A federal appeals court rules that the anti-abortion "Nuremberg Files" website that listed abortion providers' names and addresses is not free speech.

Political News from Wired News - The DMCA Is the Toast of D.C.. Despite broad opposition to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's major content-holders who have Washington's ear, and they think the law is just swell.

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To Hollywood, the DMCA is just the first step: It only made most types of "circumvention" illegal. Now movie studios want to require copy-protection technology in most software and hardware.

A bill, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, introduced in March by Senate Commerce chairman Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) seeks to compel the computer industry to adopt software and hardware standards aimed at reducing illicit copying.

Technology News from Wired News - Why Does School Own Clone Patent?.

A patent watchdog group discovers that the University of Missouri holds a U.S. patent not only on cloning technology, but on any product of the process -- including, potentially, a human being.

SecurityFocus Infocus: Securing Privacy Part Three: E-mail Issues.

This is the third article in a four-part series that will examine privacy concerns as they relate to security. The first installment in the series examined hardware-based privacy issues and solutions. The second installment discussed software-based issues and solutions. This installment will discuss privacy issues that are particularly relevant to e-mail.

According to research conducted by Neilson NetRatings, e-mail is by far the most widely used application on the Internet. Unfortunately, e-mail should also be of great concern to people concerned about privacy. This article will help you assess the dangers that e-mail provide and give you ideas about how to safeguard your privacy while using it.

DM Review: Toward Pervasive Computing: Should Complimentary Organizations Share Customer Data?.

Our own personal who, what, where, when and why information has always been of interest to business. Maybe even coveted. Before the Internet - before the fax machine, the debit card, and the smart credit card - your personal stats weren't all that easy to come by. Fast forward ten or fifteen years, and guess what? Data on who we are and what we like is readily available to any organization that makes the effort to collect it.

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Forget the cultural reservations that exist with regard to a potentially intrusive Orwellian state. Skip over the technological hurdles of integrating data from multiple sources. (The space program and the Internet have basically proven we can overcome whatever obstacles we face.) I say put your mind in a state of dog food coupons and convenience. Work backward, and let the advantages you will receive as a customer lead you into accepting the idea that complimentary organizations should share customer data. That would be progress.

DM stands for direct marketing, and obviously this guy is for sharing anything he can find out about you. So make him happy and drink the Kool-Aid

Newsbytes - Best E-Buyers Have High Privacy Standards - Survey.

E-mail recipients with tough privacy standards should not be written off as "privacy nuts," in fact, they do a lot of shopping on the Internet and spend more money than other online consumers, a survey has found.

Thirty percent of those most concerned about privacy were more responsive to permission e-mail, according to a Executive Summary Consulting, which conducted the survey for e-mail marketing firm Quris.

"It's no longer the case that you can dismiss the five or 10 percent of your customers that you consider privacy nuts because you think those folks are unprofitable customers," said Michael Sippey, Quris' vice president for corporate development.

Privacy-conscious recipients are more likely to believe that permission e-mail can affect their purchase decisions, are more inclined to open permission messages, and are far more likely to value customizable e-mail, the survey of 1,256 U.S. e-mail users found.

The study is a PDF file and can be found at: http://www.executivesummary.com/about/samples/quris.pdf

CNN.com - Judge orders VeriSign to stop ad campaign. 'Domain expiration notices' at issue

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A U.S. court on Tuesday ordered Internet naming giant VeriSign Inc. to immediately cease a direct-mail campaign that used what a rival called deceptive advertising to poach its customers.

Domain-name seller BulkRegister sued VeriSign in Baltimore on Monday, saying the company sent thousands of "renewal notices" to BulkRegister customers that sought to trick them into unwittingly transferring their accounts to VeriSign.

In a preliminary hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Frederic N. Smalkin agreed with BulkRegister, saying that VeriSign likely engaged in deceptive behavior.

"The plaintiff has shown ... that the current 'renewal' notice sent by defendant to plaintiff's domain-name registrants is misleading and likely to cause confusion among such registrants," Smalkin wrote.

Slashdot | Microsoft Opts-In Hotmail Users.

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - Appeals Court Finds "Nuremberg Files" Site Unlawful.

