Fox outfoxed? From Fox News - "Judge Rejects Fox News' Request for Injunction on Franken Book." A 'fair and balanced' Fox News report on the judge's decision to throw out their case. Author Franken and publishers Penguin are pretty pleased with the publicity.

The BBC are planning to open their archive to the public. "Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, has announced plans to give the public full access to all the corporation's programme archives."
"The service, the BBC Creative Archive,
would be free and available to
everyone, as long as they were not
intending to use the material for
commercial purposes, Mr Dyke added."

"Open-source software maker MontaVista Software is advising customers not to pay any money to The SCO Group" The SCO website has been brought down be a denial of service attack. This is completely counter productive to the aims of the open source community and will only provide ammunition to people who want to discredit them. Eric Raymond put it pretty well: "We're the good guys. But that doesn't matter if we aren't *seen* to be the good guys. We cannot fight our war using vandalism and trespass and the suppression of speech, or SCO will paint us as crackers and maybe win."

"New DVD-copying tools to hit shelves"

Towards the end of August the California Supreme court ruled in favour of the DVD Content Control Association in their case against Andrew Bunner for posting DeCSS code on the Net. Essentially they said that requiring Bunner to respect the DVDCCA's trade secret was not an interference with his right to free speech under the first amendment. The decision has been going back and forth on this as it has worked its way through the courts. Just one, relatively old, question: how is CSS now a trade secret when DeCSS has been so widely distributed? That, at least, remains to be seen, as the Supreme Court has sent the case back to the lower appeal court to determine if Bunner has violated any trade secrets. Cindy Cohen of the EFF (who are supporting Bunner) seems confident of the outcome on that: “The appeals court can now examine the movie industry's fiction that DeCSS is still a secret and that a publication ban is necessary to keep the information secret". Having reflected on the detail of the decision the EFF and the First Amendment Project are even spinning it in a very positive fashion.

The UK government are proposing to set up a database on children, including a listing of their potential criminality. Odd that the usual suspects in the media have not rallied against it. As Ian Brown of Foundation for Information Policy Research says, "Imagine if the government proposed creating a database of "potential troublemakers" that covered 10% of the adult population, based upon the opinions of doctors, social workers or policemen..."

Off topic but Escaped murderers refused return

"When a Hopkins computer scientist declared a new breed of electronic voting machinery to be junk, he cracked open a wide and costly debate."

CAPPS Navigates Unfriendly Skies

Bill Clinton's former privacy czar, Peter Swire, is concerned at the privacy implications of the RIAA's campaign to target individual file sharers. Greplaw have and interview with Glenn Peterson who is representing the woman fighting to keep her identity a secret from the RIAA.

"However, the music industry is pursuing music piracy with strong
arm tactics and subpoena powers that far exceed those available
against violent criminals. It is astounding to me that the law bends
over backward to safeguard the constitutional rights of accused
criminals and then completely ignores the same rights of teenage
kids sharing music in an environment they have every reason to
believe is legal. It is important for me to stress that we do not
condone music piracy or copyright infringement. What we want
to do is clarify what qualifies as music piracy and further to
ensure that the so-called accused pirates have the same minimal
constitutional rights that we afford to those accused of doing
much more serious and harmful things than sharing music...

Arguably the most dangerous consequence, the
subpoena power can be put in the hands of anyone willing to
pretend to have a copyright claim. Without a judge's review,
these fraudulent requests are easily passed of as legitimate
ones, passing under only the minimum, ministerial scrutiny
of a court clerk with a rubber stamp. The potential abuser
categories are limitless, and include everything from
annoying marketers to swindlers, child abductors,
blackmailers, and terrorists."

The RIAA are not giving up on Peterson's client (Nycfashiongirl) or on MIT. They've sent a second subpoena filed in the local jurisdiction of Massachusetts, to get the alleged file sharer on the MIT network identified. Looks like the RIAA and the movie studios are gaining some allies in their fight with Streamcast and Grokster too, with amicus briefs coming from Harvard and NYU professors as well as expected sources such as "copyright holders ranging from Major League Baseball to the Screen Actors Guild. "

The Conservative Party in the UK, the remains of Margaret Thatcher's tories, actually want to shut down the BBC website, according to a report in the Guardian. I won't comment to avoid being impolite.

A group of economists are critical of the proposed Directive on the Patentability of
Computer-Implemented Inventions.

SCO deny they have any plans to sue commercial linux users.

