Al Macintyre: e Law

Sun, 05 Jan 2003 18:50:56 GMT

US State Dept site with Info about USA for people in Foreign Nations.

Mon, 16 Dec 2002 08:09:43 GMT

I started post here today with my idea for e Bounty Hunting of spammers, virus creators, and other e-unwanteds.

Sat, 07 Dec 2002 19:05:51 GMT

Court to rule on software that copies 'protected' DVDs. New Scientist Dec 7 2002 7:05AM ET [Moreover - Science news]

Interesting case here

The really interesting arguement here is that the copy protection scheme has a humogous loophole or design flaw ... the backups of movies are made at a point in the process when the copy protection scheme is non-functional, so nothing in fact is being spoofed. The courts will have to rule on whether or not it is legal to exploit the stupidity of your adversaries.
I thought copyright law made it legal for us to backup software, but did not make it a right, so that software companies were free to offer stuff that is impossible to backup.
I thought copyright law with respect to software backups allowed multiple backups, but basically ruled that only one copy could actually be running ON THE COMPUTER with ONLY ONE USER per software license.
This article implies that I thought wrong about that, and that we are back to the interpretation that loading software from CD Rom or diskette or Internet download is a violation of copyright law because we are COPYING it from the purchase media into our computer.
I thought copyright law was a bit different for different kinds of media ... software, printed literature, music

Sat, 23 Nov 2002 20:34:44 GMT

How is this legal? What other free services might be threatened? [Tomalak's Realm] QUOTE

Washington Post: Free Web Research Link Closed Under Pressure From Pay Sites. The Energy Department has shut down a popular Internet site that catalogued government and academic science research, in response to corporate complaints that it competed with similar commercial services. UNQUOTE [Tomalak's Realm]

Fri, 22 Nov 2002 04:28:53 GMT

Using the DMCA to copyright freaking *sale pricing*. Wal-Mart and other retailers are upset that various websites have posted leaked info about their upcoming Black Friday sales. They've decided -- conveniently enough -- that this is a copyright violation, and they're using the freaking DMCA to shut it down. That whacky DMCA, it's the goddamned MacGuyver/Leatherman of copyright laws -- endlessly versatile, endlessly adaptable, slices, dices and makes Julienne civil liberties. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]

Tue, 19 Nov 2002 20:08:39 GMT

I started a story on Identity Protection, which collects various ideas on what to do to minimize our risk of someone stealing our credit, and what should be done after an incident, beyond the standard advice.

Sun, 17 Nov 2002 20:42:51 GMT

Can Visa sue governments for issuing permission to enter nations, using their trademarked name for the permission document?
Can Microsoft legally restrict use of the word windows when used to see out of buildings and vehicles, or the word win when used to indicate the victor in a conflict, like a ball game?
Can Apple Computer Company restrict use of the word apple for fruit?
What's the difference between these examples and precedents from the court case cited below?

Well any organization can bring lawsuit. The importance is in what court cases rule which way, and legislatures changing the rules for the lawsuits. After all, in a government of the lawyers, by the lawyers, for the lawyers, what is most important (for gov.law) is in providing lots of opportunities to keep their lawyer constituents gainfully employed, doing interesting work. Currently the ultimate arbiter of law in USA is the Supreme Court, but when in international affairs there are different final decisions by US Supremes & their opposite numbers in other nations, I could see some things being taken to an expanded World Court.

I have chopped some examples out of this repost below, so as to focus on the essence of the news.

[Boing Boing Blog] QUOTE

Visa claims to own dictionary definition of "visa". eVisa.com -- a site that hosts travel info and info on getting travel visas for various countries -- has had its domain name taken away by a court at the behest of Visa, the credit-card company.

This is fallout from the recent changes in trademark law, which created a new, ridiculous dilution standard that allows companies that own extremely famous marks built on regular, English words, to stop others from using that mark in any other context.

Visa claims that the fame of Visa, the credit card, has so outstripped the fame of "visa," the English word, that anyone who names a company or product "visa" (even, presumably, a book called "How to Get an American H1B Work-Visa") is ripping off their intellectual property.

This is a stunningly bad law, and the lawmakers who wrote it need to be thoroughly spanked, but what's worse are the thieves at Visa who've decided that the anti-dilution standard is ready-made for expropriating small businesses of their domain-names. Link Discuss UNQUOTE [Boing Boing Blog]

Fri, 15 Nov 2002 19:03:31 GMT

Topic: Spam = Unwanted e-mail advertising

USA Today and my local newspaper Computer Business Pages have different stories on recent FTC (US Federal Trade Commission) efforts to protect consumers from inappropriate use of unsolicited e-mail, but not from the majority of this unwanted stuff. Spam is not illegal in the USA federal laws, although it is illegal in a dozen states, but efforts are being made to get rid of those laws. It is a continuing battle between interests that want more spam, and people who want less.

The newspaper stories that I link you to above, include information on those industry associations of spammers that are fighting to legalize much more spam into our e-mailboxes, and make it more difficult for us to filter it out. It is estimated that almost 1/2 of the e-mail today is spam, and the FTC has testified to Congress that the growth in fraudulent spam threatens to undermine consumer confidence in online commerce. Consider for example the 1-900 technology, which had great promise, but its abuse by unscrupulous marketers destroyed all public credibility.

This year the FTC ran a test called Spam Harvest in which they setup 250 e-mail accounts that were posted various kinds of places, 175 in all, in association with expressed interests, then they monitored how fast those accounts got spam and of what kinds. They found that it did not matter what you allegedly interested in, you likely to get spam across the spectrum of topics being advertised.

For example, e-mail addresses posted to sites for children, generated

38% of the spam was suitable for adults only
24% was work-at-home offers
10% was for hallucinogenic drugs

As a result of this FTC investigation, they sent warnings to 100 spammers informing them that their messages were fraudulent or deceptive under federal trade laws, while charges were brought against 4 spammers whose messages were designed to induce consumers to turn over personal financial information, thinking it was going to legitimate financial institutions, or other similar schmes.

Chat rooms generate the most spam the fastest.
News Groups and Web pages are close behind.
86% of e-mail accounts planted above were spammed.
Free Personal Web pages, such as weblogs, that placed e-mail addresses in plain sight. Those e-mail addresses became spammed 50% of the time. There is a lesson there to webloggers.
27% of e-mail addresses posted to message board discussion groups got spammed.
9% of e-mail addresses on e-mail service directories were spammed.

Past posts on related information:

Beware of Spam Cop Abuse
Computer Security (Al rules of thumb)
Embedded Chips (in our bodies) benefit risk trade-offs
How To Get Better Laws (in Europe)
How To Stop Identity Theft (in any civilized nation)
How To Stop Phone Spam (in Indiana)
Risk Management
Urban Legends
Viruses and Hoaxes
We are the weakest link (humans in general)

Thu, 14 Nov 2002 18:45:57 GMT

I have added Stop Identity Theft which has my proposed solution to a problem that causes grief to far too many people today.

Mon, 11 Nov 2002 18:00:46 GMT

[Boing Boing Blog] QUOTE

Open spectrum explained for the laity. Seattle Times has run a great story on the group of "lawyers, engineers and telecommunications analysts" who are lobbying the FCC for cognitive radio and open spectrum.

In an ideal world, the FCC would treat the airwaves like a highway system nobody owns and enforce rules governing how people use its lanes without crashing into each other, the group says. And in cases where this isn't possible, the FCC would allow people to drive across other people's "property" as long as they keep a low profile and don't do any damage.
Given this freedom, inventors and entrepreneurs would invent new vehicles and new ways of using the highway, the thinking goes. Consumers would finance the development of the airwaves by buying the devices that suit them best and abiding by the rules of the road that prevent nasty accidents.
But to make this vision a reality, the devices need a slice of the spectrum that would form a virtual park or an airwaves commons where equipment makers and others could experiment. In addition, common protocols — industry standards that allow devices to understand each others' communications — and rules are needed to prevent accidents and to make sure everyone gets a fair shake.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Howard!) [Boing Boing Blog]

Let's hope the FBI crew that's checking up on War Chalkers, also reads this perspective. I also think there may need to be some standards to avoid electronic smog, where equipment is controlled by signals delivered by wireless, but the wireless can also pick up signals from unrelated activity that is sharing the same spectrum. If the controller cannot tell the difference between the authorzed control signals and the unrelated traffic, then something can crash, which can be very dangerous if that something is robotoic, transportation, medical, public services, etc.

Tue, 22 Oct 2002 19:00:14 GMT

[Eclecticity: Dan Shafer's Web Log]

Cyberspace is Not a Place After All!

