Legal, Privacy & Security
01 April 2008
Internet book piracy will drive authors to stop writing The Sunday Times
Book piracy on the internet will ultimately drive authors to stop writing unless radical methods are devised to compensate them for lost sales. This is the bleak forecast of the Society of Authors, which represents more than 8,500 professional writers in the UK and believes that the havoc caused to the music business by illegal downloading is beginning to envelop the book trade.
31 March 2008
eBay Boots Digital Goods Off Auction Block - Domain Names Included? ECommerce Guide
Could domain names be booted off eBay? This is a question that is not totally answered following eBay's recent decision to stop the sale of digital goods on the auction site according to a recent article in the E-Commerce Guide.
ru: Putin defies Convention on Cybercrime CNews
Russia has refused to sign the European Convention on Cyber Crime. A corresponding resolution has been passed by the RF President Vladimir Putin. Russia did not manage to agree upon appropriate terms for cross-border access to data-processing networks. Several experts believe Russia will lose nothing in case of signing the Convention.
IBM project seeks privacy controls for users Network World
A three-year project to infuse privacy controls into identity technologies and emerging social networking communities is being undertaken by IBM Research with funding help from the European Union.
30 March 2008
French court fines user-generated website for privacy breach Sydney Morning Herald
A Paris court ruled on Thursday that a user-generated website had violated a film star's privacy by hosting a link to a report about him, in a potentially landmark ruling for the French Internet.
28 March 2008
uk: We are not Big Brother, says online ad tracker Phorm The Guardian
The boss of Phorm defended the embattled online advertising technology developer yesterday, offering to open the company up to outside scrutiny by a panel of independent web experts after the firm was blasted by privacy campaigners.
Cybercrime is in a state of flux The Guardian
In the recently released internet thriller Untraceable, starring Diane Lane, a criminal uses advanced technology to ensure that his own macabre website remains "untraceable" to FBI agents trying to close him down. Cybercriminals in the real world have their own version, "fast flux", to hide the location of phishing and spamming sites and illegal malware.
26 March 2008
FBI Opens Probe of China-Based Hackers Washington Post
The FBI has opened a preliminary investigation of a report that China-based hackers have penetrated the e-mail accounts of leaders and members of the Save Darfur Coalition, a national advocacy group pushing to end the six-year-old conflict in Sudan.
US Firms Brace for Cyber War Dark Reading
A new breed of large-scale cyber attack threatens to wreak havoc on U.S. businesses and government organizations, according to Rutgers professor Michael Lesk.
CMS Cameron McKenna Technology Annual Review Law-Now
The CMS Cameron McKenna Technology Annual Review is now available to download. The Technology Annual Review contains short, easy to read articles on topics of interest over the last year, presented on a month-by-month basis. Topics in this year's Review include: selling spam lists, illegal spyware, software copyright, VoIP, the i-Gasm, CD-WOW, the Fresh Prince, E-Commerce defences, data retention, digital downloads, domain name decisions, patent ambushes, the smiley :-), Bluetooth spam, and much, much more.
Germany's Top Court Curtails Disputed Data Storage Law Deutsche Welle
Germany's constitutional court on Wednesday severely curbed parts of a wide-reaching and highly controversial data collection law that requires telecom companies to store telephone and Internet data for up to six months, dealing a setback to government efforts to fight terrorism.
Anti-Virus Firms Scrambling to Keep Up Washington Post
The sheer volume and complexity of computer viruses being released on the Internet today has the anti-virus industry on the defensive, experts say, underscoring the need for consumers to avoid relying on anti-virus software alone to keep their home computers safe and secure.
25 March 2008
Tibet - the cyber wars BBC
We know that YouTube has been blocked in China, as the authorities seek to control what they see as biased Western coverage of events in Tibet, but there is a wider battle being fought in cyberspace. Tibet protest groups have been in touch to say they are under attack, with emails arriving containing attachments that are designed to infect or take over their computers.
24 March 2008
Is China Attacking Websites Advocating for Darfur? New York Times
Is the Chinese Government orchestrating I.T. assaults on websites that advocate for Darfur? The Save Darfur Coalition reported that it has been subject to sophisticated Internet attacks -- attacks that apparently originated in China.
22 March 2008
Phorm tracks every Web move in Britain International Herald Tribune
As the debate continues over how much data should be gathered by companies like Google and Yahoo about people who surf the Web, one new company is drawing attention and controversy by boasting that it will collect the most complete information of all.
Cyber Solidarity: Five Nations, One Mission FBI
Cyber attacks, we've been saying for some time now, are the ultimate borderless crimes: they can come from anywhere, anytime, impacting millions of people and systems across the planet in the blink of an eye. That's why we in the global law enforcement community have been steadily building operational partnerships at every turn -- through a growing number of joint investigations and both formal and informal collaborations and task forces.
UK government's plans for cyber-crime 'half-baked' The Times
The Government has severely underestimated the threat the country faces from cybercrime and risks having its own networks breached by foreign spies if it doesn't devote more resources to the problem, the security industry has said.
Infected Australian computers fetch top dollar The Age
Hackers are paying top dollar on international blackmarkets for computers from Australia that have been unknowingly hijacked and infected with spyware.
Schmidt: Google may share user info with US gov't ZDNet
Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has revealed that the US government has made "requests" for the search giant to share information about its users, and that Google would comply if the requests were legal. During his flying visit to Sydney, ZDNet.com.au asked Schmidt whether, if Google was sharing information with the US government, the company would admit to it.
FBI Opens Probe of China-Based Hackers Washington Post
The FBI has opened a preliminary investigation of a report that China-based hackers have penetrated the e-mail accounts of leaders and members of the Save Darfur Coalition, a national advocacy group pushing to end the six-year-old conflict in Sudan.
21 March 2008
us: A Push to Limit the Tracking of Web Surfers' Clicks New York Times
After reading about how Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo collect information about people online and use it for targeted advertising, one New York assemblyman said there ought to be a law.
UK national threat assessment to be made public The Times
The full gamut of dangers facing Britain, from terrorist plots to disasters caused by climate change, is to be spelt out by the Government in the form of an annual national threat register, Gordon Brown announced. ... Included in the threats delineated in the White Paper was cyber warfare.
Is the Wikileaks Case Really Like the Pentagon Papers Case? FindLaw
Recently, a case before San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White made headlines - thanks to two controversial orders the judge issued last month. ... In this column, Part Two, I will consider a comparison that has been made both by observers and by Wikileaks itself, paralleling this case to the "Pentagon Papers" case. That case, as many readers will recall, arose from the New York Times's publication, in 1971, of a lengthy secret government history of the Vietnam War, leaked by former Defense and State Department official Daniel Ellsberg. The Supreme Court ultimately lifted an injunction against the Papers' publication on First Amendment grounds.
Wikileaks Is Spared a Shutdown As a Federal Judge Reverses Course FindLaw
An extremely significant case is pending before San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White -- one that has tested, and likely will continue to test, the scope of First Amendment rights on the Internet. ... In this column, Part One, of a two-part series, I'll review the facts of the case thus far, the federal court's rulings, and their implications.
20 March 2008
Facebook opens door to second-class friends The Times
Facebook is to allow its users to create a hierarchy of friends within their profiles - in a move that threatens to complicate the already delicate social etiquette that governs the site.