David Blunkett is determined to press ahead with his national identity card in spite of Blair backing awaying from it. He's planning a test run later in the year in a 'small market town'. Cryptome have a copy of a WSJ article on A New Battleground In Web Privacy War: Ads That Can Snoop

Naomi Klein has taken a poke at the international franchise that is the War on Terror.

From The Register Want to visit Britain? Join the fingerprint queue

The MPAA are going after the 321 Studios folk in the UK alledging breach of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

Sharman Networks which owns Kazaa have complained to Google about copyright infringement. In response Google pulled the links to the KAzaa imitator complained of, for fear of the DMCA falling on their heads.

Protests on the EU sofware patent issue have delayed the vote in the European Parliament under later this month.

Freenet creator Ian Clarke has decided to leave the US partly due to the restrictive intellectual property laws.

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.

Privacy advocates call for RFID regulation "How would you like it if, for instance, one day you realized your underwear was reporting on your whereabouts?" Callfornia state Senator Debra Bowen asked.

The Sad Tale of a Security Whistleblower by Mark Rasch at SecurityFocus. Rasch is the former head of the Department of Justice's computer crime division.

For folks interested in pursuing the kind of material I cover in this blog in a bit more detail, there are lots of universities who provide their internet law syllabus on the web. Jessica Litman is currently updating her links to these courses.

Here's a neat twist in the copyright wars - Grokster has reported the record industry to the Office for Fair Trading in the UK for restraint of trade!

From Lisa Rein's fair and balanced radar, I learn that (and it's difficult to believe this but) Howard Berman, when talking about his latest proposal to criminalise peer to peer file sharing, actually said, on CNN, "The penalty would range from...eh up to eh five years in jail. Notice, no death penalty but eh it i..it's part of our effort to send a message that that which is already illegal and that which is criminal should be avoided..." I had to play it repeatedly to have it sink in. "...no death penalty..."? People in California elected congressman Berman. If you're interested in Californian politics, or even if you're just interested in the entertainment business, Lisa has another link to a political analyst with a funny take on the story of Arnold Swarzenegger running for governor.

There's an interesting apparent throwaway line in the Sunday Times article about Peter Gabriel's song downloading joint venture with Microsoft. A spokeswoman for the British Phonographic Industry says there are no plans to sue UK file sharers: 'It's not a hearts-and-minds winner,' she says, 'It's a PR nightmare.'

I've been tinkering with my course, T182 Law the Internet and Society: Technology and the Future of Ideas, (taster here) based on Larry Lessig's book The Future of Ideas. And I've been wondering how the Council of Europe's 'Declaration on freedom of communication on the Internet ' (Strasbourg, 28.05.2003) meshes with the EU copyright directive, and the likely autumnal developements on EU software patents and the intellectual property enforcement directive, the latter having already been called 'the DMCA on steroids'. I can't see a comfortable fit here, but then I can't see a comfortable fit the the Council of Europe's cybercrime treaty either, which the declaration says it is compatible with. Perhaps I'm looking at it through too complex a filter?

Lots of people are poking fun at Fox News for their 'fair and balanced' lawsuit against Penguin.

According to the Wall Street Journal, "China is about to embark on the world's biggest experiment in the use of electronic identification cards, which next
year will begin to replace the paper national ID cards carried by 960 million Chinese citizens."

ISPs are accused by a new report of not doing enough to protect children online. Expect more demands for CDA and CIPA type legislation in Europe, without the CDA's section 230 protections for ISPs.

Meanwhile on the other side of the pond, the US government are trying to resurrect COPA, according to the Guardian. "The Bush administration has appealed to the Supreme Court to reinstate a law that punishes Web site operators who expose children to dirty pictures and other inappropriate material."

The EFF and Stanford Center for Internet & Society Cyberlaw Clinic have launched DirecTVDefense.org. From the site:

"DirecTV has launched a reckless legal campaign that threatens smartcard researchers and innovators. Over the past few years, the company has sent hundreds of thousands of demand letters and filed nearly 9,000 federal lawsuits in response to the mere purchase of smart card readers, emulators, unloopers, reprogrammers, bootloaders, and blockers. The satellite TV company accuses techies – some of whom threw out their televisions in favor of the Internet long ago – of using these devices to illegally intercept its signals. But the smart card readers and their variousderivatives are capable of so much more: they secure computer networks, enable user-based identification, and further scientific discovery.

People who intercept DirectTV’s satellite signal are breaking the law. However, DirecTV’s cease and desist letter campaign does not distinguish the legitimate users from the thieves. This website is meant as a legal resource for the legitimate computer scientists, technology workers, and hobbyists who are being harassed by DirecTV's no holds-barred slash-and-burn legal strategy. This site provides scientists, researchers, innovators and their lawyers with the resources necessary to fight DirecTV and protect their right to own and use multi-purpose technology for its legal applications – and without fear of reprisal."

