4/23/02
4/23/02 -- 321 Studios, who brought us the popular DVD Copy Plus program for "backing up" DVDs, have filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. DVD Copy Plus packages DeCSS and three other widely available programs with detailed instructions for decoding, storing, and rerecording films from DVDs. The suit claims that making personal digital copies of DVDs is legal, and a statute that prohibits distributing software and instructions for legal use violates the software company's first amendment rights. Read Lisa Bowman's story for c|net News.com
4/16/02 -- The Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, the case challenging the constitutionality of Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, which expand3ed the definition of child pornography to include pictures that do not actually depict minors but appear to. The Court held the law overbroad and unconstitutional.
3/31/02 -- A Harlan Ellison fan scanned, digitized and posted the text of Ellson's "The Voice from the Edge" and "Count the Clock that tells the Time" to Usenet newsgroup alt.binaries.e-book. Ellison sued America Online for direct, vicarious and contributory copyright infringement. On March 12, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper granted AOL's motion for summary judgment and dismissed all claims against it.
3/21/02 -- Senator Fritz Hollings has finally introduced his infamous copy-protection bill, now reworked and rechristened the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act. The current version is top-heavy with several pages of "findings" about the economic threat posed by piracy, and the importance of mandatory copy-protection technology to the future deployment of broadband. The CBDTPA preserves the essence of the original draft, but vests most of the authority originally assigned to the Department of Commerce in the FCC, and allows the Register of Copyrights to kibbitz. The MPAA and RIAA say that they're pleased. Read Declan McCullagh's story for WIRED News. McCullagh has posted the Senator's statement and several lobbyists' press releases on his Politech site at http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/
3/21/02 -- Reuters reports that Madster, nee Aimster, has filed for bankruptcy.
3/21/02 -- Operation Clambake, a scientology-protest website based in Norway, features a variety of material that is critical of the Church of Scientology, such as this page and this page. Under pressure from the Church of Scientology, Google has removed Operation Clambake's web pages from its search engine database. In a letter to the site, Google explains that under section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, once the Church complained that material on the Clambake site infringed its copyrights, Google had no option but to delete the accused URLs. "Had we not removed these URLs, we would be subject to a claim for copyright infringement, regardless of its merits." Read Declan McCullagh's story for WIRED News.
3/22/02 UPDATE -- Reuters reports that after intense press attention, Google has restored links to much of the Operation Clambake site. Specific pages that the Church of Scientology claims infringe its copyrights, like this one, this one, and this one remain disappeared.
3/19/02 -- After several quiet months, ICANN has once again gotten itself into trouble. First, there was Stuart Lynn's ill-conceived plan to restructure ICANN to make it less accountable. In response to Lynn's plan, members of Congress called for a new round of hearings into ICANN's operations, and urged the Commerce Department to keep ICANN on a tight leash. Then, the ICANN Board voted to abolish at large elections of ICANN Directors. On Monday, Reuters reports, one of ICANN's directors filed suit against ICANN, claiming that ICANN staff had refused to permit him to inspect corporate records, in violation of California law. Today, Internet heavyweights David J. Farber, Peter G. Neumann, and Lauren Weinstein posted an open letter suggesting that ICANN should be abolished, effective immediately, and its functions transferred temporaily to an existing organization until a successor to ICANN can be created. As always, ICANNwatch is keeping track.
3/5/02 -- While ICANN twists in the wind, and its President's restructuring plan falls with a thud, Congress is moving ahead with the "Dot-Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act". The bill would require the Commerce Department to create a .kids.us domain and ensure that its content is limited to material suitable for minors. Read David McGuire's story for NewsBytes.
3/5/02 -- Lester Chambers, Carl Gardner, Bill Pinkney and Tony Silvester brought a class action against their record companies and MP3.com, claiming that MP3.com's "Beam it" service infringed their copyrights, and that their recording contracts did not grant rights to distribute digital versions of their recordings over the Internet. Plaintiffs argued that the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 was not retroactive and did not apply to any recordings made before the Act's effective date. Therefore, they argued, their record companies had no right to authorize digital distribution or to collect damages from the unauthorized digital distribution of their recordings. The trial court found that plaintiffs had conveyed all copyright rights to their record companies, and dismissed the complaint. Last month, the 2d Circuit reversed on procedural grounds: Judge Rakoff had relied on documents introduced by the record companies in support of their motion to dismiss without giving the plaintiffs an opportunity to submit countervailing evidence. The case now returns to Judge Rakoff for another go round.
