TRUSTe Accused of Breaking Its Own Privacy Rules
Privacy from Companies
8/25/2000; 11:02:30 PM 'The nonprofit Internet privacy organization TRUSTe allowed an outside company to track visitors to its Web site without visitors' permission or knowledge, said Interhack, a Internet security firm.'

Trade Groups Support Napster
Music & MP3
8/25/2000; 10:54:27 PM 'Several trade groups filed friend-of-the-court briefs today with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals disputing claims made by Judge Marilyn Patel, who ruled against Napster in a case brought by the recording industry.'

Time-Warner steps in it, again Music & MP38/25/2000; 10:17:02 PM Odds are good you all read Davenet, given who's hosting this website, but still, this deserves to be archived here so people can find it in the future. Time-Warner violates what is essentially their own law...'This hypocrisy is making a joke of the US Constitution. If the litigants can't keep their own act clean, how dare they sue others to stop what is clearly an expression of free speech.'Agreed.

Future of Digital Music Senate Meeting
Personal Commentary
8/23/2000; 4:48:10 PM It's 5:52 EST, and on C-SPAN 2 is the Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on the Future of Digital Music, with Lars Ulrich, the Napster CEO, and the RIAA that took place on September 11, 2000. It's out of date in lawsuit terms, but hey, get it straight from the horse's mouth(es).

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.'It is not possible to firewall Napster and leave the rest of your network connectivity intact, esp. after Napster (and Gnutella, and Freenet, and ...) start trying to actively bypass the firewall. This will degrade your network connection, period, so the media companies can think they are protecting themselves.Let's hope this wouldn't fly legally; this would piss a lot of people off (remember the computer industry is about 10 times the size of the music industry), and you are not allowed to use your copyrights as an excuse to hurt anything else. Let's hope this was an ignorant blowhard who hasn't yet talked to his techs to learn that what he proposes is absurd.

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. But they left the non-HTML versions of the addresses intact, so visitors can simply copy and paste them into a browser window.'Good; this will help highlight the absurdity.Court: "Stop linking to DeCSS."2600: "OK... here's non-linked URL's."Court: "Stop providing non-linked URL's."2600: "OK, here's obfuscated URLs: aicth tee tee pee colon slash slash..."Court: "Stop that!"2600: "OK, if you search google for "DeCSS", you can find 20 sites providing the code...What do you do after that? Order 2600 to pretend there's no such thing as DeCSS? "Never mention" it? ("Click here to download a program to deactivate encryption on DVDs.") This just can't fly, it's a restraint on First Amendment rights, and there's no line in this case to draw that can make this somehow make sense without destroying too much other stuff too.

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.'It is not possible to firewall Napster and leave the rest of your network connectivity intact, esp. after Napster (and Gnutella, and Freenet, and ...) start trying to actively bypass the firewall. This will degrade your network connection, period, so the media companies can think they are protecting themselves.Let's hope this wouldn't fly legally; this would piss a lot of people off (remember the computer industry is about 10 times the size of the music industry), and you are not allowed to use your copyrights as an excuse to hurt anything else. Let's hope this was an ignorant blowhard who hasn't yet talked to his techs to learn that what he proposes is absurd....Especially that last point! Firewall it at my PC? Touch my PC and I'll haul your ass into court! Mine! Seriously, though, do they think they own my computer? If they think they can firewall Napster on my PC (a nearly meaningless phrase, BTW... he really means "block Napster"), which would involve forcing me to install a program and always have it active (do they have it for Linux?), then this guy obviously would answer yes.What a bozo. It's sad these people are making the law.

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. The sequencing of the human genome will supposedly eradicate cancer and other diseases. The wildest optimism, though, has greeted the Internet. A whole industry of cybergurus has enthralled audiences (and made a fine living) with exuberant claims that the Internet will prevent wars, reduce pollution, and combat various forms of inequality. However, although the Internet is still young enough to inspire idealism, it has also been around long enough to test whether the prophets can be right.'

It seems undeniable that the Internet is causing more problems then it solves. Still, the benefits are immense. It's all a matter of balance.

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?