DirecTV's volume of cease and desist letters has reached about 100,000 in the past year. That's a lot of threats. This site is worth a thorough read.

The letter urging the EU JURI committe to reject the IP enforcement directive from new CODE collective of civil liberties groups I mentioned earlier is available online.

This is a joke right? "Fox News Channel has sued liberal humorist Al Franken and the Penguin Group to stop them from using the phrase "fair and balanced" in the title of his upcoming book." The book is apparently called "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right." Ranks up there with Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone case.

More IP fun over at Lawmeme. What are we going to do about vicious pirates who..... er ..... copy .... er... bags?

38 civil liberties groups from around Europe have combined to form a new coalition to oppose the proposed EU intellectual property enforcement directive. "The groups argue that the proposed IP Enforcement Directive, is a "DMCA on steroids" that would hand broad anti-competitive powers to large foreign companies, limit competition, and erode the traditional rights of consumers to use the products they purchase as they see fit." It includes the UK's Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR).

Microsoft have been fined $520 million for patent infringement after a jury concluded they stepped on Eolas Technologies and University of California patents.

Aaron Swartz paints Dean Kamen (the inventor of the Segway) in a new light for me. "All you technologists get an A+ for doing great things but a D- for being socially responsible...Your technology isn’t going to do what you think it will. Answering machines were supposed to make sure we can talk to everyone, but now we use them to screen calls. Cell phones were supposed to connect us to everyone, but instead they separate us from the people in the same room. We won’t solve the digital divide with more technology. The most important thing we can invent is inventors. If we keep having more people with less resources the world is going to be an ugly place." Nicely said. A man with a mission and let's hope he has some success. This short superhero feature on Kamen focussed me, for the first time really, on his social conscience, whereas I've primarily always thought of Kamen as a passionate technology advocate.

CSAPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) are launching a boycott Gillette campaign because Gillette (or, more accurately, their retailers) are using RFID tags in their products to surreptitiously take photographs of shoppers. Tescos are running a trial at their Cambridge store, which the Guardian headined as Tesco tests spy chip technology.

USA Today report on the mass deployment of webcams throughout schools in the Biloxi district of Mississippi. "So far, Biloxi is the only school district in the nation to install Webcams in every classroom -- nearly 500 so far." This is allegedly for security. No comment

Large US retailers and food companies are trying to get RFIDs designated as anti-terrorist devices according to Wired. This would be comical if it wasn't so serious. Of course the natural follow up is that it is the patriot duty of every citizen to support anti-terrorism measures. Can't wait to see David Blunkett jumping on this bandwagon.

The RIAA's P2P war hit a slight snag on Friday when a Boston judge threw out their subpoena from a Washington D.C. court to identify Massachusetts students. . "The court rejected the RIAA's bald-faced attempt to use a single D.C. court ruling to steamroller Internet users' privacy nationwide," said EFF staff attorney Wendy Seltzer. One up for MIT and Boston College. Nice article on the RIAA crusade here. Haven't come across Phillyburbs before.

IBM are coming out all guns blazing against the SCO lawsuit over linux. They're treating SCO's advice that they indemnify their customers against IP infringement claims with contempt. A clear sign they don't believe SCO has a chance in court. They're also saying SCO ahve violated the GPL and undermined their own case with their past behavior and finally, in true IBM form, they're accusing SCO of violating at least four IBM patents. Anyone for settlement talks?

Elsewhere, eBay have written to Google to demand they ban advertisers using keywords like 'ebay', 'bay' and 'auction web sites'. Francis Hwang wonders if domain names matter as much as they used to?

And the 9th circuit, according to Yale's excellent Lawmeme, "will be hearing arguments on a suit challenging the constitutionality of computerized voting systems that do not generate paper records." As Steven Wu says, "What in heaven's name are the arguments against requiring a paper trail or some other independent (and independently verifiable) indicator of voter intent?"

Recommended - Exchange between Ernest Miller (Yale) and Fred von Lohmann (EFF)on compulsory licenses and Larry Lessig's lament about MP3.com's lawyers.

Charles Cooper thinks the Total Information Awareness programme is a good idea. Or, at least, that's what he has written, I suspect to bait the usual libertarians. He's right that DARPA (originally ARPA) was set up during the cold war (by Dwight Eisenhower in response to the Soviet launch of the sputnik satellite in 1957) "to think big about technology". It was essentially the then president's technology fast response agency, to avoid getting caught on the hop by the Soviets again.