3/5/02 -- WIRED's Farhad Manjoo reports that Elmcosoft sought dismissal of the criminal action against it and programmer Dmitri Sklyarov on the ground that releasing software over the Internet did not occur within the borders of the United States and was therefore not subject to the DMCA. The US Department of Justice, which has long taken the position that the Internet is a US possession, disagreed.
2/27/02 -- ICANN, established three years ago as a private-sector, representative alternative to a government managed domain name system, has decided that it likes the lack of accountability that being a private sector corporation gives it, but that it needs a government power it does not have: the power to tax. After two years of living high on the hog, ICANN has run out of money. Over the weekend, ICANN's president posted his plan to restructure ICANN as a newfangled world government. The new ICANN would jettison any pretense of being broadly represenative, and get rid of procedural constraints adopted to ensure modest accountability, but would replace board members currently representing INCANN constituents with representatives of national governments and large Internet business interests in order to have access to a steady source of increased funding. As usual, the perceptive people at ICANNWatch are keeping track.
2/27/02 -- Senator Hollings has scheduled a Hearing on Thursday on his controversial Security Systems Software Certification Act. The SSSCA would require every computer or other interactive electronic device made, sold, or imported into the US to be equipped with US government certified copy-protection technology. Read Declan McCullagh's story for WIRED News. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has posted this description of the (as yet unintroduced) draft bill:
The SSSCA's scope is breathtakingly broad, forcing technology companies to add support for copy and use restrictions into virtually all future digital technology. This would include not only all software, PCs, hard drives, CD-Rs and other computer peripherals, but also many non-PC technologies like cellular phones, TiVos, set-top boxes, video game consoles, digital watches, CD players, MP3 players, GPS receivers, ATM machines, digital cameras, digital photocopiers, and fax machines. Although existing devices are grandfathered under the statute, all future models of these devices would have to be revised to incorporate federally-mandated technology intended to help Hollywood control how its content may be used by consumers. The SSSCA also applies to anyone who sells or distributes these digital technologies, and to anyone who bypasses or modifies any DRM systems in them. Those who violate the SSSCA would face civil fines and criminal penalties.And who gets to define the particulars of the DRM systems? According to the SSSCA, Congress will rely on technology companies and content companies to select DRM systems based on criteria set by Congress. If the industries are unable to agree, federal bureaucrats will choose. The public is not invited to participate, nor do the criteria set out in the SSSCA require the preservation or protection of fair use, first sale, the public domain, or any of the other rights reserved for the public by copyright law.
In a related story, earlier this week, Jack Valenti published an Op Ed in the Washington Post claiming that the mighty US motion picture industry is under attack by a small band of rogue law professors, and that only the SSCA will save it.
2/25/02 -- Yes, Napster is still out there, defending itself in scorched earth litigation while trying to persuade its adversaries to agree to allow it to buy licenses to their catalogs. After a month of talks failed to produce a settlement, Judge Patel agreed to require the record company plaintiffs to prove that they indeed own the copyrights they claim to own. She also agreed to hear Napster's copyright misuse defense based on the labels' anticompetitive licensing. Read Matt Richtel's story for the New York Times and Brad King's story for WIRED News.
2/17/02 -- The Texas Republican Party has taken umbrage at a parody of its Website. The parody site, at www.EnronOwnsTheGOP.com, includes a parody of the Texas GOP service mark, superimposing the Enron "E" on the Republican elephant. The Texas GOP has sent a bigfoot letter, claiming that consumers will be confused by the parody, and threatening to sue for trademark infringment and dilution. (The party apparently believes that Texas Republicans are easy to confuse.) Read Brian Krebs's story for NewsBytes.
2/17/02 -- Michael Robertson, the founder of MP3.com, who left the company after it was sued to the brink of bankruptcy and then acquired by Vivendi, has launched another litigation magnet. Robertson's new company, Lindows.com, seeks to market a Windows-compatible, Linux-based operating system, for all of us who are fed up with Microsoft but insufficiently expert to install and configure Linux. The Lindows-OS software has been released in an unfinished and still-buggy "sneak preview" edition. Meanwhile, Microsoft has sued Lindows.com for trademark infringment, seeking a preliminary injunction against use of the LindowsOS and Lindows.com names. Lindows has posted its reponse, which argues that the Windows trademark is generic. Read Dick Kelsey's story for NewsBytes.
