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The Year In Tech Law

Posted by michael on from the law-and-order dept.

Selanit writes "CNet has an article rounding up the year in IP law. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this article is that the SCO case gets only one paragraph out of a fairly lengthy article. It's good to get a reminder that there are other issues out there, including content filtering in libraries, the potential for a tax on Internet access, pop-up ads, domain name legislation, and of course file-sharing."

26 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Why is it surprising? by ObviousGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The SCO case introduces no new law. The case relies almost solely on existing law.

    --
    I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
  2. SCO only getting 1 paragraph understandable... by tekiegreg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Think about it, how many Cnet readers even know what Linux is? Ok that's sarcasm but you get the idea, Windows users are not horridly affected by Darl McBride/SCO and company. However this regulation has many people in the Linux community wondering (well duh).

    Spam on the other hand affects all of us, and the effectiveness of the new law will bring a shrug from most of us. If it's effective, great; if not the battle rages on...

    Pop-ups? Same thing, affects everyone, legislation in any direction would be interesting to all.

    Illegal music downloading also has popular appeal. The draconian efforts of the RIAA affect anyone who could be sued (including the grannies they were suing who barely knew what a computer was...)

    Domain names? Got a fair amount of mention apparently, the reach on that issue is medium, lots of people own domain names these days.

    Taxes, DEAR GOD NO!!! Good they're not going anywhere yet...broad reach so gets decent mention...

    So in the end this is the reporting I'd expect from CNet...

    --
    ...in bed
    1. Re:SCO only getting 1 paragraph understandable... by AKnightCowboy · · Score: 5, Funny
      Pop-ups? Same thing, affects everyone, legislation in any direction would be interesting to all.

      Pop-up? What's a pop-up?

      -- Clueless Mozilla user.

    2. Re:SCO only getting 1 paragraph understandable... by Dukael_Mikakis · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Okay, so I don't have unending faith in CNet, but I'd at least expect some savviness to at least know about Linux (CNet does acknowledge the SCO case as "Perhaps the most far-reaching high-technology legal issue in 2003"), so they're not blind. The problem is that the public, the average Windows-Hotmail-IE-Kazaa computer user has no idea that the case is significant.

      It's sad, because it certainly is significant to the ordinary computer user. What happens if open source is allowed to collapse like this (and it won't)? Well, much of the present software developed has been more than a little derived from open source or open research (IE derived from Mosaic or even modern UIs hijacked from Xerox research).

      Sure, the ordinary user doesn't care about Linux for his or her own system, but what will happen to these users if open source folds?

      All the servers and other systems that form the framework of the internet could become increasingly propietary by rogue distributors like SCO and make the Internet more costly to run/access, whatever. Researchers wouldn't be willing to develop formerly open source software because they'll simply be padding Darl's pockets for free, so there could be a sort of stagnation of new and creative ideas (users didn't think all the UI innovations were Microsoft's idea, did they?). Decreased (albeit somewhat slight) competition for Microsoft's monolithic OS. The list goes on ....

      Basically, it's sad to see CNet (a technology portal) give more face time to an (avoidable and preventable -- with Mozilla or blockers) issue like Pop-Ups (and misleading domain names, etc ...) than to something at the core of the computer revolution (and hence at the basis of all these issues) as the open source case. CNet should be trying to educate users, not pandering to their sensibilities.

      But I guess I know what Linux and SCO is and everything, so I have a different perspective.

  3. No Eldred mention? by tepples · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why wasn't the Supreme Court's upholding of serial copyright term extension (Eldred v. Ashcroft) mentioned?

  4. At one time by cluge · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At one time we didn't NEED internet law. It was understood that certain standards of behavior we're required so that we could all "get along". People that refused to follow the rules were "banned", essentially made non citizens of the global eletronic world. It was a brutally effective punishment.

    Now we have no real accepted standard of behavior, and no penalty that is effective. Thus we have to create "Internet Laws" and find someway to enforce them. The early system was elegant and egalitarian. The current system is simply a miserable failure. I do not pine for the early days, I do not secretly sit in a dark corner complaining about the unwashed masses. I am vocal and write to my representatives when internet issues come before them, I try to enlighten my friends and family on the issues. Perhaps someday we will have some represntatives with a modicum of internet savvy. Then and only then can we start to write good internet law. Until then, 2003 was merely a stepping stone in a long arduous process.

