U-WIRE Today-Sony exec: We will beat Napster Music & MP38/23/2000; 4:42:26 PM '"Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop [Napster]," Heckler told the Summer Forty-Niner. "We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source -- we will block it at your cable company, we will block it at your phone company, we will block it at your [Internet-service provider]. We will firewall it at your PC.

Censorware Blocking Methods Using Akamai Censorship 8/23/2000; 9:59:32 AM 'Peacefire has discovered a way to block censorware using Akamai's servers.' This is just funny. The article has a lot of links. Yahoo had a follow-up where it seems Akamai will indeed do something after all.

Only News That's Fit to Link Free Speech8/23/2000; 9:04:30 AM 'Kaplan's ruling, legal experts say, appears to be an unprecedented expansion of traditional copyright law. No longer is it merely illegal to distribute a potentially infringing computer program -- but now even linking to someone else's copy could be verboten.'This article provides a good overview and connects this with the past year or two of history.'For its part, 2600 simply removed the links to copies of DeCSS.

Sony exec: We Own Your Computer Music & MP38/23/2000; 8:49:15 AM '"Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop [Napster]," Heckler told the Summer Forty-Niner. "We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source -- we will block it at your cable company, we will block it at your phone company, we will block it at your [Internet-service provider]. We will firewall it at your PC.

What the Internet cannot do Technology & Sociology 8/22/2000; 2:30:15 PM '“IT IS impossible that old prejudices and hostilities should longer exist, while such an instrument has been created for the exchange of thought between all the nations of the earth.” Thus Victorian enthusiasts, acclaiming the arrival in 1858 of the first transatlantic telegraph cable. People say that sort of thing about new technologies, even today. Biotechnology is said to be the cure for world hunger.

MP3 suit blames AOL for music piracy Music & MP3 8/22/2000; 2:07:10 PM 'An online music service, under legal fire for helping consumers locate copyrighted music files for free download, launched its own volley late Monday by suing America Online and its would-be merger mate Time Warner for assisting in the development of the currently raging free-music-download phenomenon.' What next?

emmanuel golstein's Comments On the DeCSS Ruling DVD & DeCSS 8/21/2000; 2:18:17 PM 'What too many people don't seem to realize is that the rules have changed overnight and it WILL affect them. Imagine not being allowed to lend a book to a friend. Imagine not being able to play music that you bought in another country. Imagine only being able to watch "approved" content on your DVD player. And just wait until HDTV comes around and makes it impossible to record anything unless you pay.

TheStandard.com: Napster to Court: The Judge Screwed Up Music & MP38/21/2000; 9:18:18 AM 'If Napster thought Judge Marilyn Hall Patel disapproved of the file-sharing service when she ruled against it last month, wait till she gets a load of the company's new legal filing. 'Late Friday, Napster's lawyers filed a brief that spells out Judge Patel's "errors" in her preliminary injunction ruling, which was temporarily stayed by an appeals court just hours before the injunction would have effectively shut Napster down.

Consumers' Views Split on Internet Privacy Privacy from Companies8/21/2000; 8:47:09 AM 'In the continuing battle between Internet companies that want to use customers' personal information to deliver tailored advertisements and services and privacy advocates who want stricter controls over how this information is used, consumers themselves appear to be of two minds. 'At least that is the finding of a survey whose results were released last night by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, a nonprofit group.

IEEE-USA UCITA Grassroots Network UCITA 8/21/2000; 8:33:37 AM IEEE is the most importent professional organization of electrical engineers. In my opinion, the opinion of this organization should be respected; they are in an excellent position to understand how this will affect people. They are maintaining a state-by-state listing of how UCITA is doing; check your state out. There's some stuff shown on this list I haven't seen in the news, such as Delaware and Oklahoma.