Technology - Top Stories latest opinions

You think your design work gets stolen now? Wait 'til infringement becomes the law of the land. The Orphan Works Act defines an "orphan work" as any copyrighted work whose author any infringer says he is unable to locate with what the infringer himself decides has been a "reasonably diligent search." In a radical departure from existing copyright law and business practice, the U.S. Copyright Office has proposed that Congress grant such infringers freedom to ignore the rights of the author and use the work for any purpose, including commercial usage.
zeldman.com Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Google in Maori launches

To celebrate Te Wiki o te Reo Maori 2008, a group of dedicated volunteers has worked together over the course of the past year to translate the Google homepage and search interface into the Maori language.
Geekzone.com Wednesday, July 23, 2008

One Spammer Sentenced To 4 Years In Jail As Another Escapes From Prison

Last week, we asked you how you would sentence a convicted spammer, and you came up with all sorts of colorful solutions. I doubt it influenced the judge much, but she's now sentenced the spammer in question to almost four years in jail, noting that she hopes it will serve as a warning to other spammers, especially unrepentant ones like Robert Soloway: "This individual has refused to stop his criminal conduct, notwithstanding two separate civil judgments and an injunction by a U.S. federal court judge. I suggest to you the only effective way to stop Soloway is a long prison sentence during which he'll be incapable of continuing this criminal activity." Of course, on the very same day the sentence was handed down, another spammer escaped from the minimum security prison where he was serving a 21-month sentence. Federal Marshals and the FBI are apparently now searching for him. Perhaps Soloway will have a bit more security. Permalink
Techdirt.com Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Checking your mobile data usage online is not easy: a Telecom New Zealand tale

Yesterday I posted about telecom New Zealand's lack of a "meter" for their mobile data. Here is something that I thought would illustrate the issue well...Let's say you rent a car on a monthly basis, for work. You agree to pay $49.95 a month if you drive up to 1,000 km per billing cycle, and $1 per km after this.You decided on 1,000 km because you thought this could cover your average daily usage multiplied by the number of days in the month.You get the car and notice there is no meter in it, but the rental agency tells you it's ok, they are monitoring it within their system, remotely.You drive away. During 30 days you have no exact idea of how many kms you've done. You have to keep calling the company to find out how many kms you have driven so far, and calculate to see if you are still within the expected average. Then you receive the monthly bill. You look through five pages for something that says "kms driven this month", but instead you find "times you sta
Geekzone.com Wednesday, July 23, 2008

What Productivity Studies Really Show [Opinion]

Every time a new research study around personal productivity and office culture appears, we dutifully post the "proof" that information overload, email distractions, and multitasking are keeping you...
Lifehacker.com Wednesday, July 23, 2008

NY State Passes Video Game Labelling Law; About To Waste Taxpayer Money Defending It

About a dozen states have passed laws either requiring video games be labeled for content or banning the sale of certain video games to children. Every single time this has happened, the law has been struck down as unconstitutional. And, every single time, the same arguments are shown to politicians, explaining how such a ban is a clear violation of the First Amendment. Politicians know this. But they can't resist passing such laws, because it gets them headlines about how they're "protecting the children," even if the only real result is having to waste taxpayer money defending the law in court, where they always lose. The latest to join the fray? New York State. NY has been working on such a bill for a while, and Gov. Patterson has signed it into law. Lawsuits are already being filed against it, and New York will almost certainly lose. Once again, we can't resist repeating the quote from Judge Richard Posner in striking down one of these laws: "Violence has always been and
Techdirt.com Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Road Runner Hawaii Vulnerable to DNS Threat

A Significant DNS threat that is now on the loose on the Internet ... set to really cause mayhem in a really bad way. So tonight I did a quick check of Road Runner Hawaii and the Time Warner system here and found that the system administrators here have not patched their DNS servers yet. BetaNews Try your site via the DNS Checker on this site Explanation on how bad this can be!
Geeknewscentral.com Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Amazing, But True: FTC Doesn't Want To Rush Into National Privacy Standards

While there are plenty of gov't agencies that seem to rush into any chance to add more regulations that grant them more power, the FTC has a history of being quite reasonable and quite conservative about these things. You may recall that years ago, the FTC was against the idea of CAN-SPAM because it would effectively legalize plenty of spam, with one FTC commissioner noting that spam should be anything that you don't like -- and legislating against that is next to impossible. Specifically, he was worried (correctly, it appears) that in allowing lawmakers to define spam, it has merely opened up more possibilities for spamming. That commissioner (Orson Swindle) is no longer with the FTC, but the Commission seems equally skeptical of any sort of national privacy standards, noting that any set standards would deal with the market we see today, not the markets of tomorrow, and that could create serious unintended consequences. It's so rare these days to see federal agencies not leap for
Techdirt.com Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Joichi Ito - One of the Smartest Guys in the Room - a ''Venture Communist''

The best panel (by far) I saw at Fortune Brainstorm was "2018: Life on the Net." It was moderated extremely well by Quincy Smith, CEO of CBS Interactive. On the podium was Lawrence Lessig, professor of Law at Stanford Law School, Joichi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons and Chairman of Six Apart Japan, and Philip Rosedale, founder and chairman of Linden Lab, (Second Life.) I'm currently editing the video of the panel and all were very good but wanted to pull out this segment featuring Mr Ito, who is one of my new favorite people to watch. He has some very original insights. During this segment, Vint Cerf, (Father of the Internet) calls out that he is a "venture communist!" [url] just posted this video so it might still be processing by Youtube, so check back in a few minutes if it isn't yet available.)- - - Rave reviews find out why! - Order the The Amazon Kindle Electronic Book Reader! You need video services! Creation, Distribution, Atten
Siliconvalleywatcher.com Wednesday, July 23, 2008

DNS Flaw Is A Serious Security Threat

Aaron Massey has a good write-up of the DNS vulnerability that was discovered by security researcher Dan Kaminsky and leaked onto the Internet this week. In a nutshell, a flaw in the design of the DNS protocol (which translates domain names like "techdirt.com" to IP addresses) will make it possible for malicious individuals to invisibly redirect web traffic from legitimate sites to sites of the attacker's choosing. This is a huge deal because a ton of online applications and services depend on reliable DNS for their security. You might think you're visiting your bank's website, but if your DNS server isn't patched you could really be sending your password to hackers in Russia. Kaminsky tells Wired that fewer than half of the DNS servers on the Internet were patched when the details of the vulnerability leaked, so it's a real problem. If your ISP hasn't patched its DNS servers, you can protect yourself by switching to OpenDNS until they do so. There's a long-running argument in comput
Techdirt.com Wednesday, July 23, 2008

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