Scary, Sneaky HR 46
Misc.
12/20/2000; 1:57:07 PM

'Congress may adjourn today — but not before inflicting a series of blows on civil liberties and federalism. As is usual for end-of-the-session assaults on civil liberties, the plan is to speed the new laws through as attachments to some innocuous law, before most people in Congress have time to notice.'

Note the addition to the National Review Online story: "Late on December 15, the sponsors of H.R. 46 agreed to remove all objectionable material from the bill, except for the encryption provision."

Censorware to be Mandatory in Schools, Libraries
Free Speech
12/20/2000; 11:30:40 AM 'Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a longtime proponent of censorware, introduced the amendment.... Essentially it says that any school or library which receives federal funds to build its network must install censorware. Since these funds are the chief way that poor and middle-income areas bring the internet into public institutions, effectively this means that only rich counties will have the option of an uncensored internet. '

Against Intellectual Property and an update
Personal Commentary
12/20/2000; 11:05:46 AM

I've been unwell the past couple of days, hence the lack of updates.  I'm going to catch up, so the next few links may seem a bit out of date

I read this essay a while ago, before I started this site, but I came across it again and want to link to it. Against Intellectual Property is an essay on why there should be no intellectual property. Personally, I disagree with it strongly, and I suspect that if we actually lived in the world the author desires, not only would things not be as peachy as he seems to think, but I think there would be a large movement towards re-instating intellectual property. In particular, I think his paragraph starting with "In a society without intellectual property, creativity is likely to thrive." uses a hand-waving argument; it seems OK from a distance, but trying to actually construct such a society is a challenge, if one is realistic about human behavior.

Prodigy to fight BT's 'shameless' hyperlinks patent lawsuit
Patents
12/15/2000; 8:46:14 PM

'Prodigy Communications Corp has reacted angrily to BT's hypertext links lawsuit branding it "blatant and shameless".... It intends to fight its case and expects other companies to band together to take on BT....

Yikes! I'm rooting for Prodigy! I never thought that day would come.

'It could take years before this matter is resolved.'

By which time the patent will nearly have expired.  Funny, in a sick way. I don't even want to think about the interest on the back royalties.

German Hate Law: No Denying It
Free Speech
12/15/2000; 2:42:15 PM

'The court, called the Bundesgerichtshof, issued a ruling on Tuesday that overturned a lower court ruling, and found that German law applies even to foreigners who post content on the Web in other countries -- so long as that content can be accessed by people inside of Germany.'

This is unlike the French Yahoo! ruling; the French have some claim to jurisdiction because there is a Yahoo! branch in France. I wouldn't call it enough, along with a lot of other people, but at least there's basis for argument. This story appears to be a ban on content from anywhere in the world. I'll skip belaboring the obvious implications, but I would like to point out one thing about the people who support this ruling:

BT sues Prodigy over U.S. hyperlink patent
Patents
12/15/2000; 2:15:48 PM

'BRITISH TELECOMMUNICATIONS (BT), which earlier in the year said it had discovered that it owns the U.S. patent for the invention of the hyperlink technology used on the Internet, has sued Prodigy Communications for copyright infringement....

'Early in the year, after discovering in a routine check that it owned the patent for the hyperlink, BT wrote to 17 U.S. ISPs, including Prodigy, asking them to pay for the privilege of using the technology through licensing agreements. The suit filed against Prodigy, which claims to be largest consumer DSL (digital subscriber line) ISP in the United States, is the first suit BT has filed to protect its hyperlink patent, according to Orr.'

Final Carnivore Report Offers No New Answers
Surveillance and Privacy from Government
12/15/2000; 2:08:17 PM

'House Majority Leader Dick Armey made the following comments about the newly released, final report on the Carnivore cybersnooping system:

'This superficial review doesn't get to the heart of the matter. It does nothing to restore the confidence that Americans should have in the confidentiality of their online transactions.

'Why should average Internet users have to wonder whether a rogue agent could snoop through their emails and other online transactions?

Port scanning other networks legal
Hacking & Cracking
12/15/2000; 1:25:35 PM

A United States District Court in Georgia has ruled that port scanning is legal, because it causes no damage to the target computers. Here's the full court report.

I tried to find a decent explanation of port scanning on the net, but I couldn't find a level-headed definition, so I wrote my own definition.

Port Scanning
Glossary
12/15/2000; 1:24:26 PM

I tried to find a decent definition of port scanning on the web, but I can't find one to my satisfaction. They either resort to ill-advised metaphors or panicky ohmigoshHACKERS!-style definitions. So here's my take on it:

The "port" in "port scanning" refers to TCP/IP ports. The internet protocol that we all use defines about 60,000 "ports" on each computer, which a program can "listen" to in order to recieve communication on the Internet. For instance, web servers typically listen on "port 80". There are some other accepted port numbers, but any program can listen on any port.

it has begun - from Hack the Planet
Free Speech
12/14/2000; 5:15:56 PM

'Richard Stallman, The Right to Read (1997): "Frank was in prison, not for pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger."

'Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader: "If you are a software programmer, you should note that the Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader's security implementation does not allow program debuggers to be executed on the machine while the Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader is running."'