Category Archives: Law

RIAA Blowback

tanya_andersen.jpg Sometimes suing your customers produces blowback:
Former RIAA target Tanya Andersen has sued several major record labels, the parent company of RIAA investigative arm MediaSentry, and the RIAA’s Settlement Support Center for malicious prosecution, a development first reported by P2P litigation attorney Ray Beckerman of Vandenberg & Feliu. Earlier this month, Andersen and the RIAA agreed to dismiss the case against her with prejudice, making her the prevailing party and eligible for attorneys fees.

The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the District of Oregon late last week and accuses the RIAA of a number of misdeeds, including invasion of privacy, libel and slander, and deceptive business practices.

— Exonerated defendant sues RIAA for malicious prosecution By Eric Bangeman, Ars Technica, June 25, 2007 – 04:40PM CT

Does it help a company or an industry’s reputation when its customers sue back? Is this good risk management?

-jsq

Breach Discovery

bv.jpg If people know about security breaches, maybe there’s incentive for the companies whose customers they are or the governments whose constituents they are to do something about them, so this is good news:

New Hampshire, one of a handful of U.S. states that require breaches involving personal information to be reported to the state as well as to affected individuals, has made at least some breach notices it has received available on the net.

— New Hampshire gets it, Chris Walsh, Emergent Chaos, 13 June 2007

Or at least if we know what’s really going on, maybe unfounded scare

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Public Public Domain

malamud2006.jpg
James Duncan Davidson/O’Reilly Media

In March, Carl Malamud finished organizing release on the Internet of videos of Congressional subcommittee hearings. Back in November 2006 Malamud was lobbying the Smithsonian Institution to rescind its exclusive contract with Showtime. Now he’s teamed up with others to multiplex such projects and get more done:

When you buy content, we get the material from the U.S. government and then upload the data to places like the Internet Archive, Google Video, and other fine content sources. Because this data is public domain, anybody can use the material without restriction!

— How Do We Do It? public.resource.org, accessed 9 June 2007

Already he says:

Per Lessig’s agreement with CNN, we’ve uploaded both Presidential Debates to the Internet Archive:

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Microsoft RICO

Microsoft claims that I (and possibly you, dear reader) am violating 235 of its patents on Windows by running Ubuntu Linux:

After many earlier rounds of saber-rattling and FUD, Microsoft has announced that Free Software users — including everyone who, like me, uses Ubuntu Linux — are violating at least 235 of Microsoft’s patents, though they don’t say which ones. Microsoft are now threatening end users of GNU/Linux (that’s you and me again) with lawsuits unless we pay them protection money. "Nice operating system you got there, it’d be a shame if something were to happen to it."

The Microsoft position is this: even if you don’t use Windows, you still have to pay them as much money as they would have gotten for selling you a copy of it.

—Microsoft says GNU/Linux violates 235+ Windows patents, Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing, Monday, May 14, 2007

Microsoft did stop short of saying it would sue Linux users or its own customers:

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REAL ID Blues

Fergie notes that apparently all those complaints to DHS had some effect:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), citing concerns about Americans’ privacy, signaled yesterday that he will push to repeal a provision of a 2005 law aimed at creating new government standards for driver’s licenses.

Leahy, who has co-sponsored bipartisan legislation to repeal the provision, spoke out as the debate intensified over the Real ID Act, which requires states to create new tamper-proof driver’s licenses in line with rules recently issued by the Department of Homeland Security. States must begin to comply by May 2008 but can request more time. After 2013, people whose IDs do not meet those standards will not be allowed to board planes or enter federal buildings.

A similar Democrat-backed bill to repeal the provision is pending in the House. At least seven states have passed laws or resolutions opposing implementation of Real ID. Fourteen states have legislation pending. By yesterday, the DHS had received more than 12,000 public comments in response to the rules.

— Leahy, Others Speak Out Against New ID Standards, By Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, May 9, 2007; Page D03

You may be wondering why you didn’t hear about this law in 2005, when it was passed.

