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Hugh Pickens writes "As companies collect, use, and disseminate data regarding online users, there is concern that tracking individuals' Internet activity and gathering information from online users violates their expectations of privacy. The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday to look at the policy issues, and the hottest topic will be proposed systems by which ISPs can watch users and sell information about their surfing habits to advertising companies. The Center for Democracy and Technology has issued a report suggesting that these systems may violate federal law (PDF). 'Advertising per se is not the evil here,' says Leslie Harris from CDT. 'It's the collection of individuals' information, usually without their knowledge, always without their consent, creation of profiles and the complete inability of people to make choices about that.' On the other side NebuAd, the most active ad-targeting company, says its profiles are interest-based, and not personally identifiable. 'We have designed our entire company to make sure that we stay on the opt-out side of those laws and policies,' says NebuAd CEO Robert Dykes. Charter Communications announced last month that it would suspend a trial of NebuAd due to customer concerns about privacy."

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mikesd81 recommends an AP piece covering a lot of examples of the ways free speech and other rights don't exist on the private Web. One case featured was that of Dutch photographer Maarten Dors, who had this picture deleted by flickr. Without prior notice, Yahoo deleted the photo on grounds it violated an unwritten ban on depicting children smoking. While Dors eventually got the photo restored, after the second time it was deleted, the case highlights the consequence of having online commons controlled by private corporations. "Rules aren't always clear, enforcement is inconsistent, and users can find content removed or accounts terminated without a hearing. Appeals are solely at the service provider's discretion. Users get caught in the crossfire as hundreds of individual service representatives apply their own interpretations of corporate policies, sometimes imposing personal agendas or misreading guidelines. First Amendment protections generally do not extend to private property in the physical world, allowing a shopping mall to legally kick out a customer wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a smoking child." Reason.com has some more analysis on the issues brought up by the AP story.

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Corrupt notes an Ars analysis of the FISA bill of which the telecom immunity provision has been getting all the attention. Timothy B. Lee enumerates the ways in which the bill loosens current protections on domestic wiretapping and opens up whole new areas to government eavesdropping. "The legislation eliminates meaningful judicial oversight of eavesdropping between Americans citizen and foreigners located overseas and effectively legalizes dragnet surveillance of domestic-to-foreign traffic. It stretches out the judicial review process so much that the government will in many cases be able to complete its surveillance activities before the courts finish deciding on its legality."

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TV Barn writes "We've been conditioned to think that if you pull something off the web and use it, you're committing some sort of copyright infringement. But increasingly, the law is moving in the opposite direction. Provided you are making a truly new use of the content, you are free to make money off those copyrighted images and video and sound. On Monday the Center for Social Media released 'Code of Best Practices for Fair Use in Online Video,' which reflects the latest changes in copyright law that has expanded the understanding of fair use to include 'transformational effect.' Already Miro has endorsed the guidelines, as have several public broadcasters. The Center has a good track record, having issued guidelines for documentary filmmakers that have greatly reduced copyright claims in that area. The website has plenty of resources for mashers and mixers; I interviewed the Center's director in this podcast that summarizes the most important findings of the report." On the other hand, says reader kaliphonia, your guitar tablature sites may not fare so well.

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I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "With the telecoms all but assured of amnesty for their participation in illegal spying, there's now one last amendment in their way — the Bingaman amendment. Because President Bush is unwilling to sign FISA reform without immunity, and because Blue Dog Democrats fear for their reelection unless FISA reform as a whole passes, most compromise positions are already off the table. So the new amendment seeks to sidestep part of the problem by moving it to a later date. It would put the court cases and amnesty provision on hold until a report is completed detailing exactly what happened, allowing Congress to consider denying amnesty at that time. There's an EFF campaign to support both this and the Dodd-Feingold amendment, which would strip immunity altogether."

