   August 2004 ArchiveAugust 31, 2004Never Have to Ask "What Are You Wearing?" Again!
If these RFID-embedded garments ever take off, that is.
August 29, 2004French Feds Investigate Restricted Music Discs
EMI France and retailer Fnac (say it out loud - it's fun!) are being investigated after numerous reports of copy-protected disc malfunctions.
Uncle Sam Goes Shopping for Big Brother
The Department of Homeland Security has given notice that it's interested in any commercially available data-mining software.
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Posted at 11:25 PM by Ren Bucholz | Permalink | Other Links:
Data Mining
| Privacy
| Surveillance
Things Google Knows About You
Thing #1: You google yourself, like, twenty times a week, right? Wrong? Oh, well - guess you'll have to read on for the real deal.
Olympics Wins Second Gold Medal for Stupid Internet Policy
This time it's for banning "coaches, support personnel and other officials, from writing firsthand accounts for news and other websites."
Duke Distributes iPods, Shuns Napster
The Blue Devils will not be the 21st student body forced to pay for Napster 2.0.
"CAPPS III" On the Way
TSA's "Secure Flight" is the heir to the much-maligned and recently cancelled CAPPS II passenger screening program. It will begin testing in the next two months.
August 26, 2004Hearings Continue in Maryland E-voting Case
Voters in Maryland are taking the stand in a three-day hearing to determine whether the state is required to provide paper audit trails for its e-voting machines.
Next on Fox - "CSI: Cyberspace"
Ever wonder what that would look like? Then check out "Forensic Examination of Digital Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement."
MPAA Sues Makers of DVD Chips
Hollywood has DVDs locked down so tight that you have to agree to strict licensing terms to make pieces for a player. Two chip companies reportedly ran afoul of these agreements by selling their wares to companies outside of the cabal.
August 25, 2004Italian Protest Site Censored
Time to say "ciao" to free speech on our favorite Mediterranean peninsula?
44% of Voters Want a Paper Trail
A poll commissioned by a voting machine vendor indicates a significant jump in the number of people who are concerned about validating the votes they cast on electronic voting machines.
James Boyle Gives Apple the Eye
Essays about law and technology don't get much smarter or more accessible than this.
August 24, 2004New Mexico's Missing Votes
In 2000, New Mexico's electronic voting machines failed to record 678 presidential votes - in a state where the election was decided by 366.
Voting Labs Fail Transparency Test
Three private labs are responsible for testing all of America's electronic voting machines, but the results are a secret.
DoJ Official Pans PIRATE Act
The act aims to enlist federal prosecutors in the fight against file sharing, and it was passed by the Senate earlier this year.
Checking Out Wireless at the Public Library
A strange little story about a library, an open wifi network, and a very confused police officer.
And the Gold Medal for Stupid Linking Policies Goes to...
...the 2004 Olympic Games. Organizers issued a ridiculous "hyperlink policy" that requires other sites to ask permission before creating a link to their site. You know, like this one. And no, we did not ask for permission first.
August 13, 2004DVD Jon Forces Apple to Play with Others
"DVD Jon" Johansen has figured out how to make the AirportExpress play music from non-Apple devices. In order to make it work, he had to add encryption to the streams of the other devices. Neat!
Paper Trail Catches Glitch in E-Voting Machine
A recent demonstration of Sequoia Voting Systems' new paper trail-enabled voting machine proved more than expected: when the machine malfunctioned, the paper trail caught the error.
Teaching Kids About Copyright
The American Library Association is about to launch an education campaign that balances the copyright-maximizing propaganda being pushed by Hollywood. This Wired News article mentions EFF's proposal to do the same.
August 12, 2004Developing Nations Choose Linux Over Windows
The price is right, and many are concerned about relying on Microsoft products.
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Posted at 09:58 AM by Ren Bucholz | Permalink | Other Links:
Free Culture
| International IP
More Grassroots Opposition to the PATRIOT Act
The NY Times on "the 330 communities and 4 states that have condemned or expressed worry about the act."
Improving Canadian Copyright Law
Michael Geist examines the recording industry's proposed changes to Canadian copyright law, and offers a few of his own.
Iran Cracks Down on Internet Use
A new law would increase jail terms for dissident speech and "give the police the power to search Internet users' homes or the premises of any legal entity involved in Internet activity, without a judge's authorisation."
555-SPAM Could Be Your Next Cellphone Number
A new bill may make it easier for cellphone spammers to send unsolicited text messages.
