Support for UCITA Law Eroding UCITA 11/20/2000; 3:25:05 PM 'After more than a year of conflict, a campaign by America Online, Microsoft and other powerful software companies to pass legislation dramatically limiting the rights of software buyers appears to have stalled in the face of growing opposition. 'Half a dozen states this year have considered the controversial legislation, which would allow software companies to ban the sale of used software, avoid fixing software bugs and even block the publication of critical reviews of their products.

Court to Yahoo: Use Nazi Filter Country Watch: France 11/20/2000; 1:21:52 PM 'In a landmark ruling with potential implications for Web users around the world, a French court on Monday ordered U.S. Internet giant Yahoo to bar French users from sites selling Nazi memorabilia. 'Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez confirmed a ruling that he first issued on May 22 ordering Yahoo to prevent people in France from accessing English-language sites that auction Nazi books, daggers, SS badges and uniforms.

New LinkBack Feature & First User LinkBack 11/20/2000; 10:52:44 AM Last week, I added a new feature to LinkBack.  It can now send the results anywhere, so you can host them on your own weblogs if you want.  Serious Instructional Technology is the first (and currently) only site using it. "Who's Linking to SiT" in the upper left is being dynamically generated and uploaded via XML-RPC every hour.... which means that iRights is now showing as linking to him (since this has been posted for long enough).

Watching for Internet Privacy Law Signals Privacy from Companies 11/20/2000; 10:12:32 AM 'E-commerce companies and other Internet-based operations are going to face a cyberspace odyssey on the privacy front in 2001. In its next session, Congress is more likely than ever to pass online personal data protection legislation.... 'The battle trenches are quickly being dug. Technology companies trying to figure out how not to break the law (remember, the Federal Trade Commission is erring on the side of the privacy advocates for the most part) will have to tune in to these key players next year.

New documents shed more light on FBI's "Carnivore" Surveillance and Privacy from Government 11/18/2000; 11:04:15 PM 'The FBI released additional documents about its controversial Carnivore technology Thursday, and critics immediately lambasted it as proof that the email-tapping program is more powerful and invasive than the government has disclosed. 'The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which sued the FBI for the information through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), said the batch of paperwork indicates that Carnivore can capture and archive "

Police chief slams Yahoo! chatroom silence Free Speech 11/17/2000; 12:56:34 PM 'It has been a difficult week for Yahoo!. Three children's charities including Childnet International, NCH Action for Children and Childwatch lambasted the company for its policy on Internet chat. Later, expert child psychologists warned that Internet chatrooms are likely to increase the number of attacks on children in the UK and urged Yahoo! to act before more children fall prey to the kind of attacks Patrick Green put his victim through.

The Bubble Has Popped: Amazon Works To Form Union Misc. 11/17/2000; 11:15:58 AM 'Customer service workers at Amazon.com's (AMZN) Seattle headquarters have started a drive to form a union. 'The workers hope to gather support from a majority of the 400 or so customer service representatives in Seattle. They hope to obtain union recognition and eventually a collective bargaining agreement.' The dot-com boom is now officially over Dot-coms can't just throw more stock at their employees and expect them to work 70+ hour weeks.

Rights fielder Misc. 11/16/2000; 11:53:54 AM 'In order to foster and preserve the openness of the Internet, it's imperative to make the right choices now. Mr. Lessig makes clear the danger from efforts to regulate the Internet, which will have long-lasting effects on its growth and development. But following a simple laissez-faire policy is also fraught with problems. Mr. Lessig maintains the approach that the openness of digital code can be used to restructure cyberspace.

Why Digital Signatures Are Not Signatures Misc. 11/15/2000; 11:32:10 PM 'The problem is that while a digital signature authenticates the document up to the point of the signing computer, it doesn't authenticate the link between that computer and Alice. This is a subtle point. For years, I would explain the mathematics of digital signatures with sentences like: "The signer computes a digital signature of message m by computing m^e mod n.

PORNsweeper Free Speech 11/15/2000; 11:20:25 PM 'Blocking software in general is vastly oversold. If censorware salespeople sold motor scooters, mining companies would be buying them, having been faithfully assured that a 50cc Vespa can carry 200 tons of iron ore up a 30 degree grade.' OK, so we've covered how bad image filtering is... but this review is a really fun read.