The Florida State College of Law Research Center Blog

Viruses Can Infect Computers with Child Porn

According to a recent ABAJournal Law News Now article computer viruses can infect users computers with child pornography.  Here's and excerpt:

An infected computer may be the least of your problems, the Associated Press reports. “An Associated Press investigation found cases in which innocent people have been branded as pedophiles after their co-workers or loved ones stumbled upon child porn placed on a PC through a virus,” the story says. “It can cost victims hundreds of thousands of dollars to prove their innocence."

Read the article here. 

Posted by Jon Lutz

Trade Talks Hone in on Internet Abuse and ISP Liability

Interesting review in PC World of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement meeting in South Korea.  Here's an excerpt:

ISPs around the world may be forced to snoop on their subscribers and cut them off if they are found to have shared copyright-protected music on the Internet, under an international agreement being promoted by the U.S.

Countries including Japan, Canada, South Korea, Australia as well as the European Union and U.S. have been negotiating an anticounterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA) over the past two years to combat the growing problem of counterfeit products ranging from designer clothes to downloadable music.

The countries are due to discuss the ACTA at a meeting in South Korea on Wednesday, focusing specifically on the issue of Internet piracy. The U.S. has drafted the text of the chapter on the Internet.

Read more here.  

Posted by Jon Lutz

Broadband Internet is Now a Legal Right in Finland

Finland has become the first country to declare Internet access a legal right.  Here's an excerpt from Mashable:

The EU Parliament has on several occasions stated that access to the Internet is one of basic human rights. Now, Finland has become the first country to actually declare fast (broadband) Internet access a legal right.

In practice, this means that telecom companies in Finland will be required to provide all Finnish citizens – all 5.3 million of them – with broaband Internet connection of at least 1 Mbps, starting in July.

Read more here.  

Posted by Jon Lutz

Why the White House is Hiring a Social Media Archivist

The Whitehouse is attempting to archive its social media content.  Here's an excerpt describing what they are trying to do:

“In order to comply with the Presidential Records Act, the White House New Media team is looking for a non personal service contractor to crawl and archive PRA content on all third party sites where the EOP has a presence (i.e. Facebook.com/whitehouse, Twitter.com/whitehouse). Currently, the Government team is capturing the data and content both programmatically (via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) from social networks) and manually (through daily screen shots). EOP requires a provider to ensure we automatically capture this content in a scalable, efficient and reliable manner.”

Read more here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Appeals Court Throws Out $358 Million Verdict in Microsoft Case

A federal appeals court on Friday affirmed a jury verdict that Microsoft, with their Outlook calendar function, infringed an Alcatel-Lucent patent, but ruled that the $358 million dollars awarded to the software company was excessive.

Read more about the case:
From : WSJ | Bloomberg | PCWorld

Posted by Jon Lutz

Hackers Routinely Sell E-Mail Passwords

From the ABAJournal Law News Now Hackers Routinely Sell E-Mail Passwords with Virtual Impunity; here's an excerpt:

Think you're personal e-mail's secure? Think again.

Hackers can obtain virtually anyone's password, experts say, and the penalties for doing so, in the rare cases that are prosecuted, ordinarily provide little or no protection, according to the Washington Post.

Those who wish to obtain someone else's e-mail password can purchase it through a variety of online services that advertise openly on the Internet, the newspaper states.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Microsoft Wins Emergency Stay of Judge’s Ban on Word Product Sales

From the ABAJournal Law News Now Microsoft Wins Emergency Stay of Judge's Ban on Word Sales.  Here's an excerpt:

A federal appeals court has granted Microsoft's emergency appeal of a Texas federal judge's order that would have banned the computer Goliath from continuing to sell some Word software products next month unless they could be reconfigured to avoid infringing on a Canadian company's patent.

In a ruling late yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stayed the U.S. District Court order. Meanwhile, a fast-track appeal on the merits continues, with oral arguments scheduled for Sept. 23, reports Computerworld.

Both Dell and Hewlett Packard filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the appeal, arguing that the Word revisions required by U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Davis would also require extensive, time-consuming work on their own part to reconfigure personal computers that use Word software.

Read the article online here.  

Posted by Jon Lutz

Computer Hacker Albert Gonzales Indictment

In what is probably the biggest identity theft prosecution in US history, computer hacker Albert Gonzales has been indicted.  His hacking may have exposed data from as many as 130 million credit and debit cards. 

You can see the indictment here. 

Posted by Jon Lutz

Microsoft Files Emergency Motion in Word Verdict

On Friday Microsoft filee an Emergency motion with the US District Court for Eastern Texas to block a ruling that would make it stop selling Word.  Here's an excerpt from an article in WindowsITPro:

Tiny i4i sued Microsoft in 2007 for infringing on its patent for custom XML, charging that several of the software giant's products—including Word 2007 and 2003, .NET, and Windows Vista—contained functionality that was covered by the patent. However, Judge Davis said that only Word "unlawfully infringed" on the i4i patent. He ordered that Microsoft stop selling Word in its current incarnation within 60 days but didn't require the company to amend versions already in the marketplace.

In a bit of courtroom drama, $40 million of the $290 million in fines was directed at Microsoft's lawyers, who the judge said engaged in trial misconduct. They argued that i4i was a "non-practicing patent owner" and that it was thus "improper" that they sue for monetary damages. The judge also admonished a Microsoft lawyer for "equating i4i's infringement case with the current national banking crisis [and] implying that i4i was [like] a banker seeking a 'bailout'."

Read more here: 

Posted by Jon Lutz

Skype Future in Jeopardy

Joltid developed some of the underlying p2p technology that Skype uses.  They are claiming that Skype doesn't have a right to use that technoloyg.  Skype's parent company EBay is suing Joltid for the continued use of that technology.

Read more about it here on Bloomberg.com. 

Posted by Jon Lutz