2/13/02 --The Federal Trade Commission has announced announced a stern crackdown on deceptive spam, culminating in a settlement with seven egregious bad apples. The unfortunate spammers sent out an email chain letter promising that anyone who sent $5 would receive tens of thousands of dollars within 90 days, and urging recipients with doubts about the programs' legality to to contact the FTC's Associate Director for Marketing Practices. The FTC pursued its quarry relentlessly and would not be dissuaded from imposing the stiffest of penalties: the seven spammers have been forced to promise, cross their hearts, that they won't do it again.
2/12/02 -- The American Bar Association Working Group on the proposed Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act has released its report. The report suggests that UCITA is poorly written and contains a number of undesirable provisions. A single dissenter filed a minority report complaining that the Work Group's conclusions require a complete rewrite of UCITA both to simplify it and to change many of the policy decisions it implements. The dissenter is not persuaded that a rewrite is necessary: "Having just read the 2001 Patriots Acts and the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act and reviewed portions of the Internal Revenue Code, I suggest that UCITA is no more difficult or incomprehensible than most other laws that attempt to address complicated issues...."
2/11/02 -- British Telecom claims that a US patent it filed in the mid-1970s covers hyperlinking and entitles it to collect royalties from Internet Service Providers, and sued Prodigy to collect its due. The case goes to court this week. WIRED's Michelle Delio reports on Monday's hearing before Judge McMahon.
2/11/02 -- Ditto.com is a search engine for images. When it indexed photographs displayed on Leslie Kelly's home page, he objected, and filed suit for copyright infringment. The district court held that the reproduction of Kelly's images was necessary to the operation of the search engine and was therefore fair use. Kelly appealed. The 9th Circuit has issued its opinion, affirming in part and reversing in part. To the extent that ditto.com's search engine creates internal copies as part of its indexing process and returns small thumbnail versions of images in response to search requests, the court held, the reproductions are indeed fair use. Ditto.com, however, also includes in its search results framed, inline links to indexed images. Judge Nelson concluded that the inline links did not violate Kelly's reproduction rights because inline linking isn't copying: ("This use of Kelly's images does not entail copying them but, rather, importing them directly from Kelly's site. Therefore it cannot be copyright infringment based on ...reproduction....") The links do, he held, violate Kelly's public display rights, because inline linking is a public display. The 9th Circuit concluded that since the images are shown as they appear on Kelly's site rather than reduced, the unauthorized display is not fair use. (Yes, that's correct: The court appears to have held that inline linking is not a reproduction because the linked-to site, rather than the linking site, does the reproducing, but that it is nonetheless a public display because the linking site does the displaying.) Kelly has vowed to seek the maximum allowable damages for willful copyright infringment. AP has posted a story about this but I'd better not tell you where to find it.
2/11/02 -- New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer filed a lawsuit against Network Associates, claiming that its mass market software license, which purports to prohibit reviews of its software, or disclosure of the results of any benchmark tests without the company's prior consent, violates New York's Deceptive Trade Practices law. Read Matt Richtel's story for the New York Times.
2/4/02 -- The 9th Circuit has affirmed the right of 1981 Playboy Playmate Terri Welles to use the words "Playboy" and "Playmate" on her website and in the metatags to her website. Read Steven Bonisteel's story for Newsbytes.
2/4/01 -- Those of you worried about the things your children may see on the Internet should be reassured to learn that Peacefire has released a new report on the sites blocked by CyberPatrol content blocking software. If you have CyberPatrol running on your computer, you will be able to verify that it blocks Adoption Links Worldwide, Detroit's Greater Mitchell Temple Church, and The American Cancer Society as pornographic sites. Read Michael Barlett's story for NewsBytes.
1/22/02 -- The Electronic Frontier Foundation is either the Don Quixote or the Judah Maccabee of the copyright wars. It has most recently taken on the defense of Morpheus in the lawsuit filed by the motion picture and recording industry.On Tuesday, the EFF filed a motion for summary judgment seeking a ruling that Morpheus software is capable of substantial noninfringing uses and that the Supreme Court's opinion in the Sony case bars the imposition of contributory copyright liability for the design and distribution of Morpheus software. Read Kevin Featherly's story for Newsbytes.
1/22/02 -- AOL/Time Warner announced today that Netscape had finally sued Microsoft for its predatory marketing of Internet Explorer. Netscape seeks treble damages and "injunctive relief sufficient to prevent further antitrust injury to Netscape and to restore competition lost in the market for web browsers, and to enable middleware platforms to compete with Intel-compatible PC operating systems" (emphasis mine). Read Joe Wilcox's story for c|net News.com.