    AngryPeopleRule

    --
    "Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
    1. Re:At one time by jjjack · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think the reason "internet law" wasn't necessary in the early days is that the internet wasn't actually used for all that much, and those who used it tended to be scientists and/or people very technically-inclined. You can't bemoan the fact that the internet is now used by the general public, that's just how it's happened. As a result, innovation on the internet boomed in the late '90s, and created a lot of issues which are now being considered. Along with this, general interest in the Internet of course created major commercial interests.

      So the important thing to do now is to get educated individuals with a "modicum of internet savvy," as you put it, to represent the public interest to our officials (yes I know that's their job, but if they aren't doing it correctly, we need to help instruct them) in order to counter the often amoral and anti-innovative opinions of the invested commercial interests.

    2. Re:At one time by astrashe · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There was another explanation, something that some people believed in.

      The idea was that the net worked because of shared protocols. You didn't have a cop enforcing thing in the center -- people followed the protocols because it was in their own interests to do so. If you didn't follow the protocols, then you'd be unable to communicate.

      Protocols that allowed people to cheat were bad protocols. I used to hang around on the cypherpunks list, and that's where I picked up this world view. But the idea is that a good protocol will prevent people from cheating, usually cryptographically.

      The idea was that if you were a solid net citizen, and pushed for strong, well designed protocols, and if you were responsible (ie., you applied your patches), then you would be safe.

      Cypherpunks had actually extended their experiences on the net to a form of libertarian politics. They thought that by applying these ideas, the state could -- would inevitably -- shrink, and that people would become less dependent on central authorities enforcing rules.

      DoS attacks tend to argue against that point of view, I think, as does the power of inertia that old protocols like SMTP have.

      But on the other hand, you have to admit that the net is remarkably usable, remarkably complicated, and remarkably free of central administration.

      I would be pretty surprised if the powers that be didn't break it over the next decade or so.

    3. Re:At one time by Tim+C · · Score: 3, Insightful

      At one time we didn't need any law - what the village elder(s) said, everyone did. Failure to comply would generally see you left to fend for yourself, banished, or killed.

      Then society got too big and too complex, and laws had to be made, and people employed and charged with upholding them.

      I see the net as being similar. Back when it was small, as you say everyone agreed to get along, or was kicked out. Now, it's too big for that - you get me kicked off my current ISP today, I'll be back with on new one tomorrow.

      On the other hand, with its distributed, no single owner nature, I'm not sure how we can make laws for the net as it is. There's simply no-one to enforce them.

      --
      It's official. Most of you are morons.
    4. Re:At one time by adjuster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      At one time we didn't NEED internet law. It was understood that certain standards of behavior we're required so that we could all "get along". People that refused to follow the rules were "banned", essentially made non citizens of the global eletronic world. It was a brutally effective punishment.

      It's still a brutally effective "punishment" today. No one is stopping users (corporations, individuals, etc) from installing pop-up blockers, subscribing to blacklists, using alternative DNS roots, and generally mangling the hell out of the traffic they receive from the Internet.

      The thing is, on the whole, we're not exercising our freedoms to shun others and "police" the Internet ourselves. The public support needed to really make these "punishments" work isn't here, and the waves of unsecured "zombie" computers give ammunition to those who would seek to thwart these "punishments" with denial-of-service attacks. We need better software solutions to help people "police" their view of the Internet, more secure client computer operationg systems (and no, I don't mean "trusted computing"), and more social education about acceptable behaviour (i.e. never buy anything you see advertised in a spam, stop patronizing companies that you see advertised in spam, etc).

      United States legislators are more concerned about passing new laws to outlaw very abstract types of "crimes" ("illegal spamming", as defined by the direct marketing lobby, for example) than they are about working to see that our law enforcement has the necessary appropriations and tools to enforce those existing laws that are being broken now (spammers breaking into PC's and using them for spam factories, for example).

      I think we'd all agree that modifying bits bound for somebody else without their express consent is a bad idea, but modifying bits that I've requested is a-okay. Firewalls, proxy servers, intrusion detection and response systems-- all of these "technologies" function on that principle.

      It's going to be really, really disturbing, though, when we all wake up and find out that we can't run our "popup blockers", use our blacklists, and filter responses through proxies anymore. It'll be "made illegal" to alter the contents of packets that we receive from the Internet because of "intellectual property" bogosity.

      It's going to be even more disturbing when we all wake up and find that none of us have "root" access on our computers anymore. All our packets on the Internet are going to be authenticated and cryptographically "secured" (i.e. "secured" from US), and the content publishers and distributors will hold all the keys.