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - Senate Committee Holds Webcasting Hearing. jonathanjo writes --- "Yesterday (5/15/02) the US Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled: "Copyright Royalties: Where is the Right Spot On The Dial For Webcasting." This was a review of the work of CARP, the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel, the group formed by the DMCA that has closed down webstreaming for many independent radio stations with new high fees and exhaustive reporting requirements. Representatives from RIAA, Digital Media Association, Arbitron, Real Networks, and Yahoo gave testimony, as well as people representing two independent Vermont webcasters, and the American Federation Of Television and Radio Artists. Senator Patrick Leahy's (D-VT) testimony was surprisingly sympathetic to small webcasters (especially by inviting two from his state to speak). Orrin Hatch gave the expected pro-DMCA boilerplate."

Boston Globe Online / Business / Large-scale identity theft is painful reminder of risk.

Ford Motor Credit Co. recently sent 13,000 people certified letters warning them that an unauthorized inquiry had been made on their credit reports and that they were now at risk for credit fraud and identity theft.

The letters not only were a shock to the recipients but another painful reminder of how prevalent identity theft has become. It is the fastest-growing white-collar crime in America and is being conducted on a scale unthinkable just a few years ago.

Federal agencies offer all sorts of tips on how to help consumers protect their personal information to prevent identity theft, but here was a case where the thieves broke into a credit reporting agency and downloaded the files of 13,000 potential targets.

''It's a very large number,'' said Richard Van Leeuwen, executive vice president at Ford Motor Credit. ''Exactly how it happened we do not know.''

The thief or thieves somehow acquired Ford's code to gain access to the credit files maintained by Experian, one of the nation's three major credit reporting agencies. They carefully selected individuals in affluent areas across the country and downloaded their credit files, gaining access to their names, addresses, Social Security numbers, account numbers, and payment histories.

In short, the thieves in one fell swoop obtained everything they needed to assume a person's identity and open a credit card or bank account in his or her name. Experts say the thieves could also establish telephone or utility service in the person's name, obtain a loan, or use the information to obtain government documents or even government benefits.

Slashdot | Experian, Ford, and Identity Theft.

Slashdot | Creative Commons.

WashTech.com part of the Washington Post (5/16/2002) - Senate Panel Debates Divisive Internet Privacy Bill . At least until it was stalled via a parliamentary trick.

New York Times - free registration required Senator Prevents Action on Online Privacy Bill.

Senator Trent Lott, the minority leader, forced the Senate Commerce Committee to adjourn this morning as it was on the verge of adopting an online privacy bill.

The measure would require Internet service providers, online service providers and commercial Web sites to get customers' permission before they could disclose important personal information. That would include financial, medical, ethnic, religious and political information along with Social Security data and sexual orientation.

Mr. Lott, a Mississippi Republican, had been on the losing side of a series of votes on amendments. The most important would have deleted the bill's provisions allowing individuals to sue over disclosure of their personal information, and another would have imposed the same secrecy protections on businesses that collect their information without using the Internet.

The bill does direct the Federal Trade Commission to enact rules imposing "similar" requirements on online and off-line data collection. But that did not satisfy most committee Republicans.

New York Times - free registration required 13,000 Credit Reports Stolen by Hackers.

Hackers posing as employees of the Ford Motor Credit Company have in recent months harvested a trove of 13,000 credit reports -- a virtual one-stop shop for fraud and identity theft -- with data on consumers in affluent neighborhoods across the country.

The company said in a letter to the victims that computer intruders used an authorization code from Ford Credit to get the credit reports from Experian, one of three major reporting agencies.

"I've never seen anything of this size," a spokesman for Experian, Donald Girard, said. "Privacy is the hallmark of our business. We're extraordinarily concerned about the privacy issue here, and the trust factor."

The inquiries gave the intruders access to each victim's personal and financial information, including address, Social Security number, bank and credit card accounts and ratings of creditworthiness, which can be used to identify the best targets.

"This is not just a credit card number; this is the whole kazoo," said Richard Power, the editorial director for the Computer Security Institute, an industry trade group. A criminal could use the data to make credit card charges or even open bank and credit card accounts in the victim's name.

Thefts of credit records, Mr. Power said, are far more common than is reported. "The unique thing about this one," he said, "is that it has surfaced." The theft was first reported yesterday by The Boston Globe and The Detroit News.