ACLU calls for public hearings on new top-level domains
Misc.
1/19/2001; 9:58:58 PM

'The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and several other groups championing "cyberrights" this week sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Commerce criticizing the planned addition of seven new Internet top-level domains under a November decision by the organization that manages the domain-name system.'

Observation: "Cyberrights" shouldn't be in quotes!  They're just "rights" that happen to be exercise online.  Do we talk about "public park rights"?

Copyright: Your Right or Theirs?
DMCA
1/19/2001; 12:28:10 PM

The article rehashes much of what has been said before. The news is that the EFF will be going to court on Friday.

Also, for what it's worth, I don't think the co-author of the DMCA's defense of the DMCA is very compelling, because he doesn't seem to address the concerns of the opposition, he just says that they don't understand the bill or the nature of copyright, which I find highly unlikely. Ad hominem, anyone? 

The New Old Economy
Technology & Sociology
1/18/2001; 11:23:25 PM

A truly fascinating article on the impact of information technology on oil drilling, which is used as a prototypical example of many "Old Economy" industries being revitalized by the staggering increase of computing power and the ways in which it can be used.

The Internet is big and flashy, but it tends to obscure many equally interesting effects of the machines that enhance our minds.

AltaVista to become only Net search engine
Patents
1/18/2001; 8:54:18 PM

'AltaVista may have a crap search engine (did we say that?) but in these days of corporate-owned Internet that doesn't matter. It's patents and lawsuits that decide what we can get on the global "free-market". And if it's patents you want, AltaVista has got a few. Thirty-eight in fact, and more on the way.

'So what? Well, Internet World magazine has just run an interview with the chairman and CEO of AltaVista's parent company, CMGI, David Wetherell in which he said the company would be pursuing its search engine patents and we can expect lawsuits coming this quarter.'

Filter THIS! Librarians to sue over new law
Censorship
1/18/2001; 8:37:37 PM

'The American Library Association has decided to file a lawsuit challenging a new federal law that would require filtering in public schools and libraries....

'In its suit, the ALA will focus on the effect the law will have on all libraries, arguing that the requirement could further widen the so-called digital divide. Critics of mandatory filtering argue that the requirement forces people who rely on public computers for Internet access to see only pre-screened content--a restriction that those with home computers don't have.

Online recruiter wins ban on rival's web links
Free Speech
1/17/2001; 11:44:06 PM

'StepStone, the online recruitment company, has obtained an injunction in Germany preventing a rival from linking to its website pages. The move is one of the few cases to test the law on Deep Linking - links between sites that bypass home pages and hence banner advertising....

'"It is not, of course, every case of hypertext linking which is unlawful - the internet would grind to a halt. But the courts in Europe do have power to intervene where linking is extensive and prejudicial to the site involved," Mr Lifely added.

France Retracts Media Tax Proposal
Country Watch: France
1/17/2001; 11:29:58 PM

A slashdot story, since the media is French. It's good that they backed down, but see the high-ranking comments for some interesting theories

Cache at the End of His Rainbow General IP Issues1/16/2001; 11:52:24 AM 'Just ask Jake Savin, a San Francisco programmer who recently lost an entire website -- and three years' hard work -- but found a copy of his entire site in Google's online archive. 'It's worth pointing out that it has been questioned whether what Google is doing is legal, or if it is illegal redistribution of content. I want to point out that this could be an instance where we are being blinded to negative consequences because a high-profile good consequence is blocking consideration of the negative ones.Suppose Jake had deliberately deleted the website. Now it's still in Google's cache. Yes, legally, if he demanded that they remove it, they'd have to, but it's obvious that we can't know e who all is caching our content.I'm not suggesting that these sort of caches are bad, my real opinions are more complicated then that, I just want to point this out as an example of when a small, relatively uncommon good effect can totally obscure much larger questions about other effects. We get this in other places all the time... "it's for the children!" "we tax media because occaisionally somebody might pirate something, so we'll pay off the music companies just in case." The full stories deserves more consideration.Update: A discussion of this on geeknews, later found on dangerousmeta. (Actually, it's not very good; nobody's even mentioned the DMCA, without which you can't understand the legality of the cache.)

Group Says It Beat Music Security but Can't Reveal How Administrative1/16/2001; 11:43:09 AM 'Edward W. Felten, an associate professor computer science at Princeton , is perhaps best known for his role in the Microsoft antitrust trial. During the trial, where he demonstrated a program that he said stripped the Internet Explorer browser from the Windows operating system, he spent hours explaining what he had done and how he had done it.'But the professor has been far less forthcoming about a more recent hack, and at a conference last week he explained why: Lawyers have advised him that publicizing the details of his tinkering could violate a 1998 federal law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.'Academic freedom, or protecting the interests of corporations... that's an easy choice for politician$, isn't it?

France To Tax Computers, Disks, Phones
Country Watch: France
1/16/2001; 11:16:59 AM 'France is planning to slap levies on the sale of computers and digital recording devices to ensure musicians and film-makers are compensated for pirate copying, its Culture Minister said in an interview published on Monday. '

Shocked by the news? I more shocked that people are shocked... I'm actually posting this story because this isn't news. Many other technologies already face similar taxes in the US or elsewhere, and every time you buy or use one of these technologies, you are being presumed guilty of copyright infringement. This battle has already been lost.