Category Archives: Law

Bad Broadcast Treaty

In the world of the Long Tail, blogs, podcasting, and online video, you’d think copyright would be getting more flexible and diversified, right? Not if the U.S. government has its way:
Under the Broadcast Treaty, fair use, Creative Commons and the public domain would be trumped by the “broadcast right,” which would be owned by the broadcaster of works. If you got a copy of a work over the air or over the Web that copyright would let you use (because it was in the public domain, because it was factual, or even because the creator had granted you permission), you’d still need to seek permission from the “caster,” who would get a 50-year monopoly over the re-use of copies of the works it transmitted.

America to US gov’t: kill the Broadcast Treaty! Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing, Tuesday, September 5, 2006

For this treaty: Yahoo! and Microsoft. Continue reading →

Stemming the International Tide of Bad Spam Laws

Sure, spam is bad, and I’d like to get rid of it, too, but not at the cost of having ISPs and governments required to discard my mail based on content. That last is basically what a new ITU report, Stemming the International Tide of Spam seems to recommend.

The root problem with all such recommendations is their insistence on defining spam as commercial. I get spam from religious organizations, spam in languages I don’t even read, and, worst of all, spam from politicians. Spam is unsolicited bulk electronic mail. Confusing content with spam is, and has always been, a big mistake. If you let content leak into your definition of spam, quickly you’re into censorship and first amendment territory.

Continue reading →

Leaves of FBI

Brian Krebs has an interesting post about the Leaves worm of 2001, which masqueraded as a Microsoft update and used the legion of zombies thus recruited to run up click counts on ads, thus generating revenue for its perpetrator. A perpetrator who has never been identified. Which leads to Krebs most interesting point:

Still, I have to wonder whether the case didn’t sour the FBI on investigating these types of crimes, given the resources they piled into an ultimately futile effort. Today, there are hundreds of guys around the world making money just like Mr. Leaves — with far more victim computers at their disposal — except that many of them operate out of countries which have far less cozy legal and diplomatic relations with the United States.

Lessons Learned from the ‘Leaves’ Worm? Brian Krebs on Computer Security, 22 June 2006

We need to find ways to get law enforcement evidence that is not so costly yet is more enforceable.

-jsq

Liability for Not Reporting?

Although this is not the kind of liability I’ve been advocating, it might be of some use:

The Cyber-Security Enhancement and Consumer Data Protection Act of 2006, introduced this week by House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), would punish companies for failing to notify the Secret Service or the FBI of an electronic database breach if that archive holds information on 10,000 or more people or data on federal employees. Under the bill, violations would be punishable by fines and prison sentences of up to five years.

Bill Would Criminalize Failure to Report Breaches, Brian Krebs on Computer Security, WashingtonPost.com, 11 May 2006

This bill, H.R. 5318 could produce some useful data, but, as the article notes, it’s not clear what good it will do if the feds don’t do anything with the data.

The article notes that the FBI has bumped cybercrime up on its priority list, and there have been some high profile convictions of bot herders lately. Those are both good things.

However, government funding for such investigations and prosecutions is still a drop in the bucket compared to the military budget, and there’s still no real liability for vendors of the software that enables most of the exploits bot herders use. And the article makes another general point.

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Thinking Shouldn’t Be Illegal

I’m a little surprised to find myself in wholehearted agreement with Michael Crichton, after what I wrote about his essay about alarmism. But his recent New York Times op-ed says something clear, simple, and important:
Actually, I can’t make that last statement. A corporation has patented that fact, and demands a royalty for its use. Anyone who makes the fact public and encourages doctors to test for the condition and treat it can be sued for royalty fees. Any doctor who reads a patient’s test results and even thinks of vitamin deficiency infringes the patent. A federal circuit court held that mere thinking violates the patent.

This Essay Breaks the Law by Michael Crichton, The New York Times, OP-ED Section, Sunday, March 19, 2006

Maybe this will convey to more people that Software Patent Reform and patent reform in general is needed. Continue reading →

Software Patent Reform?

Does it take IBM to organize software patent reform? It’s IBM spearheading a move to assist the US PTO and inventors in looking up prior art, using open source methods.

I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that IBM is involved in this, given that they file more patents every year than anybody else. See also the book, Rembrandts in the Attic..

I hope this movement succeeds. It would be nice for software patents to be more useful than they are, which would mean less cluttered with junk that never should have been let in the door.

-jsq

Gilmore v. Gonzales Tomorrow

Tomorrow John Gilmore gets a hearing on Gilmore v. Gonzales. On the fourth of July 2002 John attempted to board an airplane, was told he must show identification, refused to do so, and was denied entry to the aircraft. He has not flown since. Instead, he sued.

The hearing will be

December 8th 2005 at 9am
9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals
Third Floor, Courtroom 3
95 Seventh Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

If you are familiar with the case and will be in San Francisco, it would be worth attending, especially if you’re interested in helping elminate what Cory Doctorow calls "a back-door to mandating Soviet-style internal passports for travel."

Continue reading →