Anita Ramasastry on Why we should fear the Matrix.

Larry Lessig is worked up about SCO's CEO, Darl McBride, insulting the constitution by claiming it supports his case against IBM and Linux.

California is about to criminalise the act of sneaking a video camera into a cinema.

In the wake of Jon Johansen posting some software to help get round Apple iTunes digital rights management, some previously happy customers are feeling a bit put out. Not that Johansen has created the foundations of a workaround (though there are folk being less than polite about that) but rather that they feel conned into buying into DRM.

Can't really blame Apple, who made it pretty clear the files were protected, though they did deliberately fudge the issue of first sale.

The WIPO director general told reporters in Geneva yesterday that "Piracy is like terrorism today and it exists everywhere and it is a very dangerous phenomenon... We would like to have consensus by all countries and all nations that piracy is a very dangerous phenomenon today"

This stuff is too important for this kind of claptrap, which really annoys me. People like Idris should be raising the level of the debate, not resorting to ridiculous soundbites. This adds absolutely nothing to the task of waking ordinary people up to the increasing importance of intellectual property laws - now a form of personal regulation not just industrial regulation of the creativity distribution industries, as used to be the case - explaining the complexities of the issues and addressing the problems of piracy and, more generally, balance in intellectual property laws.

After all, in a information society, intellectual property laws are the default rules of the road. Aaaaaargh - now they've got me using soundbites!

According to Computer Weekly, security flaws have been found in e-voting machines from the four major suppliers in the US.

The Irish Labour Party have issued a report outlining their concerns about electronic voting in Ireland and suggest that it may be a threat to democracy. They use a quote from the Gangs of New York at the beginning:

"The voters don't decide the election, the counters decide the election, so keep counting."

Highlights?

Although the individual components of the system have been tested, what the report calls an "integrated end to end test" of the entire system has not been carried out.

Promised cost savings in reducing staff for counting may be outweighed by increased numbers of people required to operate the voting machines.

The lack of appropriate procedures in the use of the system leaves it open to "interference from unauthorised persons".

And the report recommends that the electronic voting in Ireland be suspended until

1. A voter verifiable audit trail is available
2. A sensible set of operational procedures is in place
3. The whole system in fully integrated operational mode is tested and proved to be robust.

All seems pretty sensible really. Will it happen? Mmmm.

The Markle Foundation's Task Force on National Security in the Information Age has released a report saying that there has been a failure in the past to share information effectively amonsgt government agencies to combat terrorism. It also recommends more sharing of information between federal agencies and also use of private sector databases. They also directly criticise the Bush administration for not improving the sharing of information and federal agencies for sharing data on terrorism threats insecurely.

Fighting the worms of mass destruction - the Economist on computer security including comments from Lessig, Schneier and Greer.

The New York Times have caught up with the Diebold story.

The Markle Foundation's Task Force on National Security in the Information Age

Interesting that Jennie Levine, a librarian who started the Sugar Quill Harry Potter fan fiction site, with her friend, Megan Morrison, should have nearly the same name as the Shifted Librarian, Jenny Levine.

Larry Potter v Harry Potter? The Scholastic, Inc. v. Stouffer ended in September 2002 with a federal judge siding with J.K.Rowling and her publishers. Nancy Stouffer had been claiming that Rowling had infringed the copyright of Larry Potter books she had written in the 1980s.

The White House and Congress have reached a compromise about the FCC's new media ownership rules raising the limit to 39% market share.

"Army Quietly Opens JetBlue Probe" says the Wired headline explaining the US Army are looking into the recent JetBlue passenger data scandal. They've not been too successful in keeping it quiet if Wired has got hold of the story.

Looks like Diebold have agreed not to sue at least some of the people publicising their embarrassing internal memos online. The company's submission to the court to this effect is available online.

According to the Register, via Kevin Poulsen at SecurityFocus, the Nachi worm infected Diebold ATMs. Yes the same Diebold that make electronic voting machines. Diebold have a nice list of links to media stories that treat them favourably or at least gently. Some of these provide exemplary examples of the unfair tactics of persuasion that advocates use to persuade people of their point of view. Attacks on people who have criticised Diebold are prominent are is praise for those implementing or defending Diebold. Wonderful "we're the good guys, they're the bad guys" stuff. Pity.

"Reporters Without Borders today urged the Zimbabwean authorities to drop charges against 14 people who were arrested for circulating an e-mail message criticising President Mugabe's economic policies and calling for his departure. They were all released on bail but have been ordered to appear in court on 26 November."

The Australian music industry have decided to sue ISPs "who failed to stop consumers illegally downloading music."

Lawmeme point us to some links on the latest troubles for e-voting machines and some policy proposals over broad copyright claims; and finally one for US 4th amendment scholars on new dog sniffing technology.

Apparently John Johansen of DeCSS fame has released a program on his website called QTFairUse which demonstrates how to get round Apple's iTunes anti-copying technology. Given that he is facing re-trial next month on criminal charges related to the release of DeCSS, I'm not sure that's the best of tactics on his part.

Censored Dance-why Fair Use plus $3.25 will get you a nice latte. Elizabeth Rader razor sharp on how Carol Loeb Shloss’s new biography Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake had to get re-written repeatedly due to intellectual property threats on the part of Stephen Joyce.

"Think of this story the next time someone tells you that fair use is the down parka that
will keep writers from being chilled by virtually limitless copyright terms and
ever-expanding copyright scope. As my mother told me when I wanted to walk out in
the street into moving traffic, “you may have the right of way, but it doesn’t do you
much good after you’re run over.”

Ernest Miller sees end to end as fundamental to a free society.

"The government shall neither create nor sustain a monopoly carrier in the distribution of speech that discriminates in what it will or will not carry.

Sounds suspiciously similar to the end-to-end principle, don't you think?"

Too right!

Eben Moglen, a professor of law at Columbia University Law School and the general counsel of the Free Software Foundation, has done an analysis of SCO's case against IBM on linux/unix and found it wanting.

Patents on human organisms are to be banned in the US according to the Washington Post.