Latte.Weblogs.Com LinkBack8/9/2000; 6:24:11 PM Welcome to Latte.Weblogs.Com!Think this story had anything to do with joining?

Licensing Legislation Said to Imperil Academic Freedom UCITA8/9/2000; 6:16:21 PM 'Imagine that an architecture professor distributes to his distance-education students digitized photographs of the palace at Versailles, warns the students about the images' poor quality -- and then gets hit with a lawsuit from the software company that provided the pictures. 'The company accuses the professor of violating the terms of the license agreement, which prohibits customers from publicly criticizing the product.

UCITA group backs off provision -- somewhat UCITA8/9/2000; 6:09:24 PM 'The group that drafted the Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act (UCITA) has backed off slightly from one of the more controversial measures in the proposed software-licensing law -- a so-called self-help provision that allows vendors to remotely disable the software they sell to users. But that may not be much solace to corporate users. 'At its annual meeting, which ended last Friday, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) agreed to end the self-help provision for mass-market software sold via retail channels.

Pollster loses restraining-order request in spamming case Spam & E-Mail 8/9/2000; 6:02:06 PM 'A U.S. District Court judge in Rochester, N.Y., yesterday denied a request from market-research firm Harris Interactive Inc. for a temporary restraining order that would have forced an antispam organization to take the company off a list of e-mail spammers while a lawsuit filed last month by Harris is heard.'

Polling firm drops AOL from spam suit Spam & E-Mail 8/9/2000; 12:04:32 PM 'Harris Interactive Inc. has withdrawn a federal lawsuit accusing America Online Inc. of blocking correspondence with many of the Internet-based polling company's 6.6 million online panelists.'

UpsideToday Newsroom: Privacy from Companies8/9/2000; 9:31:26 AM 'As of last week, the International Olympic Committee had ruled out streaming video over the Internet, saying its free availability would create conflicts with exclusive broadcast deals the IOC has made with individual media companies on a country-by-country basis.'But the deal to make video available on the NBCOlympics.com website makes a neat end-run around the IOC limits, via Axient's OctaneSM network. 'Partnership with ISPs The Octane network, in a nutshell, consists of Axient's partnership with more than 100 Internet service providers (ISPs) across the country.

Udell & Lessig on Internet Regulability Misc.8/9/2000; 9:21:58 AM 'Assume the existence of trusted systems that enforce copyright protections, count the number of copies of protected works that they make, and perhaps even artificially degrade the quality of such copies. What will stop alternatives from usurping the role of these trusted systems, just as Napigator and Gnutella and Freenet are now preparing to stand in for Napster?'It's easy, and tempting, to say: "

The Cornucopia of the Commons Technology & Sociology8/8/2000; 4:11:31 PM 'What we see here is that increasing the value of the database by adding more information is a natural by-product of using the tool for your own benefit. No altruistic sharing motives need be present, especially since sharing is the default.'The only thing I'd take issue with is the title of the article... if you increase the value of something by using it, then by definition, it isn't a common.

Publius Home Page Boundary Breakers8/8/2000; 2:01:03 PM Publius has apparently started working.Technical details:'Our system consists of publishers who post Publius content to the web, servers who host random-looking content, and retrievers who browse Publius content on the web. At present the system supports any static content such as HTML pages, images, and other files such as postscript, pdf, etc. Javascript also works. We assume that there is a static, system-wide list of available servers.

E-Privacy's Foggy Bottom Privacy from Companies8/8/2000; 10:00:49 AM 'The discovery spurred a controversy over the role of this unseen third party -- as well as lawsuits targeting Toysrus.com and Coremetrics. The suits focused on the seemingly inflammatory fact that the hand-off was not mentioned in Toysrus.com's privacy disclosures even though the information handed over was explicitly personal. 'But the alleged privacy transgression isn't as clear as it might seem. Coremetrics was a contractor to Toysrus.