      I may be overly pessimistic now, I guess, but I feel like we can't stop it. The Internet, as we know it now, is going to be gone sooner rather than later. There will be "other internets" that will be similar to this one, but the age of a single, unified, global Internet is going to pass quickly, and idiotic legislation, content publishers and distributions, and "intellectual property" are going to be the forces that break it apart.

      --
      The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
  5. Hard to believe some of this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I had to read this twice before understanding the full extent of the possible repercussions. IANAL, but I think now the 9th circuit court could invalidate the ruling, which would be a disaster for many of us:
    In its first ruling on COPA, a divided Court said that definition does not by itself render the statute substantially overbroad for purposes of the First Amendment, refused to lift an injunction against enforcement of the act and sent the case back to the lower appellate court, which in March 2003 found COPA unconstitutional.
  6. It *was* a scary year by jsav40 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I feel as if I've lost a whole slew of civil rights as far as anything connected to computers goes. Starting with libraries, continuing on to my "illegal" linux DVD software and culminating with DCMA. The fact that congress is taking every opportunity to connect *everything* to the "war on terror" does not bode well either.

  7. More free publicity for SCO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The article claims that the outcome of this SCO case could affect the future of Linux. Wooo, scary! Just the kind of statement they want!

    How about a more accurate statement like: "Unless SCO comes up with some evidence behind their so-far meritless case, SCO is likely to accelerate their self-destructive business trajectory."

    There is simply no conceivable way SCO can win this case. The future of Linux has a better chance of being affected by the second coming of Cthulhu.

  8. the diffrent meanings of the term "IP" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If someone said "IP" last year, people in the tech-world would probably assume they were talking about the internet protocol.

    This year however, its all about "Intellectual Property"
    Sad..

  9. Let's not forget... by PaulK · · Score: 4, Informative

    The criminal arena. The first ever "felony" spam arrest, followed by two more spammers surrendering.

    A cybersquatter goes to prison for pr0n linking to mis-spelled children specific sites. Not trying to be redundant, but this article is informative.

    My personal favorite, "DVD Jon" acquitted.

  10. libraries and secret site lists by bodrell · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I find the ruling on libraries, requiring them to install site-blocking software, especially frightening. I know it's been said many times before, but plenty of legitimate sites get blocked--like those discussing reproductive health, or censorship itself. And although outright pornography isn't found in libraries, some books are considered pornography to conservatives. The best example I can think of is "Naked Lunch" by William S. Burroughs, which has some repulsive content, but the Supreme Court ruled it could not be banned as an obscene material. I'm sure an online text of the book would be filtered out.

    Of course then there's the software patenting nonsense. At least the patent office has enough sense to realize it needs to reform itself.

    --
    Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
  11. grassroots campaign to end spam by bodrell · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Besides whitelisting, the only way I can think of to end spam is to get people to stop buying the advertised products. This can't be that hard to do. You could even buy spam-advertised products, as long as you didn't click the link in the email. Ex: rather than clicking the link in a Viagra spam, just find an online drugstore yourself and buy it through them. I know there are plenty of net-stupid people out there, but if everyone takes the time to spread the word, maybe we'll have a reduction in spam. Or, at the very least, keep some money out of the spammers' pockets. Someone second me on this. And for the lazy, it'd be a trivial New Year's resolution to spread the word about not clicking on spam links.

    And out of curiosity--there have been plenty of high-profile spammers interviewed in various publications; now that an anti-spam bill has been passed, are those folks all fair game for law enforcement?

    --
    Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
    1. Re:grassroots campaign to end spam by Artifakt · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem is, spam only requires half a percent of the most cluelss or so to bite, and it's working. Fixing that CAN be that hard to do.
      A task like getting 80% of your local high school graduates to go on to college or trade school, or like getting a 50% reduction in the highway fatality rate by getting the worst 10% of drivers off the road, is a lot easier than getting the word to that last, clueless 1/2%, just because you can miss a half % or so completely, and still succeed, but here it's that last 1/2% that you have to find and convince instead, and nothinge else counts.

      --
      Who is John Cabal?
  12. More SCO coverage to come by PCM2 · · Score: 3, Funny
    Look for my forthcoming book,

    Laughing Stock: The Darl McBride Story

    The title works on so many levels...

    --
    Breakfast served all day!
  13. Internet legislation futility by adjuster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Who says I have to use "the" root DNS servers?

    Who says I have to use "official" ICANN IP address allocations?