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jlmcgraw was the first to alert us that Hans Reiser has lead police to the location in the Oakland Hills where he buried the body of his wife Nina. (We discussed the rumor that he would do so last month.) SFGate.com reports that remains were recovered but have not yet been identified. Reiser is to be sentenced on Wednesday. CBS5 claims that Reiser made a deal for a reduced sentence, to 15 years, in exchange for revealing the body.

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Law.com has up a review of ongoing and historical cases of telecoms suing municipalities that plan broadband networks. In many cases those same telecoms have spent years ignoring as potential customers the cities and towns now undertaking Net infrastructure projects, only to turn around and sue them. One lawyer who has defended many municipalities in this position says, "This is similar to electrification a century ago when small towns and rural areas were left behind, so they formed their own authorities." Bob Frankston has been writing for years about the financial model of artificial scarcity that underlies the telecoms businss plans. This post gives some of the background to the telecoms' fear of abundance.

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Recently a user, Lori Drew, was charged with a felony for the heinous crime of pretending to be someone else on the Internet. Using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Lori was charged for signing up for MySpace using a fake name. "The access to MySpace was unauthorized because using a fake name violated the terms of service. The information from a "protected computer" was the profiles of other MySpace users. If this is found to be a valid interpretation of the law, it's really quite frightening. If you violate the Terms of Service of a website, you can be charged with hacking. That's an astounding concept. Does this mean that everyone who uses Bugmenot could be prosecuted? Also, this isn't a minor crime, it's a felony punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment per count. In Drew's case she was charged with three counts for accessing MySpace on three different occasions."

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An anonymous reader writes "For more than a decade, Aviel "Avi" Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University in the US and an e-voting activist, has been a vocal critic of e-voting systems. In this interview Rubin talks about the recent US presidential primary election cycle and his thoughts on e-voting going into the November US elections."

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mister_woods writes "It's not just governments that lose private data. Germany's Chaos Computer Club (CCC) reports that market research firm TNS Infratest/Emnid has lost 41,000 private data records of their survey participants. By simply changing the customer ID number in the browser's address bar access could be gained to comprehensive survey results, including names, addresses, dates of birth, email addresses, phone numbers and much more sensitive data. A CCC spokesman described this as 'unprofessional, grossly negligent and above all deeply worrying' and sees this loss as a vindication for its calls for strict regulations for public and private sector data collectors."

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An anonymous reader writes "A site called LegalTorrents has just launched that hosts trackers and seeds for digital media licensed under the Creative Commons license. ('We distribute content with the full permission of the rights holders and use the peer-2-peer file-sharing technology called Bittorrent.') The site even provides a way to donate money to artists you like. (LegalTorrents takes 15% off the top unless you are a member, which costs $50 one-time during the beta period.)" It's always good to see "legitimate" content distributed in ways that make it hard to demonize the distribution system itself — something Lawrence Lessig in particular has been doing for years, and his book "Free Culture" is one of the audiobooks available through LegalTorrents. Note that LegalTorrents has been around for a while now, rather than "just launched," but the current beta period won't last forever.

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palegray.net writes "Congress is attempting to strip US District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of his power following his ruling against the government regarding immunity for telecoms in the NSA wiretapping case. Walker was appointed to the bench by President Bush, and has attempted to enforce existing prohibitions against warrantless wiretapping. From the Wired article: 'Walker, the chief judge of the Northern District of California, affirmed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the exclusive legal method for conducting surveillance inside the United States against suspected spies and [terrorists]. The Bush Administration argues that Congress's vote to authorize military force against Al Qaeda and the president's inherent war time powers were exceptions to the exclusivity provision.' The article makes the observation that Congress seems to be having difficulties bringing itself to enforce the laws that it has previously passed regarding wiretapping, and seems more interesting in silencing opposing viewpoints." Update: 07/06 16:15 GMT by SS: As several readers have noted, the vote would only limit Judge Walker with respect to this particular case. His other responsibilities would be unaffected.

