The Chronicle: 11/30/2001: New Company Besieges Colleges With Notices About Copyright Violations Misc. 'Ms. Klimanis was caught by NetPD, a London-based company that has begun using sophisticated technology to sniff out people who share copyrighted files and to send out letters of complaint to university and other officials, asking them to take file sharers off their networks. 'The service seems to be an effective new ally for the recording industry but a growing headache for colleges.

FBI software cracks encryption wall 'The FBI is developing software capable of inserting a computer virus onto a suspect's machine and obtaining encryption keys, a source familiar with the project told MSNBC.com. The software, known as "Magic Lantern", enables agents to read data that had been scrambled, a tactic often employed by criminals to hide information and evade law enforcement.' There are obvious concerns about this, which I share. The article of course mentions them.

Thirty countries sign cybercrime treaty Misc. While I was snoozing the L-Tryptophan Slumber... 'Thirty countries today signed a controversial international treaty to combat online crime. Representatives of 26 Council of Europe (CoE) member states, plus the U.S., Canada, Japan, and South Africa, put their signatures on the document at an international meeting in Budapest.' Interesting Slashdot post about defending against this. IANAL, but unfortunately I'm pretty certain that historically speaking, treaties have sometimes been self-enforcing.

The Internet Under Siege Misc. 'Who owns the Internet? Until recently, nobody. That's because, although the Internet was "Made in the U.S.A.," its unique design transformed it into a resource for innovation that anyone in the world could use. Today, however, courts and corporations are attempting to wall off portions of cyberspace. In so doing, they are destroying the Internet's potential to foster democracy and economic growth worldwide.' Another Lessig missive.

Convert Movies From R to PG13 to PG On The Fly Content Integrity 'Trilogy Studios announced the launch of its "Movie Mask" web site - www.moviemask.com , which will eventually lead up to the release of its "Movie Mask DVD Player" and "Movie Mask Director" software.... The Movie Mask DVD Player, on the other hand, will allow its users to download a movie config file(for lack of a better term) which will have various portions of the movies to bleep/cut out depending on the rating which the person set.

UCITA: a security threat UCITA 'THE EVENTS OF Sept. 11 taught us that our enemies are ready to take advantage of any weakness to do us harm. One weak link we have right now is UCITA (Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act) and the security holes it encourages in government and corporate information systems. As a matter of national security, UCITA has got to go.'  

kuro5hin.org || The Dog Ate My Password! Surveillance and Privacy from Government 'I've followed the discussion on Convention on Cybercrime which was recently approved by the Council of Europe with great worry.... One of the Convention's points is that an individual might be forced to hand over his password to investigators (part of the Explanatory Report included in the above link, section 201). If this section of the treaty will not be enforced by technological means (key escrow, backdoors, etc) fighting such draconian legislation is still difficult: claiming that you "

Cybercrime and Patents in Europe General IP Issues, Patents Slashdot - '"The Council of Europe has been working on a Cyber Crime Treaty for some time. The final version is now available, and makes interesting reading." The submitter points out that treaty signers will be obligated to create legislation, as the UK already has, to force people to disclose passwords and encryption keys to the authorities. The U.S. may well sign this treaty - we've participated in the drafting process.

Openwire LinkBack, Misc. 'Of course, now that I think about it, if everyone did that, it would seriously destroy the rankings, permanently enshrining those 40 links in the list since they would be linked from every site via the RSS feed creating, in essence, an infinte loop. Interesting!' Quick point: I hit this exact problem (conceptually) with a project I'm working on. The answer is to tag the links in the RSS feed, and have DayPop ignore a link if it has that tag.

Salon.com Technology | Internet liberation theology Misc. 'As more of the commons -- as more of the intellectual material of innovation -- is controlled, the opportunity for new forms of production is diminished. The monopolies of today sweep more broadly than the monopolies of the past. Mr. Ford may have controlled the auto industry, but he did not control the nation's roads. This is the warning in Lessig's masterly exploration of the history of the Internet and the future of innovation.