Justice be damned! It's the money!
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2218682,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594
Massachusetts AG Slams TJX Consumer Settlement Sale
November 19, 2007 By Evan Schuman
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who is heading the multi-state attorney general probe of TJX, is opposing a part of the proposed settlement of the consumer class-action case.
In a letter Nov. 15 to the federal judge overseeing the cases outlining her objections, according to documents filed in federal court Nov. 16.
... Her objection was not so much with the sale itself, but with having it included as a part of the official settlement. The difference? If it's in the official settlement, it increases how much money the consumer lawyers involved in the case get for their fee.
... The attorneys general who signed the letter represent Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont and California. In March, there were 34 states involved in the probe. There was no word what happened to the other 24 states and whether they endorse the letter's comments.
You might ask yourself how they could be unaware...
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20071119133146779
Survey Says 62 Percent of Companies Believe Missing Computers Go Unnoticed; Consumers Fear Identity Theft
Monday, November 19 2007 @ 01:31 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches
... Absolute's survey of its consumer customers had 1842 qualified respondents while 402 companies responded to the corporate survey. A summary of each can be found below. For additional results from both surveys, please visit: http://www.absolute.com/resources/computer-theft-statistics-complete-survey.asp
[...]
One in five (20%) companies reported experiencing a data breach in the past and believe that the majority (61%) of data breaches are perpetrated by internal employees. However, one in five (20%) also believe that sensitive data has been breached that no one in the company is aware of. What kind of data is being exposed? 39% have had confidential business information lost, 22% have had employee information breached, 22% have had customer information misplaced and 16% have had Social Security numbers stolen.
Source - Trading Markets
...here's how.
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20071119171437475
Global State of Information Security Study
Monday, November 19 2007 @ 05:14 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches
A new security survey shows organizations are strong on infrastructurer but are weak on monitoring and enforcement. Whilst India improves information security safeguards, China leaves room for improvement. Organizations worldwide are investing in infrastructure but lagging in implementation, measurement and review of security and privacy policies according to the 5th annual Global State of Information Security Survey 2007, a worldwide study by CIO magazine, CSO magazine and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
{...}Other survey results show privacy continues to be high profile but not necessarily high priority for security executives. Most companies report gains in privacy safeguards however there are a few key areas in which companies still tend to be weak. Only one-third (33 percent) of respondents keep an accurate inventory of user data or the locations and jurisdictions where data is stored.
Similarly, only one-quarter (24 percent) keep inventory of all third parties using customer data. Encryption of data at rest also remains a low priority even though it is the source of many data leakage issues. Less than half of respondents report encrypting data residing on databases and laptops (50 percent and 42 percent respectively).
Source - 4Hoteliers.com
It was a good idea (clearly identifies what could be done) but it was doomed to failure because the lawyers weren't getting paid...
Federal Judge Tries Experimental Method to Resolve a Major e-Discovery Dispute in Non-Adversial Manner
District Court Judge William Haynes, Jr. in Nashville recently tried to move litigants out of a traditional adversarial approach to e-discovery, and into a more cooperative kumbaya mode. How did he do it? He scheduled a hearing and requested all of the attorneys and their IT experts to be present. Then when they arrived, he asked all of the lawyers to leave so that the experts could work things out in peace.
Are you reading this? Then you're in deep trouble!
http://techdirt.com/articles/20071119/015956.shtml
The Infringement Age: How Much Do You Infringe On A Daily Basis?
from the a-lot-more-than-you-might-think dept
Boing Boing points us to a paper from John Tehranian, called Infringement Nation: Copyright Reform and the Law/Norm Gap (pdf), which attempts to show how far out of whack copyright laws are, with the simple tale of a hypothetical law professor (coincidentally named John, of course) going about a normal day, tallying up every big of copyright infringement he engages in. Replying to an email with quoted text? Infringement! Reply to 20 emails? You're looking at $3 million in statutory damages. Doodle a sketch of a building? Unauthorized derivative work. Read a poem outloud? Unauthorized performance. Forward a photograph that a friend took? Infringement! Take a short film of a birthday dinner with some friends and catch some artwork on the wall in the background? Infringement!
"By the end of the day, John has infringed the copyrights of twenty emails, three legal articles, an architectural rendering, a poem, five photographs, an animated character, a musical composition, a painting, and fifty notes and drawings. All told, he has committed at least eighty-three acts of infringement and faces liability in the amount of $12.45 million (to say nothing of potential criminal charges). There is nothing particularly extraordinary about John’s activities. Yet if copyright holders were inclined to enforce their rights to the maximum extent allowed by law, he would be indisputably liable for a mind-boggling $4.544 billion in potential damages each year. And, surprisingly, he has not even committed a single act of infringement through P2P file sharing. Such an outcome flies in the face of our basic sense of justice. Indeed, one must either irrationally conclude that John is a criminal infringer—a veritable grand larcenist—or blithely surmise that copyright law must not mean what it appears to say. Something is clearly amiss. Moreover, the troublesome gap between copyright law and norms has grown only wider in recent years."
While the paper calls this "infringement nation," it clearly goes beyond our nation. We are living in the "infringement age," where it's impossible not to infringe on copyrights every single day -- yet many people still don't understand why it makes sense to change copyright laws to make them more reasonable.
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