    Am I committing a crime in the United States if I put up a private network running TCP/IP, put up some DNS servers that are authoritative for "CartoonNetwork.com" and put up some web servers to host pornography for that domain name? What about if I invite other people to participate in my private network? What about if I sell access to the public to my private network? What if I sell rights to corporations to join my private network? Where does the idiocy end?

    Idiotic legislation to attempt to control the behaviour of the Internet is going to result in "multiple internets". We may well end up with the "United States internet" and the "rest of the world internet". Hell-- we practically have a "Chinese internet" and a "rest of the world internet" now.

    Cooperation on the Internet works on the basis of social pressure, not on legislation. Legislation will only cause the Internet to fragment and "route around" the stupidity.

    --
    The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
    1. Re:Internet legislation futility by Jerf · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Who says I have to use "the" root DNS servers?

      Shhhhh. Don't freak out the Senators.

      Am I committing a crime in the United States if I put up a private network running TCP/IP, put up some DNS servers that are authoritative for "CartoonNetwork.com" and put up some web servers to host pornography for that domain name?

      To the extent that an external, unconnected visitor might see this resolution of "CartoonNetwork.com", it probably would be a crime, but not really one of those new-fangled "internet crimes", it'd just be fraud and/or trademark violations.

      If it's purely internal then I can't imagine what the crime would be.

      Cooperation on the Internet works on the basis of social pressure, not on legislation. Legislation will only cause the Internet to fragment and "route around" the stupidity.

      Only to the extent that the legislation permits. I can imagine laws that can not be "routed around" in any significant way; an extreme, but perfectly viable, option is to ban the Internet altogether, or just whitelist it at the transport level. This is damned hard to just "route around". Unfortunately, this logic promotes just sitting back and do nothing ("they will inevitably lose"), which is a Very Bad Idea, not least of which is that there is still a difference between "not losing" and "winning".

    2. Re:Internet legislation futility by adjuster · · Score: 4, Interesting

      (Oh dear-- I just found your blog on a Google search about a minute ago, and here you've replied to one of my posts. Now that's fuckin' spooky!)

      To the extent that an external, unconnected visitor might see this resolution of "CartoonNetwork.com", it probably would be a crime, but not really one of those new-fangled "internet crimes", it'd just be fraud and/or trademark violations.

      If it's purely internal then I can't imagine what the crime would be.

      I wonder where the "line" between "internal" and "external" stops, eh? Suppose "my internet" was a private organization that you could join and particpate in. I wonder how trademark usage comes to bear in private communications between private individuals or companies. I don't know enough about how United States trademark law would work in this case, but I suspect that it's quite odious, given the mindset of "intellectual property" "owners". Our (worldwide) "intellectual property" law is outmodded and mismatched with technology.

      Only to the extent that the legislation permits. I can imagine laws that can not be "routed around" in any significant way; an extreme, but perfectly viable, option is to ban the Internet altogether, or just whitelist it at the transport level.

      I'm talking about countries, states, ethnic groups, etc that decide to simply "make their own internet" because "the Internet" isn't suitable for their needs anymore. Does this U.S. legisation that covers "the Internet" cover "my internet"? I seriously doubt these laws are sophisticated enough, and I doubt that there's necessarily jurisdiction for the United States government to control the operation of private computer networks-- especially those that are made up of physical components located outside their geographic borders.

      Unfortunately, this logic promotes just sitting back and do nothing ("they will inevitably lose"), which is a Very Bad Idea, not least of which is that there is still a difference between "not losing" and "winning".

      I'm not advocating that we "do nothing" because "they will inevitably lose". Rather, I'm saying that we might as well "do nothing" because (1) the emergence of private internets is inevitable, and (2) the interests of the public to freely communicate and exchange ideas have already taken a back seat to the greed of content distributors and "intellectual property" "owners".

      You may know of Douglas Adams' character "Wonko the Sane". He decided that the world was incurably insane after he read the instructions on a packet of toothpicks. He reasoned that any society that needed instructions to use toothpicks was so sufficienty sick as to be beyond hope.

      In that mindset, then, I knew we were "fucked" when, a few years ago, a simple piece of software that allowed users to make shared annotations on web sites (a piece of software that users consented to using by downloading and installing themselves) was held up as some kind of violation of intellectual property by content creators. If I remember correctly, the content creators bitched about "derivative works" and somesuch. The content creators were saying "They're still our bits, even when you're using your computer to display them". It's the same logic that says that making "mix tapes" should be illegal. It's the same logic that says that you shouldn't be permitted to make annotations in books that you've purchased. I don't believe the manufacturer of the software was litigated out of existance, per se, but I'm sure that any effort to do something similar today would be.

