Judges Seek Answers on Computer Code as Free Speech Free Speech5/11/2001; 10:42:23 PM 'In what may signal a heightened significance for a case testing the constitutionality of a 1998 digital copyright law, a panel of appeals court judges has asked both sides of a case to answer a list of 11 questions on whether computer code can qualify as free speech.'Here's the court request with the questions.I'll post the EFF's answers (which I'm sure they will post) when I can get them. It will be really interested to read the two side's answers. I think the subtext for all 11 question is "Can code really be speech?" For instance, consider question 2: "Does DeCSS have both speech and non-speech elements?" The real question is what definition of speech the two sides will use to answer this question is. Stay "tuned".

Three criticisms of the "$30 Billion" privacy price tag
Privacy from Companies
5/11/2001; 8:10:56 PM These are three good criticisms of the amazingly-inflated 30 billion dollar price tag a recent industry "study" placed on the costs of federally mandated privacy.

There's also a lot of pointers in there that apply to analyzing other studies of equal quality.

Anti Spam Bills Continue Spam & E-Mail5/11/2001; 7:18:40 PM From the article that Slashdot links to:'A bill designed to reduce unsolicited commercial e-mail ran into trouble in a House committee Thursday, as business leaders and lawmakers declared their opposition to the legislation.'Almost every legislator and witness present for the House Judiciary Committee hearing said they had problems with the bill, which previously passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee.'I linked to the Slashdot article for the extremely bad natured humor occurring in the comments... unusually enjoyable.

What They (Don't) Know About You Privacy from Companies5/11/2001; 6:57:47 PM 'When Richard Smith got his FBI file, he learned a lot of interesting things about himself. 'He found out that he had died in 1976 and that he may have previously been married to a woman named Mary. He also discovered that he may be known as "Ricky Smith" or "Rickie Smith" -- aliases he shares with a couple of convicts doing hard time in Texas. 'En fin, Smith -- who is the chief technology officer of the Privacy Foundation -- found that his FBI file contained more errors than correct data.'

Jury finds Rambus committed fraud
Patents
5/9/2001; 7:35:34 PM 'A federal court jury here Wednesday afternoon found Rambus Inc. had committed fraud by failing to disclose its synchronous patent applications to the industry JEDEC standards body.'

More rare justice.

Truth squad needed to combat Internet lies,commercialization Misc.5/9/2001; 4:21:46 PM 'When moneyed and powerful interests concoct a prevailing -- but false -- wisdom through public-relations deceptions and other techniques, credible experts need to stand up and explain why this or that emperor is unclothed.''There are precedents. In 1997, for example, federal government officials were publicly mulling whether to force adoption of a ``key escrow'' system of cryptography, whereby people and organizations would effectively be forced to turn over to third parties the keys to their most secret data. Eleven noted technologists, including several of the world's top cyptographers, issued a report persuasively showing why key escrow would inevitably compromise our collective security, not enhance it.''On many topics, one person's truth is another's lie. But every debate needs a foundation of plain facts, laid out in ways the public can grasp.'

EU Data Protection Could Clamp Data Flows
Privacy from Companies
5/8/2001; 2:43:06 PM

Pointing to this Financial Times article, an unnamed reader excerpts: "'The wide-ranging directive aims to protect data about EU citizens against misuse worldwide. It is backed by the power to cut off data flows to countries that the EU judges not to have adequate data protection rules and enforcement.'"

A Case of Free Speech Boundaries Free Speech5/8/2001; 2:07:42 PM 'A pending libel suit in New York now stands to test -- and potentially redraw -- some of the boundaries of journalistic free speech on the Internet. 'The case concerns Roberto Hernandez Ramirez, general director and majority owner of the National Bank of Mexico, also known as Banamex. In 1997, this prominent Mexican billionaire and Salinista investor was the subject of a series of 15 investigative reports in the Merida, Mexico daily newspaper Por Esto that fingered him as a major narcotics trafficker between Colombia and the United States....'"You have a Mexican business -- (in) this case the Bank of Mexico, very much a Mexican business -- suing for stories concerning activities that took place in Mexico," said Thomas Lesser, a First Amendment attorney in Northampton, Mass. "And they're suing a website that emanates in Mexico -- in New York."'This must be thrown out on lack of jurisdiction grounds, or the jurisdiction system as we know it is dead. I'm sure some of the stuff on this site is prosecutable in other countries; what about you?

Google Information for ETP.com Personal Notes5/8/2001; 1:52:59 PM LATER UPDATE: Sheesh, people, Google's de-indexing was worth doing something about, it was worth discussing what actions to take, but it wasn't worth a flaming shit-fest. Let's have a sense of scale, here, please.UPDATE: I was incorrect. See this post on Andrea's site. (Thanks to Seth Dillingham.)I wanted to pass this on, since many ETP'ers who read this site may not have seen this. You may have noticed recently that your referers list recently got much shorter, because our Google hits have disappeared. It looks like techInterview has the answer:'after more debugging I realized that the editthispage.com domain would have been scanned around April 5th, the date on the cached copy of www.scripting.com that Google has. i looked back and realized i don't have any puzzles around then because on April 3rd, all the editthispage.com sites were down for a week. so guess we'll just have to wait a month to get back into Google.'I hope that's it. I do like Google's listing...

Defending the cookie monster
Privacy from Companies
5/7/2001; 5:20:53 PM I've been thinking about cookies lately because here at Salon, our new Premium program relies on them in order to work properly, and we've corresponded with a small but vocal group of readers who feel strongly that All Cookies Must Be Destroyed. And though I am normally a diehard on issues of Web privacy, I have to report that cookies have been unfairly maligned.