I'm way behind with everything, for which I apologise, but some of the following from the past couple of weeks may be of some interest.

"But as technology in general, and the Internet in particular, drives deeper into the fabric of daily life, battles also rage behind the scenes. They are struggles for control over how the Internet should work, over who sets the rules for its pipes and gateways and who owns the material that moves through them. These are the wars fought with armies of corporate lobbyists, technologists and citizen activists but largely ignored by the general public. And none is larger, or carries higher financial stakes, than the issue with the eye-glazing name of intellectual property." Said the Washington Post on 21st August (when I was away) in an article about the lobbying to kill a proposed meeting on open source development to be hosted by the World Intellectual Property Organisation.

Dave Farber's interesting people list has more information on WIPO backing away from this meeting.

The city of Tampa (having finally won the Superbowl for the first time earlier this year) are dropping a face recognition system after a two year trial during which nobody was positively identified.

I see the Linux community are less than impressed with SCO's - so far - publicly presented evidence of intellectual property infringement. The examples are apparently code from the 1970's which is covered by a BSD licence which allows sharing of code. You've got to say this is a nice example of open and collaborative development in action - like the linux folk 'Dear SCO, I wouldn't use this code as the foundation of your case as you are likely to get laughed out of court' At least they've had the opportunity to try out some their evidence before using it in anger.

SCO's lawyer, at least, seems grateful for the tip: "Let's say you have a hundred files, and you put one of your hundred files under the GPL (GNU General Public License). That doesn't mean you've lost the rights to your other 99 files," Heise said. "So I don't think it's going to have an impact."

Tescos have ended their trial with the RFID chips linked to hidden cameras at their Cambridge store.

Somebody thinks that John Ashcroft's road show to promote the PATRIOT Act is funny.

File swapper fights RIAA subpoena. And the RIAA's tactics may be having an impact on file swapping with the volume being reduced since they decided to target individuals.

The RIAA and MPAA are, not surprisingly, appealing the April decision in favour of Grokster and Streamcast, where the judge declared that the p2p file sharing technologies were not illegal and were, in fact, analagous to home video recorders.

If this report is to be believed, SCO are taking a leaf out of the RIAA's book and going after individual linux users. The chances are that they are still talking about companies with deep pockets rather than individuals.