      Once I saw that this logic was at play on the Internet, I knew we were fucked, and that there wasn't much point in doing anything else.

      --
      The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
  14. Obscenity vs. indecency by tepples · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And although outright pornography isn't found in libraries, some books are considered pornography to conservatives.

    An erotic work will fall into one of two classes: "obscene" erotica without artistic or scientific value, and merely "indecent" erotica considered "harmful to minors" even though it may be art. The Supreme Court has long held that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not protect the right to disseminate "obscene" material. The COPPA/COPA/CIPA controversy mostly considers 1. preserving adults' access to legitimate "indecent" erotica, and 2. preserving access to non-erotica that censorware miscategorizes as erotica, such as breast cancer pages, Philip K. Dick pages, pages that promote adoption over abortion or vice versa, Matsushita's site, etc.

  15. SCO case hasn't made law, not surprisingly by mbstone · · Score: 4, Informative

    Case law gets made when somebody loses their case, it goes up to a court of appeals, and the appellate court either affirms or reverses, issuing an opinion. So it's neither interesting nor surprising that the SCO v Linux case isn't mentioned in the article, that case is still at the trial court level.

  16. One year is not enough. Look back at the last ten by Qrlx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's going to be even more disturbing when we all wake up and find that none of us have "root" access on our computers anymore. All our packets on the Internet are going to be authenticated and cryptographically "secured" (i.e. "secured" from US), and the content publishers and distributors will hold all the keys.

    I don't know diddly about crypto... but what you've described is exactly why Hollywood wanted CSS.

    If Xing had protected their key better, we might still be trying to crack DVDs. (I'm not really sure how strong CSS is.) But take note of the approach -- a combination of leveraged industrial power, tech, and legislation. I think we'll be seeing this hybrid approach more and more. Try to lock 'em out, and if(when) the hackers find a way in, make sure the path they took was an illegal one, and a federal case to boot.

    To wit: "Content providers" believe that when you skip commercials in TiVo, you're "stealing" from the networks. New TiVo's don't have this feature. (Or maybe it's ReplayTV, I'm a bit ignorant since I barely watch TV.) When you decipher Adobe's eBook, you go to jail for a few months -- the Sklyarov case being the equivalent of the Feds dipping their toes in the hot tub. Linking is looking less and less like protected speech. Jon Johansen gets retried for DeCSS. Microsoft rams Product Activation down our throat, and Windows XP loves to phone home.

    While everyone's caught up looking at the trees, here's what's happening in the forest: We're inching ever towards limiting the common man's access to "intellectual property" (whatever that is). In doing so we're walking away from the past five hundred years of intellectual freedom brought about by Johannes Gutenberg and Martin Luther.

    This is a huge, gigantic assault on the philosophy of the Enlightenment, on which (to some extent) our country was founded and our Constitution based. Yet my impression is that most comptuer geeks only see the tip of the iceberg --e.g. "I can't legally play my DVDs on Linux" or "ROT13! WTF J00 AD0B3 LAM3RZ!" The strongest fight is coming from librarians. I think librarians are the only ones to realize that, were libraries to be invented today, they would promptly be sued out of existence by the RIAA for illegal filesharing.

    Though I think the librarians missed the obvious solutions when faced with CIPA and COPA: Deny Internet access to minors, and let adults surf unfettered. Let's see how Mommy and Daddy respond to that.

  17. Grateful by Lord_Dweomer · · Score: 3, Insightful
    You know, while everybody here has been discouraged over the downfall of our online freedoms (and i'm right with ya on it), I feel grateful. The internet spreads information at such speed that it speeds everything up. Including the evolution of societies. The internet is a society. It is a culture.

    We have been fortunate enough to be able to live through the "Pilgrim" days of the net, as well as the "Wild West" which we are just starting to come out of. We've experienced many exciting things, and it doesn't look to be slowing down any time soon.

    In 5 or 10 years from now, we may all be under the draconian rule of M$, the RIAA, the MPAA, or whatever organizations might strip our net freedoms, but they can never take away our memories of what it was like in the golden days.

    I hope it doesn't come to that, but if it does, I will be sure to tell my future children and grand children of the glorious days of yore when you had to be a real computer geek to even access a BBS, or when almost any song or movie or software program could be found online for free if you knew where to look.

    Take a step back and absorb all you can about the great things we take for granted on the net right now, for you may log on one day to find out they've disappeared over night, like a broken link.

    --
    Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!