Slashback: Indymedia, Starfighter, Mozparty

Slashback, below, brings updates and followups to several recent Slashdot stories, including Diebold's (trivial) financial penalty for copyright abuse, reviews of 'The Last Starfighter,' an inquiry into the best response to the recent seizure of Indymedia's servers in the UK, and the upcoming, distributed Mozparty2 to celebrate the 1.0 releases of Firefox and Thunderbird. Read on for the rest.

An apology might be a nice start. Chris writes "The UK government has broken its silence on the Indymedia server raid and is claiming that there 'no UK law enforcement agencies were involved'; see Richard Allan's blog for the whole written answer. This means that the potential for taking legal action against Rackspace in the UK needs to be explored -- were any UK laws (eg the Data Protection Act 1984 or the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000) broken? Are there any UK cyber law experts on Slashdot with any suggestions...?"

Is Google private enough for you? XeRXeS-TCN writes "Following on from the recent concerns reported on Slashdot about the Google Desktop, the CEO of Copernic has warned about user privacy. Google Desktop Search allows users to opt out of sending the company back detailed usage data, but it isn't possible to firewall it completely. Much more ominously, Google's product manager Marissa Mayer said she expected the private queries to generate more hits for google.com. Most people, she believed, would choose to combine personal and web searches resulting in more revenue for Google's ad business. More on this at The Reg."

If this is a dupe, then Murphy was right. Vcullen writes "The Formula that scientists recently proposed to calculate Murphy's Law has recently been turned into an easy to use online Murphy's Law calculator. So now you can work out what the probability of it happening on any given situation!"

Nice shooting, kid. Bravo! Jason Scott writes "Inspired by the Slashdot story about the arrival of 'The Last Starfighter: The Musical' off-Broadway, I drove from Boston to New York City and back in one day to attend a matinee. I have written a review of what I experienced on my weblog. As I say in the review, 'If spoilers do not interest you, if you only want the simplest of directions and want to make the next right move, then heed these words: if you live within driving, walking, bus or train distance of New York City, see this musical. Immediately.'"

And ottffs writes with his own impressions: "I was recently in Manhattan presenting at ACM Multimedia 2004 conference. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the premiere of 'The Last Starfighter: the musical' on Friday night. I have posted a review and some pics to my blog."

There goes the next office party budget. JimMarch(equalccw) writes "After losing a major copyright case in which Diebold was punished for exercising their copyright in a wrongful fashion (copyWRONG?), the other shoe has dropped: the court says Diebold owes the ISPs and webmasters who complained a total of $125,000. "

Anyone care to start one for El Paso? loconet writes "Following the success of Mozilla's 1.0 release parties, where Mozilla supporters from all over the world celebrated the release of Mozilla 1.0, comes Mozparty 2 celebrating the upcoming 1.0 release of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. According to the Mozparty site, currently there are 1007 ppl partying in 109 parties from which the biggest party is in Mexico."

Comments

Google

[erick99]

The Google privacy issues are not issues if people use it on their home machine with a single user accessing the machine as Google instructs. The software was never intended to be deployed in a business or other multi-user environment.

Re:Google

[BenjyD]

Clearly nobody reads the articles, not even the mods. From TFA:

"users should know that the giant ad broker intends to mix public and private queries in the future,"

"Google Desktop Search allows users to opt out of sending the company back detailed usage data, but it isn't possible to firewall it completely"

"Eric Schmidt said the company's goal was to create a "Google that knows you""

Admittedly, the main source for the article is the CEO of a competitor to Google. But this isn't the multi-user issue.

Re:Google

[erick99]

Yes, a competitor who made unsubstantiated statements that do not reflect well on Google. It's a cheap shot and tells me they are afraid of Google and not confident of their own stable. But, hell, it worked. It fooled you.

Diebold

[mind21_98]

Now if only Diebold would be punished for their crappy voting systems, we'd be in nirvana. :)

"Diebold's (trivial) financial penalty "

[FauxReal]

Come on, give the guys a break, they were too busy protecting the sanctity of the political process. Besides, it's not like they were downloading music!

Re:Don't start planning your mozparties yet.

[bizpile]

Firefox is notoriously bad at coming out on the days they say it will. November 6th? Not gonna happen.

Most of the parties aren't being planned on the day of the release anyway, seeing as how it is (I believe) on the 11th which is a Thursday.
From the site:
*Hint* Suggested date for your parties is: Friday, November 19 - Sunday, November 21

How long before...

[Anonymous Coward]

... a virus or worm could exploit this google privacy issue?

Its all about the fear factor

[t_allardyce]

The Indymedia thing to me sounds like a case of an ISP doing everything it can not to get into trouble. Its been shown time after time and even tested, ISPs will remove/giveup anything if they told. Even random people on Hotmail accounts have been able to order that information be taken down because it violates copyrights even though the copyright is fully explained on the actual page. We've come to a time when ISPs have no interest in sticking up for their clients, if someone can sue Rackspace then maybe it will send a message that ISPs have 2 sides to respect OR perhaps the law could just be changed to take all legal responsibility off their hands?

Re:Its all about the fear factor

[dbIII]

We've come to a time when ISPs have no interest in sticking up for their clients

If they do so it is entirely possible that they will be shutdown by some bloodyminded official. Bruce Sterling's non-fiction "The Hacker Crackdown" has some good examples of machines that were seized on very flimsy pretexts and not returned for months or well over a year - and that was over ten years ago before DVDs were considered worth protecting with a military reponse (Norway). Very few ISPs have the resources to rebuild an entire facility from scratch - it's not just the hardware, all available backups are seized as well.

