A privacy watchdog has banned Google from gathering detailed, street-level images in Greece for a planned expansion of its panoramic Street View mapping service until the company provides additional privacy safeguards. In rejecting Google’s bid to roam Greek streets with cameras mounted on vehicles, Greece’s Data Protection Authority, or DPA, said it wanted clarification from the US Internet company on how it will store and process the original images and safeguard them from privacy abuses
Like patents and copyright, trademarks are a weapon that companies can use to battle each other and ultimately restrict the freedom of their customers. As such, I find it odd that while many people in the world of open source are campaigning for reforms in copyright and patents, most ignore trademarking. Trademarking is just as dangerous as its two intellectual property brothers
Even before it’s officially adopted, France’s controversial anti-piracy law has already claimed its first victim. Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim, head of web innovation at one of the largest TV-networks in France was fired recently because he criticised the law in a letter to his MP
StudiVZ is a Facebook-style operation and is Germany’s largest web-based social networking site. With the European Parliament elections in sight, the web site recently opened up to established political parties for election campaigning. Not for all parties though, as they chose to ban the Pirate Party
The Home Office has been accused of colluding with online ad firm Phorm on informal guidance
to the public on whether the company’s service is legal. E-mails between the ministry and Phorm show the department asking if the firm would be comforted
by its position. The messages show Phorm making changes to the guidance sought by the ministry. Lib Dem Home Affairs spokeswoman Baroness Sue Miller, who has questioned the Home Office about Phorm, said the e-mails were jaw dropping
The island of Taiwan has just approved new legislation which effectively bans the use of P2P technology to facilitate the distribution of copyrighted works online. The legislation also requires ISPs to start a 3 strikes
regime for file-sharers
In Germany, the file-hosting service Rapidshare has handed over the personal details of alleged copyright infringers to several major record labels. The information is used to pursue legal action against the Rapidshare users and at least one alleged uploader saw his house raided
The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, today ruled out building a single state super-database
to track everybody’s use of email, internet, text messages and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Smith said creating a single database run by the state to hold such personal data would amount to an extreme solution representing an unwarranted intrusion of personal privacy. Instead the Home Office is looking at a £2bn solution that would involve requiring communications companies such as BT, Virgin Media, O2 and others to retain such personal data for up to 12 months
Barbara Ringer believed, above all, that copyrights should protect the creative people in American life — the authors, songwriters and performers whose work was too often printed, plagiarised or broadcast without permission. By 1955, she was writing papers and commissioning studies on how the nation’s copyright laws should be revised. For years, Ms Ringer devoted much of her time to drafting a new, comprehensive copyright act and educating congressmen about why it was needed. Foreseeing the rise of the Internet, she inserted provisions into the law to protect authors from the unauthorized reproduction of their work, even by means not yet devised. The basic human rights of individual authors throughout the world,
she warned in a 1975 speech, are being sacrificed more and more on the altar of … the technological revolution.
Ms Ringer spent 21 years drafting the legislation and lobbying Congress before the Copyright Act of 1976 was finally passed. She wrote most of the bill herself
Copyright term for music recordings must be extended from 50 years to 70 years, says legislation adopted on Thursday by the European Parliament. By adopting the report by Brian Crowley (IE, UEN) with 377 votes in favour, 178 against and 37 abstentions, MEPs voted to increase the term of copyright protection to ensure that performers continue to receive royalties for 70 years from the first publication or performance of their song. The European Commission had previously proposed an extension of the copyright protection up to 95 years. According to Mr Crowley, the compromise reached by the Parliament on 70 years takes into account Council’s resistance and would facilitate an agreement with national governments
Apple has been found guilty of willfully infringing on a predictive snooping
patent awarded to Opti Inc. in 2002. The company has been ordered to pay just over $19 million in compensation, despite its attempts to have the patent thrown out
One of the biggest cases in file-sharing history ended last week with The Pirate Bay Four sentenced to huge fines and jail time. Today it is revealed that far from being impartial, the judge in the case is a member of pro-copyright groups — along with Henrik Pontén, Monique Wadsted and Peter Danowsky. There are loud calls for a retrial
Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive has jumped on Google’s Authors Guild
settlement and asked to be included as a party defendant, claiming that they ought to get the same rights and protections from liability that Google will receive when the settlement is approved by federal court. From the Internet Archive’s letter to Judge Denny Chin: The Archive’s text archive would greatly benefit from the same limitation of potential copyright liability that the proposed settlement provides Google. Without such a limitation, the Archive would be unable to provide some of these same services due to the uncertain legal issues surrounding orphan books
— via Slashdot
Law enforcement officials are vastly expanding their collection of DNA to include millions more people who have been arrested or detained but not yet convicted. The move, intended to help solve more crimes, is raising concerns about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent. Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts. But starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will collect DNA from detained immigrants — the vanguard of a growing class of genetic registrants. The FBI, with a DNA database of 6.7 million profiles, expects to accelerate its growth rate from 80,000 new entries a year to 1.2 million by 2012 — a 15-fold increase. FBI officials say they expect DNA processing backlogs — which now stand at more than 500,000 cases — to increase
The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews. Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the NSA had been engaged in overcollection
of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional
Because there’s so much attention to this, I’ll offer spokesman Drew Herdener’s comments unfiltered: This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloguing error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection. It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay and Lesbian themed titles — in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind and Body, Reproductive and Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon’s main product search. Many books have now been fixed and we’re in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future
President Obama yesterday announced a series of steps aimed at easing the US relationship with Cuba, breaking from policies first imposed by the Kennedy administration and stepping into an emotional debate over the best way to bring democratic change to one of the last remaining communist regimes
As if it wasn’t hellacious enough working customer support for Amazon.com on Easter, the online book store’s reps must now explain why gay romances (and other books) are too adult
to rank. Straight romance like Jackie Collins and straight porn is still ranked on Amazon. But not the homosexual stuff: Gay romance publisher Mark Probst noticed hundreds of such books lost their rankings over the past two days. There is now a full-fledged Twitter shitstorm spreading virally
Last week, the French Parliament passed a new law requiring Internet service providers to cut off Internet access for persistent copyright offenders. Since the parliament voted in favor of the law, everyone — including the most fanatical critics — believed that it would easily pass through Senate and the National Assembly — but it didn’t. After a two hour discussion, the law was rejected by the National Assembly with 21 votes against and 15 votes in favour. According to early reports, the Socialist deputies changed their initial position and decided to vote against the law after witnessing the mass opposition from the French public
Fears that over 100 jobs from Western Australian Energy company Synergy would be outsourced to an Indian IT company were yesterday laid to rest. Western Australian Shadow Minister for Energy Kate Doust had said earlier this week that Synergy was negotiating with an Indian company with the goal of sending IT jobs abroad. Energy Minister Peter Collier said he would take the concerns to the company and yesterday announced a plan developed with Synergy to make sure no Western Australian jobs would be sent overseas as part of Synergy’s business transformation program to introduce new SAP-based customer care and billing systems
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