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. I guess the news media doesn't want to cover this story 50+ times (can't say I blame them ).

The Heavenly Jukebox
Music & MP3
8/18/2000; 2:46:53 PM 'Rampant music piracy may hurt musicians less than they fear. The real threat -- to listeners and, conceivably, democracy itself -- is the music industry's reaction to it '

Long and well worth reading. As linked... everywhere else

Digital Copyright Act comes back to haunt consumers
DMCA
8/18/2000; 10:16:05 AM 'Kaplan's ruling in the New York case was sweeping and deeply troubling for anyone who cares about fair use and, ultimately, the First Amendment. He likened software code to a disease, implying that the people who used it were acting like agents of germ warfare. He seemed to acknowledge the radically anti-free speech nature of his banning of hyperlinks in this matter, but then went ahead and did it anyway.

'There's little doubt at this point that the courts will continue to rule in favor of the entertainment industry in these kinds of cases. The DMCA, which has some temporary exceptions that the industry wants to eliminate, is one of the most anti-consumer acts of recent times. But it's the law, unless the higher courts re-read the Constitution and restore some balance.'

Judge Kaplan's MPAA vs. DeCSS Decision DVD & DeCSS8/17/2000; 2:36:40 PM Judge Kaplan has ruled in favor of the MPAA in the DeCSS case. This is not a surprise, and opens the door for the inevitable appeal and show-down in a higher court.The high-rated Slashdot comments seem fairly insightful. I agree with many of them; the judge seems to have ruled completely within the bound of the DMCA, and basically dodged the issue of whether the DMCA is constitutional.You'll be hearing more from this suit, I'm sure.

Outline Browser
Fun Stuff!
8/17/2000; 1:07:19 PM If you have IE5+ and Javascript active, you can use the Outline Browser I whipped together last night. It allows you to view and even browse file conforming to Dave Winer's outline XMLization.

Bangkok Post Aug 17, 2000 - Armed roboguard world's first Misc.8/17/2000; 12:50:55 PM 'The world's first armed robot security guard that can open fire on intruders while controlled through the Internet was unveiled in Bangkok yesterday.''"The robot is equipped with a camera and sensors that track movement and heat. It is armed with a pistol that can be programmed to shoot automatically or wait for a fire order delivered with a password from anywhere through the Internet," [Asst Prof Pitikhet Suraksa] said.'Boy, it'd be fun to hack one of these... I'm not sure you want to put digital firearms on the chaos that is the 'net... hmmm... there's no QBullet "evil smiley"...

Appeals Decision in USTA vs. FCC (CALEA)
Surveillance and Privacy from Government
8/16/2000; 1:20:03 PM 'Electronic Privacy Information Center announces the DC Circuit Decision in USTA v. FCC (CALEA). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has ruled that law enforcement agencies must meet the highest legal standard before using new surveillance capabilities. The court decision came in a legal challenge filed by EPIC, other privacy groups and the telecommunications industry to invalidate technical surveillance standards issued by the Federal Communications Commission last year. More details at: CDT Policy Post Volume 6. The court's decision is available."'

Napster’s backers under attack Programmer's Rights8/15/2000; 3:48:15 PM 'THE legal juggernaut set in motion by the recording industry to rid itself of Napster is threatening to take with it more than just the upstart firm whose software enables music fans to share each other’s CD collections free on the Internet. If, as seems likely following a hostile ruling a fortnight ago, Napster is fined for music piracy, the way could be open for action against both its investors and the developers of any software that might be used to undermine copyright. 'For now, the ruling that Napster must immediately remove all copyrighted material from its site (in effect closing the service down) is stayed until the case reaches the appeal court, from where it will almost certainly move to the Supreme Court. If, as expected, things go badly for Napster in the higher courts, litigious music and film companies will most likely turn their sights on the venture-capital firm that backed Napster, Hummer Winblad, and the programmers who made Napster possible.'Big problems! This could restrain freedom every bit as much as patents do, and extend it out to investors, who need to worry about the legal liability the investments could open them up to.

Toysrus.com stops using Coremetrics
Privacy from Companies
8/15/2000; 9:46:42 AM '"For a short period of time, we had a trial arrangement with a service called Coremetrics to assist us in evaluating information about how visitors use our site," Toysrus.com's policy read. "This trial arrangement is no longer in effect."'

I think I understand thier point of view (if they are telling the truth)... "It was only a trial, why should we notify customers of something temporary that we may not even go with?" The answer is, of course, that a site like Toysrus.com can collect more data in an hour then I could collect from this site in a year; what looks like a trial arrangement can still collect a lot of data very quickly, without customer's knowlege. It's a perspective thing.