Where Did They Go: CallTheShots.com Misc. 12/12/2000; 5:18:12 PM It seems that Akamai ate CallTheShots.com, a service that chopped up various websites and re-combined the pieces, probably illegally as it did it without any permission from the website owners. I don't know why Akamai would want them. *shrug*

Judge Blocks Whois Spam Misc. 12/12/2000; 1:06:45 PM 'In a ruling in U.S. District Court in New York City, Judge Barbara Jones ordered Verio to stop using customer contact information housed in Register.com's Whois database to carry out a massive telephone and e-mail market campaign. 'In issuing the preliminary injunction, Jones determined that Register.com (RCOM) had a significant likelihood of prevailing on its claims that Verio violated usage policies, made unauthorized references to Register.

Webcasters Get Copyright Relief Administrative 12/11/2000; 2:03:53 PM 'The copyright office ruled that terrestrial radio stations that simulcast their content on the Web are subject to paying the same licensing fees as Internet-only broadcast businesses. Previously, only webcasters were forced to sign up for compulsory licenses. '"This was a very good day for webcasters," said Jonathan Potter, the executive director of the Digital Media Association (DiMA).'

SmartFilter - I've Got A Little List Free Speech 12/8/2000; 11:34:29 AM 'Censorware blacklists provide one of the best validations ever seen, regarding the slippery slope theory of censorship. Consider the preceding examination of the Extreme or Obscene category. The words certainly sound scary. Extreme ... Obscene ... Child Pornography ... Excessive Violence ... Mutilation. Only upon very careful and precise reading does one realize that the category definition is akin to Mother rapers .

Encryption tears holes in RIP Country Watch: Britain12/7/2000; 1:59:36 PM 'A group of cryptographers think they have found a way to defeat the RIP Act, by making it impossible to hand over the keys to encrypted information. 'The section of the act that has caused so much controversy in the UK gives the government the right to the plain text of, or key to, enciphered information. However, if a person has used an ephemeral key, they never know what the key is and so cannot pass it on to a third-party, and it is this vulnerability that the group wishes to exploit.

FBI Hacks Alleged Mobster Surveillance and Privacy from Government 12/6/2000; 3:25:47 PM 'But when the feds learned of Scarfo's security measures, they decided to do something that would bypass even the best encryption software: FBI agents sneaked into Scarfo's office in Belleville, New Jersey, on May 10, 1999, and installed a keyboard-sniffing device to record his password when he typed it in. 'A seven-page court order authorized the FBI and cooperating local police to break into Scarfo's first-floor "

Privacy Fears are Not Paranoia Privacy from Companies 12/6/2000; 3:20:27 PM 'A 20-year-old woman stalked through the Internet and killed. Thousands of e-commerce customers watching as their credit card numbers are sold online for $1 apiece. Internet chat rooms where identities are bought, sold and traded like options on the Chicago Board of Trade. These are the horror stories dredged up by privacy advocates who say the Net’s threat to personal privacy can’t be dismissed as mere paranoia.

Fending Off the Pay-Per-View Society General IP Issues 12/6/2000; 1:05:37 PM 'It is disconcerting, of course, to be told that our society might be passing up a chance at a digital heaven and opting instead for hell. The warnings are all the more alarming when they come from people like Moglen, who understand digital networks so much more profoundly than the rest of us do. 'But there is reason to be circumspect about their predictions.

Council of Europe drops plans to ban hacking tools Hacking & Cracking 12/5/2000; 1:19:25 PM 'The Council of Europe has scrapped controversial plans to ban the use of "hacking" tools by IT professionals, after industry groups successfully persuaded it that the proposals were unworkable. 'Original proposals by the council would have made it illegal to distribute tools or discuss techniques that look for weaknesses in the security of systems, for example software used to scan the perimeter of networks for security vulnerabilities.

ETP's First Anniversary - Let's Look At The Community Internet/Weblog Culture 12/4/2000; 9:45:14 PM It's EditThisPage's first anniversary today, which is to say that this community has been running for a year now, give or take a bit. You start taking things for granted after a while, but take today and look around the community we've got! I made some bold statements in my essay Weblog Communities, but looking around today, I feel vindicated, at least for the first year.