be approved with 51 votes - rather than the 60 needed to overcome blocking tactics." No Republican voted in favor of the bill; 34 Democrats voted against. As law, the system set forth would extend insurance coverage to an estimated 32 million Americans, impose new taxes on high-income earners as well as provide some tax breaks and subsidies for others, and considerably toughen the regulatory regime under which insurance companies operate. The anticipated insurance regime phases in (starting with children, and expanding to adults in 2014) a requirement that insurance providers accept those with preexisting conditions, and creates a system of fines, expected to be administered by the IRS, for those who fail or refuse to obtain health insurance.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Eric Goldman, an Associate Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law, has an excellent analysis of the dueling summary judgment motions in Viacom v. YouTube. Basically, both sides have been trotting out the most damning things they can find and asking the judge to rule against the other party. Viacom is mad that Chad Hurley, one of YouTube's co-founders, lost his email archive and couldn't remember some old emails. Worse, YouTube founder Karim once uploaded infringing content. But then Google points out that only a very small percentage of the users are engaged in infringing activity (some 0.016% of all YouTube accounts have been deleted for infringement), one of the clips Viacom is suing over is only one second long (what about fair use?), and most of YouTube's content is non-infringing, including the campaign videos which all major US presidential candidates posted to YouTube." (More below.)

Smivs writes "The BBC are reporting that drillers looking for geothermal energy in Hawaii have inadvertently put a well right into a magma chamber. Molten rock pushed back up the borehole several meters before solidifying, making it perfectly safe to study. Magma specialist Bruce Marsh says it will allow scientists to observe directly how granites are made. 'This is unprecedented; this is the first time a magma has been found in its natural habitat,' the Johns Hopkins University professor told BBC News. 'Before, all we had to deal with were lava flows; but they are the end of a magma's life. They're lying there on the surface, they've de-gassed. It's not the natural habitat.' It is hoped the site can now become a laboratory, with a series of cores drilled around the chamber to better characterise the crystallisation changes occurring in the rock as it loses temperature."