1/18/02 --Last fall, the US Recording Industry filed a lawsuit against Morpheus, Grokster, and KaZaA, three of the most popsular peer-to-peer file-trading services. The following month, Dutch copyright watchdog group Buma-Stemra filed its own suit in the Netherlands against KaZaA. The Dutch judge ordered KaZaA to block trading of illegal files or face fines of $40,000/day. KaZaA is unable, because of the deisgn of the system, to monitor or police the content traded on its service. On January 17, it suspended downloads of its software. That, without more, will do nothing to stop file trading among the millions of consumers who have downloaded KaZaA already. Read Brad King's story for WIRED.
1/21/02 UPDATE -- KaZaA has a new owner, and downloads have resumed. Reuters is reporting that the Dutch Company has sold its controversial KaZaA software and website to Sharman Networks, based in Australia. The new owner has posted new Terms of Service, which advise the user that if she violates the copyright or data privacy laws of whatever jurisdiction she's subject to, then it's her own fault.
1/18/02 -- While ICANN concentrates on fighting terrorism and rolling out as few and as narrow new top level domains as slowly as feasible, European domain name registries appear increasingly concerned that ICANN is ignoring its core responsibility to oversee the stability of the DNS. The frustrated registries have refused to pay ICANN's fees until it turns its attention to shoring up the stability of the root servers that form the core of the system. According to Gwendolyn Mariano's story for c|net News.com, ICANN has responded that this isn't really its responsibility.
1/4/02 -- A Calfornia superior court has upheld the constitutionality of California's anti-spam statute. Professor David Sorkin is keeping track of state and federal spam regulation.
1/3/02 -- Vincent Donato and Gina Calogero sit on the Emerson city council. Stephen Moldow operates the "Eye on Emerson" website, which encourages anaonymous commentary and criticism of local Emerson Government. Donato and Calogero took offense to some of the remarks posted anonymously on Moldow's site, and filed a libel suit against Moldow and a slew of anonymous Johns and Janes Doe. On December 21, the court dismissed the suit against Moldow, and quashed the subpoenas seeking the identities of individual anonymous posters as procedurally flawed. Read the AP story.
12/13/01 --The Justice Department has found a face-saving way to extricate itself from the embarrassing indictment against Dmitri Sklyarov. The Department will "defer" pursuing its criminal conspiracy and trafficking charges in return for Sklyarov's truthful testimony in the case against his employer, Elmcosoft, and has promised to drop the charges after the Elmcosoft trial concludes. Dmitri, meanwhile, will be permitted to go home. Read Michelle Delio's story for WIRED News. EFF's spin on the agreement is here; the Justice Department's spin is here.
12/13/01 -- SonicBlue's Replay TV is a nifty little digital video recorder with lots of keen features. It will find the shows you want to record, record them without any commercials, allow you to program the device from remote locations over the Internet, and to share your recordings via email with up to 15 of your closest friends. Motion Picture producers have filed suit. SonicBlue is the successor corporation to Diamond Multimedia, which prevailed in a copyright infringement suit to stop the Rio portable MP3 player, so it has more experience than most in fighting with windmills. Read Brad King's story for WIRED News. Replay TV requires a continuing subscription to the service in order to operate, so suing SonicBlue into bankruptcy should be a swift approach to shutting the service down. On the other hand, Sonic Blue has just been awarded a broad patent on digital video recorder technology. The smart betting says that the email feature will disappear within a year, and that when the dust settles, the plaintiff movie studios own a stake in SonicBlue. Meanwhile, SonicBlue has filed a patent infringement suit against the manufacturer of TiVo, the competing digital video recorder. Read the Reuters story.
12/11/01 -- NarcoNews.com covers the drug trade in Latin America. It got itself sued for libel by claiming that the President of the National Bank of Mexico was involved in the drug business. The Mexican courts dismissed the action, and the Bank sued again in the state of New York. The New York court held that NarcoNews, as an online news publication, was entitled to to the first amendment protections outlined by New York Times v. Sullivan, and dismissed the case. Read Mark Anderson's story for WIRED News.
12/11/01 --Napster and the Recording Industry continue to urge the Court of Appeals to revise Judge Patel's order in their respective favors. Mark Lewis, formerly of Webnoize, has posted his account of Monday's hearing before the Ninth Circuit.
12/11/01 -- Michael Geist reports that a divided California Appeals Court has upheld an injunction prohibiting Kourosh Hamidi, a former Intel employee, from sending mass email expressing his girevances to Intel employees. The appeals court agreed that Hamidi's email amounted to trespass to chattels.