As such DARPA shouldn't be castigated for proposing ideas like the TIA or the terrorism futures market, both of which are about using information for particular ends. He's wrong to imply that we should not worry about or thoroughly debate the real utility or specific deployment of such systems, however, because he hasn't seen any proof that TIA will lead an Orwellian future, though he has seen " the smoking hole that used to be the World Trade Tower complex in my hometown of New York City." In response I'm reminded of Ben Franklin's 1759 comment that "Those that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

I'm neither a US constitutional scholar nor even a US citizen but even to me there seemed to be fairly fundamental questions raised under the first, Fourth and Fifth Amendments by the proposed TIA as it had been described variously by George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft and other members of the current president's administration. There are intuitively obvious reasons to argue that the best available technologies should be put at the disposal of the 'good guys' in targetting and fighting the 'bad guys'. That's no reason to expand the notion to the extent that those same technologies should be deployed in the assumption that the only way to catch the bad guys is to assume everyone is a baddie, until they prove otherwise. The natural outcome of the latter scenario is that so much energy is expended on checking the innocent that the real bad guys find it much easier to get lost in the noise.

The UK has banned the iTrip device that allows you to play your iPod tunes on the radio. It facilitates breaches of the 1949 Wireless and Telegraphy act which requires anyone with a radio transmitter to have a license.

The Oyez project has released an "inaugural set of Supreme Court MP3 files." I've been listening to the argument of the the Katz v U.S. eavesdropping case and the re-argument of the Roe v Wade abortion case, as I've been sorting through some routine admin. work. Terrific to be able to hear these, although in the Katz file it seems not all the justices were miked up, so it's not possible to hear all their questions.

The big issues for the Autumn on this side of the pond look likely to be the round EU implementations of the copyright directive, the September EU parliament and Commission decisions on the patenting of software in the EU and the EU's IP enforcement directive and finally, I guess, any action the Commission decide to take against Microsoft. Throw DRM and trusted computing into the fray an you've got a complex 'mess', as my systems colleagues at the Open University would call it. The Foundation for Information Policy Research are leading the UK fight against the IP enforcement directive. As he has been making NGOs aware of the directive, FIPR Chairman and Cambridge University security specialist, Ross Anderson, has come to realise that this directive could have a significant effect on ordinary retailing,

"RFIDs (radio-frequency IDs) are devices smaller than grains of rice
that can be fitted on goods such as clothes and which will, when
integgorated electronically, return a 128-bit unique number. You can
think of them as bar codes that identify individual objects rather
than merely product ranges, and that can be read from a foot or two
away. Walmart has ordered its suppliers to fit them, so we're going to
get them in everything we buy for more than a few pounds, within a
couple of years, like it or not.

RFIDs will be useful in detecting and preventing counterfeit goods, so
they will be covered by the directive. It will be an offence to mess
with them, or to possess kit to mess with them."

So these RFIDs as copyright "technological protection measures" will effectively be able to be used to create market barriers. When it comes to RFIDs I had always been more concerned about the privacy implications but the market manipulation that Ross points out is not nearly as transparent, so is potentially being overlooked by policy makers and certain sectors of commerce which don't yet realise the impact they might have when combined with regulations like the proposed IP enforcement directive.

Well, there's been plenty going on since I've been away.

The RIAA have started their avalanche of subpoenas, the first stage in tracking down and suing P2P file sharers.

MIT and Boston college stand up to the RIAA.

Red Hat have stepped prominently into the SCO linux-unix battle.

Tony Blair is apparently backing away from a national ID card

A UK government funded report supposedly to determine how to stimulate broadband rollout has declared that DRM is the only way to do this. (Do I hear 'interests' and 'vested' and perhaps even 'smells' coming together in some combination?) I can't put it better than Ross Anderson: "I deeply resent the use of my tax money to help Disney and Microsoft grind their axes. But this sort of nonsense cannot just be ignored - if not rebutted it will become policy."

The FBI are targetting VOIP as a threat to national security

The ACLU are challenging the constitutionality of the USA-PATRIOT Act

UCITA has taken a big blow as National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws put their support for it on ice.

The UK draft proposal on the implementation of the EUCD reaches its first birthday, as the UK Patent Office as putting the final touches to the final draft.

Queensland University staff have their pcs scanned for MP3 files.

Congress sees the introduction of the P4 bill with the stated aim of protecting children from P2P porn.

The UK Human Rights Act gets accused of fostering a culture of litigation

Dow Jones win a hearing in Australia to appeal the Gutnick online defamation decision.

