Friday, March 16, 2007

Antispyware advocates try, try again in Congress. Antispyware advocates try, try again in Congress. A U.S. House subcommittee heard repeated praise today for an antispyware proposal similar to two previous bills that won passage in the House -- only to fail when they got to the Senate. [Computerworld Privacy News] 3:46:19 PM

Botnets Fueling Unprecedented Attacks. Botnets Fueling Unprecedented Attacks. Spam Levels and Associated Costs Are the Highest in History [GT: Security and Privacy] 3:41:59 PM

FT.com - Web censorship spreading globally Internet censorship is spreading rapidly, being practised by about two dozen countries and applied to a far wider range of online information and applications, according to research by a transatlantic group of academics. The warning comes a week after a Turkish court ordered the blocking of YouTube to silence offensive comments about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, marking the most visible attack yet on a website that has been widely adopted around the world. A recent six-month investigation into whether 40 countries use censorship shows the practice is spreading, with new countries learning from experienced practitioners such as China and benefiting from technological improvements. OpenNet Initiative, a project by Harvard Law School and the universities of Toronto, Cambridge and Oxford, repeatedly tried to call up specific websites from 1,000 international news and other sites in the countries concerned, and a selection of local-language sites. The research found a trend towards censorship or, as John Palfrey, executive director of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said, "a big trend in the reverse direction", with many countries recently starting to adopt forms of online censorship. Ronald Deibert, associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, said 10 countries had become "pervasive blockers", regularly preventing their citizens seeing a range of online material. These included China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Burma and Uzbekistan. New censorship techniques include the periodic barring of complete applications, such as China's block on Wikipedia or Pakistan's ban on Google's blogging service, and the use of more advanced technologies such as "keyword filtering", which is used to track down material by identifying sensitive words. Methods such as these are being copied as countries new to censorship learn from those with more experience. "There's a growing awareness of best practice - or rather, worst practice," Mr Deibert said. 3:14:16 PM

Web Censorship on the Increase. Web Censorship on the Increase.  mid-devonian writes "Close on the heels of the temporary blocking of YouTube by a Turkish judge, a group of academics has published research showing that Web censorship is on the increase worldwide. As many as two dozen countries are blocking content using a variety of techniques. Distressingly, the most censor-heavy countries (which includes China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Burma and Uzbekistan) seem to be passing on their technologically sophisticated techniques to other areas of the world. 'New censorship techniques include the periodic barring of complete applications, such as China's block on Wikipedia or Pakistan's ban on Google's blogging service, and the use of more advanced technologies such as 'keyword filtering', which is used to track down material by identifying sensitive words.'"   [Slashdot: Your Rights Online] 3:10:15 PM

Groklaw - Transcript of the March 7 Hearing in SCO v IBM Here is the transcript of the March 7th hearing in SCO v IBM, the last of the summary judgment hearings transcripts. Thanks yet again to Chris Brown for arranging to obtain the transcripts. On this day, Kimball was quite busy. He heard several motions, all the ones left over from the first two hearings on March 1 and March 5: IBM's Motion for Summary Judgment on its Claim for Declaratory Judgment of Non-Infringement (Tenth Counterclaim) (PDF) -- asking for a judgment that the Linux kernel does not infringe copyrights owned by SCO IBM's Motion for Summary Judgment on its Claim of Copyright Infringment (Eighth Counterclaim) -- IBM's counterclaim regarding SCO's violation of the GPL and consequent copyright infringment -- (PDF) SCO's cross motion in which it tries to say it never violated the GPL (if you spin the wording their way) (PDF) and SCO's motion for Summary Judgment on IBM's Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Counterclaims (PDF) -- SCO's motion trying to get SCO off the hook for all the trash talk in the media. On this day, we learn from IBM's attorney, David Marriott that the "mountain of code" SCO's CEO Darl McBride told the world about from 2003 onward ends up being a measly 326 lines of noncopyrightable code that IBM didn't put in Linux anyway. On the other hand, SCO has infringed all 700,000 lines of IBM's GPL'd code in the Linux kernel. SCO's GPL defense is of the lip-curling variety and quite funny. And it's also quite amusing to watch SCO try to wriggle out of responsibility for all the trash talk its executives treated us to in its PR campaign. 2:55:03 PM