11/28/01 -- The 2d Circuit has issued a decision upholding the constitutionality of section 1201 of the DMCA and affirming the opinion of Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS case. Read Evan Hansen's story for C|NET. Judge Newman's opinion for a unanimous panel upheld Judge Kaplan's injunction, which prohibits 2600 magazine from posting the code for DeCSS or linking to sites that do, and affirmed his conclusion that fair use is not a defense to a violation of section 1201. The court held that software is speech entitled to first amendment protection, but that the DMCA was a content-neutral regulation of speech, which survived intermediate scrutiny. Read Carl Kaplan's column for the New York Times.
11/28/01 -- In unrelated bad news for EFF, the District Court for New Jersey has dismissed Professor Felten's lawsuit against the RIAA challenging the constitutionality of the DMCA, as applied to his academic research. EFF has announced that it will appeal. 2600 has posted the EFF's press release responding to the dismissal. Read Robert Lemos' story for c|net.
11/10/01 -- Last November, a Paris Superior Court found Yahoo liable under French law for permitting the auction of Nazi memorabilia, and ordered the service to prevent any further display of Nazi memorabilia or "any other site or service which constitute an apology of nazism or which contest the nazi crimes" to French citizens. Yahoo then sought a declaratory judgment in a California federal court that the French court orders were unenforceable. On November 7, Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled that the first amendment to the US Constitution precludes enforcement of the French court orders.
11/1/01 -- When a Norweigian teenager developed DeCSS, a nifty utility that allows you to play access-protected DVDs on unlicensed DVD players, scores of people posted the source code for DeCSS on the Internet. Motion picture studios filed suit under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act against sites posting or linking to the code, and secured an injunction prohibiting defendants from posting or linking to sites that post DeCSS. That case is on appeal to the 2d Circuit. Meanwhile, the DVD Copy Control Association filed a California state misappropriation of trade secrets case against 21 named and 500 unnamed defendants who allegedly misappropriated DVD-CCA's trade secret by posting or linking to DeCSS (or selling DeCSS tee-shirts). In January, 2000, a California trial court enjoined the named defendants from posting DeCSS or any information derived from it. On November 1, 2001, in a stunning victory for free speech advocates, a California State Appeals Court reversed, holding that the preliminary injunction violated the defendants' first amendment rights. Read Farhad Manjoo's story for WIRED News.
11/01/01 -- The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Sony, producer of the Aibo electronic dog, has sent a bigfoot letter demanding that Aibohack.com remove from the site programs that allow Aibo owners to modify or reprogram their robot's behavior. Sony claims that the programs violate the DMCA. An excerpt from the letter:
The exclusive rights enjoyed by a copyright holder are absolute rights, and the fact that the wrongfully acquired AIBO-ware can only be utilized by devices utilizing rightfully acquired AIBO-ware is of no consequence....
11/1/01 -- The House Commerce Committee held a Hearing Thursday on H.R. 2417 , Dot Kids Domain Name Act.
10/29/01 -- The Supreme Court has denied certiorari in Heckel v. Washington. Read the AP story.
10/27/01 -- Congress has passed and President George W. Bush has signed the USA PATRIOT Act, which gives the US government enhanced electronic and Internet surveillance powers and a number of other goodies sought by Attorney General John Ashcroft.
10/16/01 --ICANN, a "private sector non-profit corporation" located in California and incorporated under California law, seems to have decided that cyberspace is a distinct jurisdiction after all. Last week, a Los Angeles Superior Court issued a preliminary injunction in Smiley v. ICANN, a case challenging the administration of the .biz sunrise period. The court enjoined domain name registry Neulevel from proceeding with its plan to allocate contested .biz domain names, on the ground that its allocation plan amounted to an illegal lottery under California law. MSNBC's Bob Sullivan summarizes the decision. ICANN, now styling itself as a "global public interest organization" complains that the court improperly held that the law of the state of California applied to the case.
10/15/01 -- Exhibiting unusual good taste and a razor-sharp sense of timing, the Recording Industry Association asked Congress to attach a wee rider to the Anti-Terrorism Bill, prohibiting civil suits against copyright owners who damaged consumers' computers as a result of computer intrusions committed for the purpose of preventing unauthorized use of copyrighted works. Copyright infringement has apparently been promoted beyond mere "piracy" to the level of terrorism. Wired's Declan McCullagh broke the story. The LA Times' Jon Healy has posted a follow-up story.
