Adsense HTML

EFF Consumer Alert: AdviceBox.com isn't Anonymous Email

From EFF:
  • EFF is warning the public about a so-called anonymous email service located at Advicebox.com. Advicebox.com's tagline is "Anonymous email made easy" but this service does not provide real anonymity -- it's a trap for the unwary and should not be used by battered spouses, whistleblowers and others who need real protection. Read more here.

Will Google take on Microsoft in the market for office-productivity software?

Google has purchased Upstartle, a small startup that runs a collaborative word processor inside Web browsers. Jen Mazzon from Upstartle blogs about the acquisition for Google here. Business 2.o Magazine believes that this acquisition is the surest sign yet that Google plans to take on Microsoft in the market for office-productivity software. Read more here.

Who do you think will win? Can you think of any legal concerns users may have with an online office-productivity suite?

Amazon to make movies and tv shows available to download

The New York Times reports that Amazon.com is in talks with Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers about starting a service that would allow consumers to download movies and TV shows for a fee and burn them onto DVD's. Read more here (free subscription required).

Internet censorship in Russia

On Friday the Russian government sought to shut down a popular, independent news Web site (http://bankfax.ru/) in Siberia for publishing extremist views of an anonymous reader who insulted Islam. This came the day after the government warned a different website (http://gazeta.ru/) over its decision to post on its site caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that were first published in a Danish newspaper last September and inflamed violent Muslim protests when European and other newspapers reprinted them this year.

New York Times: "Anonymous Source Is Not the Same as Open Source"

From the New York Times:
  • "Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, currently serves up the following: Five billion pages a month. More than 120 languages. In excess of one million English-language articles. And a single nagging epistemological question: Can an article be judged as credible without knowing its author? Wikipedia says yes, but I am unconvinced."

Read the full article here.

What do you think? Can an article be judged as credible without knowing its author?

European Digital Library

At least six million books, documents and "other cultural works" are to be put online and housed in the European Digital Library by 2010, the European Commission announced last week.

US internet search giant Google triggered an international race to build an online library when it announced plans in December 2004 to digitise books and documents from a handful of big libraries (see Google Book Search). US based internet and software giants Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon have since announced separate plans while France, angry that private companies took the lead, has pushed for the creation of a public digital library.

Read more here.

What copyright issues need to be considered when creating a digital library?

Backspace: 5 March to 12 March

This week this blog covered several important stories and raised a number of interesting issues:

For LWB141 Legal Institutions and Method students

The PowerPoint slides used in Peter Black's computer LWB141 tutorials are available here.

Microsoft's search engine is Live

This blog has been following the launch of Microsoft's new search engine. Now we can start using it and see whether it is a serious threat to Google's dominance.

To start searching, go to http://www.live.com/.

Personal information released onto the internet

Wired reports that customers of the online payments service iBill have had their personal information released onto the internet. The information, including names, phone numbers, addresses and email addresses, are now being bought and sold in a black market made up of fraud artists and spammers.

As the report notes, "The breach has broad privacy implications for the victims. Until it was brought low by legal and financial difficulties, iBill was a top credit-card processor for adult entertainment websites."

To read about the details of this story, click here.

How should damages be assessed for privacy and cybersecurity breaches

Listen to this podcast where I discuss how damages should be assessed in privacy and cybersecurity lawsuits. The Lawyers Weekly Show host J...