Napster Enrolls, Napster Enlists
The downloading service has been inking deals with colleges for over a year, and now they've agreed to let the U.S. military access the service for... drumroll... 10% off!
The Revolution Will Be Downloaded, then Televised
Farhad Manjoo on the important convergence of BitTorrent and RSS.
Universities to School Acacia
Over 50 universities are coordinating a legal response to Acacia Media Technologies, which claims that the schools are violating its patents by using streaming audio and video in their courses. Acacia is on the EFF Patent Busting Project's "Most Wanted list."
August 11, 2004Oh Surveillance, You're So Complex
The ACLU recently launched a project on the privatization and buildup of our nation's "surveillance-industrial complex."
August 09, 2004It's Free, It's Easy, It's...
OK/Cancel, with a cartoon on sites that require registration. Thankfully, you don't need to register to see it.
UK Passports No Laughing Matter
The UK's Home Office has issued a rule barring smiles in passport photos because "open mouths can confuse facial recognition systems."
August 06, 2004Universities Give the Induce Act a Failing Grade
Several coalitions of universities recently sent Senator Hatch a letter that is critical of the Induce Act.
Valenti-isms for the Ages
Tim Wu has compiled a fantastic list of quotes from Jack Valenti, the king of lobbyists and hero of hyperbole. See, e.g., Valenti on the nascent cable industry in 1974: “[Cable will become] a huge parasite in the marketplace, feeding and fattening itself off of local television stations and copyright owners of copyrighted material. We do not like it because we think it wrong and unfair.”
Shake & Break: Tools to Evaluate the War on P2P
The economic impact of P2P has been hotly debated for years, but these people want to know if the RIAA and MPAA themselves are hurting the industry's sales.
40 States and 40 Fights
That's what a recent letter signed by 40 state attorneys general promises if P2P companies don't suddenly gain the ability to control everything on their networks.
Big Blue Promises Safe Passage for Linux
IBM has pledged not to use its massive patent library against the Linux operating system and is challenging other companies to do the same.
Apple Pays for License to Sell Music Online
A company called E-Data has already extracted payments from Microsoft and HMV over its 20-year-old patent on "the transmission of information to a remote point-of-sale location, where the information is then transferred to a material object."
August 04, 2004General Public, Security Experts Feel Differently About E-Voting
This relates to one of our favorite ploys by e-voting supporters: that e-voting is okay because a majority of the public feels good about it. Security experts are just a vocal minority. But, um, don't we rely on experts to tell us about problems that might otherwise go unnoticed and unaddressed?
FBI Wants More Ways to Tap the Net
The Bureau is pushing to ensure that CALEA, a 1994 telecom surveillance bill, applies to broadband-over-fiber.
ACLU Sues to Keep Michigan Out of MATRIX
We're hoping Neo and Trinity won't have to break out the Uzis to keep Michigan residents safe from the privacy-stripping data-mining program.
HP Exec Worries About DRM and Open Source
Martin Fink, HP's vice president for Linux, thinks that moves toward DRM could freeze open source platforms out of desktop PCs.
Arlo Guthrie on JibJab's Use of Woody's Work
According to Woody Guthrie's son, JibJab's parody is an "incredibly wonderful bit of hilarity."
Beleaguered iPod Threatened Down Under?
The Register thinks that the U.S.-Australia free trade agreement could threaten the world's most beloved MP3 player. We're not so sure about that, but there are already more than enough reasons to dislike this treaty.
Kerry On Tech
Declan McCullagh dissects Kerry's long history of votes on tech issues.
China: No Smut for You!
The world's largest country recently shuttered 700 porn sites, arrested more than 200 people, and won the censorship heavyweight title.
Election Threats, In-Depth
The Nation runs a comprehensive piece on the many ways that technology impacts an election.
A Chorus of Musical Copyright Cases
The Columbia Law Library is assembling an archive of cases involving music and claims of copyright infringement. Ready for your close-up, JibJab?
End of the Road for 321 Studios
321 Studios, the company that made easy-to-use backup software for DVDs, has officially folded under the weight of entertainment industry litigation. A sad day for fair use, consumers, and the hundreds of people who lost their jobs at 321.
The Complicated Life of TiVo
Everyone's favorite media appliance is caught in the middle of the digital copyright wars, and this article does a wonderful job of laying out how it's being hurt and who's pulling its strings.
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