10/10/01 -- On August 30, the Calfornia legislature passed Senate Bill 147, which would have prohibited employers from secretly monitoring employee email. Yesterday, Governor Gray Davis vetoed the bill, complaining that it would put unwarranted burdens on employers.
10/10/01 -- The House Science Committee is holding a Hearing this morning on Cyber Security ö How Can We Protect American Computer Networks From Attack?. The Hearing will be webcast live from the Committee Site.
10/3/01 --Dotcomscoop has posted the text of an internal RIAA memo outlining its litigation startegy against post-Napster peer-to-peer file sharing networks. The memo concludes:
Thus, we recommend (1) filing claims against FastTrack, MusicCity, and Grockster, (2) immediately thereafter initiating discussions with FastTrack about resolving our claims in a way that will provide us with useful information and testimony against MusicCity, and if possible obtain FastTrackās cooperation in shutting down or converting MusicCity and Grokster, and (3) continue forward with litigation against MusicCity, Grokster, and potentially Timberline Venture Partners
10/1/01 -- The Federal Trade Commission announced today that it had filed a complaint and obtained a preliminary injunction against John Zuccarini, who allegedly registered more than 5000 mispelled domain names and used them for sexually explicit websites. The sites featured multiple pop-up windows and a mousetrap feature that prevented surfers from exiting the site by using the "back" button or closing the browser. Read Jim Wagner's story for InternetNews.
9/26/01 -- Voyeur Dorm offers a 24-hour web view of the intimate lives of nubile young women who live in an extensively wired residence, which residence happens to occupy a lot in a residential Tampa neighborhood. The Tampa zoning board took the position that Voyeur Dorm was a non-conforming "adult use," prohibited by Tampa's zoning laws. Voyeur sued, and the The Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit held that the City was mistaken: because members of the public cannot physically visit the premises, the court held, Voyeur Dorm is not subject to the zoning code. Read Noah Schactman's story for WIRED News.
9/24/01 -- Napster has settled the lawsuit brought by music publishers, thanks to the intervention of Senators Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy, who oversaw recent settlement negotiations. Napster will pay $26 million for past infringement, plus a $10 million advance on future royalties for future authorized use of music. It can't actually get going on that future authorized use, of course, until it settles the lawsuit brough by the record companies. Presumably the good Senators are even now trying to persuade the recording industry to accept something less than Napster dead with a stake through its heart. Read Brad King's story for WIRED News.
9/24/01 -- The National Writers Union has obtained an internal New York Times memo instructing editors that writers who joined the lawsuit against the Times for posting their work online without permission should no longer receive any writing assignments. The NWU is terming this a "blacklist." It certainly is of a piece with the Times's general sore loser attitude toward the Supreme Court's decision.
9/10/01 -- Leonidas Mecham runs the Administrative Office of the US Courts. Last spring he ordered the monitoring of all computers used by judges or court employees, to protect the security of the court computer system and to reduce use unrelated to official duties. Judge Alex Kozinski objected to the invasion of privacy and instructed the technical staff of the 9th Circuit to disable the monitoring software. Before the US Judicial conference could meet to decide who was right, Mecham put his foot in mouth, big time. He accused Kozinski of "advocating his passionate views that judges are free, undetected, to download pornography and Napster music on government computers in federal court buildings on government time even though some of the downloading may constitute felonies." Kozinski, Mecham claimed, had displayed "great interest in keeping pornography available to judges." The judges of the US Court of Appeals thought those remarks might have been a teensy weensy inappropriate. Mecham has withdrawn the plan. Read Neil Lewis's story for the New York Times.
9/19/01 UPDATE -- I spoke too soon. The Judicial conference was scheduled to take up the Mecham plan on September 11, but the World Trade Center Attack forced the postponement of the vote. Voting by mail, the Judicial Conference has adopted a compromise proposal under which Web activity and downloads would be monitored but email would not be. Read Gina Holland's story for AP.
9/10/01 -- Senator Fritz Hollings is planning to introduce a Bill this fall that would ratchet copyright protection up another few notches. The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act would require every computer or other interactive electronic device made, sold, or imported into the US to be equipped with US government certified copy-protection technology. The specifications of this copy-protection technology are to be negotiated by industry groups and then codified in a Department of Commerce regulation. If industry groups can't reach agreement, the Department of Commerce gets to decide the specifications itself. The bill narrowly preserves consumers' right to home tape broadcast and non-premium cable television programming, but is otherwise uninterested in fair use. Rumor attributes the legislation to Disney. Read Mark Lewis's story for Webnoize and Declan McCullagh's story for WIRED.
