So are my Computer
Security majors worth more in the job market or not?
Future
of Data Breach Class Actions After ‘Anderson’
John F. Mullen and Francis X. Nolan IV
discuss the state of class action lawsuits over data breaches. Here’s
a snippet:
In October 2011,
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued its decision
in
Anderson
v. Hannaford, where it denied the defendant grocery
chain’s motion to dismiss an action arising from a breach of
customers’ personal information—a rare significant victory for
plaintiffs alleging mitigation damages.
1 Anderson
is viewed, by some, as a watershed moment in the brief but
frenzied history of data breach litigation. But is it really a
departure from precedent? If not, what sets
Anderson apart
from other unsuccessful data breach actions? This article reviews
and analyzes notable decisions in this area of law.
That just means they can't hit him with
it, right? They have to bring their own club...
Code
Not Physical Property, Court Rules in Goldman Sachs Espionage Case
Former Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey
Aleynikov, who downloaded source code for the investment firm’s
high-speed trading system from the company’s computers, was wrongly
charged with theft of property because the code did not qualify as a
physical object under a federal theft statute, according to a court
opinion published Wednesday.
“Because Aleynikov did not ‘assume
physical control’ over anything when he took the source code, and
because he did not thereby ‘deprive [Goldman] of its use,’
Aleynikov did not violate the [National Stolen Property Act],” the
2nd Circuit Court of Appeals
wrote
in its opinion (.pdf).
The three-judge panel in New York also
ruled that Aleynikov was wrongly charged with espionage, since the
code was not a product designed for interstate or foreign commerce, a
requirement under the Economic Espionage Act with which he was
charged and convicted. The court found that Goldman’s system was
neither “produced for” nor “placed in” interstate or foreign
commerce, nor did the company have any intention of selling its
system or licensing it to anyone.
The opinion finally provides
explanation for why the judges delivered a surprise ruling last
February that reversed Aleynikov’s conviction and sprung him from
prison a year after he had begun to serve an eight-year sentence.
The ruling also deals a blow to the
government’s ability to prosecute others for similar thefts of
trade secrets under the EEA.
I'm going to have someone
explain this to me. It's conspiracy to charge more than DoJ thinks
books are worth?
April 11, 2012
DOJ
Files Lawsuits Against Apple and Publishers Over E-Book Pricing
News
release: "In recent years, we have seen the rapid growth –
and the many benefits – of electronic books. E-books are
transforming our daily lives, and improving how information and
content is shared. For the growing number of Americans who want to
take advantage of this new technology,
the Department
of Justice is committed to ensuring that e-books are as affordable as
possible. [Interesting choice of words. Will they offer coupons?
Bob] As part of this commitment, the Department has
reached a
settlement
with three of the nation’s largest book publishers – and will
continue to litigate against Apple, and two additional leading
publishers – for
conspiring
to increase the prices that consumers pay for e-books. Earlier
today, we filed a lawsuit in
U.S.
District Court for the Southern District of New York, against
Apple and five different book publishers – Hachette, HarperCollins,
Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster. In response to our
allegations, three of these publishers – Hachette, HarperCollins
and Simon & Schuster – agreed to a proposed settlement. If
approved by the court, this settlement would resolve the Department’s
antitrust concerns with these companies, and
would
require them to grant retailers – such as Amazon and Barnes &
Noble [and Apple? Bob] – the freedom to reduce the
prices of their e-book titles. The settlement also requires the
companies to terminate their anticompetitive most-favored-nation
agreements with Apple and other e-books retailers."
(Related) It's not who you know, it's
who you PAC (and how generously)
Jeff
Bezos Should Send Eric Holder a Christmas Card
I can imagine Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in
Seattle this morning, reading the Justice Department’s antitrust
lawsuit on a gigantic Kindle Fire XL prototype, and grinning ear to
ear, savoring every word.
… Jeff Bezos knows exactly
what to do next. Jeff Bezos doesn’t have to answer to anyone any
more. Everyone else, including his most powerful counterparts across
the negotiating table, will have to answer to him.