Judge: Disabilities Act doesn't cover Web. A federal judge says Southwest Airlines doesn't have to make its site more accessible to the blind. The Americans with Disabilities Act, she says, doesn't apply to virtual space. [CNET News.com]

I'm sure glad this well-educated and articulate judge is here to teach all of us ignoramuses what cyberspace is and isn't. As more and more people rely to a greater extent on the Internet for news, connections to other humans, interaction, data storage, and a host of other things, it's nice to know that the U.S. government, at least, won't worry its pretty little empty head about those who have any disability. Let 'em cheat fate! [Eclecticity: Dan Shafer's Web Log]

I expect that someone will try to appeal this. But absent that, some employers may be able to cite this legal ruling as justification for denying access to computers on the job. If the internet is exempt from the disabled, then it is not much of a stretch to say that intranets are also exempt. If you are disabled, and want a job that involves using a computer terminal, which is probably a very large percentage of the jobs that exist today, then tough luck, the law does not apply to computer access. Discuss

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 19:26:53 GMT

[At New York.com] Overview of what's at stake in the Eldred v.s. Ashcroft Copyright Case.

Sat, 05 Oct 2002 07:40:20 GMT

Hosting Questions

I am now at 80% of my 40 meg is free, so at some point I will need to buy more than the 40 meg that we get for our $40.00 Radio purchase, probably from http://store.weblogger.com/addOns since that is the only hosting option url I know of so far, so my first question is if anyone has created a directory of where there are alternative hosting options for Radio Weblogs and the pricing. Ideally I would like to keep the same url with just more than 40 meg.

My sister Susan has not yet started her own weblog. I told her about Radio, but because each of the music files that she has written, composed, and performed, that she wants to put on her site for people to download from her, take up a lot of disk space, 40 meg just does not cut it.

Her questions were one of the reasons I started my story on Blog Software. I feared that Radio 40 meg constraint might not be easy to resolve, and perhaps one of Radio's competitors hosting options more easy to figure out.

QUOTING Al's sister Susan

I’ve been told there are extra charges if your web site has more than the allotted number of visitors. Also, music files are about 3 meg each and then I’m not sure about software to play the files…I guess the user could be expected to have that on their machine? At any rate, I would need quite a bit more than 40 meg.

UNQUOTE

I told her that I had never heard of any such thing as pricing based on numbers of visitors, but it does make sense that there is a relationship between a site's popularity and the bandwidth advisable.

I advised her that, in my opinion, software to play the music on her web site would be preferable so that people could sample what she had, and perhaps less hassle with what needs to be compatible for visitors. She is a school teacher doing this somewhat for recreation, giving friends and relatives copies of her music such as audio tapes to play in automobiles, which is mainly Modern Christian Music.

I warned her that it is possible that changes in laws due to Hollywood lobbyists may make it illegal for musicians to share their work on the Internet, or using audio tapes, but I do not think she believes me.

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 18:56:00 GMT

I got a standard e-mail from Stephen Carter who is the Attorney General of the State of Indiana (I live in Evansville which is one of approx a dozen cities that claim to be #2 in size in the state, behind Indianapolis #1) which you can read in my story on how to Stop Phone Spam (in Indiana) - this story is not really complete yet, but this is an important e-mail for me.

Mon, 30 Sep 2002 18:10:19 GMT

Friday, I shared news of the Lindows PC selling at Walmart for $200.00 that uses Linux to provide all the services that people are accustomed to paying a whole lot more from Microsoft, except Microsoft sued to stop them from saying what their PC could do. Now comes AOL with a lawsuit and the comments on this article are also worth a review. Apparently the marketing about some relationship with AOL Netscape was merely clicking I Agree to AOL fine print when making a copy of the new AOL version of free Netscape browser. Thanks V. of TYR for passing on this link to me.

Fri, 27 Sep 2002 05:19:51 GMT

Check out the comments on http://www.sammydman.com/ - this 15 year old was almost expelled for the horrible crime of having a Weblog, and only escaped that punishment by signing a full confession of what an on-line journal is and providing a list of all other students that he happened to know of that were also doing the same kind of thing.

Apparently any use of school computers for a purpose that the school administrators do not understand, is a serious academic crime, and soon there will be a mass trial of all the children who are suspected of the felony of being Internet Literate, who will also escape being expelled by naming names of others they know of. Does that remind you of something? Can you get out of this by naming top officials of the government? That's how the McCarthyism was stopped - someone named top Generals of the Army and top officials of the White House.

Sammy is now doing his weblogging from home.

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 21:45:52 GMT

[Chicago Sun Times] shares a couple stories about Zero Tolerance of Modern School Administrators:

A Nebraska 7th grader found some marijuana in his classroom and turned it into to the office. He was suspended because, the act of picking it up and carrying it to the authorities constituted possession of marijuana.
A Florida sophomore honor student saw a bag of pills on school grounds and did not follow the example of the Nebraska student because she was afraid of getting in trouble for possession of the contraband in the short distance of carrying it to the authorities. She has been told she will be expelled for failure to do so.

This reminds me of in Illinois where youngsters are encouraged to clean up the environment, but it is illegal for them to remove beer cans and alcohol bottles from the road side, because that means that those empty containers inside their garbage bags constitutes possession of those containers by a minor.

The lesson for these kids is to

Do not touch the illegal substance - drugs, guns, whatever.
Carefully write up a statement of where you saw this illegal substance, in a report to the authorities.
Make sure your report is addressed to the authorities before you leave the scene, so that if an undercover officer sees you seeing the illegal whatever and not picking it up, your statement is part of your defense.
Make a copy of your statement before you turn it in, so that if you later get hassled, you can take your statement to a lawyer, the news media, or where ever your parents think will most embarrass the school authorities into backing down.

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 06:49:28 GMT

Safety of Nuclear Power Plants Again Questioned. VOA Sep 24 2002 9:33PM ET [Moreover - Science news]

We are living in a different world today. In recent years it made sense to

Build a nuclear power plant right next to a major city, because nothing serious likely to go wrong, but now power plants are potential terrorist targets, so we do not want them right next to major cities.
Build an airport in the middle of a major interstate interchange so easy to bring passengers real close to check in counters, but now a truck bomb can take out an airport, so we need a different kind of transportation infrastructure to unload the passengers from ground transport further away from the air tranport, and run everyone through screening suitably distant from buildings that might be major targets of terrorists.

VOA = Voice of America ... there's links here to what headlines VOA is sharing in various places in the world ... an interesting site worth revisiting occasionally.

Africa

Amnesty International protests torture of child prisoners in Burundi
Intervention in Ivory Coast
Uranium Security in Africa - is that an Oxymoron?

Asia - Pacific

China ultimatim to Iraq
North Korea gets special envoy from Pres Bush
a lot of stories I had not seen on local national news

Asia - South and Central

US Troops in Afghanistan discover another chilling al Quaida site.
Dutch and Germans to take over NATO command in Afghanistan when Turkey time runs out.
Iran nervous about US troops near their border with Afghanistan
Suicide terrorists seized an Indian temple, leading to another gunfight.
Terrorists attack a Christian Charity.

Americas

Argentina and Brazil economies still in bad shape
Chilean Appeals court throws out 7 cases against Pinochet
Colombian President visits USA President
Mexican Banker gets record bail
That storm in the Carribean

Middle East
- Britain and Iraq
- China and Iraq
- Kuwait hosts USA military exercises
- Lebanon scandal with Israel
- Palestinians
- USA politics and Iraq
- USA and Pakistan cooperation
USA
- Brushfire in Western USA
- Iraq and Partisan Politics
- Various legislation

Mon, 23 Sep 2002 03:20:28 GMT

[Tomalak's Realm] QUOTES SJ Mercury: Valenti presents Hollywood's side of the technology story. Dan Gillmor. I made that offer after I heard from a colleague that Valenti, meeting recently with journalists in Los Angeles, had complained about what I'd been writing. So while I don't agree with much of what he said -- and I'll respond in a subsequent column -- it's only fair to give you his side of the argument. UNQUOTE [Tomalak's Realm]

This is Dan Gillmor's interview of Jack Valenti to get Hollywood's side on this great debate.

Hollywood wants to make their customers happy, and wants their material on the Internet, but on their terms at a fair and reasonable price, because the Internet provides new ways for people to violate copyright.
Jack Valenti has been president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America www.mpaa.org since 1966.
Dan Gillmor and Jack Valenti could not come to an agreement on how it is possible for Hollywood to get what they want, without denying consumers a continuing ability to do what is commonly called fair use:

time shift programming to view TV programs at a time other than when they were actually broadcast;
view digital programming in an analog format;
peer to peer sharing of content that is typically copyrighted.

