[05. 22. 2002]
What's with all the recent warnings of possible terrorist attacks? Could it be an attempt by our government to whip up patriotic fever and to divert our attention and criticism away
from the recent release of evidence that the Bush administration had ample forewarning of the 9/11 attacks? It's time we started asking some questions.
With a vote of 406-2, the House on Tuesday passed bill H.R. 3833
which will establish a new federally overseen TLD (.kids.us) for kid-friendly websites. The measure was overwhelmingly approved citing the recent death of Christina Long, a Connecticut
girl who was strangled by a 25-year-old man she met in an Internet chat room.
Sponsor Rep. John Shimkus believes that the measure will reduce the chances of accidental exposure to pornography and other harmful
websites. One problem is that participation will be voluntary. Another is that the new top-level domain (TLD) will do nothing to prevent children from accidentally wandering to
sites like whitehouse.com when where they really want to go to is whitehouse.gov. Parents monitoring
their childrens' Web surfing is the only solution to these problems, not putting more useless laws on the books. Senator Byron Dorgan
plans to introduce a similar bill in the Senate soon.
On February 20, 2002, the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) proposed that webcasters pay the record labels a royalty of $0.0014
per listener per song played. Fortunately, Librarian of Congress James Billington rejected the proposal on
Tuesday. If not, webcasters would have faced bankruptcy since they would be required to pay fees retroactive to October 1998, when the DMCA was first enacted.
Billington will make a final decision setting the royalty rates by June 20. Naturally, the RIAA believes that the proposed
royalty rate is fair since webcasters aren't seen as promoters of music, but rather as pirates since they [webcasters] "cost the music industry CD sales."
[05. 21. 2002]
Over the past week, word of a technique that can be used to defeat Sony's CD copy-prevention technology has spread across the Internet. According to reports, the protection can be bypassed
by simply blacking out the outer edge of the CDs underside with a marker. Once the security track, usually located on the outer rim of the disc, has been covered up, the CD can then be
played and copied using a PC. Some even claim the technique can be applied to those CDs being released by (Vivendi) Universal. Now that people know how to crack Sony's technology, will
they (the RIAA, IFPI, et al.) push for a ban on markers?
[05. 17. 2002]
The MPAA and the movie studios have won. Again. On Thursday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals denied 2600's request
to rehear Universal v. Corley because they were not going to "revisit an earlier decision in which 2600 was found to be
unlawfully distributing a DVD-descrambling utility." If you don't remember, 2600 was sued by the major movie studios in January 2000 and were prevented from publishing or linking to
on their website the DeCSS utility which permits DVD owners to view DVDs on players that are not approved by the entertainment industry.
2600's only option at trying to get the previous ruling reversed (not to mention having the DMCA ruled unconstitutional) is to file a hearing and review with the U.S. Supreme Court.
They will have 90 days to file the petition for the hearing if they choose to do so.
First it was Yahoo! Now Microsoft's MSN and Hotmail have changed their privacy settings.
With these changes, Microsoft can (and already has) shared its users e-mail addresses and other data with "outside companies" -- this, even if you explicitly told them not to do so
when you signed up for their services.
(Read More)
[05. 09. 2002]
Judge Ronald Whyte of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California has denied both of Elcomsoft's motions for dismissal of criminal charges that it violated the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Judge Whyte wrote that the DMCA's ban on copyright circumvention tools is constitutional, even if those tools are used for "legal purposes." In
his 35-page opinion, Judge Whyte wrote that the DMCA "does not eliminate fair use or substantially
impair the fair use rights of anyone... The fair user may find it more difficult to engage in certain fair uses with regard to electronic books, but nevertheless, fair use is still available."
Despite the setback, Judge Whyte did rule that software is protected speech under the First Amendment. An important ruling.
(NY Times Article | Wired News Article)
[05. 06. 2002]
U.S. Representative Rick Boucher is preparing a piece of legislation that would restore our fair use rights to digital content, something which the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
took away. Boucher strongly believes that people should be permitted to circumvent technological protections for research, criticism, or other fair use purposes such as making a back up.
Expected to be introduced within the next month, the bill would rewrite section 1201 of the DMCA which states that "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively
controls access to a work protected under this title."
In related news, the EFF has released a paper documenting the unintended consequences of the DMCA during its three years in existence. See how Section
1201 of the DMCA has been used, not against pirates, but rather against "consumers, scientists, and legitimate competitors."
(Read More)
It's been learned that the Bush administration is strongly considering legislation to establish a national identification system. A group of Senators were briefed on the issue by Homeland
Security Director Tom Ridge at a meeting organized by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT).
(Read More)
[05. 04. 2002]
In a speech given on April 18, 2002, James E. Rogan,
Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, expressed the Bush administrations skepticism about Senate Commerce chairman Fritz Hollings'
Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA). Hopefully, it [CBDTPA] will never see the light of day.
Despite the increasing opposition, proposals for national ID cards are still being made. Recently, two Virginia congressmen proposed a $315 million program that would place biometric
markers on all states' driver's licenses. According to the piece of federal legislation filed by Reps. Jim Moran and Tom Davis, they want all states' licenses to contain the driver's
retinal scan, "fingerprint or some other kind of biometric marker within an encrypted chip in the license."
Contrary to what the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) would like us to believe, the act of music file sharing does in fact cause people to spend more money on music.
This according to a new study released this week by Jupiter Research. The study reports that about 19 percent of average online music fans buy more music than they did before going
online, about 34 percent of experienced file sharers, or those who have used file-trading networks for more than six months, buy more music, and about 36 percent of people who are
veteran file traders and have CD burners have increased their music spending.
