'Hacking' To Be Declared Illegal
Programmer's Rights
10/25/2000; 9:19:54 AM

This is slashdot article about the international cybercrime treaty, as mentioned before here.  I'm posting this because I think it's a good bet there will be some insightful comments posted there. Browse with "Highest Scores First".

Whatever else you can say about the theory, I think it's quite clear that some bureaucrats who got delusions of grandeur into their heads, started writing legislation, and just ignored all technical input they receieved because they thought they knew better. I can't find a link, but I seem to recall some recent study showing that one's claimed knowlege on a subject is almost perfectly inversely proportional to actual knowlege.  Unfortunately, this means a lot of bureaucrats think they know everything there is to know about computers and they can just start legislating.

Abandoned Intellectual Property
General IP Issues
10/24/2000; 9:58:08 PM 'Most states have laws governing what is to be done with property that has been abandoned. In one state the amount of time before something is considered abandoned ranges from a mere 2 years up to 15 years. After that maximum -- depending on the type of property -- the property can be put up for auction, absorbed by the holder of the property, or possibly revert to the state, again depending on the property in question. The laws vary between states, but the principle is there. Property that is not claimed after a reasonable amount of time ceases to belong to the owner.

'Think of how this might apply to intellectual property. Copyright law allows an inordinate amount of time before works revert to the public domain -- author's life plus 70 years, and 95 years on corporate copyright. But, what if the owner of this property had to make sure it was kept available in order to keep the copyright?'

'Works for Hire' on Firing Line
Music & MP3
10/24/2000; 12:49:46 PM

'MP3.com's legal challenge of the validity of music copyrights, which is forcing a U.S. district court to focus on ownership of music, could have serious implications for the music industry.

'On Nov. 2, lawyers representing MP3.com in the damages portion of its lawsuit will argue that the Universal Music Group incorrectly classified its 4,700 copyrights as "works for hire."

Fast.weblogs.com
Personal Notes
10/24/2000; 10:01:09 AM I don't think I've seen this announced publicly, but there is a weblogs.com site that is just a fast mirror of the main weblogs.com site. In my experience, it comes up significantly faster in IE too, though it says it's meant to be a "netscape 4" friendly version.

At any rate, a lot of people already know about it and maybe I missed the scripting news announcement, but its there and you might want to try it.

Study of Average Error Rates for Censorware Programs
Free Speech
10/23/2000; 5:45:21 PM

'Using "zone files" from Network Solutions (which list all .com domains in existence), we obtained a list of the first 1,000 active .com domains on the Internet as of June 14, 2000. We tested this list of 1,000 domains using five popular blocking programs: Cyber Patrol, SurfWatch, Bess, AOL Parental Controls, and SafeServer, to see how many sites each program blocked as "pornography", and of those sites, how many were actually pornographic.'

Universal tests Napster-style music service
Music & MP3
10/23/2000; 5:33:54 PM

'Big five' recording company Universal Music Group has begun secret trials of an unlimited access, subscription-based digital music distribution service....

'The trial apparently provides unlimited access to some 20,000 tracks via a streamed media connection over the Internet. Subscribers, of whom, Reuters reckons there are 5000 - seems a lot to us - can't download and keep the songs they choose to listen to....

UK e-snooping rules conflict
Country Watch: Britain
10/23/2000; 5:32:15 PM

'The UK government bodies regulating employers' snooping on staff e-mails and phone calls have given conflicting explanations of how two overlapping sets of new rules will interact.

'The Department of Trade and Industry's surveillance rules, which come into force next week, give employers a largely free hand to snoop. The main proviso is that staff are warned their personal e-mails and calls may be monitored.

Privacy under attack (again) on Capitol Hill
Surveillance and Privacy from Government
10/23/2000; 5:31:44 PM

'One of the most bizarre items currently proceeding under the CR has to be the Presidential Threat Protection Act of 2000, sponsored by House Subcommittee on Crime Chairman Bill McCollum (Republican, Florida), which was ostensibly designed to provide better protection to former Presidents from violent lunatics "and for other purposes." Incredibly, the measure passed the Senate, but a rider McCollum wants tacked onto it called the Fugitive Apprehension Act has since raised hackles because it would authorise the Feds to read e-mail and other ISP records on a mere administrative subpoena, which does not require a warrant approved by a judge.

'"The bottom line is, the so-called 'administrative subpoenas' allowed in [the rider] are not necessary for effective law enforcement, and seriously trample on privacy rights....these subpoenas can be obtained for information pertaining to a person who has only 'allegedly' committed a crime," US Representative Bob Barr (Republican, Georgia) said in a tersely-worded letter to colleagues. Nice to see someone on Capitol Hill using his head for a change.'

Senator Hatch's Napster Epiphany
Music & MP3
10/23/2000; 11:32:16 AM

'The kinks and twists and political intrigues attaching to this story [Napster vs. DMCA vs. DMCA author] are only beginning to show, and one can only delight in contemplating what might come next. What we have thus far is a stiff-collared conservative Senator renouncing his own, industry-accommodating legislation on behalf of some punk Internet start-up venture; a pseudo-hip and nominally Democratic White House desperately trying to enforce the Draconian provisions of the stiff-collared conservative Senator's original, industry-accommodating legislation; and an extraordinarily talented lawyer with, until now, respectable Establishment credentials suddenly disdaining the political machine for which he had recently done battle, and cheered by, you guessed it, the stiff-collared conservative Senator whose crummy legislation failed to protect Napster from recording-industry abuse in the first place.

'Ultimately, it all makes perfect sense: only Washington could actually be more ridiculous than Hollywood.'

Who ya gonna call? Patent busters!
Patents
10/23/2000; 11:26:16 AM 'Charles Cella used to help start-ups like ARTISTdirect apply for Internet business method patents. Now the attorney-turned-CEO plans to make money busting them.

'Why the change of heart? "Because there are a lot of bad patents out there, and there are a lot of valid patents too," he says. "What needs fixing is the system of 'prior art.'"

'"Prior art," says Cella, referring to a legal term used to describe inventions that invalidate patents by proving that they aren't new ideas, "is just too hard to find."'