I'm sure the words "National Security" would have been invoked in this case. It is not entirely impossible for people to be dragged away and locked in a cage in Cuba for two years without even being charged with a crime - so any ISP is likely to roll over as soon as some official looking types with US accents turn up and start talking about security.

Re:Its all about the fear factor

[poot_rootbeer]

The Indymedia thing to me sounds like a case of an ISP doing everything it can not to get into trouble. Its been shown time after time and even tested, ISPs will remove/giveup anything if they told.

That basically seems to be what it boils down to.

Despite the claims that have been made on IndyMedia about IndyMedia (impartial observers, wot?), it appears that the decision to pull the plug the UK-hosted IndyMedia machines was unilaterally made by RackSpace, the hosting company.

Could RackSpace, a company that does business in both the US and the UK, have had its arm twisted by US law enforcement to pull the plug? Possible, but unlikely -- for one thing, we would have seen the fuzz go after IndyMedia resources located in the US as well. Claiming that US law enforcement was indeed involved in this action in the absence of any proof to that effect is speculation and irresponsible reporting.

Re:Its all about the fear factor

[Yeb]

Rackspace made the following press release:
In the present matter regarding Indymedia, Rackspace Managed Hosting, a U.S. based company with offices in London, is acting in compliance with a court order pursuant to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), which establishes procedures for countries to assist each other in investigations such as international terrorism, kidnapping and money laundering. Rackspace responded to a Commissioner's subpoena, duly issued under Title 28, United States Code, Section 1782 in an investigation that did not arise in the United States. Rackspace is acting as a good corporate citizen and is cooperating with international law enforcement authorities. The court prohibits Rackspace from commenting further on this matter.

Do you think Rackspace is making this up? The US was clearly involved, unless this is a total fabrication of Rackspace's, which I doubt.

Why would Rackspace want to unilaterally pull the plug, anyway?

-Jeff

Re:Its all about the fear factor

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

The Indymedia thing to me sounds like a case of an ISP doing everything it can not to get into trouble. Its been shown time after time and even tested, ISPs will remove/giveup anything if they told.

Hah! ISP's? Most people react this way. While many slashdotters would be familiar with Milgrams Experiment, I'm not sure how many realise what for me is the real insight here - not only will people submit before authority, they will submit before an unsubstantiated image or impression of authority. Rarely do people ask to see the papers, authorisations or justifications of those who seem to know what they're doing ( and I've experienced this effect first hand in the healthcare industry ).

Ok, rant over. But I think you'll be surprised how quickly the average person will be cowed by an authority figure ( lawyer, policeman, person in an expensive suit ) regardless of whether or not their claims have merit. The change that has to be made is not just for ISP's, but for all citizens.

YLFI

Gunstar

[centauri]

I don't know what they called it in the stage show, but in the movie the Starfighter is not the name of the ship. The ship is called a Gunstar. The being who fires the weapon systems of a Gunstar is called a Starfighter.

(And the pilot of a Gunstar is called a Starnavigator)

Murphy's Law Calculator

[interactive_civilian]

ummm...they seem to have forgotten a very important side effect of probabilities and Murphy's law (at least that I have noticed in my experiences, and Murphy and I have become rather close):

The more improbable that something will go wrong, the greater the chance that it will go wrong immediately and in a big way.

I mean, come on, don't these people read the Guide? The Starship Titanic immediately underwent a massive existence failure because some fool tried to use an improbability field and make it infinitely improbable that something would go wrong with the ship.

So, as a PSA to all: Do NOT trust low numbers from the Murphy's Law calculator. If you get a low score, then duck and cover.

Oh my God, Google stands to GAIN something????

[aardvarko]

Much more ominously, Google's product manager Marissa Mayer said she expected the private queries to generate more hits for google.com. Most people, she believed, would choose to combine personal and web searches resulting in more revenue for Google's ad business.

MOTHER OF FUCK! No! That's just wrong.

Aw yeah for ppl.

[The Pi-Guy]

According to the Mozparty site, currently there are 1007 ppl partying in 109 parties from which the biggest party is in Mexico.

Ah, I'd love to welcome you to Slashdot, but we don't take kindly to AOL users here. Please turn in your geek badge at the door - a man named Roland will be collecting them.

Diebold Demonstration Video

[PollGuy]

I came across this Diebold training video. Check it out.

More on Indymedia

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some good questions on Spy Blog:

The questions about whether or not Rackspace's UK subsidiary have acted illegally under United Kingdom law, by intercepting "electronic communications" (including emails), disrupting an electronic communications system, export of personal data outside of the European Union to the USA without permission, breach of copyright etc. still need to be answered.

Without the protection of a properly authorised UK law enforcement warrant, which was obviously not obtained in this case, Rackspace UK could be sued for breach of confidentiality by the >Indymedia systems administrators with whom they have a legal contract.

The contract was with Rackspace UK and Rackspace are a UK limited company... you can look this up with Companies House (UK office hours, they don't leave their mainframe connected to the net when they are not in the office!)... so there must be potential for breach of contract action(s) here...

Check term 10 of Rackspace UK's Master Service Agreement:

"10 Law and Disputes
10.1 This Agreement shall be governed by English law.

I rang Rackspace in the UK today, their Linux managed servers sales section, I asked them if they would host a box for me in the UK and if it could be exempt from UK laws... I didn't get very far... I asked to speak to her boss but she said they were both out... she said only the US company could speak about this matter...

For more background on this see Jebba's blog and also please sign the Indymedia Solidarity Statment!

PS Isn't it time for a Indymedia topic with a nice (((i))) logo... :-)

chrisc at indymedia.org

Re:Don't start planning your mozparties yet.

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

That is probably because, unlike SOME Redmond-based monopolies whose names I won't mention, they try to actually get it RIGHT before they release it. Good software is preferable to timely software any day.