ChatScan Search Engine Misc.7/23/2000; 7:35:49 PM This site will allow you to scan conversations occuring on the Internet Relay Chat channels, covering conversations previously considered so ephermal as to be untracable.More demonstration of your inability to hide.The high-rated postings in the Slashdot thread are unusally informative, including a lot of evidence that the ChatScan engines are not playing nice with others. If the allegations in that thread are true (including using their user's bandwidth for gathering information unrelated to the user's current actions and being major annoyances on entire networks), this is a nasty company.
Toysmart.com can sell customer list
Privacy from Companies7/23/2000; 7:31:45 PM The Federal Trade Commision has ruled that Toysmart.com can sell their controversial customer list, as long as the buyer agrees to follow the original Toysmart.com privacy policy.'Under the settlement agreement, Toysmart will file an order today in Bankruptcy Court ("Bankruptcy Order"), prohibiting Toysmart from selling the customer list as a stand-alone asset. The settlement only allows a sale of such lists as a package which includes the entire Web site, and only to a "Qualified Buyer"-- an entity that is in a related market and that expressly agrees to be Toysmart's successor-in-interest as to the customer information.'The Qualified Buyer must abide by the terms of the Toysmart privacy statement. If the buyer wishes to make changes to that policy, it must follow certain procedures to protect consumers. It may not change how the information previously collected by Toysmart is used, unless it provides notice to consumers and obtains their affirmative consent ("opt-in") to the new uses.'I still don't like it. Customers gave Toysmart.com information predicated on the promise that it would never be used by Toysmart.com, and now it will be. The customers have still been lied to, bankruptcy considerations or no.On the positive side, the buyer will have the only legally enforcable privacy policy on the planet; they will the be the only company that won't be able to simply change it on a whim. If they do, then they'd be in violation of the conditions of purchase. Always look for the silver lining 
(Pas coverage)
Movie studios target Scour with copyright lawsuit DVD & DeCSS7/23/2000; 12:00:05 PM 'While the movie studios have weighed in on the record industry's suit against Napster, it's the first time they've filed their own lawsuit against a file-sharing company that allows movie trading online. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) joined the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in its suit.'Scour is a file sharing service similar in architecture to Napster, but more like Gnutella in its ability to share all file types, not just MP3 music files.The actual complaint filed is available from MPAA's site.
DVD Update: Universal City Studios v. 2600 Magazine, Day 3 (July 19, 2000) DVD & DeCSS7/20/2000; 12:31:55 PM 'Interestingly, Judge Kaplan refused to allow questioning in any area related to when and whether buyers of Warner DVDs receive the "authority of the copyright holder", which is a critical element of whether the buyer is circumventing when they play a DVD. The judge thought it was obvious, and eventually facetiously asked Ms. King whether Time-Warner authorized buyers to play their DVDs on players which have never signed a DVDCCA license, to which she said "No". But this begged the question of exactly how a consumer knows what authority they have been granted, where that authority is defined by a company, whether the company can change its mind later or for specific consumers, whether this authority is general or can have limitations such as "you are authorized to play this Sony movie only on Sony's DVD players", etc. It is our position that the authority to play a DVD is granted to the buyer at the time of purchase, without limitation. Any other reading of the statute produces chaos in the market, since after selling a single copy of a technically-protected work, any copyright owner would have the legal right to decide what players are permitted to exist in the entire market (by withdrawing their authority for some drives to play their work, and then suing drive distributors, as Time Warner sued 2600, to ban them as unauthorized circumventers).'Also: Trascripts of the court proceedings for days one, two and three, along with other legal documents.(In the Internet era, all good news stories should come with links to the primary sources!)
RIP branded 'zombie legislation' as it passes Lords Country Watch: Britain7/20/2000; 10:53:23 AM 'The Lords forced a fresh set of concessions on the government yesterday before passing its email snooping bill.'But industry figures are far from happy with the way the bill stands, saying it will still harm human rights and business confidence.' ...'And in the words of Caspar Bowden, director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, the amended encryption powers are unenforceable and unfathomable. "It's zombie legislation. Clinically dead from macabre wounds, it still lumbers on menacing individual privacy and commercial confidence," said Bowden. 'RIP is due to go before the Commons next week for its final parliamentary stage before becoming law.'
Democrats Halt Meth Bill Censorship7/20/2000; 9:44:50 AM 'H.R. 2987, also known as the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999, was scheduled for a full-committee markup Wednesday but was postponed due to Democratic concerns over proposed amendments which came as a surprise to Democrats on the committee.'It was not stopped because of the provisions in the bill causing it to be covered on this site regarding censorship, it was stopped because of some amendments to the bill.'The amendments in question proposed mandatory minimums for those found in violation of the act and included Ecstasy and similar narcotics in a "Club Drug Proliferation" section.'...'"Nobody knows what part is going to get you in trouble. If you teach someone how to use a Bunsen burner, is this sufficient to get you indicted? Nobody really knows," [Mary] Johnson [of the ACLU] said.'
