SUBPOENAS AND COMPUTER CRIME

Sep 8, 2003 | law

Here’s a fascinating – and chilling – article by a former head of the Justice Department’s computer crime unit describing a recent decision by a federal appeals court in California. A routine discovery dispute has produced a decision that potentially expands the...

SAVING THE INTERNET

Jul 23, 2003 | Internet, law

Doc Searls, editor of The Linux Journal, has written an insightful article about the threat to the Internet and how to save it. He brings together the FCC media consolidation ruling, SCO’s copyright litigation over Linux, why broadband is under attack by telcos...

UPLOAD A FILE, GO TO PRISON

Jul 17, 2003 | audio, DRM, law

Here’s an article about a new bill introduced by Howard Berman, a House representative funded by the entertainment industry, that would land a person in prison for five years and impose a fine of $250,000 for uploading a single file to a peer-to-peer network. In...

THE PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE MOVIES

Jul 12, 2003 | DRM, law

The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen opened in the theatres yesterday. By most accounts it’s a pretty awful movie, but that doesn’t take away from an interesting thought. The movie features a collection of fictional characters. Guess what they have in...

THE EROSION OF ONLINE PRIVACY

Jul 1, 2003 | law, security

EBay’s director of law enforcement and compliance, Joseph Sullivan, gave a talk last winter which is only now getting any attention. In it, he offered law enforcement officials open access to EBay customer information – without regard for the legal procedures that you...

LINUX UNDER ATTACK

Jun 11, 2003 | law

The Linux community is quickly realizing that Linux faces a serious threat to its very existence. SCO Group owns various copyrights and patents for Unix, and it has filed lawsuits or sent threatening letters alleging that Linux programmers have incorporated...