DeCSS Trial Begins in The Matrix DVD & DeCSS7/18/2000; 9:16:24 AM 'Pirating DVD on the Internet is not nearly as easy as the entertainment industry claims, attorneys for 2600 magazine suggested during cross-examination Monday.'Eight motion picture studios sued the hacker-zine in January, claiming it illegally distributed the DeCSS utility that facilitates decoding and redistributing DVDs. The trial, which began this week, is the first to test the constitutionality of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Meta-Improvement on Userland's Editting Improvement Administrative7/17/2000; 10:47:57 AM If you are using IE 4 or IE 5, and you edit a text message on a Manila site, you will see a bar over the top of the text edit area that contains shortcuts for Bold, Italic, Underline, Color, Font, Alignment, Format, and adding a link.I've added keyboard shortcuts to this site only for Bold, Italic, Underline, and Add Link. Unfortunately, for technical reasons you still must highlight something to apply the formatting to first, and I can't seem to drop-down the drop-down menus via scripting.

File Downloader Spying Privacy from Companies7/17/2000; 10:38:06 AM 'As you will see below, if you use the RealNetworks RealDownload, Netscape/AOL Smart Download, or NetZip Download Demon utilities . . .'EVERY TIME you use one of these utilities to download ANY FILE from ANYWHERE on the Internet, the complete "URL address" of the file, along with YOUR computer's individual Internet IP address, and a UNIQUE ID TAG that has been assigned to YOUR machine, is immediately (and secretly) transmitted to the program's publisher.

ACLU seeks Carnivore Information via FoIA Surveillance and Privacy from Government 7/17/2000; 8:57:04 AM 'In a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request sent today to the FBI, the ACLU is seeking all agency records related to the government e-mail "cybersnoop" programs dubbed Carnivore, Omnivore and Etherpeek, including "letters, correspondence, tape recordings, notes, data, memoranda, email, computer source and object code, technical manuals, [and] technical specifications." '"Right now, the FBI is running this software out of a black box,"

Yesmail Gets Restraining Order Against MAPS Blacklist Spam & E-Mail7/17/2000; 8:45:43 AM This requires a lengthy explanation to understand. If you already know what the Realtime Blackhole List is, skip to the meat.E-mail was the Internet's first killer app. It dates all the way back to when the Internet was an academics-only network, where anybody online could probably be trusted to not abuse the system. Thus, the early protocols didn't always concentrate on security as much as might be expected today.

European official vows to go forward with U.S. privacy deal Privacy from Companies 7/14/2000; 1:40:13 PM "Frits Bolkestein, the European commissioner for internal markets, told the parliament's Civil Liberties Committee in Brussels that he plans to advise the full European Commission to adopt a draft version of the safe harbor provisions as "adequate protection" for personal data transferred from the 15 member states of the European Union to the U.

International Counter-Money Laundering Act Surveillance and Privacy from Government 7/14/2000; 1:36:54 PM 'Introduced in March, the International Counter-Money Laundering Act allows the Treasury Department to require banks to report "suspicious" financial transactions involving other countries. That can happen if the Feds find "any such jurisdiction, institution, or transaction to be of primary money laundering concern."' 'But to opponents, the move toward greater monitoring of Americans sounds a lot like a reprise of the controversial Know Your Customer regulations.

Reno to Review the FBI's Internet Wiretap System Surveillance and Privacy from Government7/14/2000; 12:46:50 PM "U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno said she would review a new FBI automated computer system that can wiretap the Internet to determine whether it might infringe on privacy rights." ... "She was unable to say whether the system would continue to operate until her review was underway."For a very interesting view on this, see Robert X.

Recording industry calls Napster defense "baseless" Music & MP37/14/2000; 11:51:54 AM '"Napster...uses euphemisms like 'sharing' to avoid the real issue," the RIAA wrote in its brief. "The truth is, the making and distributing of unauthorized copies of copyrighted works by Napster users is not 'sharing,' any more than stealing apples from your neighbor's tree is 'sharing.'"'I was thinking about this on the way to work this morning. Let's look at the situation again, and really break the situation apart:The basic arguments:Napster basic claim to legality is that music sharing amoung individuals is perfectly legal, and that is exactly what Napster is.

Is streaming a kind of "broadcasting"? Country Watch: Australia7/14/2000; 10:32:50 AM "The [Australian] Government is to commission an Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) review into Internet streaming, the process of putting audio and video on the web."The inquiry would consider whether Internet streaming should come under the definition of broadcasting, which could lead to broadcast licence payments."More importent then license payments...'"The Government has decided, and it's in law, that no further broadcasting licences can be issued until 2006.