The Practical Nomad, Edward Hasbrouck, is skeptical about the apparent cancellation of the US CAPPS II airline passenger profiling system.

The European commission have written to the UK government  about their concerns that UK data protection legislation may not be in comlpiance with the EU data protection directive of 1995, especially in the light of the recent Durrant v  Financial Services Authority case.
 
"OUT-LAW understands that the failure of the UK Government to guarantee the right of access to personal data is likely to be a strong feature of the letter. Other concerns appear to include insufficient controls on international transfers of data and a lack of investigative powers given to the Commissioner." 
 
There is a hint of irony about this letter coming at the same time as Tom Ridge confirming the killing off of CAPPS II.

According to Tom Ridge, head of US Homeland Security, the airline passenger profiling system is now dead.  I wonder if that will give the EU bureaucrats food for thought on their agreement to hand over EU passenger data to the US for CAPPS II?

Wired is reporting that the demand for e-voting paper trails is escalating in the US.

Lawmeme have produced an index to Ernest Miller's writings on the INDUCE (Inducing Infringement of Copyrights) Act.

"His coverage matters to lawyers, techies, copyfighters, and consumers. That is, everyone. Ignore it at your peril. The IICA is one of the most dangerously misguided and malicious pieces of technology legislation to rear its ugly head in the last decade. Ernie's obsessively detailed articles are a powerful indictment of a bad idea. "

The DMCA has been used, Lexmark fashion, to secure a preliminary injunction "against a third party service vendor who tried to fix StorageTek tape library backup systems for legitimate purchasers of the system." Further evidence of unintended effect of killing after sales spares/service competition.

The NYT had a feature over the weekend about a film producer who is making a documentary critical of Fox News and the potential copyright issues he might run into when using the company's news clips. The film is called "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism"

" The film is an obsessively researched expose of the ways in which Fox News, as Greenwald sees it, distorts its coverage to serve the conservative political agenda of its owner, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch. It features interviews with former Fox employees, leaked policy memos written by Fox executives and extensive footage from Fox News, which Greenwald is using without the network's permission."

Now this is completely idiotic. Apparently some in the publishing industry think:

"Used books are to consumer books as Napster was to the music industry"

What unadulterated nonsense.