9/7/01 -- ICANN is meeting this weekend in Montevideo, to consider a host of issues including the controversial At Large Study Committee Report, and the slow painful rollout of new gTLDs. Harvard's Berkman Center is again hosting a webcast of major events. ICANNWatch is taking potshots from afar.
9/7/01 -- Representatives of the recording industry have quietly confirmed reports that record companies have released copy-protected CDs in the United States and Europe to gauge consumer acceptance of recordings that cannot be copied or translated into the MP3 format without substantial degradation in sound quality. The official story is that almost nobdy has complained. One notable exception is Karen DeLise, who filed a lawsuit this week against Fahrenheit Entertainment, claiming that its release of a copy-protected Charley Pride CD violated the California Unfair Business Practices Act, because the CD label nowhere disclosed that the CD was copy-protected. Read Jim Hu's story for c|net.
9/6/01 -- When Steven Brown and his wife separated, Steven indulged his curiosity about what his wife was doing in his absence by using eBlaster software to bug his wife's computer. Unfortunately for Steven, he lives in the state of Michigan, home of Attonery General Jennifer Granholm's High Tech Crime Unit. AP reports that Granholm has charged Steven Brown with four felony counts of installing an eavesdropping device, eavesdropping, using a computer to commit a crime and having unauthorized computer access.
9/06/01 -- The Privacy Foundation has released a Report suggesting that people who use online job search services may be giving up more privacy than they realized. Apparently, resumes and data about job applicants have a way of spreading beyond the place they are submitted. The Report suggests that Monster.com, the market leader, has accumulated a huge database of applicant data, and may be sharing applicant information more widely than its privacy policy would lead an applicant to expect. In addition, the Report suggests that Monster.com's parent corporation has actively considered seeking additional revenue through applicant data sales to third parties. Monster.com replies that no it doesn't either, and anyway everybody else does it too and besides job seekers want jobs more than they want privacy or why would they be using its site in the first place? Read Farhad Manjoo's story for WIRED.
8/31/01 -- Saad Noah was a regular visitor to AOL's "Koran" and "Belifs: Islam" chat rooms, where he was repeatedly disturbed by offensive comments. He asked AOL to enforce its terms of service agreement, which prohibits offensive speech, against subscribers making comments offensive to Muslims. Noah has filed a class action lawsuit claiming that AOL's tolerance of hate speech in its chat rooms violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act. C|Net has posted the AP story.
8/30/01 -- The US indicted Dmitri Sklyarov and his employer Elmcosoft on four counts of violating the DMCA and one count of conspiracy to violate the DMCA. At their arraignment, both Sklyarov and Elmcosoft pleaded not guilty. The media has been pretty quiet on this new development, but AP has posted a short account, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is financing Sklyarov's defense, is maintaining an archive of press releases and legal documents.
8/28/01 -- ICANN's corporate bylaws provide for a Board of Directos evenly divided between nine directors selected by stakeholders and nine at-large directors elected directly by ICANN's individual members. ICANN's staff has been unhappy with the notion that fully half of its nominal bosses might be popularly elected, and has consistently worked to prevent it. Last year, ICANN grudgingly permitted the direct popular election of five directors, but postponed indefinitely the election of the remaining four. ICANN staff complained that ICANN could not afford to finance further elections, and indeed, ICANN's budget included no money for elections. Instead, it spent the money on a handsomely funded study of ICANN at-large membership. The At-Large study committee has now released a Draft of its Report. The Report suggests that direct elections of Board members by a sharply limited class of at-large members is indeed a good thing so long as the at-large directors remain a minority on the Board. ICANNWatch has posted a critique.
8/28/01 -- The state of Texas charged Ford with selling used Ford vehicles over the Internet in violation of a Texas law that prohibited used car sales without a license and made vehicle manufacturers ineligible for licenses. Ford sued, arguing that the law violated the dormant commerce clause. The Fifth Circuit upheld the law.
8/23/01 -- MP3.com has been held liable for willful infringement to the tune of $160 million for making unauthorized MP3 files of musical recordings to facilitate licensed webcasting. Vivendi, one of the successful plaintiffs in one of the suits, decided to acquire MP3.com and use it for online music distribution. Scenting the infusion of cash, 50 music publishers and songwriters have now filed a new lawsuit against MP3.com, claiming that it faciliated "viral infringements" because its subscribers made unauthorized copies of the music that it allowed them to listen to, and then traded copies of those copies over the Internet using peer-to-peer services like Napster. The suit seeks statutory damages of $25,000 per song. Reuters has posted a story.
