Napster Ruling Requires Devs. Ensure No One Misuses System Programmer's Rights2/28/2001; 10:54:00 AM 'The 9th Circuit's holding also dramatically narrowed Betamax's protection against vicarious liability by requiring technology providers to affirmatively police their systems for potential infringement, a practice which essentially forces technology creators to serve as law enforcement for the content industry, even in the absence of notification that specific infringement has occurred.'Another ruling that makes perfect sense... if you never look past the case at hand.

Stallman: The GNU GPL and the American Way General IP Issues 2/27/2001; 11:27:56 PM 'Addendum: Microsoft says that the GPL is against "intellectual property rights." I have no opinion on "intellectual property rights," because the term is too broad to have a sensible opinion about. It is a catch-all, covering copyrights, patents, trademarks, and other disparate areas of law; areas so different, in the laws and in their effects, that any statement about all of them at once is surely simplistic.

All's quiet on the UCITA front... but that's about to change UCITA 2/25/2001; 3:52:59 PM 'THE UNIFORM COMPUTER Information Transactions Act (UCITA) is the proposed state law that carries all manner of horrors for IT organizations, technical professionals, consumers, librarians, and so on (see www.infoworld.com/ucita for background information). Since being passed by Virginia and Maryland last year, UCITA has fortunately made little headway. But with most state legislative sessions now in full swing, things are starting to heat up again.

The DeCSS Haiku DVD & DeCSS2/25/2001; 3:24:19 PM Dr. David Touretzky, who made the Gallery of CSS Descramblers, has recieved a threatening legal letter ordering him to shut down his site. Dr. David Touretzky politely returned fire and asks them to be more specific. Interesting letter. There is also a new descrambler, this one in psuedo-haiku: So here's how you doit: first, take the first byte ofim -- that's byte zero;OR that byte with thenumber 0x100(hexadecimal --that's two hundred andfifty-six to you if youprefer decimal).

IBM CPRM Plan Replaced with Similar Copy-Prevention Plan General IP Issues 2/24/2001; 5:35:44 PM Slashdot sez Several people submitted the news that IBM withdrew its CPRM plan yesterday - some of them with blurbs like "We Won! Yay!". But only a few people got the additional information that it was simply replaced with another extremely similar copy-prevention scheme, this one from Phoenix Technologies, well known for their widely used BIOS's.

Michigan Considers a Cybercourt Misc. 2/22/2001; 12:50:26 PM 'To lure technology companies to Michigan, Gov. John Engler wants to establish a separate "cybercourt" for cases involving technology and high-tech businesses, where virtually everything would be done via computer rather than in a courtroom. 'Briefs could be filed online, evidence viewed by streaming video, oral arguments delivered by teleconferencing, conferences held by e- mail. Lawyers would not have to be in Michigan or even be licensed to practice in the state.

An Actual Weblog-Type Entry Personal Commentary 2/22/2001; 11:22:25 AM iRights has suffered for the last few days, but I think it's over. Windows NT is still running, LinkBack is cranking, and I'm Interneting. Thing is, while a lot of stuff went by, I don't feel like I've missed much that's actually important enough to make it worthwhile to post. Sure, Napster is discovering that letting the music industry run it is the fast track to destruction, but hey, who other then Napster and the music industry didn't see that coming?

Can John Doe Stay Anonymous? Free Speech2/21/2001; 11:14:20 AM 'What kind of lawsuit do you have when the plaintiff is happy to drop the charges and the defense attorneys wish they could have gone to trial? ...'In the suit, Rural/Metro subpoenaed Yahoo, demanding the identities of the four individuals involved in the postings. 'Rural/Metro dropped the suit Tuesday, saying it had accomplished its goal of having the messages stop. But the defense attorneys said they were disappointed the case didn't go to trial, because they hoped to set a legal precedent saying companies couldn't gain access to private information just because they allege they were wronged.

More tales of Woe Administrative2/20/2001; 9:34:48 AM Update: I think I've got it going. It's stable and working. RU was a bit tipsy but I still need to upgrade to the latest version.I did have everything working again recently, but events conspired against me and I'm now below fully functional. It'll be a little bit again (though I hope to be back up today).The long version is this: LinkBack has been running on a Windows 95 machine.

Draconian net censorship push in Australia Country Watch: Australia2/20/2001; 9:14:39 AM 'HARSH internet laws that give police power to prosecute anyone posting content deemed unsuitable for minors are likely to be passed by the South Australian Government next month.''The Classification Amendment Bill, which goes far beyond legislation in place in any other state, allows police officers to decide whether online material is illegal.'Emphasis mine. Of course, here's half of the root problem:'The federal law treats all internet content as film, and requires material to be rated by the Office of Film and Literature Classification accordingly.