Should be some useful ideas...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070911183518597

Australian Law Reform Commission Review of Australian Privacy Law

Tuesday, September 11 2007 @ 06:35 PM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Non-U.S. News

Just a pointer:

The Australian Law Privacy Reform published its lengthy "Review of Australian Privacy Law." See their site for downloading options (all free).

Die RIAA, die!

http://techdirt.com/articles/20070910/013846.shtml

Canadian Newspaper Gives Away Free Music Downloads

from the that's-the-spirit dept

Earlier this year, there was a huge fuss over the UK's Daily Mail newspaper's promotion giving away the new Prince CD for free with a copy of the newspaper. It seemed like a pretty good way of dealing with the troubles facing both the newspaper industry and the recording industry -- offering a new way of financing music combined with a new way to promote and distribute music, all the while helping give people a reason to actually buy a newspaper. It was so reasonable that it freaked out the recording industry, music stores and even other newspapers. However, it appears that some newspapers have decided to go even further. Michael Geist lets us know that over the weekend, the Vancouver Sun put up a freely downloadable compilation of songs from Nettwerk Music. You may recall Nettwerk as being the Canadian record label that seems to actually understand that the trick isn't in fighting against consumers (or in suing them), but in giving them what they want. Thus, it's not really a huge surprise that it would be this label that took part -- allowing well known acts like Sarah McLachlan and the Barenaked Ladies to take part in this promotion. What's a little strange is that the promotion only lasted for one day. However, it is good to see more newspapers (and bands) at least experimenting with this type of model. It has a long way to go, but through this experimenting the next generation of music business models are going to be discovered.

Legal writing 101

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,22398199-15318,00.html

Watchdog bitten in Google case

Susannah Moran September 11, 2007

THE consumer watchdog suffered a blow in its mammoth court case against Google, when a judge said yesterday its court documents were almost "incomprehensible", "opaque" and "somewhat repetitious".

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission was ordered to write out summaries of its key allegations against various Google companies to clarify its case.

Intriguing Making Copyright disappear?

http://techdirt.com/articles/20070910/224932.shtml

Yet Another Example Of Innovation Without Patent Protection

from the must-be-magic dept

Lately, there's been a growing body of research on industries like fashion and restaurants that thrive without the aid of patent or copyright protections. In these industries, the lack of legal barriers allows innovative ideas to spread rapidly within the industry, while informal social mechanisms like reputation ensure that innovators get proper credit for their creativity. Ed Felten points out a paper by Yale law student Jacob Loshin that explains how the magic industry has thrived without resorting to legal protections for new inventions. Instead, the magic community uses social norms to reward those who discover new magic tricks and punishes those who disclose them to non-magicians. Because magicians rely so much on their professional network of other magicians to learn about new tricks, new equipment, and new performance opportunities, maintaining a good reputation within the magic community is essential to the career of a successful magician. A magician who uses another magician's trick without giving the originator proper credit, or who reveals secrets to non-magicians, is shunned by other magicians. That kind of ostracism can be a much better (not to mention cheaper) way of disciplining wayward members than getting the lawyers involved. While it's absolutely true that the specific circumstances surrounding the magic industry don't necessarily apply to other industries, between this, the fashion industry and the restaurant industry, we're seeing time and time again that innovation can thrive and mechanisms (whether social norms or business models) are quickly presented to reward the innovators -- even if those innovations can (and often are) quickly copied.

Scary!

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070911140318268

Microsoft's Consent-or-Die Patent

Tuesday, September 11 2007 @ 02:03 PM CDT Contributed by: Wiwoh News Section: Businesses & Privacy

"Maybe you shouldn't get too attached to those new Windows Live services. On Tuesday, the USPTO granted Microsoft a patent for Privacy policy change notification, which describes how to threaten users will the loss of their account, access to web sites and services, and all of the content they provided should they refuse to consent to changes in privacy policy to allow personal information collected earlier with a promise of confidentiality to be shared in the future with third parties. Also described is a 'Never Notify Me' option so you won't have to worry your pretty little head over privacy policy changes."

Source - Slashdot

E-Treehugging?

http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/59266.html

Online Billing, Part 1: Leaving the Paper Trail Behind

By Jack M. Germain E-Commerce Times Part of the ECT News Network 09/11/07 4:00 AM PT

Perhaps the most significant savings that paperless billing could achieve would benefit the environment directly. Electronic bills would cut down on the consumption of trees. If all U.S. households viewed and paid their bills online, the reduction in paper would save 16.5 million trees a year, according to a recent report published by Javelin Strategy and Research.

This is a very interesting idea.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/11/1546258&from=rss

Swedish Company Trials Peer-to-Peer Cellphones

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday September 11, @01:01PM from the we-can-hear-everybody-now dept. Networking Communications Technology

Dr_Barnowl writes "A company named TerraNet is going through a trial period for a p2p based mobile telephony system. Phones are used to route calls onto other phones, constructing mesh networks of 'up to 20km'. The BBC reports on the natural tendency of the big telecoms providers to want to squash this. I can see other problems though. The advantages in an environment with sparse cell coverage are obvious, but network effects mean that the number of connections in a heavily populated mesh grow exponentially. What happens to your battery life when your phone becomes a node? And while the company is optimistic that they have a viable technology model from IP licensing, the demand for devices supporting this is going to be proportional to the number of devices that it can connect you to."

I wonder if any of my Security students would like to intercept satellite signals (for purely academic reasons of course)

http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2007_09.php#005434

September 11, 2007

EFF Wins Protection for Security Researchers

Court Blocks DirecTV's Heavy-Handed Legal Tactics

San Francisco - In an important ruling today, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked satellite television provider DirecTV's heavy-handed legal tactics and protected security and computer science research into satellite and smart card technology after hearing argument from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The cases, DirecTV v. Huynh and DirecTV v. Oliver, involved a provision of federal law prohibiting the "assembly" or "modification" of equipment designed to intercept satellite signals. DirecTV maintained that the provision should cover anyone who works with equipment designed for interception of their signals, regardless of their motivation or whether any interception occurs. But in a hearing earlier this year, EFF argued that the provision should apply only to entities that facilitate illegal interception by other people and not to those who simply tinker or use the equipment, such as researchers and others working to further scientific knowledge of the devices at issue.

For the full opinion from the 9th Circuit: http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/directv_v_huynh/directv_ruling.pdf

For more on this case: http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/directv_v_huynh

Honesty is good

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070911170051976

Maintenance Note

Tuesday, September 11 2007 @ 06:06 PM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Other Privacy News

From the Dysmanagement Team:

Sometime in the next few days, this site will be moving to a new server. So if we seem to disappear, clear cache and we should reappear. If we don't reappear and if you are a conspiracy theorist, run for your favorite tinfoil hat. If you're not a conspiracist, just figure we screwed up. :)