Abu Ghraib photos online

The online news magazine Salon.com has published what it says is the complete archive of the Army's photographic evidence in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse investigations. The archive included a photo depicting a naked Iraqi detainee with bleeding wounds allegedly from an attack by U.S. military dogs.

Most of the photos had been published before. Salon.com said it was the first news organization to publish the full file of photos collected by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, which previously released some in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Read more here. To see the pictures, click here.

Should these images be available on the internet? What policy considerations underpin your opinion on this issue?

Online international paedophile pornography ring

27 people who were part of an international paedophile pornography ring that streamed live molestations of children over the internet have been charged with possession, receipt, distribution and manufacture of child pornography.

Authorities have identified seven child victims, including an infant whose molestation in April by a suburban Chicago man was transmitted live via an internet chat room to a co-conspirator who used the screen name "BigtDaddy619".

Four of those charged allegedly molested the children, making the resulting images available in the chat room called "Kiddypics & Kiddyvids," that facilitated trading of thousands of images and videos, the statement said.

Read the full story here. See one of the indictments here.

ISP held not liable for passively posting defamatory content

A UK court has ruled that an internet service provider (ISP) cannot be held liable for passively posting defamatory content. The court ruled that "an ISP which performs no more than a passive role in facilitating postings on the internet cannot be deemed to be a publisher at common law." The court did acknowledge that
"if a person knowingly permits another to communicate information which is defamatory, when there would be an opportunity to prevent the publication, there would seem to be no reason in principle why liability should not accrue."

The case is Bunt v. Tilley [2006] EWHC 407 (QB) (10 March 2006).

Google to put whole books online

From SiliconValley.com:

• Google is expanding its role in the publishing world from a search engine for books to a distributor making entire books available to read online.
  The company launched a new program Friday that allows traditional book publishers in the United States and Britain to sell and set the price for access to full copies of their books, Google spokeswoman Megan Lamb said Monday. Consumers who purchase the access cannot save copies of the books or individual pages to their computers and can view them only through a Web browser.
  "We are collaborating with publishers -- in response to demand from them -- to develop a suite of online tools that will enable publishers to experiment with new and innovative ways to generate more book revenue,'' Lamb said in an e-mail.
  The new program is open only to U.S. and U.K. publishers at this point.
  Several points remained unclear: whether Google would get a cut of the price paid for access to a book; whether customers who purchase access to books see advertising while they read the books; and whether independent authors will also one day sell full access to their books through the service.

Read the full article here.

US Family Entertainment and Copyright Act

A pair of apparent Ryan Adams fans violated the new US Family Entertainment and Copyright Act when they made portions of the singer's latest album available on a website frequented by his fans. The indictments are believed to be the first under the pre-release provision of the 2005 FECA law. Read more here.

Reinventing the internet

The Economist wonders what the internet would look like if a clean slate redesign was implemented. Read more here and listen to an audio interview with Tom Standage, Technology Editor of The Economist here:

• The internet has been a hotbed of innovation because it’s "dumb". The designers didn’t presuppose how the internet would be used and that has made it extremely flexible. But what we are running into now are scaling and security problems, and some people are asking: if we were building the internet from scratch, what would be the ideal clean-slate design?

Do you think the internet should be redesigned from scratch? What do you think the internet would look like? Do you think that such a redesign could ever realistically happen?

Legal to search a computer for child pornography

The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that police may search computer hard drives for child pornography if their owners subscribe to websites selling the images. The panel found that there was a "fair probability" customers of child pornography Web sites receive or download the illegal images, opening the door for police searches.

The opening two paragraphs of the opinion summarise the issue:

• The term "Lolita" conjures up images ranging from the literary depiction of the adolescent seduced by her stepfather in Vladimir Nabokov’s novel to erotic displays of young girls and child pornography. This case requires us to consider probable cause to search a computer for child pornography in the
  context of an Internet website, known as "Lolitagurls.com," that admittedly displayed child pornography.
  Micah Gourde appeals from the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress more than 100 images of child pornography seized from his home computer. Gourde claims that the affidavit in support of the search lacked sufficient indicia of probable cause because it contained no evidence that Gourde actually downloaded or possessed child pornography. We disagree. Based on the totality of the circumstances, the magistrate judge who issued the warrant made a "practical, common-sense decision" that there was a "fair probability" that child pornography would be found on Gourde’s computer. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983). The Fourth Amendment requires no more.

The full opinion is available here. A news story reporting on the ruling is available here.

US Child Online Protection Act

In 1998 the US Congress passed Child Online Protection Act. The Act was to impose a $50,000 fine and six-month prison term on commercial Web site operators who publish content "harmful to children',' as defined by "contemporary community standards". However, legal challenges from sexual health sites, the online magazine Salon.com and other internet publishers have kept it from being enforced. The US Supreme Court has twice granted preliminary injunctions that prevent the government from enforcing theAct until the case is tried.

Opponents of the Act contend that not only is it too broad and would therefore stifle free speech, but that advances in technology have made it obsolete. SiliconValley.com summarises the issues plaguing the Act.

Is the Act obsolete? Does the Act unduly infringe upon free speech? How can we protect children from offensive content that is available online?

Judge plans to order Google to hand over data to the US Government

The New York Times reports that as the US Justice Department has sharply cut back its request for search-engine data from Google, a federal judge indicated that he would instruct Google to comply with a government subpoena in the department's defense of the Child Online Protection Act, a 1998 law that would impose tough criminal penalties on individuals whose websites carried material deemed harmful to minors..

Read more here (free subscription required). See also CNN.com.

Microsoft in trouble with the European Commission

According to the Associated Press, the European Commission told Microsoft last Friday that it was "still not in compliance'' with a 2004 antitrust ruling that ordered it to share information with rivals to make their software work with Microsoft servers. The EU has already threatened Microsfot with 2 million euros in daily fines, backdated to 15 December, and said it will make its final decision after a hearing for Microsoft to plead its case later this month.

Read the full report here.