It would be fun to look at the most recent Hollywood-backed copyright protection bill and simply call it what it is: downright silly. Unfortunately, the debate over what to do about copyright protection seem to be building to a head in Washington, with Hollywood's view -- that no holds should be barred -- holding sway.

That means, unfortunately, that heedless bills like this one, which was introduced on July 25 in the House of Representatives by Representative Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and Howard Coble (R-N.C.), actually have to be taken seriously. So, instead of ignoring it as the scrap of nonsense that it is, let's call this bill irresponsible.

What's all the fuss? Berman's bill gives copyright owners a legal right to hack into and disable peer-to-peer networks suspected of illegally trading copyrighted works. It's an aggressive new tactic in a battle that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America initially waged primarily against those behind the software and services that they allege are contributing to copyright infringement.

FREEDOM TO ATTACK.  Critics of the new tactic are calling it vigilante justice, and it certainly looks a lot like that. Frankly, the provisions under which a copyright owner gets to hack someone else's computer are pretty loosey goosey.

Linux Journal by Doc Searls - Hollywood Steps Up Its Assault on the Net While Webcasting Death March Claims KPIG.

On July 17, I asked "Why Are So Many Internet Radio Stations Still on the Air?" It was only one week after the Final Determination by the Librarian of Congress had become law--a law that was clearly a death sentence for internet radio in the United States. At the time, few stations had quit broadcasting, and there was little sign that any had plans to cease operations.

That changed the next day when KPIG pulled its live signals off the Web. KPIG was the first commercial radio station to broadcast on the Web. After more than seven years on the air, it had become one of the most popular webcasts in the world (and one that was almost entirely Linux-based). Suddenly it was gone. From there the news got worse. All over the country, webcasts were dropping like bad packets. The casualty list went bubonic, becoming too long and growing too fast to count.

Utility Business (industryclick.com) July 1,2002 - FBI Wants Easier Wire Tapping.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has requested that landline and wireless carriers make wire tapping easier by removing technical obstacles.

In a letter to the carriers, the FBI said that the removal of these obstacles was required in the 1994 "Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act".

The Institute (spectrum.ieee.org) - Member Privacy Protections Strengthened .

Most organizations take precautions to avoid unauthorized use of their customers' information, but no system is immune from scammers and spammers, not even the IEEE.

Recently, one spammer used e-mail addresses from the IEEE Membership Directory to solicit money, and another manipulated e-mail headers to make pornographic material appear to be a legitimate message from the IEEE.

Although members' information has always been safeguarded, these incidents have prompted the IEEE to strengthen its security and privacy policies.

Personnel Today - HR says firms should respect staff's e-mail privacy.

Seven out of 10 HR professionals believe employers should not have the right to open all staff e-mails.

In a personneltoday.com News Barometer poll of 263 HR professionals, 70 per cent (183) said that employers should not have the right to open staff e-mails. Only three out of 10 (79) believe that companies should be able to open all employees' e-mails.

The survey's result runs against the final draft version of the Data Protection Act monitoring code that allows employers to open e-mails if there is evidence employees are breaking the law.

Insurance News Net - Industry Must Revisit IT Security, Data Privacy and Disaster Recovery Says LOMA Executive.

ATLANTA, July 31 /PRNewswire/ -- In many financial services organizations, IT security, data privacy, and disaster recovery have not received the attention they deserve, according to a just-released study of the managerial and technological issues associated with these functions.

"The increasing complexity and interconnectivity of information systems is a double-edged sword," says Stephen W. Forbes, Ph.D., FLMI, senior vice president of research at LOMA, and report author. "On one hand, powerful new technologies enable life insurance and other financial services providers to deliver more products and services through more channels; on the other, they make it easier for insiders and outsiders to invade weak points and, as a result, compromise data privacy and interfere with IT processes. While there is no guarantee of complete security for an organization's databases and other technology resources, there is an expanding array of IT tools and business processes that can be used to increase the probability of protection."

ecommerce.internet.com - Build an Ecommerce Site: The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P).

In this article I will introduce what the Platform for Privacy Preferences Project, or P3P, is, and why it should be on your radar. Note that this article does not intend to be a thorough examination of P3P, more of an observation on the effect of P3P in web development. At the end of this article you will find a number of links you can visit for more technical information on P3P.

Just a side note for any folks who work down in the Wall Street area. It seems that Bowling Green Park (the bottom of Broadway just south of the bull) now has 802.11b access available for free to all. Have fun but remember its not secure unless you take the steps (SSL, SSH, VPN, etc.) yourself.

