Archive
Category: Weblog
Random assortments, selected for semantic content.
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Holland on the Failure of Law in Cyberspace
H Brian Holland, of Barry University School of Law, has published an article entitled ‘The Failure of the Rule of Law in Cyberspace? Reorienting the Normative Debate on Borders and Territorial Sovereignty’ (2005) John Marshall Journal of Computer & Information Law [Forthcoming]: The ultimate goal of this article is to suggest a different perspective on… Read more →
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Internet Accounts and Probable Cause
Orin Kerr offers this analysis of the circumstances in which the existence of an internet account will satisfy the ‘probable cause’ requirement to search a home for evidence: In [such] cases, the police know that an Internet account was used in a particular way potentially related to criminal activity. The police then use that knowledge… Read more →
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Lexar Settles Patent Dispute with Memorex
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Lexar Media Inc said on Monday Memorex has agreed to settle a patent infringement case related to CompactFlash cards sold by Memorex prior to November 2004, sending Lexar shares up 1.7 per cent. Lexar claimed in its 2001 lawsuit that certain Memorex cards infringed a number of its flash memory patents.… Read more →
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Legal ethics and the Ford Pinto
Basically every private law subject I’ve taken in law school has had something to say about the Ford Pinto case. Various movements in legal theory have referred to it when discussing product liability, consumer rights, the moral turpitude of law and economics, legal ethics (including the procedural pathologies of adversarial advocacy and other annoying alliterations),… Read more →
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Nuclear Reactor Cybersecurity Targeted by New US Legislation
Under new United States legislation, operators of the US electricity grid will be subject to greater regulation of their cybersecurity practices: A visit from the Slammer worm … may have been in part to blame for failures at a nuclear power plant in 2003, the report said. And in March, electric industry security consultants reported… Read more →
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Cabinet Paves Way for Telstra Sale
Federal Cabinet has approved a $3 billion plan for regional telecommunications that will pave the way for the full sale of Telstra. The plan includes a $2 billion fund to pay for service upgrades in regional Australia in the future. Mr Costello says the plan will resolve the issue of Telstra’s ownership once and for… Read more →
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Google Seeks Patent for RSS Advertisements
According to The Register, ‘Google has filed for a patent that covers advertisements in syndicated content’. Application No 20050165615 concerns a method for ‘Embedding advertisements in syndicated content’: ‘Syndicated material, eg, corresponding to a news feed, search results or web logs, are combined with the output of an automated ad server. An automated ad server… Read more →
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New Open Source Licence in the Works
Lawrence Rosen, author of the Open Software License (‘OSL’), has announced on the OSI’s licence-discuss list a draft of version 3 of the OSL (pdf). Rosen explains that many of the changes are in response to a report by the European Commission on open source software licensing. While the OSL is used by fewer than… Read more →
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Scottish Police ditch open source software in favour of Microsoft Office
‘The Central Scotland Police is removing Sun Microsystems Inc’s StarOffice productivity software from about 400 PCs and switching to Microsoft Corp’s Office System, citing lower maintenance costs and the need to interoperate more smoothly with other departments running Windows. ‘It’s not really based on any ideological argument about open-source software, it’s based on pure business… Read more →
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‘Video Game Defence’ Rejected By Jury
‘FAYETTE, Alabama (AP) — A 20-year-old whose lawyers claimed the video game Grand Theft Auto and childhood abuse caused him to kill three small-town police officers was convicted Tuesday of capital murder. Defense lawyers had partly blamed Moore’s actions on the hours he spent playing video games from the Grand Theft Auto series, in which… Read more →