Virginia Anti-Spam Law Overturned, Spammer Walks – Washington Post

The Virginia Supreme Court today struck down a state anti-spam law, saying the statute violated the First Amendment right to free and anonymous speech. The decision also tossed out the conviction of a North Carolina man once described as one of the most prolific spammers.

»»»

U.N. agency eyes curbs on Internet anonymity – CNET News

A United Nations agency is quietly drafting technical standards, proposed by the Chinese government, to define methods of tracing the original source of Internet communications and potentially curbing the ability of users to remain anonymous. The U.S. National Security Agency is also participating in the “IP Traceback” drafting group, named Q6/17, which is meeting next week in Geneva to work on the traceback proposal. Members of Q6/17 have declined to release key documents, and meetings are closed to the public. The potential for eroding Internet users’ right to remain anonymous, which is protected by law in the United States and recognized in international law by groups such as the Council of Europe, has alarmed some technologists and privacy advocates. Also affected may be services such as the Tor anonymizing network. “What’s distressing is that it doesn’t appear that there’s been any real consideration of how this type of capability could be misused,” said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. “That’s really a human rights concern.”

»»»

Consultation on legislative options to address illicit P2P file-sharing – BERR

Thinking About Truth, Lies, and the Power of Google – Wired Campus

Amy Fry, a San Diego librarian, has a thoughtful little post on ACRLog called “Information Is Power — Even When It’s Wrong.” It’s basically a dissection of the United Airlines stock-value dive that occurred after a reporter from Income Securities Advisors posted erroneous information that he had gotten from a Google search. For the average librarian, the event provides a series of lessons: that “proper metadata is important” or that “sometimes aggregators are misleading.” But a big lesson for Ms. Fry: “Google is more powerful than we even realized.”

»»»

Los Angeles Times – xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, September , 2008

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 2:59 pm and is filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewed 2845 times