UCITA Update - Going Nowhere, Fast?
A review of the situation surrounding the adoption (or lack of) of UCITA. Morass is the word I think we're looking for...

A Battle Over Software Licensing. The battle lines are drawn in the struggle for a uniform standard in software licensing for all 50 states. By Laurie J. Flynn. [New York Times: Technology] 

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Will 2004 Be Like 1984?
Who's watching you? A surveillance society [CNN - Technology] 

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Kangaroo Kourt? Or Just Klumsy Kops?
At best, this sounds like a case of incredibly inept law enforcement officials who allowed evidence to be manipulated and damaged. At worst, they're railroading this guy.

News.Com: Electronic evidence anchors porn case. A Rochester, N.Y., federal judge on Thursday sentenced a former Xerox engineer accused of trafficking in child pornography to nearly four years in prison. The government's prosecution of Larry Benedict, 45, is unusual because all the evidence in the case is electronic, and all of the evidence appears to have been allegedly tampered with or otherwise altered after it was in government custody. [Tomalak's Realm] 

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Why The DMCA Sucks - Reason #637
Astounding. Apple is using the DMCA as a club in a case that has about as much to do with copyright as my big toe does.

News.Com: Apple: Burn DVDs--and we'll burn you. At issue in the legal threat is Apple's well-received iDVD application, which permits users to burn DVDs only on internal drives manufactured by Apple. In unmodified form, it does not permit writing to external drives manufactured by third parties. [Tomalak's Realm] 

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What's Good For The Goose?
A couple of interesting debates intersect. On the one hand, the argument is made that it should be ok to attack machines that are responsible for propagating worms and viruses such as Nimda. There is much to be said for this - the worms affect the entire Internet, and - especially with attacks such as Nimda - it's not like the administrators, using the term loosely, of the offending systems have not been both warned of the existence of the worm, as well as an easily applied patch to cure the problem. On the other hand, the entertainment industry wants the right to hack into computers that are exchanging files. Governmental sources interviewed for this piece seem to believe that the 'defensive' hacking is wrong and inappropriate. We'll see if the same attitude applies to the 'offensive' hacking proposed by the representative from Disneyland.

Computers Under Attack Can Hack Back, Expert Says. A security researcher says people should be allowed to neutralize a computer that is unwittingly spreading destructive Internet worms like Nimda. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology] 

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Biometric Vendors Still Hoping To Cash In on Death and Suffering
And it's still not working. The technology that is - the effort to cash in seems to be going pretty well.

Face recognition fails in Boston airport. The patriotic scam goes on [The Register] 

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Can we trust Microsoft's Palladium?
Open Source advocate Bruce Perens believes Palladium will spell the end for open source software, claiming "If Microsoft has its way, there just won't be any open-source software." The reason is that unsigned code won't be executed by the system. If Microsoft controls signing, then they control what runs on the system. They maintain they'll let others sign code. One imagines just like others can build browsers. They also maintain that Palladium isn't about DRM. But as the article points out, "(Microsoft's) arguments about DRM are also somewhat muddied by the fact that late last year Microsoft was quietly granted a patent for just what he says it's not building: 'The Digital Rights Management Operating System,' protected by U.S. patent numbers 6,330,670 and 6,327,652." Just coincidence, I'm sure.

"Critics say Redmond's new security initiative will imprison users. But why would Bill Gates want to do that? " 

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The Humans Writing Press Releases
Jay's been feeling a bit cynical as of late. But as they say, no matter how cynical you get, it's hard to keep up.

The Devil is in the Detail. The SCREWTAPE Letters [The Register] 

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Yangfan v1.0 To Dash Microsoft's China Hopes?
Right from the pages of the People's Daily - China has announced plans to break the foreign monopoly over office software (that would be Microsoft) by introducing it's own software. Not at all clear what's actually happening here, but most interesting to watch.

China to build own version of Windows 98. Compatible with Office 2000 and Word, says here [The Register] 

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Bye Bye BugTraq?
For years, individuals have contributed information to the BugTraq mailing list strictly for the good of the community - and their resumes. But, with Symantec's purchase of BugTraq creator Security Focus, the community that created the list wonders if they'll enjoy it for much longer.

Symantec's SecurityFocus buyout met with pessimism. Bug trackers fear BugTraq death [The Register] 

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