8/22/01 -- The Justice Department is in a bit of a bind. On the one hand, its arrest and imprisonment of Russian programmer Dmitri Sklyarov is too high profile to drop. The case has inspired widespread protests. The Washington Post ran an editorial criticizing the arrest and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act on which it was based. Newsweek and Time magazine published critical articles. On the other hand, the case isn't particularly strong on the merits, and gives opponents of the DMCA a promising vehicle for a constitutional challenge. AP reports that the government is trying to negotiate a plea bargain.
8/14/01 --Professor Edward Felten is scheduled to present his infamous research paper at the USENIX Symposium on Wednesday. This is the paper that inspired the threatening letter from the RIAA, which spawned a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the DMCA. The presentation will be webcast live: www.technetcast.com/sdmi-challenge.html at 6 pm ET.
8/8/01 -- Elmcosoft is a Russian software company. Dmitry Sklyarov is a 26 year old graduate student and programmer in Russia, who wrote the code for Elmcosoft's Advanced e-Book Processor. The software, which is legal in Russia, allows circumvention of eBook technological protections. Adobe, which produces eBook reader, complained to Elmcosoft that its program violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It also persuaded Elmcosoft's US-based ISP to terminate its service. Then it paid a visit to its local U.S. Attorney. When Adobe learned that Mr. Skylarov was scheduled to travel to the U.S. to give a speech at the July, 2001 Defcon meeting, it advised the Feds of the opportunity. The FBI arrested Skylarov for trafficking in Anti-Circumvention technology. The arrest inspired widespread protests, which appparently persuaded Adobe to back down. Not so the US Attorney's office, which claims to be pursuing prosecuition. If convicted, Skylarov faces up to 5 years in jail and a $500,000 fine. After two weeks in jail, Skylarov has been released on $50,000 bail. Read Farhad Manjoo's story for WIRED.
8/8/01 --Amid widespread news reports that Napster and the RIAA are trying to settle their lawsuit, both parties continue to pursue scorched-earth litigation. The Record Companies have appealed Judge Patel's injunction (which ultimately require Napster to shut down until it can demonstrate 100% effectiveness in preventing exchange of copyrighted recordings) as insufficiently protective of copyright owners' rights. Napster has cross appealed, arguing that the injunction was both improper and inconsistent with the 9th Circuit's earlier decision. Meanwhile, the RIAA has filed a Summary Judgment Motion in the district court seeking a ruling that Napster is liable for willful contributory and vicarious infringement as a matter of law. Read James Niccolai's story for IDG Net.
8/6/01 -- The Justice Department has launched an antitrust investigation of Musicnet and Pressplay, the two major-label online music subscription services set to begin operations later this year. (Musicnet is planning to distribute its service through Napster, if there is anything left of it once its members finish suing it.) AP and The Economist have posted stories.
6/7/01 -- Edward Felten, the Princeton University professor who withdrew his paper from an academic conference after receiving a threatening letter from the RIAA warning him that delivering his paper would violate the DMCA, has filed a declaratory judgment suit against the RIAA, the SDMI coalition, the companies who own the encryption technologies tested as part of the hackSDMI challenge, and Attorney General John Ashcroft. Felten and his fellow researchers seek a declaration that publishing their paper violates neither the civil nor the criminal provisions of the DMCA. The RIAA says that it find's Felten's decision to sue "inexplicable". Read a Declan McCullagh's story for WIRED news. Cryptome.org has posted the paper Felten was unable to deliver.
6/7/01 -- The Washington State Supreme Court has upheld the state anti-spam law, reversing a lower court opinion that had held the statute unconstitutional.
6/5/01 -- With Napster apparently on the ropes, and MP3.com about to become a division of Vivendi Universal, Aimster appears to be everybody's favorite litigation partner. Last month, Aimster filed a declaratory judgment action against the RIAA, seeking a declaration that its file trading network is legal. The recording industry responded by suing Aimster for copyright infringement. Read John Borland's story for c|net. Reuters has posted an account of the May 31 hearing before Judge Kahn.
6/5/01 --ICANN held its Board of Directors meeting in Stockholm over the weekend. Harvard's Berkman Center has posted an archive of the meeting. Instead of making my usual snippy comments, I want to refer you to the dedicated folks at ICANNWatch, who have more than enough of them to go around.
You can find earlier news HERE.
There are more than 300 Internet-related bills pending in Congress. The Center for Democracy and Techology is keeping track of many of the more important ones. Here is a sampling:
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