Sony win the playstation mod chip appeal in Australia

EBay have $29.5 million dollars in damages awarded against them for patent infringement

The consumer commission in Australian rejects a complaint about copy protected CDs

Mitch Bainwol, a republican party staffer, replaces Hilary Rosen at the RIAA

The EFF issue advice on how to avoid getting sued by the RIAA

A US appeal court oks the evidence of a Turkish hacker in a child pornography case

The Pentagon propose and then withdraw the idea of a terrorism futures market.

The European Commission declare that they are likely to fine Microsoft for continuing anti-competitive practices.

Amazon begin working with publishers on the idea of an online searchable non-fiction books archive.

And that's just for starters. I'm really backed up with work so don't have the time to expand on these but there's plenty of background to be had on all these stories from all the usual suspects listed under my links.

Take a few minutes to read Take Another Little Piece of My Art by Derek Slater. It's worth it. Also his experiment with blogging using his analysis of the Napster case. Actually why not just take a run over to a copyfighter's musings and have a look for yourself at Mr Slater's recent thoughts. Some interesting ideas on Richard Posner's decision in the Madster case, in particular.

The US Senate has voted to cut off funding to the Total Information Awareness computer-surveillance program.

Kevin Poulson at SecurityFocus is reporting DirecTV dragnet snares innocent techies "In recent months the satellite TV giant has filed nearly 9,000 federal lawsuits against people who've purchased signal piracy devices. But some of those devices have legitimate uses, and innocent computer geeks are getting caught in the crackdown. "

Meanwhile the Grokster/Morpheus case is apparently being fast-tracked for review by the 9th circuit Court of Appeals.

Overture to a patent war? (via Corante) is worth a read.

I'm off to spend the next week at an Open University summer school, teaching first year technology students about the structures of bridges and planes, and the uses and limitations of mathematical, physical and computer models.

Yes Magazine have been following up on the electronic voting and voter purging issue.

Hector MacQueen, law professor at Edinburg University, points to an email alert from the editors of World Intellectual Property Report, entitled IP Commission OKs Spying on Internet Users to Protect Copyright:

"PARIS--A copyright advisory board within France's Ministry of Culture
has accepted government plans to increase surveillance of Internet
users as part of a wider bid to stop illegal copying and transmission
of protected artistic works in cyberspace.
The Superior Council for Artistic and Literary Intellectual Property
(Conseil Superieur de la Propriete Litteraire et Artistique, or
CSPLA) announced June 26 that it would support proposed legislation
now working its way through Parliament that aims to adapt copyright
protection to the Digital Age, principally through greater spying on
Internet users.
The CSPLA opinion was issued in response to parliamentary debate on
legislation -- the Law on the Digital Economy -- that would adopt
European Union Directive 2001/29/EC, of May 22, 2001, on the
Harmonization of Certain Aspects of Copyright and Related Rights in
the Information Society.
A united version of the legislation -- combining a text approved
last February by the National Assembly, or lower house, of
Parliament, and one approved by the Senate, or upper house, in late
June -- is expected to be passed by Parliament by year-end, after
fine-tuning by members of both houses and concerned government
ministries.
The CSPLA opinion -- which demands "reconciliation" between long-
standing concerns over privacy protection and individual liberties
and the growing need for copyright protection on-line -- is likely to
weigh heavy with Culture Ministry officials when they are asked for
future comment on the bill.
(The full report will appear in the August issue of World E-Commerce
& IP Report. Copyright 2003, BNA International Inc.) "

Via Michael Carroll at Villanova, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) have just published a Handbook on Intellectual Property and Traditional Knowledge

Two democrats are proposing a bill, Author, Consumer, and Computer Owner Protection
and Security (ACCOPS) Act of 2003, that would lead to jail time for file sharers. One of these, Howard Berman, was the guy who previously introduced a bill to provide copyright holders with immunity for damaging other people's computers.

Copyfight has lots of links to pieces on Berman's proposal.
Whilst Berman wants to jail file sharers, the head of Interpol wants a global crackdown on piracy which he links to terrorism.

Hot on the heels of Germany being the fifth EU country to implement the EU copyright directive, the Commission have decided to pursue the other member states for failure to do so yet.

Loyola University Chicago releases two student names to RIAA.

Just got time to point you at the terrific Donna Wentworth's Copyfight and A copyright cold war? The polarized rhetoric of the peer-to-peer debates by John Logie at FirstMonday.
Also, one of my students just pointed me at this amusing cartoon at User Friendly.