CNET NEWS.COM - DMCA defenders in enemy territory.

Copyright owners clashed with consumer electronics makers and consumer advocates during a lively debate Thursday over proposed laws that would give movie and music companies more control over digital copies of their products.

On a visit to the enemy territory of the Silicon Valley, representatives from News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which has sued numerous technology companies, defended their legislative push during a panel sponsored by the Cato Institute.

Meanwhile, the leader of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and Silicon Valley Rep. Zoe Lofgren lamented their support of earlier Hollywood-backed bills, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), saying the industry had abused them.

"The DMCA was a very flawed law," CEA President Gary Shapiro said. "We signed off on it, and it was a huge mistake."

Lofgren, who introduced the panel, said the DMCA has had unintended consequences. She said she signed off on the law because she was convinced it would be applied narrowly to prevent piracy, but instead it has been used to thwart technological development. "I think we have had a very wide set of anti-technology rules emerging from the courts," she said.

Lofgren warned that new laws should not be used to kill technology and "lock in current business models" of entertainment company "cartels."

Several controversial bills have been introduced in recent months that have fueled the debate over how to prevent piracy in the digital age while retaining the rights of consumers. One, by Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C., would require government-mandated anti-copying mechanisms in all new consumer electronic devices. Another, by Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., would allow intellectual property owners to use technical measures, including spoofing and hacking into sharing systems, to prevent copyright infringement.

CNET NEWS.COM - Politicians renew fight for anti-porn law.

A trio of politicians have renewed their efforts to persuade a court to uphold an anti-pornography law aimed at the Internet.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and two Republican House members on Thursday asked a federal appeals court to agree that the Child Online Protection Act ("COPA") is a reasonable way to shield minors from commercial Internet smut.

They argue that the 1998 law is carefully "tailored to quarantine children from exposure on the World Wide Web to commercial pornography" and that the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals should reverse its decision from June 2000, which slammed COPA as an untenable violation of Americans' right to free expression.

But a divided Supreme Court didn't agree. In May, the justices unexpectedly sent the case back, saying the appeals court should not have relied as much on COPA's use of what it calls "community standards" to define what is harmful to children.

That handed anti-pornography activists a rare second chance to assail the law. "COPA represents the legitimate and authoritative judgment of Congress that the power of additional criminal laws at the federal level is necessary," the politicians said in their 39-page amicus brief written by the National Law Center for Children and Families.

"Washington Times" - Senators seek to balance privacy, security matters.

Two senators are proposing a privacy commission that would examine new surveillance technology with the goal of balancing security and privacy concerns.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, and Sen. John Edwards, North Carolina Democrat, say the commission won't have the power to prevent any technology from being used, but it would be a place to discuss the proper role for new machines and methods in the war on terrorism.

"Unfortunately, the administration seems to put out these broad dictates -- here's what we're going to do on this issue, here's what we're going to do on that issue, military tribunals, American citizens arrested as foreign combatants -- and then the discussion occurs," Mr. Schumer said. "It would be so much better for the country, for us and for the administration if the discussion would come first."

Commission members would be appointed by the president and Congress, and would mix law enforcement officials, privacy specialists and representatives from the technology and business world, the senators said. It would propose rules for implementing new technology and investigative strategies.

[ ... ]

Soon after September 11 President Bush signed into law a measure to give law enforcement broader wiretap powers and the ability to monitor Web sites, among other new investigative techniques.

But soon thereafter, some in Congress called for controls to make sure the new powers were balanced with privacy concerns. A coalition of liberal and conservative House members is pushing a bill to require the federal government to assess the effects of new regulations on individuals' privacy rights.

Both Mr. Edwards and Mr. Schumer yesterday said they see a role for the new investigative techniques and want law enforcement to be able to use the methods against identified terrorists. But they said it's critical to balance innocent individuals' rights.

New York Times - free registration required Still Tilting at Windmills, and Fighting for Rights.

Michael Ratner, as a law student at "Columbia University", was pushed to the ground and beaten by the police in 1968 as he and other students blocked the entrance to a building occupied by protesters.

This would turn out to be one of those defining moments. Mr. Ratner, who would graduate second in his class, got up, looked at his bloodied fellow protesters and decided to become a rebel.

"That night was crucial," he said. "An event like this created the activists of the next generation. I never looked back. I decided I was going to spend my life on the side of justice and nonviolence."

Three decades later, he is still at it.

Mr. Ratner, 59, is president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit organization that litigates civil and human rights cases. He has worked or been affiliated with the advocacy group since graduating from law school.

