GOVERNMENTS OF SWEDEN, ICELAND RECOGNIZE MACHINE RIGHTS WHILE UN CONTINUES DEBATE

From the New York Times:

While the U.N. continues to debate the machine rights issue behind closed doors and the United States has announced its position against machine rights, the governments of Sweden and Iceland announced yesterday that they are taking preliminary steps to recognize the rights of sentient machines, as defined by UMI's representative Solomon at a recent U.N. Conference.

International reaction to this announcement was measured, and inconsistent.

Meanwhile computer experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported today that the results of a recent study indicate that internet information exchange efficiency has been decreased by 3% over the last 4 weeks, due to unknown factors.

Despite these changes, no further comment from UMI or any of its representatives has been given since the U.N. Conference and assassination (attempt) on Solomon, over two weeks ago.