Amazon as the returning hero
Officially, Amazon’s response to
today’s news is fairly measured. “This is a big win for Kindle
owners, and we look forward to being allowed to lower
prices on more Kindle books,” writes Amazon spokesman
Drew Herdener in an e-mail.
The settlement gives Amazon everything
it wants in its dealings with publishers, and enshrines it as part of
an agreement with the federal government, and compliance with
antitrust law.
… In short, the settlement forces
publishers who agree to it to go back to the negotiating table with
Amazon while systematically taking away every piece of leverage those
publishers have had — whether ill-gotten or not.
… What’s left out of the Justice
department’s lawsuit might be even better news for Amazon than
what’s included. There is no broader look at any of the
anticompetitive vagaries of the e-book market beyond publishers’
negotiations with retailers in the period before and after the launch
of iBooks.
The suit blasts most favored nation
agreements without noting that Amazon has aggressively pursued MFN
agreements with publishing partners, including partners whose books
it sells wholesale. It’s completely silent on retailers’ and
device manufacturers’ use of DRM to lock customers into a single
bookstore. Amazon is purely a market innovator, not a budding
monopolist, even as the DOJ notes that Amazon’s pricing power
helped determine pricing power across the industry.
(Related) On the other hand...
DOJ
is likely to lose e-book antitrust suit targeting Apple
One reason lies in the Justice
Department's
36-page
complaint, which recounts how publishers met over breakfast in a
London hotel and dinners at Manhattan's posh
Picholine
restaurant, which
boasts
a "Best of Award of Excellence" from Wine Spectator
magazine.
The key point is that Apple wasn't
present.
The Department of Justice "has a
far better case against the publishers than Apple," says
Dominick
Armentano, professor emeritus of economics at the University of
Hartford and author of
Antitrust
and Monopoly who's now affiliated with the
Independent
Institute in Oakland, Calif. "If the CEOs of the various
publishers got together in hotel rooms to discuss prices, they are
sunk" and might as well settle, he says.
Richard
Epstein, the prolific legal scholar and professor of law at New
York University, goes further. Epstein
argues
in an essay published yesterday that there are "difficulties"
with the Justice Department's case against publishers as well: "It
will take some time to hear the whole story, but the betting here is
that this lawsuit is a mistake."
At least California added
schools to those prohibited from invading your privacy.
More
States Try to Keep Facebook Passwords Away From Bosses
The Maryland General Assembly passed a
law on Tuesday to make it illegal for employers to ask employees for
Facebook passwords, and now other states are considering similar
legislation, including California,
Michigan,
Minnesota
and
Illinois.
In California,
State
Bill 1349 would prevent
schools and
employers from demanding access to social media accounts.
… One of the challenges that these
laws will face is the fuzzy line between “personal” and “work”
accounts. For instance, an employee may use a personal Twitter
account to tweet as a subject matter expert who works for a
well-reputed consultancy. Whether that consultant is
tweeting from a work or personal account could be challenged in a
court. [Who made money? Bob]
A US court can stop an
injunction issued by a German court because the German court's ruling
would stop the US court from ruling? This is why I'd never make it
in Law School – my head would explode.
"In an unusual case, a U.S.
judge has ruled that
Motorola cannot enforce an injunction that would prevent Microsoft
from selling Windows products in Germany, should a German court
issue such an injunction next week. Microsoft asked the judge for
the ruling in anticipation of an injunction that a German court is
expected to issue related to a patent infringement suit that Motorola
filed against Microsoft in Germany. The suit centers primarily on
Motorola licenses that have been declared essential to the H.264
video standard. The German injunction is expected on April 17."
[From the article:
Microsoft argued that if
the judge would allow that German injunction to go forward, which
ultimately might compel Microsoft to negotiate a license according to
German law, the U.S. court would lose its opportunity
to make its own ruling on similar licensing issues. The
U.S. court should be the one to rule on that issue, Microsoft argued,
because Microsoft filed its lawsuit against Motorola over the terms
of a licensing deal before Motorola filed its suit in Germany.
