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Thursday, May 15, 2003
Privacy International say that UK law enforcement authorities get one million customer records per year from communications providers, according to ZDNet UK.
There's some confusion surrounding a case of secondary copyright infringement which Amazon appear to have lost. The plaintiff, Robert Hendrikson, had previously lost a similar case invloving the same materials against eBay. eBay were able to claim the "safe harbour" protection (presumably section 236?) of the DMCA to avoid liability. Amazon lost on the same defence but there is no written opinion from the judge, so Amazon say they're going to seek clarification of the infringement order.
Intuit are removing DRM and product activation from their tax software.
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) have sued a website CIRAWatch.com for libel over an article an article "alleging that CIRA’s validation process for domain name registrations discriminated against certain ethnic communities."
There's a lot of fairly high profile netlaw news around today, including 321 Studios facing the movie industry in court, a company called SCO threatening big linux users with infringing intellectual property rights. I suggest you have a look at Michael Geist's BNA Internet Law News for links to the breaking stories.
Corante point at an interesting International Herald Tribune story about Miscosoft memo suggesting a strategy in their continuing efforts to deal with linux. Basically it amounts to giving massive discounts to governments where Linux may be a competitor.
There's some confusion surrounding a case of secondary copyright infringement which Amazon appear to have lost. The plaintiff, Robert Hendrikson, had previously lost a similar case invloving the same materials against eBay. eBay were able to claim the "safe harbour" protection (presumably section 236?) of the DMCA to avoid liability. Amazon lost on the same defence but there is no written opinion from the judge, so Amazon say they're going to seek clarification of the infringement order.
Intuit are removing DRM and product activation from their tax software.
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) have sued a website CIRAWatch.com for libel over an article an article "alleging that CIRA’s validation process for domain name registrations discriminated against certain ethnic communities."
There's a lot of fairly high profile netlaw news around today, including 321 Studios facing the movie industry in court, a company called SCO threatening big linux users with infringing intellectual property rights. I suggest you have a look at Michael Geist's BNA Internet Law News for links to the breaking stories.
Corante point at an interesting International Herald Tribune story about Miscosoft memo suggesting a strategy in their continuing efforts to deal with linux. Basically it amounts to giving massive discounts to governments where Linux may be a competitor.
There's a nice account of how Disney slipped two no fly zones (over their theme parks) through Congress over at Aero-News.net.
Bruce Schneier calls this a funny password story.
The Open University's T182 Law the Internet and Society: Tecnology and the Future of Ideas has encouraged at least a couple of bloggers.
According to Ziff Davis eWeek a South Korean group is suing Microsoft for negligence over the damage caused by the SQL Slammer worm. Now that will be an interesting one to watch. Microsoft's licences (like most software licences) pretty much require users to sign away the right to sue but the article seems to suggest that South Korea's Product Liability Act may provide a route around the get-out clause.
The Open University's T182 Law the Internet and Society: Tecnology and the Future of Ideas has encouraged at least a couple of bloggers.
According to Ziff Davis eWeek a South Korean group is suing Microsoft for negligence over the damage caused by the SQL Slammer worm. Now that will be an interesting one to watch. Microsoft's licences (like most software licences) pretty much require users to sign away the right to sue but the article seems to suggest that South Korea's Product Liability Act may provide a route around the get-out clause.
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Privacy International are launching a campaign to encourage people to submit subject access requests to telcos and ISPs. This is in response to the UK government's ongoing plans on data retention.
The Open University in the UK have just brought out a course called T182 Law the Internet and Society: Tecnology and the Future of Ideas based on Larry Lessig's book, The Future of Ideas. A beginners guide to Larry Lessig's ideas about the importance of law and architecture in formulating the future of the Net and everything it affects. You can see a sample of the material online.
James Boyle has just published the latest edition of LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS journal, based on the amazing conference on the public domain held at Duke University in November 2001.
David Weinberger has combined rule bending and copy protection in a nice article in Wired. David is an end to end advocate.
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Robin Gross of IP Justice recently did a very accessible paper on her perspective of the European Union's copyright directive. Donna Wentworth and other copyfighters are currently focussing on the media concentration debate and the FCC's imminent decision on "de-regulation".