Sun, 22 Sep 2002 00:20:01 GMT

[Scripting News] QUOTE BBC: "Californian authorities have decided against prosecuting former astronaut Buzz Aldrin after he punched a documentary maker who claimed his moon missions were faked." UNQUOTE [Scripting News]

Fri, 20 Sep 2002 23:11:37 GMT

I recently shared e-mail that I got asking me to sign an Amnesty International Petition to send to the President of Nigeria asking for clemency for Amina Lawal, the Nigerian woman convicted of adultery and having a child outside marriage, and who has been sentenced to death by stoning by the court, the sentence to be carried out after the baby can be rescued from this.

Yahoo's Virus Hoax Busters have some things to say on the subject similar to my views.

This Nigerian woman has in fact been sentenced to death for allegedly bearing a child out of wedlock (the father denies responsibility, so the woman is automatically guilty). This is real. This is not a hoax. We agree on that point.
Internet petitions do not have much impact in the West, let alone on this Nigerian culture, says the moderator of the discussion.
Well we do not exactly agree here. I think this effort raises public awareness of the work of Amnesty International, especially when it results in the European Parliament voting to boycott Miss World contest in Nigeria, and the President of Mexico making a special trip to visit the President of Nigeria to appeal on behalf of the woman's case.

I passed this appeal on to some people who are into that kind of thing, while I seriously doubt Amnesty International is going to get significant change in nations supporting death sentence for violation of Islamic Law, even though they have collected over a million signatures so far (what does this say about the billions of people who have not signed the petition?). I think Amnesty International power is when a nation says one thing and does another, so by illuminating duplicity, the exceptions can be stopped. This is not duplicity. It is Nigerian law and policy.

Here is a directory of links to current Amnesty International themes:

Stop Torture
The Death Penalty
G8 exporting tools for use in Human Rights abuses
Police Accountability in Human Rights
Human Rights Education
Human Rights impact of Economic Activities
International Justice
Health Professionals
Child Warriors before Emotional Maturity
Guatamala History Repeats
Diamond Trade's dark side.

Anyhow my referrers are showing someone doing a Google search on the notion that this is a hoax. I found a ton of searches for variations on the woman's name, Nigerian woman, hoax, Amnesty International petition, and all the hits were either on my site, sites about this woman's plight, or Google combining different posts that contained individual words of the search. It is possible that there are a bunch of people doing similar searches. The sad thing is that this happens to many women around the world, and is so alien to our western culture that many people receiving the e-mail appeal info about the petition, their first reaction is to wonder if this is a hoax. So I am looking at some of the other posts on the topic that were in the Google searches, and finding some interesting sites.

Another Nigerian woman, Safiya Husaini, was also sentenced to death by stoning, but an appeals court let her live. But it is a continuing problem because Nigeria is deeply divided between Muslims and Christians, who have different moral codes.

The President of Mexico will be meeting with the President of Nigeria, and this injustice is one of the things the Mexican President will be arguing against.
- QUOTE
- The man Lawal identified as her baby's father denied the accusation and was acquitted for lack of evidence.
- UNQUOTE
- One would think that a gene test could prove or disprove it one way or the other, and the fact that no such test was done substantiates the complaints of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA).
Other nations are protesting this at top government levels.
- Australia
- Britain
The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) labels this as injustice in the name of Islam.
- The punishment for zina (fornication) by unmarried persons is a certain number of lashings, not stoning, and very stringent conditions are needed to verify the crime. For example if Amina became pregnant through rape, then she is innocent of any crime.
- The IHRC has Action alerts on Amina Lawal (Nigeria) and Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (USA). In the latter case, this man got a life sentence in which they are arguing many inconsistencies in the lack of evidence that the right man was convicted.
Women's Rights Watch update # 2 on the continuing story of the Nigerian woman, Amina Lawal.
- QUOTE
- The judge has declared that Amina should not be executed until 2004, if she loses her appeal, so that she can look after her 5-month old baby daughter Wassila.
The Nigerian Justice Minister has joined the fight all the way to the Nigerian Supreme Court.
Here is a Canadian source that seems legitimate to me.
Exclusive Interview with Amina Lawal published in UK's Mirror.
- QUOTE
- On Monday, an Islamic court in Nigeria upheld the sentence of death by stoning on Amina. She should be taken, buried to the neck in the earth and perish beneath a hail of rocks, half-bricks... anything conveniently to hand.
- Summoned before the tribal elders - who traditionally settle matters before police intervene - Yahay accepted paternity and promised to pay medical expenses for Amina and her baby.
  
  But he recanted after his family allegedly convinced him that his acceptance would bring shame on them.
- UNQUOTE
- Amnesty International says that death sentence by stoning is prohibited by two UN Treaties that Nigeria has signed:
  - the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;
  - and the Convention against Torture.
The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has appealed to Nigeria on behalf of Amina Lawal.
The International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) is protesting that this Sharia legal code, as implemented in Northern Nigeria, is unfair to women.
- QUOTE
- In the three cases of conviction for adultery which attracted public interest, the women were convicted while their male associates were discharged with ease.
The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom has listed this appeal on their page of Violence against Women, although the problem here is that of Islamic Law's attitude towards women, whether they behaved in a manner that religion considers immoral, or were a victim of rape.
The American Women's Self Defense Association (AWSDA) has a link to this appeal (on upper left corner of their home page).
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) On_Line forums has a link to this appeal.
The USA National Organization of Women (NOW) is protesting a couple who were sentenced to death by stoning (both husband-to-be and wife-to-be) for making love before they got married.
This stuff is no hoax, it is normal Nigerian legal system, and Nigeria is not the only nation like this.

Global Feminist News Wire has several interesting relevant links

Amina Lawal's stoning is on schedule, rules the appeals court, after the central government provided her with a lawyer to help her fight for a lesser sentence, which sounds almost as barbaric. Several contestants will not be participating in the Miss World contest in Nigeria, as part of the protest.
- In a related link, the European Parliament has called for all of Europe to boycott the contest, in protest.
South Korean Sexual Slavery to benefit US Servicemen in the last decade.
Rwanda's Female Minister is the first woman to ever be charged with rape as a crime against humanity. This is because of her alleged complicity in war crimes.
Catholic Church continues to be mired in scandals.

Here is a link that indicates that the Amnesty International effort is no Hoax, but some people searching on Google find the site because they looking for the name of the victim, and the word hoax, which are two separate topics on the same site, because lots of people write about both problems like this, and the problem of e-hoaxes. http://crawfurd.dk/africa/index.html#amina

[Crawfurd] shares lots of info about Nigeria such as QUOTE

Hoax Letters / E-mails from Nigeria

Several people has received e-mails with a friendly and very polite business suggestion from someone apparently living in Nigeria (I certainly have received a few of these scams myself). Many of these mails originates from Nigeria, but lately I have also received one which seems to be sent from D. R. Congo. The sender usually claims that he has access to a large sum of money (usually from the government or some private company). The sender asks for help to transfer the money out of the country. This is said to be risk free transaction and you will receive a large sum of money for helping him out. Don't even think about it! Follow this link if you wish to report a scam or read more about this subject: Nigeria - The 419 Coalition Website.

UNQUOTE

I know about this. It is an international scam to get access to your bank account numbers for the purpose of draining them. Honest people should see through the scam, and struggle to figure out which is the correct government agency to report it to (US Secret Service in the USA, because this is a Currency Crime). Unfortunately some big corporations have dishonest clerks, which have led to the corporations bank accounts being drained.

Another very interesting site linked by my reverse searching review, that I want to explore more some time: Crime on the Internet

Mon, 16 Sep 2002 22:09:11 GMT

forwarded to Al in e-mail from V. of TYR

QUOTING the forwarded e-mail

Subject: Amina Lawal -- Please support this woman

This is not a hoax.

Look in any search engine for reaction around the world, such as a boycott of the Miss World Contest by women and nations that disapprove of this Nigerian sentence.

You have probably heard about Amina Lawal, the Nigerian woman convicted of adultery and having a child outside marriage, and who has been sentenced to death by stoning. The appeals court has approved this sentence. The judge has decided that she should be stoned to death as soon as her 8 month old baby daughter is weaned. Amnesty International has organised a petition which you can sign on line and which will be forwarded to the President of Nigeria. You can Sign it by clicking here:

<http://www.mertonai.org/amina/>http://www.mertonai.org/amina/

Go to the right hand side of the page and click the please sign our

letter. Please sign and pass on to other people - it seems the least we

can do for her.

UNQUOTE - I updated some of the text to help make the post a bit more readable.