The Score is IBM - 700,000 / SCO - 326. The Score is IBM - 700,000 / SCO - 326.  The Peanut Gallery writes  "After years of litigation to discover what, exactly, SCO was suing about, IBM has finally discovered that SCO's 'mountain of code' is only 326 scattered lines. Worse, most of what is allegedly infringing are comments and simple header files (like errno.h). These probably aren't copyrightable for being unoriginal and dictated by externalities and aren't owned by SCO in any event. Above and beyond that, IBM has at least five separate licenses for these elements, including the GPL, even if SCO actually owned those lines of code. In contrast IBM is able to point out 700,000 lines of code, which they have properly registered copyrights for, which SCO is infringing upon if the Court rules that it repudiated the GPL."  [Slashdot: Your Rights Online] 2:52:31 PM

PATRIOT Act Apologist Site Didn't Get the Memo. PATRIOT Act Apologist Site Didn't Get the Memo. Last week, the Department of Justice Inspector General's office released a damning report documenting the FBI abusing its powers under the PATRIOT Act and violating the law to collect Americans' telephone, Internet, financial, credit, and other personal records about Americans without judicial approval. It appears that not everyone at the DOJ got the memo. The DOJ's Life and Liberty website, a site dedicated to defending the honor of the PATRIOT Act during the re-authorization process last spring, still reads as if nothing has changed. Particularly in the light of the newly revealed truth, many of the quotes now seem (at best) naive. Under the headline of "Examining the Facts", the DOJ asserts that PATRIOT has "four-year track record with no verified civil liberties abuses." The site quotes an op-ed by former House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner: Zero. That's the number of substantiated USA PATRIOT Act civil liberties violations. Extensive congressional oversight found no violations. Six reports by the Justice Department's independent Inspector General, who is required to solicit and investigate any allegations of abuse, found no violations. Wow, that sure sounds good. Unfortunately, the new report reveals that is is simply not true: the inspector general identifies dozens of instances in which extra-judicial demands for personal information -- known as National Security Letters -- may have violated laws and agency regulations. In the Archive section, the site includes quotes from an op-ed by Senator Pat Roberts responding to critics like ourselves: I regret to say it, but the rhetoric of those opposed to permanently authorizing the act has no substance and borders on paranoia. Opponents have criticized the act for years but can cite only hypothetical abuses. Facts are stubborn things. The actual record is quite clear - there have been no substantiated allegations of abuse of Patriot Act authorities, period. Critics could only point to hypothetical abuses because the fox was guarding the hen house. Senator Roberts also opined that: Through aggressive congressional oversight, we know the FBI uses Patriot Act authorities within the law. It's now clearer than ever that the oversight was not aggressive enough, with the report documenting that the FBI decieved Congress about its use of the letters. The report is likely only the tip of the iceberg. Immediate and thorough oversight hearings are necessary to uncover the truth and hold the Administration accountable. Tell Congress to defend your privacy now. [EFF: Deep Links] 2:45:28 PM

RIAA to Universities: Help Us Threaten Your Students. RIAA to Universities: Help Us Threaten Your Students. Not content with wasting universities' resources via their usual tactics--i.e., flooding them with machine-generated complaints about file sharing--the major record labels are now demanding that universities help them shake down students. The RIAA has asked universities and colleges to forward "pre-lawsuit" letters to alleged filesharers that promise a "discounted" settlement price if the student agrees to pay up immediately. Forwarding the letters saves the RIAA the trouble and expense of filing a lawsuit to obtain students' contact information--a savings that may be redirected to more lawsuits. To add insult to injury, the letters advise students to contact the RIAA if they have any questions. It's safe to say that the RIAA is unlikely to give students the full picture. For example, will the RIAA tell students that parents are generally not liable for infringements committed by their kids, or that the record labels sometimes sue the wrong people? Probably not. We think students should seek out less biased sources of information--and their institutions should assist in that process. Toward that end, we've put together a short FAQ to help students learn more about their options; we hope colleges and universities that forward the RIAA's threat letter will take the additional step of directing students to this FAQ as well as other neutral information sources. Of course, the RIAA should not be putting universities in this perverse position in the first place. If you'd like to help academic institutions get back to their real mission--educating students, not helping to threaten them--Take action now to help stop the lawsuit campaign. [EFF: Deep Links] 2:43:13 PM

© Copyright 2007 Paul Hardwick. Last update: 3/18/07; 10:37:22 PM.