Joint Statement From RIAA And Voice of The Webcasters on House Passage of HR 5469
The RIAA and Voice of The Webcasters (VOW) issued a brief joint statement on the House voice vote on H.R. 5469.
Amazon Posts New Privacy Policy
On October 4, Amazon posted their new privacy policy indicating what personal data the site collects from customers, as well as how and what personal data it repurposes for third party use.
2nd Circuit Rules Against Netscape in Privacy Case
The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion in Specht v Netscape on October 1, according to this InternetNews article. This facts of the case were the topic of previous article on July 2000, Lawsuit Accuses Netscape of Eavesdropping. Netscapes’ SmartDownload http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/getcase/2nd/case/017860&exact=1 http://www.atnewyork.com/news/print.php/1474381 http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3_410521
Briefs in Cyberslapping Cases
cyberSLAPP.org maintains a library of briefs for researchers to track cases in which users of e-mail or web sites were sued for their speech and ISP’s were sued for access to personal data on such individuals.
Internet Filtering Controversy
Internet content solutions company N2H2 and Harvard law student Benjamin G. Edelman are battling over his project to obtain and disseminate a list of sites that N2H2 software blocks. The case summary and documents are here.
Personal Data and Privacy Rights
An Online Journalism Review article posted on October 3, focuses on the intensifying debate over the availability of personal data on the Web, and specifically on the evolution of California case law on privacy rights. It is important to note that personal data finds its way to the Web through a number of database streams, …
Global Internet Censorship
There is a growing concern in the U.S. about state sponsored Internet censorship in countries throughout the world. Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman at Harvard are skillfully documenting this activity. Now Congress is responding to Web filtering with a bi-partisan legislative initiative, H.R. 5524. This bill seeks to “develop and deploy technologies to defeat Internet …
New Public Interest Advocacy Group
Public Knowledge (PK) is a relatively new advocacy group whose agenda is to maintain free and open public access to digital data. According to President and co-founder Gigi B. Sohn, PK seeks to “promote a balanced approach to copyright policy that reflects the “cultural bargain” intended by the framers of the constitution – creators and …
Recording Industry Battles Verizon Over Music Trader
Declan McCullagh’s coverage of the RIAA v. Verizon cases notes that at issue are copyright, privacy and free speech arguments. The two companies are battling over access to the identity of a subscriber accused of file trading. Declan links to an amicus brief filed on behalf of Verizon by high profile advocacy groups that include …
ICANN Self Evaluation and the Markle Foundation's Review
On October 2, ICANN issued its Final Implementation Report and Recommendations of the Committee on ICANN Evolution and Reform. See also the Markle Foundation Report, dated September 18: Enhancing Legitimacy in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – Accountable and Transparent Government Structures.
MIT Researchers and Unmonitored Web Access
Researchers from MIT have developed a scheme, called Infranet, that ensures anonymity and access to Web content that has been blocked or censored, for users around the world. An abstract of their paper titled Infranet: Circumventing Web Censorship and Surveillance provides links to the full-text of the paper in HTML, PDF and PostScript. See also …
Boucher Introduces New Copyright Legislation
Rep. Boucher of Virginia issued a press release on his new bill, the Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act (DMCRA). On his website, Boucher has provided a Section-by-Section Description of the DMCRA, and a Digital Media Consumers Rights Act handout.