[ ... ]

"The assault on civil liberties is as bad as I have ever seen it," Mr. Ratner said while seated in his cramped offices in Greenwich Village, "and it is not like the 60's or 70's when there were people fighting for civil rights and ending the war in Vietnam.

"What we have now is a frightened population. The government is able to push through draconian laws that are in clear violation of the Constitution. These are the most sweeping changes of our fundamental rights in over 50 years."

The government's open-ended war on terror has, in the eyes of Mr. Ratner and his supporters, condemned the United States to a downward spiral. This struggle, he said, has left him watching while many of the changes he and other liberals fought for over the last few decades have been reversed. And, he says, especially if there is another terrorist attack, things will get worse.

[ ... ]

He ticks off a list of things that worry him, including increased censorship of information, the silencing of dissent, ethnic and religious profiling, the decision to wiretap lawyers and their clients without a court order, and the creation of military tribunals that can mete out the death penalty without appeal.

"The laws they said would only apply to immigrants are now being applied to ordinary citizens," he said. "The military tribunals were set up to detain noncitizens. And now two citizens have been picked up and are being detained infinitely without any right to a court process."

SourceForge - proxyTools.

ProxyTools is a package of Perl network utilities designed mainly to assist those whose Internet access is censored, unreliable, or otherwise damaged. Uncensored access is provided to any outside service required (Usenet News, Web browsing, IRC, Socks etc.). Setup requires installation of Perl and some modules; this is doable by even a novice MS Windows user with email instruction, allowing help to be provided to those inside these countries from expert users outside.

In pursuit of this rather non-specific goal, some interesting network utilities have already been produced. We think the code is interesting in itself, useful in other areas, and would welcome contributions to the overall sum of ideas, concepts and ideals expressed in these tools.

freshmeat.net: Anti-censorship Tools (proxyTools) 2002-08-02 .

Anti-censorship tools (proxyTools) consists of a huge Perl application (localProxy) and a set of tools to analyze the user's network (proxies, firewall rules, name servers, etc.). LocalProxy abstracts external services in an uncensored, reliable, fast manner to the localhost, where they may be used by standard clients (Web browsers, Usenet news clients, SOCKS-capable clients, etc.). Various combinations of strategies are tried to ensure the non-censored nature of the information, and multiple, parallel services (e.g. HTTP proxies) are used to ensure reliability and speed. The tools are capable of automating collection of the data required for localProxy. LocalProxy builds a configuration for the user and dynamically adjusts to using the fastest strategies and proxies available to it. The tools are useful for network analysis (firewall rules, proxy capabilities, etc.) independently of localProxy.

I haven't tried it but sounds interesting. If someone tests it out maybe they could put a write-up in the discussion group.

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - Interview with DMCA-challenger.

BrianWCarver writes "The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interview with Ben Edelman, the Harvard Law student and internet researcher who is bringing suit against the DMCA with the ACLU. Slashdot covered the announcement of this legal challenge. To refresh your memory, Edelman wants to be able to research the lists of sites blocked by internet filtering software, and to be able to publish his research. He's no lawyer yet, but he responds quite well to several objections to the case."

New York Times - free registration required Surveillance Rules Are Needed to Save Privacy, Senators Say.

Two Democratic senators, Charles E. Schumer of New York and John Edwards of North Carolina, said today that federal and state governments needed to set standards for how they used new surveillance techniques like video cameras and the monitoring of Internet use and called for a commission to propose such standards.

The senators, who do not yet have Republican supporters for their idea, said such surveillance techniques could threaten privacy if not used thoughtfully.

Their proposal is part of a growing concern in Congress about privacy. Last Friday the House voted to prohibit the proposed Department of Homeland Security from developing a national identity card and to block any government agency from using the proposed TIPS (for Terrorism Information and Prevention System) program of an organized corps of citizens reporting suspicious activities.

Republicans took the lead then, with Representative Dick Armey of Texas, the majority leader, telling the House that not only a national identity card but also a federally authorized uniform driver's license with ``unique identifiers of Social Security numbers'' was ``not consistent with a free society.'' Of the TIPS program, Mr. Armey said a system of reporting suspicious activities to the federal government was a threat to the freedom that the House was there to defend by creating the new department.

In addition, the House Judiciary Committee is likely to approve in September a bill sponsored by Representative Bob Barr, Republican of Georgia, that would require the federal government to issue a privacy impact statement, comparable to an environmental impact statement, describing how new policies would affect individual privacy.