The University just went
to dual-boot (Windows 7 & Ubuntu) over the break between Quarter.
This was (apparently) considered so trivial that they didn't even
notify the professors. We haven't trained anyone on Windows XP in a
long while...
"Microsoft's recent
announcement that it will end support for the Windows XP operating
system in two years signals the end of an era for the company, and
potentially
the beginning of a nightmare for everyone else. When
Microsoft cuts the cord on XP in two years it will effectively leave
millions of existing Windows-based computers vulnerable to
continued and undeterred cyberattacks, many of which hold the
potential to find their way into consumer, enterprise and even
industrial systems running the latest software. Although most of the
subsequent security issues appear to be at the consumer level, it may
not be long until they find a way into corporate networks or
industrial systems, says VMWare's Jason Miller. Even scarier,
Qualsys's Amol Sarwate says many SCADA systems for industrial
networks still run a modified version of XP, and are not in a
position to upgrade. Because much of the software running on SCADA
systems is not compatible with traditional Microsoft OS capabilities,
an OS upgrade would entail much more work than it would for a home or
corporate system."
Ah ha! That's why they
killed the penny, so Canadians would be forced to use e-Currency!
Now they will be able to spend fractional pennies if they choose –
perhaps my blog would be worth 14/93 of a penny?
"The
Canadian mint has allowed 500 developers to enter a
contest to create a new digital currency. The
currency would allow micro payments using electronic devices.
From the article: 'Less than a week after the government announced
the penny’s impending death, the Mint quietly unveiled its digital
currency called MintChip. Still in the research and development
phase, MintChip will ultimately let people pay each other directly
using smartphones, USB sticks, computers, tablets and clouds. The
digital currency will be anonymous and good for small transactions —
just like cash, the Mint says. To make sure its technology meets the
gold standard in a world where digital transactions are gaining
steam, the Mint is holding a contest for software developers to
create applications using the MintChip.'"
(Related)
"A Japanese bank this week said
it will introduce ATMs
that use palm scanners in place of cash cards. Ogaki Kyoristu
Bank said the new machines will allow customers to withdraw or
deposit cash and check their balances by placing their hand on a
scanner and entering their birthday plus a pin number. The ATMs will
initially be installed at 10 banks, as well as a drive-through ATM
and two mobile banks. Ogaiki announced the new ATMs with the slogan
'You are your cash card.'"
How to get a
micro-education?
Microsoft
Inks Its Biggest Cloud Deal Yet: 7.5M Students And Teachers In India
Microsoft has announced that it has
signed its largest-ever cloud services deal, an agreement with the
All India Council for Technical
Education to deploy Microsoft’s Live@edu service to some 10,000
technical colleges in the country, covering 7.5 million users.
Microsoft
Live@edu
Microsoft Live@edu offers education
institutions free, hosted, co-branded communication and collaboration
services for students, faculty, and alumni. Microsoft Live@edu can:
Provision cloud-based email.
Provide enterprise-class tools.
Enable online document sharing and
storage.
Help improve alumni communication.
For my Intro to Computer
Security class
Could this be an e-Study
Group tool?
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Remember when Facebook was just a
network for college students? Well they're not reverting back to
those days, but today they did introduce
Groups
for Schools that do require members to have a .edu email from the
college or university whose group they wish to join. The new Groups
for Schools option is for colleges and universities who wish to
create groups in which to post lectures, notes, and files. Groups
for Schools includes a
file
sharing option that members of each group can use.
TechCrunch
has a good piece about Facebook's new Group's for Schools that I
recommend reading.
For that day in the (near)
future when e-Textbooks become mandatory...
eReaderLookup is a website that allows
users to compare different eBook readers and choose the best one
suited for them. It shows users complete specifications of the
available eBook readers along with their price.
