WASHINGTON--The debate over digital copyright finally is returning to the nation's capital--and it's about time.

Last week, the Supreme Court kicked off its fall term by hearing a challenge to a law that extends the duration of all U.S. copyrights for 20 years.

And on Tuesday, James Rogan, Commerce Department undersecretary for intellectual property, will give a talk with the dead-giveaway title of "Reaffirming Intellectual Property Rights in an Information Age." Also this week, the Association Internationale pour la Protection de la Propriété Intellectuelle (AIPPI), devoted to promoting "the protection of intellectual property," is holding a two-day conference in Washington.

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Both sides of the debate are unhappy with this state of affairs. The copyright expansionists, led by the entertainment industry, want more laws and more power for holders. Lobbyists for the motion picture studios and the record labels are behind two important bills: The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, which would forcibly implant copy-protection technology in electronic devices, and a peer-to-peer hacking bill, sponsored by Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif.

The copyright reductionists, on the other hand, want their opponents to have fewer laws and far less power. Besides the Supreme Court case, they're pinning their hopes on a pair of newly-introduced "fair use" proposals introduced by Reps. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., that would make it legal to bypass copyright-protection mechanisms.

This renewed interest in copyright law could be a very good thing. The reason: More and more of what people do in real life--trading files on peer-to-peer networks and descrambling DVDs, for instance--has become illegal.

New York Times - free registration required Your Call. Everybody's Business.. Following are some suggestions for increasing openness.

New York Times - free registration required Tiny Bar Codes on Bullets.

Except for its beveled tip, the entire girth and length of a bullet fired through a bar-code barrel would be inscribed with several copies of the code. According to Mr. Lawson, this will make it easier to identify bullets even if they fragment into many pieces, as they often do if fired from high-velocity rifles, like the one used by the sniper around Washington.

Mr. Lawson acknowledged that intelligent crooks could probably figure out how to file down the inside of the barrel or would merely steal a gun.

"I don't see it stopping every gun crime in America," he said. "But I sure see it helping."

New York Times - free registration required An Uphill Battle in Copyright Case.

At 11:01 a.m. last Wednesday, at the conclusion of the Supreme Court arguments over the constitutionality of a law that extended copyrights for 20 years, the statute's challengers knew they had not scored a decisive victory.

"My sense is that the case could be in trouble," Charles Nesson, the co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, said afterward at a lunch reception. "They saw the problem, but they didn't necessarily buy our solution."

Some of the justices expressed what bordered on disdain for the 1998 legislation, which passed after intensive lobbying by the major film studios.

"It is hard to understand how, if the overall purpose of the Copyright Clause is to encourage creative work, how some retroactive extension could possibly do that," said Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. "One wonders what was in the minds of the Congress."

But there is a big difference between thinking a law is bad policy and finding it unconstitutional. That hangs on the question of whether Congress has exceeded its Constitutional authority to grant copyrights for "limited times" by repeatedly extending the term.

Guardian Unlimited Observer | UK News | How mobile phones let spies see our every move . Government's secret Celldar project will allow surveillance of anyone, at any time and anywhere there is a phone signal

Secret radar technology research that will allow the biggest-ever extension of 'Big Brother'-style surveillance in the UK is being funded by the Government.

The radical new system, which has outraged civil liberties groups, uses mobile phone masts to allow security authorities to watch vehicles and individuals 'in real time' almost anywhere in Britain.

The technology 'sees' the shapes made when radio waves emitted by mobile phone masts meet an obstruction. Signals bounced back by immobile objects, such as walls or trees, are filtered out by the receiver. This allows anything moving, such as cars or people, to be tracked. Previously, radar needed massive fixed equipment to work and transmissions from mobile phone masts were thought too weak to be useful.

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'It's an appalling idea,' said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International. 'The Government is just capitalising on current public fears over security to intoduce new systems that are neither desirable nor necessary.'

The system, used alongside technology which allows individuals to be identified by their mobile phone handsets, will mewan that individuals can be located and their movements watched on a screen from hundreds of miles away.

Prototypes have been effective over 50 to 100 metres but the developers are confident that range can be extended.

Slashdot | Tracking People Via Cell Phone.

An anonymous reader writes "According to the articleat the Guardian the UK Government have been working on a project to use the widely available mobile phone masts as a form of localised radar to track both people and vehicles without their knowledge. Supposedly there is even work on the way to give this project the ability to see through walls! Maybe Philip K. Dick was right to be paranoid about governments."

NEWS.com.au | Anti-spammer wins court case.

The District Court of Western Australia dismissed the lawsuit by Perth-based direct marketing firm T3 Direct against anti-spam activist Joey McNicol, describing it as "speculative and based on propositions (the plaintiff) knew to be incorrect".

The Which Company, trading as T3 Direct, had sued Mr McNicol for allegedly getting the company black-listed on anti-spam website SPEWS.org

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - Australian Anti-Spammer Wins Court Case.

An anonymous reader writes "The Australian court system upheld the right of internet activists to campaign against junk email in a landmark decision today. Story from The Australian." --- Sounds like the spammers (T3 Direct, of Perth) were justly told off.

Slashdot | Yahoo! Online Games Contain Spyware.

An anonymous reader writes "I just noticed that yahoo.com is offering Civilization III for free, online. I figured it was too good to be true, so I actually read the EULA. Guess what, yahoo is now distributing spyware. The following is a cut and paste from their EULA: '5.Collection and Use of Registration and Usage Information. In connection with your use of the Applications on Demand Services, the installed software contains an application for the collection of data pertaining to your use of the Software and the operation of the Software. Furthermore, your Service Provider will collect data regarding what Applications you use, how long you use them and in which ways you use them (collectively, your "Usage Information"). You hereby give your consent to direct retrieval by Exent of the Usage Information collected by the Software and acknowledge that the Service Provider has agreed to provide the Usage Information gathered by it to Exent (without specifically identifying you). You agree that Exent may use your Usage Information by aggregating it with the Usage Information of other users of the Software to provide general statistics about the Applications on Demand Services as well as for purposes of making necessary adjustments and corrections in the Software as shall be deemed it by Exent at its sole discretion.'"

Reader feedback: In response to my post about Freevo on October 10,2002 I got an E-mail from its author. He said that the program would not having any tracking options like the original TIVO does. He also pointed out something else that should have been obvious to me. Even if he had included any tracking options, the program is GPL and open-source, which means that the users could just take it out.

I wonder if he's a regular reader?? It would be cool, but he probably did a search on Freevo to see what had been said about his project.

PGP Corporation - Beta License Agreement - PGP 8.0 Public Beta.

Thank you for your interest in the PGP 8.0 Public Beta. Please read the relevant sections of this text carefully as it contains important information about the beta software.

Slashdot | PGP 8.0 Beta Released.

James Evans writes "With a release date seemingly scheduled in December, the new PGP Corporation has today released PGP 8.0 Beta. It features Smart Card functionality, Unicode support, Novell Groupwise support, among other things. A Mac OS X Beta is out as well, also with a robust feature set. One word of caution however: On Friday, December 6th, 2002, the beta will expire, at which time access to encrypted data will be prevented."

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - Lessig's Thoughts On Eldred v. Ashcroft Arguments.

yokem_55 writes "Lawrence Lessig has updated his blog giving his thoughts on how the oral arguments for Eldred vs. Ashcroft went before the Supreme Court on Wednesday. He discusses the goals and methods he used in framing his arguments to convince the court to overturn the Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, how he felt he did in presenting his arguments, and also provides some analysis on how he thinks the court might rule."