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tpaudio writes "The ACLU and the EFF are suing the Department of Justice over how the government might be using GPS and location data from cell phones. With over 200 million Americans carrying cell phones, this could be pretty important for setting guidelines. We have already seen other frightening powers related to cell phones, such as 'cell mic tapping.'" The ACLU press release is also available, and it contains links to the complaint and the Freedom of Information Act request. We've previously discussed instances of cell phone tracking in the US and elsewhere.

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orenh writes "Viacom has recently obtained a court order that requires Google to hand over a complete list of every video watched by YouTube users. These logs will include the login names and IP addresses of the users. Google are now asking Viacom if they can anonymize the logs before turning them over; Viacom hasn't responded yet. But this privacy nightmare could have been greatly reduced if Google had anonymized the data in advance. Google's privacy policy states that they keep personally identifiable information for 18 months. There is no real reason to do so; Google can achieve everything they need even if they anonymize their search logs after just one month, and it's time users told them to do so."

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An anonymous reader writes "In Iran, crimes such as apostasy (leaving a religion, in this case Islam) and armed robbery are already punishable by death, but a new bill in Iran aims to add to the list 'establishing weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy,' effectively giving the government a free hand in silencing bloggers. The internet is widely used in Iran, despite its previous attempts at censorship. Will this change as the censorship grows more rampant?"

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NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "After three years of pursuing a home health aide in Brooklyn who has never even used a computer, the RIAA has announced it's ready to throw in the towel. Only thing; it wants the dismissal to be 'without prejudice' so it won't be liable for attorney's fees. The courts have been saying that where a copyright plaintiff gives up, the defendant is presumptively entitled to an attorney's fee award. So, Ms. Lindor says 'no way.' She wants the dismissal to be 'with prejudice,' and she wants her attorney's fees." We've been discussing this case and Ms. Lindor's fight against the RIAA for quite some time.

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NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "When some North Carolina State students recently brought to the attention of the Court the apparent illegality of the RIAA's investigations by unlicensed investigators, they also caught the attention of the judges. After reading these new papers, District Judge Louise W. Flanagan, who admits that she's been routinely signing the RIAA's ex parte discovery orders in the past, has indicated that she is now going to take 'a fresh look' at the RIAA's tactics. She issued a stay of the subpoena, ordering NC State not to respond to it, and referred the motions to dismiss the cases to a Magistrate Judge for him to take that 'fresh look' at what has been going on."

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The Associated Press reports that Max P. Sanders, 19, is charged with a felony for attempting to auction off his vote on eBay for the upcoming presidential election. From the article: '"Fundamentally, we believe it is wrong to sell your vote," said John Aiken, a spokesman for the office. "There are people that have died for this country for our right to vote, and to take something that lightly, to say, 'I can be bought... It's a real shame"' Yes, that is a terrible shame, isn't it. Perhaps we should arrest, prosecute, and imprison everyone who sells their vote. The boy says it was all a joke, but prosecutors aren't laughing. Max faces up to 5 years in prison and $10,000 in fines if he is convicted.

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An anonymous reader writes "The Bavarian Parliament passed a law that allows Bavarian police to place 'Remote Forensic Software' (Google translation) on a suspect's computer as well as on the computers of a suspect's contacts. They may break into houses in secret to install the RFS if a remote installation is not possible; and while they are there a (physical) search is permitted too. The RFS may be used to read, delete, and alter data." The translation says that RFSs may be used in cases of an "urgent threat to the existence or the security of the Federation or a country or physical, life or liberty of a person... Even where there is a reasonable assumptions on concrete preparatory acts for such serious offenses."

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theodp writes "In its just-published patent application for Network Node Ad Targeting, Google hatches plans for identifying the most influential of a circle of friends and providing this 'influencer' with 'financial incentives from advertisers in exchange for permission to display advertisements on the member's [social network] profile' (sound familiar, Jeremy?). Doing so will 'provide advertisers with the option of targeting either all members in the community or advertising only on the profile of the influencer, thereby targeting the entire community,' explains Google. Who says you can't buy friendship!"

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