Tue, 10 Sep 2002 06:00:11 GMT

[Morgan Wilson's Exploded Library] shares [How Appealing] news that The Eldred v. Ashcroft reply brief was filed in the U.S. Supreme Court and the 29 pages can now be viewed online at this PDF link.

There are obviously a bunch of heavyweight petitioners on behalf of many solid interests, such as preserving our early heritage, and placing public domain literature in a form that it can be read to the blind (Doesn't the US Disabilities Act have some requirement that things should be accessible to the Blind and people with other disabilities?)

But lobbyists who asked Congress to do the other side of this are also a bunch of heavyweights.

What a shame there can't be some compromise that offers copyright owners an option of opting in or out of this deal, and also provide exemptions for public domain, proprietory systems (open and closed) that have independent protection schemes.

Tue, 10 Sep 2002 05:50:58 GMT

[Morgan Wilson's Exploded Library] studies the USA Patriot Act in detail, particularly the sections governing libraries and librarians, and shares with us a bit more detail that we sometimes see when there are accusations flying around.

Tue, 10 Sep 2002 01:14:10 GMT

[Asia Business Intelligence] QUOTE

elgooG won elbissecca ni anihC?

Slashdot posts a discussion of a "backwards" Google search engine that appears to defeat China's filter. But how many Chinese will know to use it? Besides, this writer couldn't make it work in Chinese!

That said, the concept is interesting. A New Scientist article on the site is viewable here.

UNQUOTE [Asia Business Intelligence]

I have found really neat things before on New Scientist ... that is a great site to explore.

Sun, 08 Sep 2002 20:06:48 GMT

On a thread in the e-com-sec discussion group, I asked what are we supposed to do when we get spam from known criminals such as the Nigerian Scam. We have a moral obligation to report criminals to the government, but police seem to be ill equipped to deal with individual internet solicitations of criminal activity. The tip lines are so overwhelmed as it is with more serious issues, that GOV has a serious need for a software magnet to find the key needle clues in their information haystack.

I was basically told that we should treat any spam as spam, forget about trying to deal with criminals the same way as is done in the real world outside of the Internet, and given an interesting link to a back issue of Sysmod's Praxis, which I have previously mentioned on my weblog. It included the following stimulating topics:

Europe's anti-spam legislation.
Microsoft IE patch
The person in personal decisions about the computer you think you own, and stuff stored on it, is not you but Microsoft.
Google Features
Cyber Squatting
Euro Glitches
Euro Zone
Nigeria Scam Clones
Worst Web site (warning: protect your eyes)
Longest domain name

Thu, 05 Sep 2002 21:23:31 GMT

Comment on Al's Radio Doc Sources using Quick Topics. Eventually, Al wants to look into pros & cons of several different commenting systems for Radio, but we have to start some place.

Wed, 04 Sep 2002 11:56:08 GMT

[Boing Boing Blog] QUOTE

Greek government bans solitaire, mindsweeper, Quake, et al. The Greek government has banned all computer games -- from solitaire to Quake -- in an effort to crack down on Internet gambling. Good to see that Hollings-grade technophobia isn't just an American phenomenon. Link Discuss (Thanks, Two of Four!)

UNQUOTE [Boing Boing Blog]

Have they also banned games off of computers, such as Chess, Ball games (sports football basketball soccer tennis) horse shoes? After all, people watch sports games on TV, which is an electronic means of delivering news of the games to the spectators. Also many spectators have engaged in sports betting on the results since time immemorial. Technically, betting on results of horse races is not Internet gambling if done with a bookie, unless the telephone falls into the collection of gaming by electronic means.

The Greek government clarified the new law, in the wake of public outcry and confusion. They are not banning games that do not depend on electricity. I guess this means sports games indoors or at night (electricity of lights) are out, but some people are interpreting this to mean that games that are purely mechanical are still legal, such as dart board, horse shoes, ball games. How about games played to keep children from getting restless on long auto trips? The Greek Retail Industry must be sighing in relief, because now board games for kids in the Christmas season will not be banned.

In some European nations, an extremely popular game is for the news media to publish a photo of a ball game in which the ball is missing from the photo, then people send in money with their doodle of where they think the ball belongs in the picture, based on the body language of the players. Winner takes all, except the photo service cut. Obviously this game is now illegal in Greece, because photography is published using electricity.

Greek Industries, that are now out of business, are making a case to the Greek government arguing that some games cannot easily be used for gambling, such as space war, driving games, and therefore should be exempted from this ban. I can't see that arguement having merit. Humans will bet on anything. Here is a Petition asking the Greek government to preserve their entertainment industry (are movies and music also threatened?), with lots of links to other information sources on this controversy.

That [Boing Boing Blog] Link is to The Register which says that Internet gambling was already illegal in Greece before this new law was passed, but apparently the Greek government was incapable of distinquishing innocent games from illegal gambling, so the simple solution was to throw the baby out with the bath water.

The ban includes all kinds of games supported by computers, software, any electronic means, such as video arcade games, pac man. I assume this means the Casino business has now been banned in Greece, which of course is good for Nevada and other places where the Casino business is still healthy. Meanwhile Germany has imposed a tax on the coins that are stuffed into video arcade amusement games.

This of course means that On Line Chess is banned from Internet Cafes. Internet Cafes can still do other stuff in Greece, but anyone who operates a PC in a public area for commercial purposes must pay a tax on each machine. This includes hotels, cybercafes, and clubs. The rationale here is that such machines must be primarily used for Internet gaming. Does this mean that hotels that have computers for reservations of rooms will be presumed guilty of Internet gaming, because of the mere fact the computer is in a public area (the hotel check in desk)?

Do they have public libraries, computers in public schools? I see a cottage industry in software to remove solitaire games from Windows. Bill Gates may offer a special version of Windows that is legal in Greece, sold at excessive high price since he has a captive audience - buy the upgrade or we will report you to the Gaming Police.

Since 9/11, Insurance Rates have skyrocketed for thrill rides in amusement parks in Australia, because of the increased risks of a terrorist bombing. This is forcing some of those activities to shut down entirely.

In the Discuss above it was brought up that Athens is hosting the 2004 Olympic Games, and didn't they just make the Olympics illegal? ... debate is over definitions ... the Olympics uses electricity for tracking the rankings and scores and showing people the judge's rulings, and also people at home watch on TV, which uses electricity. I am sure Spectators pay money to attend, and there is a lot of money in the sponsorships.

Another related story [Boing Boing Blog] QUOTE

Bridge player stripped of medal for refusing drug test. The World Federation of Bridge is attempting to get bridge recognized as an Olympic Sport, so it is requiring that bridge athletes be drug-tested. This year's silver medalist has been stripped of her title for refusing to pee in a cup. Link Discuss UNQUOTE [Boing Boing Blog]

Mon, 02 Sep 2002 22:51:51 GMT

[Scripting News] QUOTE

Paolo: "How to open a weblog and get sued in less than one week."

UNQUOTE [Scripting News]

[Paolo]'s friend Simone's weblog (in Italian but the child's maze is understandable irrespective of your language) criticized an article printed on a local newspaper. Simone alleged that the article had lots of errors. He notified the article author of this, and got back legal action against Simone. Simone's site shares the traffic involved and now there is an article (in Italian) covering this on one of Italy's main technology news sites.

Mon, 02 Sep 2002 21:54:58 GMT

[Scripting News] QUOTE

A mostly user-level discussion on Blogroots about syndication and aggregation. It's good to get grounded with users every once in a while to relearn that what to us seems neat and cool, often trips up people who have expertise in areas other than ours.

UNQUOTE [Scripting News]

[Ken Dow] also shares links from [Dave Winer's Scripting News] from [Wired] QUOTE

"[Verizon] refused to comply with the order, arguing the entertainment industry is presuming the guilt of its users without any due process."

UNQUOTE [Scripting News]

While reading related stories on [Wired] I came across a law suit against Hollywood by people who want the right to Edit the Movies to remove material that they find to be objectionable. The suit has been brought by someone who has a patent pending that will help home users, such as parents, to edit what Hollywood delivers to the home, to remove material unsuitable for their children.

You have probably heard my opinion on this before. But I restate it and revise it as reality shifts.