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IT Security: Unnatural Industry

Bruce Schneier says the obvious:
Last week I attended the Infosecurity Europe conference in London. Like at the RSA Conference in February, the show floor was chockablock full of network, computer and information security companies. As I often do, I mused about what it means for the IT industry that there are thousands of dedicated security products on the market: some good, more lousy, many difficult even to describe. Why aren’t IT products and services naturally secure, and what would it mean for the industry if they were?

— Do We Really Need a Security Industry? Bruce Schneier, Schneier on Security, 3 May 2007

Obvious in an emperor’s new clothes sort of way. Continue reading →

Yahoo! Sued about China Again

A year ago, someone lodged a complaint against Yahoo! in Hong Kong regarding jailed activist Shi Tao. This month, there’s another suit against Yahoo! for revealing user information to the Chinese government, this time in a U.S. court:

A suit filed in federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday by the wife of Wang Xiaoning accuses Yahoo of “aiding and abetting” torture and human rights violations by linking her husband and others to e-mail and online comments.

— Yahoo sued in US court for giving user data to China, Sydney Morning Herald, April 20, 2007

The previous suit noted that Yahoo! operates as a Hong Kong company, so it’s not clear whether it actually had to go by mainland Chinese rules instead of Hong Kong ones. Continue reading →

Sentimental Education

Regarding Blogger Civility, I’d like to add that where there are real threats, of course the person threatened should complain, and if the threatener can be tracked down, there are already laws that apply. Also, some people think that technical subjects aren’t contentious enough to provoke threats; those people apparently haven’t yet gotten crazy rants from people who incorporate technology into their conspiracy theories, or who fear technology because it might help people oppose their favorite policies, or who don’t like technology because they’ve always been afraid of people who understand it, or who don’t like women/gays/blacks/whites/southerners/foreigners/whatever participating in it. And there are people who think the blogosphere is unusual in harboring threats; those people apparently don’t get out much. I wonder what sort of mail somebody like Condoleeza Rice or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John McCain gets?

Anyway, the idea of a blogger code of conduct reminds me of something else:

A technique to detect favorable and unfavorable opinions toward specific subjects (such as organizations and their products) within large numbers of documents offers enormous opportunities for various applications. It would provide powerful functionality for competitive analysis, marketing analysis, and detection of unfavorable rumors for risk management.

— Overview, Sentiment Analysis, IBM Tokyo Research Lab, accessed 13 April 2007

Yet another artificial intelligence scheme; ho hum. Or is it?

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Son of Base Rate Fallacy

Lamar Smith has proposed to wiretap everything on the Internet:

SEC. 6. RECORD RETENTION REQUIREMENTS FOR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS.

(a) Regulations- Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this section, the Attorney General shall issue regulations governing the retention of records by Internet Service Providers. Such regulations shall, at a minimum, require retention of records, such as the name and address of the subscriber or registered user to whom an Internet Protocol address, user identification or telephone number was assigned, in order to permit compliance with court orders that may require production of such information.

H.R. 837, 6 Feb 2007, "SAFETY Act" (Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act)

Once again children are used as an excuse for blanket spying.

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SOX Seen as Good for Lawyers

This article views Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) as good for lawyers:
Sarbanes-Oxley has been a veritable boon for corporate and securities lawyers across the United States. No CEO in his right mind wants to end up sharing a cell with Skilling or Ebbers or, heaven forbid, the likes of some poor fellow who knocked off a 7-Eleven for a couple of hundred bucks and a carton of Winstons. Martha Stewart might not be a bad cellmate, especially if neatness is your thing, but she has already paid her debt to society. There is a real premium these days on professional advice that will keep executives on the right side of the law and out of the slammer.

Sarbanes-Oxley is manna for lawyers By Frank Schuchat, Rocky Mountain News, February 10, 2007

So one view is of SOX as a sort of full employment act for lawyers. Continue reading →