I’m flattered that some of my peers have chosen to honor my Blawg Review #93 (The Illumninati 2-disc special edition) as one of the best Blawg Reviews from 2007. I’m looking forward to hosting again myself on the 28th of January… I’d like to nominate my fellow Hosts as follows: #122 – David Gulbransen #130…
So why is it difficult to properly legislate for Cyberspace?
Ryan Blitstein asks this question in a great article at the Mercury News, here is the link. To summarize, the difficulties include legislators who don’t understand the technology, as well as companies that fight good laws because the proposed law hurts their bottom line. Special interests, as usual, appear to have more sway than implementing…
IPLAC High Tech Committee – 11/16/2007
The first of the IPLAC High Tech Committee’s lunchtime discussions will be held on November 16, 2007 at John Marshall Law School from 12-1:30. As the chair, I can say that I am really excited to have this come together. If you can join us, please do! The details on how to register are in…
Quick Links
Here are a few short items of interest I’d like to pass along: 1) Conrad Jacoby has a great article on the electronic discovery of employee-owned computer equipment that was published at llrx. Here is a link. 2) If you’ve not already seen Michael Wesch’s video called Information R/evolution, check it out now. It only…
Will hacked iPhones become iBricks?
Jacqui Cheng’s article at Ars Technica points out the dilemma facing consumers who want to hack their iPhones so they are not tied to Apple’s exclusive service provider in the USA, AT&T. While hacks are available, they are quasi-legal at best. And, users who do it face the possibility that their $600/$400 iPhone could become…
Video on National Security Letters
The Bill of Rights Defense Committee has put together a 26-minute video entitled “FBI Unbound: How National Security Letters Violate Our Privacy”, which can be viewed online or ordered on DVD. It features interviews with Lisa Graves, Bruce Fein, and George Christian, who actually received one of these letters and can talk about it. Hat…
Symantec releases e-discovery solution
Symantec has announced a new e-discovery initiative by rolling out products that will assist in the collection of electronically stored information. Unfortunately, these appear to be only for users of its Enterprise Vault solution. Still, it’s a nice change. Symantec claims that it will reduce the likelihood of system administrators having to testify as to…
Blawgworld 2007
I’m happy that my Blog was included in the 2007 edition of Blawgworld, published by Technolawyer. Here’s a link to get your free copy. Be sure to check out the other wonderful legal blogs that are linked through from there.
Detecting government spyware
Here’s an interesting article, written by Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache, entitled “Will security firms detect policy spyware?” There are currently no rules that specifically require companies to comply with requests for government spyware to be installed on users’ machines. There similarly is no current requirement for anti-spyware vendors to write software that doesn’t detect…
Microsoft claims Open Source software violates its patents
Although I’m not a patent attorney, I was drawn to news of Microsoft’s statement in a Fortune article that free and Open Source software violated 235 of its patents. Mary Jo Foley covered the news in detail here. In particular, the claim was made by Microsoft’s Horacio Gutierrez that the Linux kernel violates 42 Microsoft…