Intellectual Property Rights need to be protected, so that there is good incentive for people to improve the quality of what we get, be it literature, music, movies, software.
- If we accept a society in which anyone can take whatever they want, without proper compensation to the artists and authors, then the market place quality will be driven towards crud.
- We are in a society in which the mass consumers seek the lowest price and are getting what we are paying for, and the intellectuals are having a hard time getting a decent income.
- The publishers of the intellectual property are getting the lion's share of the income, and there is rebellion against them by both the consumers, who want freedom to get the stuff at low price, and the artists who think they are not getting fair share of the income.
- There needs to be ways that we can get the entertainment that we want and pay a fair price for it.
- My sister composed and performed music which she sent me by e-mail. Is that kind of artist to audience delivery to now be banned because so many people are abusing the communication links for delivery of entertainment for which the copyright has been violated?
- I am extremely unhappy about the degree to which advertisements are intruding on the content stream, and law suits by the advertisers to try to block the ability of consumers to switch channels, fast forward, etc. to get around having to view the ads. The main product should be packaged at a price that we can get it without having any of the advertisements in the first place.
Computer usage can get complex. Business Accounting is complex and difficult to understand. Some of it is that way deliberately, where special interests lobby Congress to make it complex.
- Consider our Income Taxes ... how many people figure it out themselves without help from some software or going to a Tax place to figure it for us?
- Those tax places lobby Congress to keep it so complicated that we have to go to them to figure our taxes.
Decisions are made that rule our lives by people who not understand the implications of what they are mucking with.
- One thing that really alarmed me was when I bought and read a book by a former National Security Advisor about cyber threats, it shows that he seemed to be really ignorant about some computer stuff, reminiscent of the kinds of thinking that Bruce Sterling wrote about in his book The Hacker Crackdown.
  - We've talked about some of these things in Computer Community and it is evident that some of this is hogwash (threat is not real) and some of it is naive (threat is much worse than these people realize) but the news media repeats the book author stuff without much review by people who theoretically can comment on how much the author got it right and how much should have got expert advice before finalizing these writings.
- I believe that the computer community needs to give seminars to the law enforcement community to bring them up to speed on where the risks really are, and which of the risks in the popular media are really Science Fiction.
  - End consumers ought to be allowed to obtain entertainment in one form, and listen to it in another form, be it put those tapes into your car stereo, boom box, walkman, home appliance, or whatever. Just so long as the original obtaining was legally purchased or legal copies.
  - End consumers ought to be allowed to obtain information or software onto their computers and make reasonable backup copies. The issue should be related to the number of users and the number of platforms, and the licensing agreement should make it clear what the ceiling is, with a way to upgrade the ceiling, or to move your stuff from your old computer to a replacement one. Just so long as the original aquisition was a legal purchase or legal copy.
  - End consumers ought to be allowed to remove software, like games, or entertainment, like music, from their computers and personal places, like home and auto, then sell or trade that with some other consumer. Just so long as the original user no longer keeps the copy.
- It seems like Government Beaurocracy is growing out of control. All those agencies competing with each other and not doing a great job of communicating with each other in a national crisis.
- New ordinary users of computer technology often do not understand e-etiquette let alone all the stuff their software is doing, so they learn by emulating the other users around them.
  - We see this blind leading the blind process with all the people on the public highways who are oblivious to speed limits, and the accident rate from drunk drivers.
  - We see this blind leading the blind in the cyber-plagues of our own making, popularly known as computer viruses, and how people get infected.
  - Consumers are smart enough not to be wearing t-shirts with their credit card numbers emblazened for anyone to use, or take the doors off of homes for anyone to help self to contents, but there seems to be a widespread misconception that there is such a thing as Internet Privacy. That is an Oxymoron. If you not want anyone to copy your stuff, do not connect it to the Internet.
- A generation or so ago, before PCs invented, students were stealing computer time to play space war simulation games. The students had no conception of intellectual property rights, a problem that continues to this day. The owners of the stolen computer resources had no conception of security, a problem that continues to this day.
  - Now that the price of computer power has dropped so that anyone can use it, we have new generations of people making the same mistakes. Put your stuff on the Internet and have this fantasy that no one is going to use it.
- Professional places, that post stuff to the internet, do a really good job of confusing the customers.
  - Visit just about any news organization web site.
    - With one message they clearly state that to copy anything from that site without their permission is a violation of copyright. In other words reading the data from screen through my eyes to my brain is in violation of their rules.
    - With other messages you can push a button and get a printer friendly copy, e-mail it to some discussion group, or copy the pages.
  - Who reads the contract that comes with software?
    - Radio license clearly states that this is not to be exported outside the USA and a very narrow range of countries.
    - Anyone who looks at the popular sites and discussion lists can see that Radio is being sold all over the world.
    - Does this mean that their contract is meaningless, or is there some law that called for putting some phrases in their contract and at some point 100% of Userland executives are going to be in trouble with the government for export violations?
  - Documentation exists but where is the motivation for software vendors to do a good job with it ... how many end consumers bother to read the documentation before they have some kind of a problem?
    - A potential problem exists with the acronyms and new uses for new technology.
    - Can we reasonably expect any new buyer of Radio to know what RSS means?
    - New users see something on other people sites and want to do that on their own sites, but do not know the right terminology for the phenomena. This is like looking up the correct spelling of a word in the dictionary, when you do not even know what the word is. That makes it difficult to pose good questions to the discussion groups, or use search engine to find prior answers.
  - With Radio Referers we can see who is reading our stuff and giving us proper credit for it. We can not see who is quoting us without attribution.
    - I am learning how to give good credit to my sources, but many sites (most recently Slashroot), in combination with the software that I am using, won't let me edit to just do part of their story.
      - It is getting difficult for me to figure out how to do credit when information flows through a series of people before it gets to me.
      - When something is written with a summary statement at the beginning like a journalist story, then it can make sense to copy just the headline with a link to the source for full details, but many beginning webloggers are not that good writers to provide something that can be extracted like that.
      - Some web sites have strict copyright rules, but those rules don't get into the RSS feeds.
    - Many newbies don't give any credit until someone points out to them the need to do so.
- Different people want different things. You can't blame software for being a square peg that you try to put in a round hole. If you want a round peg, buy one.
This does not bode well for the long term health of the Republic.
The bulletin boards taken down by the government that led ultimately to the Steve Jackson case ... those BBSes were not selected at random. There was stuff going on that gave the government reason to suspect criminal behavior. It may or may not have been sufficient probable cause had the case been appealed all the way up the court system, but they did not move in with zero evidence.
- There were criminals using the bulletin boards to trade information on how to break into private computers. Now people can always argue whether hacking is not illegal immoral etc. and what the responsibility of the host of a network has to help authorities catch abusers of the services, but the fact remains that there were serious assaults on the nation's infrastructure, such as a cracker bringing down a 911 service, attacks on computers in hospitals whose work was essential to the health of patients there. Locating the responsible people was no easy task for the early cyber cops.
- Steve Jackson was working on a simulation game about cyber criminal activity. As research for this game, he had employees trying to infiltrate the cyber criminal underworld. Now when a bunch of people sit down to discuss their criminal behavior, the odds are that at least one is a police spy, and at least one is a journalist, but the police spy does not know which one is there as a journalist and which is there as a criminal.
- Journalists need some sources protection so they can get the information they need to do stories, but they also have an obligation to the nation. When we have knowledge of criminal behavior, we ought to make an effort to inform law enforcement of this, or risk being treated as being part of the criminal conspiracy. This applies equally to journalists, authors, game designers, computer professionals.

Sat, 31 Aug 2002 23:26:13 GMT

[Ernie the Attorney] QUOTE

Political candidates, your websites may soon be regulated - It's being considered, according to this article. UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney]

Reading the Washington Post article, that Ernie has shared with us, indicates to me that some day Bloggers will need a reminder calendar. The general election is now X days away so STOP writing about the politicians until after the election. Posting political commentary may become illegal on the eve of elections, whether it is by people inside or outside of politics.

Who will be accountable when this law is violated? There might be a discussion forum with many people talking about many topics, including people in other countries who are ignorant about our election laws. An innocent comment about some stupid thing seen in the news media, by an e-friend from another nation, could mean a published post that is for or against a particular candidate, ending up on a web site within the X days window when that is banned.

They debated, but backed away from, the notion of regulating hyper links to sites that give out information about political candidates. They may return to this topic again, since deep linking is a hot topic with lots of law suits that will change the fabric of our e-society rules.

Thu, 29 Aug 2002 07:30:08 GMT

[Delaware Law Office] tells us that the reasons the FDA is suing the RED CROSS include QUOTE

the Red Cross:

-- "Continues to accept donors who have not completed the health history questionnaire, including those who leave unanswered the question designed to detect those at high risk for HIV/AIDS."

-- Accepts blood from donors with very low blood pressure and those who have given within the past eight weeks, putting them at risk of adverse reactions including anemia.

-- Has "lax inventory control," including "losing blood products" and "distributing unsuitable blood products."

I'm wondering that, if not for the press reporting about the lawsuit, would we have heard anything about these ongoing troubles between the FDA and the Red Cross.
posted

UNQUOTE [Delaware Law Office]

This on top of all the coverage by Fox News and others about how the Red Cross apparently has a disconnect between who they are collecting donations to help, and whol actually gets their help.