White House seems to send mixed messages on privacy Surveillance and Privacy from Government7/19/2000; 2:01:30 PM Silicon Valley News says in a happy article:'The White House plans to propose legislation designed to make it as difficult for police to legally read your e-mail as it is now for them to tap your telephone. ``It's time to update and harmonize our existing laws to give all forms of technology the same legislative protections as our telephone conversations,'' White House chief of staff John Podesta said Monday. ``Our proposed legislation would harmonize the legal standards that apply to law enforcement's access to e-mails, telephone calls and cable services.'''The Register seems a bit more pessimistic about it:'Current regulations under which federal law enforcement can intercept private communications vary for e-mail, a phone calls and a cable modems. In this instance the result might be a bit less government monitoring of private e-mail messages, which at the moment requires a lower legal standard than monitoring a telephone conversation. (You are using PGP religiously, right readers?) 'Meanwhile, the White House would like to see increased penalties for violations of US wiretapping laws, thereby giving the Feds the undisputed monopoly on snooping, and another weapon which can potentially be used against the dreaded malicious hackers, whose activities might at times be construed as the illegal interception of communications.'Good news or bad news from the Whitehouse? Apparently, there's no consensus. Still, the Register's seems to ring true:'The entire proposal was packaged under the benign heading of assuring public trust in cyberspace, another White House obsession. Bill Clinton is convinced that the Internet is the golden goose of his tenure as President, and there is little he would not do to individual civil liberties in his eagerness protect it from disruption by those who fail to appreciate its economic implications as he does.'
Movie Studios Admit DeCSS Not Related to Piracy (July 18, 2000) DVD & DeCSS7/19/2000; 8:35:46 AM 'The movie studios next called to the stand Robert Schumann, who owns a company called Cinea that receives more than 50% of its yearly income from the MPAA and the Proskaur Rose law firm. Schumann stated his expertise comes largely from being the chief architect of the DiVX security system, .... Schumann's affidavit and testimony that DeCSS was created to be a tool of piracy was severely undermined on cross-examination by EFF's defense team when asked about a report he submitted to the MPAA concluding that members of the Livid mailing list (where DeCSS was published) were attempting to build a Linux DVD player. After the defense asked Schumann whether the studios have found any infringement at all related to DeCSS, they [the movie studios] agreed to stipulate that they have no evidence of a single instance of illegal copying attributable to the software which they are demanding the court ban.'Fascinating... this is almost the exact inverse of the Napster trial. In the Napster trial, a software program that is very heavily used for piracy (as the music companies define it) is defending itself on the claim that it is used legitimately (among other defenses). The music studios claim Napster should be shut down because of all the illegitimate use; it's probably fair to claim this is the sole claim they have to shutting it down.Here, the movie studios claim DeCSS has the exclusive use of piracy of movies, and that it should be banned, but in this case are utterly unable to find anyone that has actually used it in this fashion. There is however a project that uses it to play DVDs for legitimate purposes, I believe, or will soon. But because this legitimate tool might someday be used for piracy, it should be banned.However, this isn't an example of legal hypocrisy, because the movie studio's defense,'The studios' argued infringement of copyrights is irrelevant to whether anyone has violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.'is of course correct. The DMCA doesn't talk about intent or use, only the use of a tool for the purpose of breaking protection, period.
Slashdot : Deja Linking Ads Within Usenet Posts?
Content Integrity7/19/2000; 8:15:14 AM 'skinfaxi noted that Deja has begun insert advertisements within the bodies of messages collected from usenet. Here's an example where the word 'Modem' was linked to (surprise) ads for modems! Skinfaxi attached Deja's response to her complaint below as well.'This is an unacceptable modification of people's Usenet posts and is 
Internet may need new cyber-borders-U.S. legal body Misc.7/18/2000; 12:43:05 PM 'The Internet makes such light work of geographical frontiers that new cyber-borders may be needed instead, top U.S. lawyers said Monday as they presented a two-year report into preventing global online chaos. ...'If a French customer buys a rug from Turkey via a website hosted in the United States and with a Swiss credit card, for example, there are risks all round -- the rug might be a dud, the payment might be faulty and taxes might not be paid -- but where should such matters be settled?'This appears to be the report mentioned July 10th, 2000.How do you solve that problem? None of the simple answers work. Neither do any of the complicated ones.