Piano Scrolls and the Law Music & MP38/7/2000; 3:24:14 PM Two articles that go well together:The Standard has ''The Piano-Scroll Precedent'', a retrospective on copyright law and past technology.'Technology, then and now, takes unexpected twists and turns, and copyright law struggles to keep up. Today, as the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ponders the Recording Industry Association of America's complaint against Napster, people trying to cope with the fast-changing Internet might draw some lessons from history.

Will the Real Katie.com Please Stand Up? General IP Issues 8/7/2000; 3:02:41 PM 'This isn't the first time that two parties have squabbled over a domain name, but Jones' case is unique in one aspect. Countless cybersquatters have registered domain names of large companies and tried to extort large fees from the companies in exchange for relinquishing the names. A whole body of law now addresses the rights of companies to extend their trademark to Web addresses.

A hacker crackdown? Programmer's Rights 8/7/2000; 12:39:30 PM 'As the long arm of the law reaches Napster and its lookalikes, programmers could be held responsible for what others do with their code.' The inaugural "Programer's Rights" story, which convinced me to start this as a new department.

New Department: Programmer's Rights Programmer's Rights8/7/2000; 12:37:39 PM I'm creating a new department for what I percieve to be a controversy I suspect we'll be hearing more about in the future: Programmer's Rights and the responsibilities that come along with those rights.Like any controversy, one can find hints of it extending far back, but I think this issue has come into a new focus with the developments surround Napster. Can Napster-the-software's writers (i.

THE ARCHIVAL MIND: The Brain's Third Hemisphere Digital Divide8/4/2000; 9:59:47 PM 'Indeed it also seems possible that we are now developing a new thought-consciousness. Our intuitive awareness of this fact accounts, I believe, for the characteristic love affair people come to have with their computers. To the outsider they are "computer nuts" or "nerds." The outsider can never understand one thing the present analysis makes clear. People who fall in love with their computers are really falling in love with their own minds, and the stunning new Boolean capabilities it makes possible.

Privacy Plan Likely to Kick Off Debate Surveillance and Privacy from Government8/4/2000; 10:26:00 AM 'he goal of the plan announced by President Clinton's chief of staff, John Podesta, sounded admirable: to overhaul the nation's privacy laws, harmonizing a patchwork of inconsistent rules and extending to e-mail and mobile phone messages the same strict safeguards against government snooping that now apply to telephone calls.' ...'In arguing that all e-mails should be given the same enhanced protections as telephone calls, Podesta in effect declared that the telephone wiretap law should be the privacy baseline.

Registrar Sues for Whois Spam Privacy from Companies8/4/2000; 8:29:58 AM 'In a dispute that could test the legal limits for how of personal information stored on publicly available websites is used, a domain name registrar has filed suit against a firm it claims illegally used its customer contact information in an aggressive marketing campaign of unsolicited email and phone calls.'Register.com, a New York company that registers Internet domain names, filed suit this week against Verio Inc.

TheStandard.com: Privacy Report Criticizes 'Infomediaries' Privacy from Companies8/3/2000; 9:16:41 AM 'A new report released by Internet security firm Interhack, based in Columbus, Ohio, warns that the practice of outsourcing data collection on the activities of Web site visitors creates significant potential for privacy breaches. 'The report takes several e-commerce Web sites to task, as well as Coremetrics, the firm that collects and analyzes their customer information. But concern about outsourced data collection is applicable to any company that serves as an "

Reform Voting Evokes E-Votes Political Speech 8/3/2000; 8:47:53 AM '[Reform] Party officials say that the contest between Patrick Buchanan and John Hagelin for the Reform Party presidential nomination will be settled through a unique "mixed-media" election, giving voters the option of voting either through a mail-in paper ballot or on the Web over a three-day period prior to the party's Aug. 10-13 national convention.' 'The entire voting process -- electronic and postal -- is being handled by eBallot, a relatively new entrant into the raucous electronic voting industry, in which upstart companies are tripping over each other to get valuable commissions from national organizations.

EBay Accused of Monopolization Content Integrity8/2/2000; 2:11:02 PM 'The judge in the eBay v. Bidder's Edge case has refused to throw out antitrust allegations leveled by the auction listing re-aggregator against auction giant eBay. 'Bidder's Edge contends that eBay behaved anticompetitively and that therefore the company is guilty of monopolization or at least attempted monopolization.'Mmmmmm... "anticompetitively" because eBay won't let Bidder's Edge use a substantial portion of eBay's bandwidth for reasons that eBay will find possibly economically damaging?