Sun, 25 Aug 2002 20:03:03 GMT

[Ernie the Attorney] QUOTE

By the way, his article is copyrighted. That means you can read it, examine the ideas, and discuss them with your friends. You can't reproduce his words in any significant part without permission from him. That's the way copyright works. Pretty much only he is allowed to make money off of his words, but you can examine them if you'd like.

UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney]

Do we need enhanced multi-author derivative copyrights? Here are some cases to illustrate my meaning.

A non-profit club newsletter is copyrighted. After publication, copyrights revert to individual authors. How is someone to know that is the situation if they want to reprint something? Safety is to see permission from both individual article writer and editor publisher.

Similar situation with Internet discussion group. You want to reprint something, and keep it legal. Is the copyright that of the individual person who posted what you want to reprint, or the owner moderator of the discussion. Like the club newsletter, it appears shared. This is obvious when there are multiple people writing into the discussion you want to reprint. Copyright is shared by all the contributors.

There are many analogies in other kinds of copyrighted material.

Someone creates a copyrighted work.
- Second person adds to it.
  - The addition is also copyrighted.
  - You cannot use the second piece without also using the first piece.
Examples
- Software Package or structure developed.
  - Additional programmers add additional features to the core application.
  - End users can't use the new features independently of the original art.
  - They can run the original without the new features, but they want the enhancements.
  - Original package can compete better in the market place, if it is enhancement-friendly.
  - In other words, the original copyright holder makes things easy for people to improve the product.
- Music or Poetry
  - May other people add verses beyond what the original artist composed?
  - The original artist might think some parody demeans their work.
  - Original artist may demand approval before add on person's stuff is published.
- Game Design purchased by many enthusiasts who meet to play and discuss.
  - Some players add new rules, scenarios, variants to enhance their enjoyment.
  - They publish their suggested improvements and try out other people's ideas.
  - Part of the fun of the game is figuring out how to grow it from the basic original.
- Fact Essay
  - Commentary, more opinions by other people.
  - May in fact be hostile counter point to original author.
- Novel creates a set of characters in a universe or reality.
  - Another author writes a sequel.
  - I think the new author needs permission from whoever created the story universe.
  - Not copyright law, but publishers seeking to avoid any lawsuits.

Compare result of rules imposed by original copyright owner on people who would add to their software creation worlds.

Microsoft is somewhat Open to anyone writing any software that will run on their Operating Systems, but it is Open Season on what will continue to work. In any future MS upgrade, surprise, MS changed the standards, now something that worked on the old MS version does not work on the new, and it may be that only parts of an application got broke. So for the end users, things are fragile, and we do not know why collisions are occurring between parts of our PC software. For the developers in the MS world, it is like quicksand, the foundations, that you build your applications upon, are at risk of collapsing under you without warning.

IBM is somewhat Open to anyone writing any software that will run on their Operating Systems, but IBM imposes rigid standards. IBM guarantees to their customers that any software written by an approved vendor will not break their computer. Everything will run fine, or we will fix it (IBM and the software vendor), guaranteed. What is an approved vendor? One that obeys IBM's standards.

Now there are vendors out there that break IBM's standards. IBM warns its customers. If you install that vendor's stuff on your IBM computer, then your IBM contract is null and void. If it breaks, we won't fix it, unless you agree to have that vendor's stuff removed from the computer.

Do new upgrades of IBM operating systems drop support for stuff that was in earler versions. Yes, but they announce in advance to their approved vendors what aspects are going away, so that the vendors know what to re-write, and the customers are given a list of what will no longer work, so they have choice of not doing the upgrade, or replacing the software.

It is a different world, and it is governed by the behavior of the original copyright owner, within framework of what the government allows, to permit other developers to add to their worlds, and set rules for the additions.

Fri, 23 Aug 2002 22:23:38 GMT

In my earlier piece on search engines and directories, I noted some specialities like

http://www.cyberjournalist.net/cyberjournalists.html
Directory of weblogs maintained by professional journalists
http://www.libdex.com/weblogs.html
Directory of weblogs maintained by librarians

How about sources of information on e-law which seems to be hot topic recently.

[Ernie the Attorney]
- Law Blogs
[Law Meme]
[Staton Blog] fusion of law economics and technology
http://portal.eatonweb.com/cat/Law
People who SAY they are interested in Law are not neccessarily all professionals at explaining it.
[Scripting News] QUOTE
- A list of law-related weblogs.
UNQUOTE [Scripting News]

Fri, 23 Aug 2002 21:12:50 GMT

[Ernie the Attorney] QUOTE

UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney]

Here's what I believe / desire.

Capitalism belongs to many shareholders: Employees with decent jobs and investments in 401k or other retirement plans; Stockholders; Management Executives; Creditors; Customers who expect Integrity with respect to product service promises, whether they are on the side of the box of purchase, in the documentation, contract, any advertising. As new rules are imposed, we should have both notification of the rule changes, and able to opt out of whatever arrangement got us there. If a company not like new SEC rules, they should be allowed to offer their shareholders more than the stock is worth, so they can quit being a public company.

Industries should have special protection when they are new, such as Cable TV was protected against Broadcast TV, but this protection should not last forever. As technology advances, the Horse and Buggy Entertainment Industry does not have a Constitutional right to permanent existance.

Contracts need to be in plain English. Incomprehensible Contracts should be automatically null and void until they get re-written. People with disabilities ought to have the right to access to contracts and key documents in a form that they can read or hear. See "Blind of NH" for what reality is instead.

Artists and Writers and other creators of Intellectual Property need to get proper compensation for their labors so as to provide incentive to future quality. Look at it this way, over 300 firemen died in the WTC, but they are not paid enough money to live in NYC without their families having a second job. The people we value, be they teachers or parents, they need to have honest access to enough money for a quality life.

Public Libraries available to everyone regardless of economic status, in which the public can take turns reading what is in the library, and the publishers do get financially compensated because their books are distributed to thousands of libraries all over the planet. Ditto rent a movie at the video store. We are not supposed to make our own personal copies of what we borrowed. We can also have Private Exchanges, whether flea market or auction. We show up with books videos whatever that we are done with, trade them with other people, go home with new selections.

Schools have text books in which they may contract with the publishers for permission to make cheap copies, and pay a royalty for doing so, just like non-profit theatrical performances and churches are allowed to buy one copy of sheet music or a play, make photocopies for all performances, and pay a fee to the publisher based on size of audience and number of performances.

Home Computer technology is still in its infancy with great potential. I say infancy because it is so fragile. How often do you have to reboot your Operating System? When something goes wrong, how fast do you find out what it is and get it fixed with assurance that nothing else will go wrong for a while?

I do not approve of high tech vigilanteism, just as I do not approve of real world vigilanteism.

If it appears like someone is doing improper behavior, prove it in small claims computer court, or gather evidence for a computer crimes court where the suspect can face accuser with both sides access to competent technical witnesses. The state of art of software to catch improper actions is pretty dismal. How often do we have to update our anti-virus protection? How many false positives does spam blocking filters generate?

I do approve of the government attempting to protect the citizenry from future attacks by terrorists. In a war it is sometimes neccessary to do things that would never happen in peacetime. Individuals, who are dedicated to the other side and who will never surrender or stand down, they need to be locked up in perpetuity, but there also needs to be some proof that these people are in fact guilty of being the enemy. It is an extremely slippery slope to allow government to lock people up, with no legal protections such as a defense attorney, based on mere suspicion, or to spy on the people without probable cause as defined by the court system.

Tue, 20 Aug 2002 10:27:44 GMT

PARAPHRASING [Boing Boing Blog]

I am rewriting the content to try to better understand the process of what happened, and how we are all at risk from misapplication of a system to try to fix a big problem. Spam is an extremely serious pain in the butt. Software to try to block it is flawed, generating false positives. People dream up flawed systems and policies in which people are used like robots to enforce the flaws, and we end up having more problems instead of less.

There is also a relevant story on this kind of problem from [Dan Gillmore] on the problems that faced writer Steve Outing.

Ed Felten, spam-vigilante martyr.

