On January 20, Microsoft and Sun delivered an agreement to Maryland U.S. District Court Judge J. Frederick Motz detailing how Microsoft would implement Java in its Windows OS, in accordance with the judge’s order to do so within 120 days. See this Reuter’s article for more details. Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: January 2003
Cybercrime and the Courts
Appellate courts around the country are attempting to craft procedures that apply to the use of technology by cybercrime offenders once they leave incarceration. Disparate determinations are being made in regard to such offenders, allowing some to return to regular use of the Internet and e-mail, while others, such as notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick, was… Continue Reading
NJ Senate Bill on Financial Privacy
New Jersey State Senator Shirley K. Turner introduced Senate Bill No. 2245, the New Jersey Financial Information Privacy Act, that “protects privacy of an individual’s financial information by prohibiting disclosure without the prior informed, affirmative consent of the consumer.” Continue Reading
New Cyber Security Bill
Senator John Edwards introduced the National Cyber Security Leadership Act of 2003, S. 187, “A bill to provide for the elimination of significant vulnerabilities in the information technology of the Federal Government, and for other purposes.” For more information, see this Government Computer News article. Continue Reading
Privacy Groups Press For Surveillance Docs from DOJ
As a result of their October 2002 FOI lawsuit, EPIC and the ACLU obtained over 200 documents related to DOJ surveillance activities undertaken subsequent to the Patriot Act. However, this ACLU press release indicates that the documents were so heavily redacted as to provide little if any relevant information. Examples of these documents are available… Continue Reading
Politicians and Spam
The current issue of the Duke Law and Technology Report (2003 Duke L. & Tech. Rev. 0001), has an article by Mark Sweet, Political E-mail: Protected Speech or Unwelcome Spam? This link comes via politechbot.com, where Declan McCullagh has been discussing Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s use of bulk e-mail to promote his recently announced 2004 Presidential… Continue Reading
Law Firm's Innovative Use of E-Mail
Tech-savvy Australian law firm Phillips Fox is exploring the use of e-mailing their attorney’s audio dictation files, using smart card technology, to typists in their New Zealand offices, according to their IT Manager. Due to the time zone difference, documents e-mailed in the evening would be ready first thing the next morning. Continue Reading
Lessig Continues Eldred Copyright Fight
Lawrence Lessig has not laid down the gauntlet in his crusade to amend the term of copyright protections despite last week’s Supreme Court decision. See his Op-Ed, Protecting Mickey Mouse at Art’s Expense, in the January 18 New York Times, as well as his announcement about a new effort to tackle the issue on the… Continue Reading
Hollywood v. PlanetReplay TV and SonicBlue
Chad Little, owner of Planet Replay, a P2P service that allows users to share TV shows they have digitally recorded using SonicBlue’s ReplayTV, has issued a press release indicating the discontinuation of part of his website’s service. This was done to protect the privacy of site users as a result of the entertainment industry’s copyright… Continue Reading
Censorship of U.S. Military Websites Escalates
U.S. military websites are subject to a new directive issued on January 3 by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to remove sensitive, unclassified information published on the huge DOD web databases (comprising 770 gigabytes of total data), that could potentially be of assistance to the intelligence gathering efforts of our enemies. Continue Reading
MIT Spam Conference
A Spam Filtering Conference was held on January 17, 2003 at MIT. The conference was organized by Paul Graham, author of A Plan for Spam (published August 2002), and had 580 attendees. Brief abstracts of papers presented at the conference, including titles and authors, are here. Topics included applications solutions for specific platforms, legal efforts… Continue Reading
USPTO Issues IP Law Enforcement Report
The National Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Coordination Council Report 2001-2002 (in PDF) to Congress is a joint effort by DOJ, USPTO, State Dept., U.S. Trade Representative, Commerce, and the Copyright Office. “The mandate of the Council is to coordinate domestic and international intellectual property law enforcement among federal and foreign entities.” See also the DOJ… Continue Reading
