Privacy bill would control 'cookies'
Privacy from Companies
5/2/2000; 6:09:50 PM Feb 10, 2000: Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., says he wants to control networks' use of "cookies," or digital ID tags, dropped on Net users' hard drives. OK, great, we've got people who want to do something about the privacy issues on the Internet. Is Sen. Robert Torricelli, or any of his staff, aware that Cookies aren't the problem, tracking people is. Banning cookies isn't any good, Doubleclick can still track you by IP address, they just won't be able to trick your machine into doing the hard work for them.

Things need to change, but they need to change at a high level; ban cookies, and tommorow they'll use some other tracking technique. Want to accomplish something (skipping the debate as to the goodness or badness of the something)? Ban a behavior, like user tracking. Don't go after the hammer, go after the idiot beating heads in with it. Tools aren't the problem; uses are.

FTC Investigates Amazon's Alexa
Privacy from Companies
5/2/2000; 6:06:46 PM Feb 9, 2000: Update on yesterday's Alexa story. Using a packet sniffer to monitor the data travelling between his computer and Alexa's servers, Smith discovered that his full home address had been sent to Alexa while he was using AltaVista's yellow-page service. He also learned that Alexa's servers had received detailed information from an airline ticket purchase he made on Travelocity, and a personal phone call he made to a relative in Florida. Wow!

Criminal Code DVD & DeCSS5/2/2000; 6:04:26 PM Feb 9, 2000: I hate linking to stories after they've made the rounds on the other weblogs, but this one is just so perfect, it could replace my Purpose page. Well, pieces of it anyhow. Every day, in our increasingly networked world, our freedoms and privacy are being stolen from us. And most of us just let it happen -- most of us tend to accept our computer's workings as immutable, that we are chained to an irrational, vindictive, uncontrollable machine destined to rule over our 9-to-5 days.But the machine is not opaque; the rules today need not be the rules of tomorrow.

Amazon, Alexa unit face privacy lawsuits Privacy from Companies5/2/2000; 6:00:49 PM Feb 8, 2000: I don't usually emphasize this issue, but it is one that people should be aware of. Alexa is a browser companion that, among other things, gives a "More Pages Like This One" type-feature. In order to display that information, the software must query the Alexa servers on every page view. This gives them access to your browsing patterns for every page you visit while this tool is activated. They may have stepped over the line, if this article is correct.Some browser companians, such as uTOK, promise never to use your information in that fashion. Other make no such promise. None of them have any other visible residue stream at this time without collecting and selling this information (Third Voice as of two weeks ago still appears not to have sold any ads for the service). And what promises exist can unfortunately be erased if the company in question is aquired by another, which is part of the Doubleclick fiasco. If you really care about your privacy, at the very least, I'd recommend against using any of the browser companions. (update upon conversion to News Item format: Link is now dead, sorry.)

MP3.com files countersuit against RIAA
Music & MP3
5/2/2000; 5:56:33 PM Feb 8, 2000: MP3.com returns file against RIAA's copyright violation suit with a suit against RIAA for "unfair business practices."

They're going to need a sympathetic judge, esp. if the copyright infringement case goes well for RIAA. Hard to accuse 'them' of unfair business practices if you are legally 'stealing' from 'them', isn't it?

L-Bomb
Humor/Amusing
5/2/2000; 5:55:09 PM Feb 8, 2000: The Curmudgeon suggests what I can only describe as a license bomb. Je l'aime!

Resume Theft
Privacy from Companies
5/2/2000; 5:53:53 PM Feb. 8, 2000: From MetaFilter, on Feb. 7th: "Personal rant time: I wrote my own resume a while ago, and have been building onto it for a couple years now. To me, it is copyrighted material, just as anything else I write. So why is it showing up in all sorts of resume databases? I'm getting calls from recruiters saying they got it from Aquent, Passport Access, and various other resume sites. These sites seem to be sucking down resumes, putting them on their site, and making money off them. I can't see my own resume, since I haven't paid to look at it. I find PassportAccess to be especially annoying: they offer an opt-out page. What the hell? Why should I even have to do this? It's my resume, not theirs!"

New KGB Takes Internet by SORM
Country Watch: Russia
5/2/2000; 5:50:22 PM Feb. 6, 2000: More demonstration that a government can certainly take a good shot at regulating the Internet: New KGB Takes Internet by SORM. The regulation requires all ISPs to install a little "black box" rerouting device, and to build a high-speed communications line, which would hot-wire the provider -- and necessarily, all Internet users -- to FSB headquarters.

Somehow, it does not seem entirely impossible that the US will at least try something like this sooner or later...

uTOK
Boundary Breakers
5/2/2000; 5:44:22 PM uTOK is a web annotation service.

Third Voice
Boundary Breakers
5/2/2000; 5:42:47 PM Third Voice is a famous 'web annotation' service.