Ed "Tinkerer" Felten setup a new webblog at www.freedom-to-tinker.com containing his commentary on various issues.
News of Ed "Tinkerer" Felten's new blog was shared with a mailing-list, by an enthusiast, someone other than Ed sent the e-mail.
A subscriber to that list made a mistake and reported the posting as spam to SpamCop.
On that "evidence" SpamCop declared Ed guilty of spamming and decreed that Ed's site should be shut down.
Never mind that Ed had never sent a single e-mail message from the site. Never mind that Ed's site was not selling anything. Ed was not allowed to see the e-mail, mentioning his site, that did not come from him, that was used to label him as a spammer. Ed could not even to communicate with an actual human being at SpamCop. They're not interested in listening to complaints from spammers.
But you know, that is how spammers operate.
- They have a website at ISP # 1.
  - They send e-mail to millions of people from account 2 then shut it down and send from account 3 and so forth, shutting down the source of the e-mail is ineffective, so the anti-spammers go after the spammer website.
Ed's ISP shut off Ed's account, because it had appeared on a list of "spammers" published by SpamCop, who blackballed his email address with no appeal. -- it was that or have their mail-relays on everyone's blacklist. Why did his ISP shut Ed down? According to the ISP, SpamCop's policy is to put all of the ISP's accounts on the block list if the ISP does not shut down the accused party's site.
With help from his ISP, Ed eventually learned that the offending message was sent on a legitimate mailing list, and that the person who had complained was indeed subscribed to that list, and had erroneously reported the message as unsolicited. Ironically, the offending message was sent by someone who liked Ed's site and wanted to recommend it to others. Everybody involved (Ed, his ISP, the person who filed the complaint, and the author of the message) agreed that the report was an error, and they all told this to SpamCop. Naturally, SpamCop failed to respond and continued to block the site.

Note the similarities to the worst type of Stalinist "justice" system: conviction is based on a single anonymous complaint; conviction is based not on anything the accused did but on favorable comments about him by the "wrong" people; the evidence is withheld from the accused; there is no procedure for challenging erroneous or malicious accusations; and others are punished based on mere proximity to the accused (leading to shunning of the accused, even if he is clearly innocent).
Note also that the "evidence" against Ed consisted only of a single unsigned e-mail message which would have been trivial for anyone to forge. Thus SpamCop provides an easy denial of service attack against a web site.
The only bright spot in this picture is that our real justice system allows lawsuits to be filed against guys like SpamCop for libel and/or defamation. My guess is that eventually somebody will do that and put SpamCop out of business.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Bruce!) [Boing Boing Blog]

Al's guess is that it will take several lawsuits, and bad publicity.

Let's suppose they do this to a journalist with BBC or New York Times. That institution fights back with a court injunction to shut down SpamCop, which makes an exception for the complainant with the clout, but continues behaving this way against all the little guys.

The basic problem is that SpamCop has a good idea but incompetent implementation.

Meanwhile [Dan Gillmore] relates that Steve Outing wrote an article on what NOT to include in e-newsletters if you want to avoid becoming a false positive from the anti-spam software, giving examples, which meant that his e-newsletter was bounced all over the place due to brain damaged filters, proving that he was right about the problem, but wrong path to communicate it. Dan talks about some spam fighting software that does a better job, and asks people to share what we do with spam, for him to share on [Dan's Weblog]. The good news is that Computer-Science Professor Ed Felten's weblog (www.freedom-to-tinker.com) is back up.

Mon, 19 Aug 2002 21:32:36 GMT

[Boing Boing Blog] QUOTE

ISP blocks routing from the RIAA's site, turnabout is fair play?. An ISP has decided to ban routing to the RIAA's IP block from its network, on the grounds that the RIAA will attempt to hack its customers' computers.

[Boing Boing Blog] apparently quoted from [Information Wave ISP]

Due to the nature of this matter and RIAA's previous history, we feel the RIAA will abuse software vulerabilities in a client's browser after the browser accesses its site, potentially allowing the RIAA to access and/or tamper with your data. Starting at midnight on August 19, 2002, Information Wave customers will no longer be able to reach the RIAA's web site. Information Wave will also actively seek out attempts by the RIAA to thwart this policy and apply additional filters to protect our customers' data.
Information Wave will also deploy peer-to-peer clients on the Gnutella network from its security research and development network (honeynet) which will offer files with popular song titles derived from the Billboard Top 100 maintained by VNU eMedia. No copyright violations will take place, these files will merely have arbitrary sizes similar to the length of a 3 to 4 minute MP3 audio file encoded at 128kbps. Clients which connect to our peer-to-peer clients, and then afterwards attempt to illegally access the network will be immediately blacklisted from Information Wave's network. The data collected will be actively maintained and distributed from our network operations site.

End of [Boing Boing Blog] quote from [Information Wave ISP]

With the RIAA suing backbones to block MP3 distribution sites in China and ISPs blocking access to the RIAA's IP block, you gotta wonder, is this the end of the end-to-end principle? Maybe if everyone blocked the RIAA's IP block, just sent them away into bad netizen coventry, the rest of the net could get on with it. Link Discuss (via MeFi) UNQUOTE [Boing Boing Blog]

[Boing Boing Blog]'s Link to [Information Wave ISP] gives us the whole story from them, and their e-mail address. while Discuss is for people to comment on this news. Thanks also for the link to

[MeFi] QUOTE The MetaFilter Network is a collection of sites built with user interaction in mind. UNQUOTE [MeFi]

This place might also be worth revisiting.

There's a lot of places worth revisiting starting with miscelaneous links on my own site.

Mon, 19 Aug 2002 21:24:43 GMT

Here I correlate multiple stories about the West Nile Virus problem, that apparently is worse thanks to Humans who think they know what they are doing when trying to manipulate the Environment. I have commented at other times and places about how come I think the Fires out West are largely a problem of our own making. We collectively need an education in how not to manipulate our environment.

[Bob Morris: The Politics of Water] QUOTE

Are retention ponds breeding West Nile mosquitoes?

Yow, attempts to clean up the water may be providing breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

Public officials across the country are inadvertently creating vast breeding grounds for mosquitoes -- including those that carry the West Nile virus -- by installing stormwater retention ponds near businesses and homes in an effort to reduce the contaminants that collect in water.

As concern over the mosquito-borne virus heightens, the effort to create new ponds and to clean up old ones has pit two environmental causes against each other.

UNQUOTE [Bob Morris: The Politics of Water]

Bob Morris's source is the [Washington Post].

Warning: the intensity of Pop Up ads is so fierce that if your PC is hurting for resources, like mine often is, you are at grave risk of the Bill Gates advertisement for more money spent on PC resources, popularly known as the Blue Screen Of Death.

It is apparent to me, from the Washington Post story, that these government mandated West Nile Breeding ponds are needed for many reasons, and the people who operate them do not consider the West Nile virus to be a serious problem.

I think the solution to this would be for the families of victims of the West Nile to do a class action suit against the polluters.
Simple cause and effect.
Don't put the pollutants into the environment in the first place.
So we don't need these ponds that invite mosquito breeding grounds.
It does not matter if you cannot trace back which mosquito, that killed your loved ones, bred at which pond, which was needed because of which pollution.
What matters is you find polluters with deep pockets.
This then sends a chilling message to other polluters.

Pollutants are not the only problem.

I think a bigger problem, especially near where I live, are poorly designed drainage systems. A city near where I live was recently sued because in the same trench in the ground they ran storm drain overflow, and sewage disposal, and drinking water. They did that to save money on construction costs. Sorry I can't cite a url on this. I got the info from the real world grapevine.

But let's not panic over how long this will take to resolve.

I am paraphrasing [CDC FAQ on West Nile]

Even in an area where there are infected mosquitos most of them do not have it, and of the humans who get bitten by an infected mosquito, only 1% of them are at risk.

end of info I got from [CDC FAQ on West Nile]

so if you get bitten by a mosquito, there is no reason to have a panic attack.

I saw an interesting tip on the wee hours TV.

You are out camping, bothered by mosquitos, and other small flying critters. Put some mint on the side of your food plate, such as chewing gum unwrapped but not consumed. It will drive away the bugs.

Hmm, does chewing mint flavored gum keep them away from your face?

I just learned a new use for junk food.

[Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] QUOTE

Now we finally know what mosquitoes do in the grand scheme of life. UNQUOTE [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

Adam's link is to a story on USA states responding to Centers for Disease Control prediction that 1,000 people could be infected with this deadly miniature terrorist in the next year. That AP story has additional links to more on this problem.

Now combine Bob Morris story with

[Boing Boing Blog] QUOTE

Greenpeace blog. Greenpeace has a blog. It'd be great if NGOs around the world started doing this. In particular, it'd be great if some of the sustainable development NGOs like Youth Challenge International had blogging set up from their base-camps, so that project staff could make some notes about their projects while they're back at HQ. Geekhalla, the geek-house in Accra, Ghana, that the Geekcorps volunteers live in, has blog, but are there others? I'd love to read a blog maintained by the crews on Greenpeace's boats, too. Link Discuss (Thanks, Gillo!)

