INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
On trial: Digital copyright law
Music Bill Is Bully on IMs
INTERNET
Electronic Frontier Foundation Joins Wireless Crusade
Physicians' Net Usage Up
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
ON TRIAL: DIGITAL COPYRIGHT LAW
On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of
a 22-year-old programmer. Thus far, the controversial Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 has been upheld by every judge. ACLU hopes that
this case will be different. The plaintiff, Ben Edelman, has been conducting
research in an effort to critique software used by public schools and
libraries. In the library-filtering lawsuit now before the Supreme Court,
Edelman reviewed software by Surfcontrol, N2H2, Websense and Secure
Computing, and concluded that filters are unable to do a consistent job of
blocking only pornographic Websites. The ACLU's lawsuit seeks permission for
Edelman to Decrypt N2H2's blacklist, publish the decrypted list and
distribute a decoding utility. Many experts doubt that, in the current
climate, the court will agree that the First Ammendment is more important
than the DMCA.
[SOURCE: CNET, AUTHOR: Declan McCullagh]
(http://news.com.com/2100-1023-946266.html?tag=fd_lede)
MUSIC BILL IS BULLY ON IMS
Representative Howard Berman (D-CA) introduced his peer-to-peer legislation
yesterday in the House of Representatives. The proposal would give copyright
owners the legal right to employ technological measures to stop peer-to-peer
trading. In essence, the bill allows copyright owners to immediately
'attack' individual computers, open-source programs and decentralized
networks. Recourse for mistaken identity actions would be difficult.
Individuals would have to petition the Attorney General who would then have
four months to investigate the matter. Rep. Berman's legislation also gives
carte blanche to chat applications such as AOL Instant Messenger, MSN
Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. Each of these have file-sharing options built
into their systems and, more importantly, ties with the entertainment
industry that protect them from anti-piracy action. AOL, for instance, is a
subsidiary of AOL Time Warner and Yahoo has a licensing agreement with the
recording industry. The Association of Competitive Technology said in a
letter to Rep. Berman that it will continue to support the bill as long as
it protects instant messaging products. Despite the entertainment industry's
cries against file-sharing applications, instant messenger programs may pose
a bigger threat to those genuinely concerned about stopping downloading. At
its height, the Napster network handled just under three billion files a
month, while AIM handles one billion files a day.
[SOURCE: Wired News, AUTHOR: Brad King]
(http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,54124,00.html)
INTERNET
ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION JOINS WIRELESS CRUSADE
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has posted a list of Internet
service providers (ISPs) that allow customers to share wireless Internet
access with their neighbors and passers-by through the use of low-cost
wireless hubs. These wireless "community networks" gives free Internet
access to households located near a wireless hub. According to EEF, this
practice "democratizes access to Internet services and helps to span the
digital divide by providing anyone within the physical vicinity access to
the Internet."
[SOURCE: Electronic Frontier Foundation]
(http://www.eff.org/Infra/Wireless_cellular_radio/20020725_eff_wireless_pr.h
tml)
PHYSICIANS' NET USAGE UP
A survey conducted by the American Medical Association (AMA) finds that
almost half of the responding physicians indicated that the Web has had a
major impact on the way they practice medicine. The study, based on
interviews with 977 physicians in the U.S. from August to December 2001,
revealed that more than three-quarters (78 percent) of physicians surf the
Web. The higher numbers of Web-surfing doctors is encouraging for the
millions of patients that would like to communicate online with their
physician. A recent Harris Interactive survey in the U.S. has shown that
large numbers of people would be likely to fix appointments, refill
prescriptions or ask simple questions of the doctors online and that many
people would pay to be able to do this.
[SOURCE: CyberAtlas, AUTHOR: Robyn Greenspan]
(http://cyberatlas.com/markets/healthcare/article/0,,10101_1430741,00.html)
---------------------------------------------------------------------