UNQUOTE [Boing Boing Blog]

If they are not already doing so, I think Greenpeace should be subscribing to Bob Morris on the Politics of Water.

Incidentally, I found out about Bob Morris by randomly looking at recently updated Blogs, most of which were not of interest to me, but there are some gems out there that make the Blog Surfing worthwhile.

What is the correct terminology for Blog Surfing?

Sun, 18 Aug 2002 10:16:15 GMT

Arrested for needing to go to the bathroom at the airport. Another reason why I don't fly no more, I need to go too often.

Sun, 18 Aug 2002 10:13:53 GMT

I was impressed with the effort of family members of 9/11 victims to go after the financiers of terrorism.

Here is CNN link to summary of the story.

If you want to watch it on C-Span, here is link to 2 hours worth.

Fri, 16 Aug 2002 21:00:38 GMT

On the topic of alleged government legalization of copyright owner vigilantism, [QUOTE from Scripting News] Jim Zellmer got a letter from his congresswoman about computers, music and copy protection. [UNQUOTE Scripting News]

Thu, 15 Aug 2002 17:07:12 GMT

[Ernie the Attorney]QUOTE: Michael Alex Wasylik - you're a blogger. And a lawyer. And you've been apprehended. Mike practices Intellectual Property, Civil Litigtion (including Franchising) and other stuff. His office is in McLean, VA. :UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney]

Lawyers are skilled at fighting back.

Wed, 14 Aug 2002 02:53:48 GMT

More here on the Deep Linking Controversy. Links to my earlier comments on this legal quagmire, or use the Calendar to jump to Aug 4th, July 16 or 10.

The Link Controversy Page provides an overview of the legal problems of using hyperlinks, inline images and frames on the WWW, covering problems in the area of copyright, trademark, trespass law as well as unfair competition law. The links are grouped using the national flag of the nation whose language is being used. The organizer of this wants to be informed of any articles missing from his directory.

[Ernie the Attorney] QUOTE Another article on deep linking, another heavy sigh. Somebody call a timeout. And motion for Congress to send some eager beaver who likes to create new laws. Say, Berman, get over here. You want to introduce some Internet legislation? Okay, here's what you do. Introduce a bill that says the law doesn't recognize any cause of action based on someone linking to another person's site (after all that's what the Web was created to allow). But this law isn't there to protect people from their own stupidity, so if people want to use technical means to frustrate deep linking then they're allowed to do that. Now that would be a law that makes sense. So what are the odds of that getting passed? UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney]

Ernie's first link, to British Register, lets us know that Europe has lots of law suits by News Media against search engines and news aggregators for linking to them. Apparently these media do not want people finding out about their stories thanks to search engines and links based on the content of what they are doing, and they claim that deep links constitute violation of copyright. I could understand the copyright complaint if someone reprinted their material and made it look like the reprinting person was the writer.

News Club offers a search engine by news category, in which hits go directly to the articles of 100 different news sources. The user receives the page directly from the publisher's server, with everything that is on the publisher's site, including contents, links, advertising. But one of the publishers is suing News Club for copyright infringement. They do not want search engines like this giving consumers access to their news paper. Under German copyright law, the owners of content do have the right to block access by other people. What I do not understand is why the publishers put their stuff on the Internet if they do not want people looking at it.

Germany Legislators are seeking to adjust their copyright law to legalize the kind of access that is provided by Search Engines, but it is not clear whether other kinds of deep linking could be argued is something German sites may argue is a copyright that other people are violating. German copyright law is also murky on the legality of someone viewing something on the Internet. The act of copying it from the web site to our browser you see is something that the German Legislature never considered before. There are meta tags on the publisher's web site declaring that they want to be found by search engines, so it sounds like the newspaper is using software in which they have no idea what their software is doing.

In 2000, News Club took measures to remove this publisher from their software, so no one using their search engine would find them through News Club, after they got a cease and desist order, but the law suit for copyright infringement is still going forwards.

Tue, 13 Aug 2002 02:46:27 GMT

My sister the musician.

I am not active in the communities of people doing music on PCs so I do not know what types of files there are that work on what kinds of systems, or if the Hollywood Washington partnership is working towards making this kind of artist to audience delivery illegal. In experimenting with my web site, I may be going beyond what Susan had in mind.

Susan has written and performed some religious music, which she sent me as

an e-mail attachment. I asked her if Ok with her if I forward copy to

other people that I e-communicate with. She says this is Ok provided I

also supply them her e-mail address, note that it is copyrighted by her,

and that they check with her if want to do anything with it other than just

enjoying it on their PCs.

I also told her that on my PC to my ears the words were not too distinct,

similar to being in a crowd and knowing people talking but not making out

the words clearly. So she sent me the words in a Word document.

Who would like me to share a copy of this?

The music is 2.5 Meg file

The document is one page.

I may cut & paste the document here.

Some of it is already a bit scrambled because of differences between the fonts she uses for music and what I have on my PC, and I know that a Word document to a Web site via Microsoft is asking for additional embedded garbage.

Mon, 12 Aug 2002 20:07:18 GMT

Thanks to Dave Winer [Scripting News] QUOTE Thanks to genehack for the link to The Time Travel Fund. Well worth a read, if not a deposit. Give them $10 now, and in 500 years, they pay to transport you to the future from your deathbed. Think about it. UNQUOTE [Scripting News]

No guarantees.
Time Travel might not be invented.
Once Time Travel is generally known to have been invented, the government will have to regulate how it is used.
The religions of the world will not want non-believers going back to the times of their saviors and miracle workers to contaminate anything.
Evolutionists will not want non-believers going back to rescue the Dinosaurs and undo the evolution of mankind.
The political systems of the world will not want non-believers going back and undoing the invention of Democracy, and other forms of government.
The list of reasons to hire a lawyer to sue the inventor of Time Travel are endless.
The temptation to keep it secret and use the money for other purposes seems overwhelming.

Mon, 12 Aug 2002 05:09:44 GMT

Today's Topics: e-Academia; e-Accessibility; e-Law and real world Law; e-Privacy; e-Speech Freedoms; Great Links if you share my interests; Ideas for my Personal to do list; Ideas for Radio Manila software enhancements; Web Site Design Inspiration.

There are a number of disturbing Internet and computer trends. On other days here I have shared my struggle to understand the Deep Linking controversy.

If we buy computer hardware and software, is it ours to do with as we please? No. There is some kind of a license and intellectual property rights associated with this. Just like when we buy a book or magazine, we not have the right to photocopy all the content, or when we buy an automobile, we need to drive it in accordance with state laws, and have proper insurance. But what rights do other people have to the content on OUR computers? What rights do other people have to content we might want to access? This is ever changing.

The Chilling Effects Clearing House tries to help us understand our Freedom of e-Speech Rights, and what some people, who don't get it about what the Internet is all about, have been doing to undermine Freedom of e-Speech, and what we can do about it if one of those people hassles us. Lots of good links here.

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School explores evolving issues of cyber law. Lots of good links here also.

Directory of Objectionable Words we should refrain from using when discussing controversial topics.

Mon, 12 Aug 2002 04:52:28 GMT

Guide to Real World (as opposed to Internet Virtual Reality) Legal Topics.

We got these Terrorists in custody and we want to throw away the key, but how do the precedents compare to 50 years ago when America feared Loyal Japanese Citizens and wanted them locked up and throw away the key? We think we are justified in locking up Terrorists without any trial, or access to a lawyer, or protections of the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, and that the people 50 years ago were just racists.

Domestic Issues (Husband Wife as opposed to Homeland Security).

What should we do about these people who kidnap and abuse small children?

Catholic Priests scandal.

Computer Criminals.

Various controversial law suits.

These are hot topics, that Law Scope helps put in perspective for us.

I hate it when a site disables the back button. I want an icon that warns of that also.

Mon, 12 Aug 2002 04:43:27 GMT

CDT's Guide to On Line Privacy.

Mon, 12 Aug 2002 04:36:10 GMT

Tech Law Journal has news, records, and analysis of legislation, litigation, and regulation affecting the computer and Internet industry. This is another place that I could spend all of several days reading interesting stuff and getting nothing else done. I could use a fancy icon that means what I just said in the last sentence, that I would put beside some links as a warning to anyone about to step in. Perhaps make it a category when I get around to learning how to do different kinds of Navigation Links.

Sun, 11 Aug 2002 00:41:20 GMT

Topics Today: e-Accessibility and Reality Accessibility and folks seeking various kinds of help.

"B2B International e-contracts" is information on a research project by one of my contacts in Britain, in which Joseph is looking for constructive suggestions how the law should do a better job of resolving practical/technical issues.