Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Sunday, December 29, 2002

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Perspective: Tech's answer to Big Brother: "...if our personal information--some of it extraordinarily sensitive--is archived in corporate or government databases and protected only by the weak shield of the law, it's vulnerable to federal snoops. [...] When a nation is responding to perilous threats, politicians tend to repeal privacy laws in a femtosecond. [...] That's why simply enacting laws and trusting to the government to protect our privacy can be a very dangerous thing. Just ask the Japanese-Americans forced into internment camps during World War II. New research says they were selected using Census Bureau data--data that was handed over to the government in strict confidence. Or ask the people who were robbed by the former chief of detectives for the Chicago Police Department, who pleaded guilty last year to using law enforcement databases to plot crimes." [News Is Free: Popular Items]

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Sheep scientist warns against human cloning: "A scientist at the British research centre that produced the first cloned mammal has warned of the dangers of human cloning, a day after a US cult claimed to have successfully cloned a baby girl." [Google Technology News]

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With Dog Detectives, Mistakes Can Happen: "When bomb-sniffing dogs indicated the presence of explosives last summer in the cars of three medical students bound for Miami, the authorities detained the men and closed a major thoroughfare across South Florida." [Google Technology News]

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When not to cooperate: "In an essay called Peer and non-peer review, Andrew Odlyzko pooh-poohs the fear that blogging [...] will undermine the classical system of scholarly peer review..." [Jon's Radio]

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Biggest IP cases of 2002: "Law.com's article, The Biggest IP Cases of 2002, has a nice summary of some of the intellectual property cases that have caught our attention this last year. Of particular interest to slashdotters: Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp. (regarding Arriba's visual search engine), Enzo Biochem Inc. v. Gen-Probe Inc. (regarding a gene patent being invalid because it did not meet the written description requirement), an Illinois federal court injunction against Aimster, United States v. Elcom Ltd a/k/a Elcomsoft Co. Ltd. , and Playboy Enterprises Inc. v. Welles" [Slashdot]

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Permissions and copyrights: 'The publishing world is giving itself a lot of extra work because it hasn't yet discovered stuff like Creative Commons. I was just contacted by a major book publisher that wanted to get permission to use something I've written in a book of theirs. Quite a few people have asked to use stuff I've written in books or articles or pamphlets, but usually it has been a friend thing of somebody calling me and asking if it is OK, and I say "Sure, use whatever you want", and I don't even keep track of it. So this was the first time it was a formal thing. First they contact me to be sure they can find me, and a few weeks later they send me forms to fill out and sign and get back to them. [...] The biggest problem here is that copyright law tells them that everything is copyrighted (owned and restricted) by somebody, unless they specifically have been told otherwise. Creative Commons does it the another way around. You're told up front what you can use and how.' [Ming's Metalogue]

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Personal data on residents of entire town stolen: "Digital tapes recording personal information of all 9,600 residents in the town of Iwashiro, Fukushima Prefecture, have been stolen, police said Saturday. [...] Town officials said the stolen tapes were backups for the controversial national resident registry network and contained six types of information used in the registry - a resident's name, address, date of birth, sex, resident registry code and the record of changes of the information." [Privacy Digest]

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Should Mobile Safety Trump Privacy? "While the safety advantages of being able to pinpoint a mobile user's location are positive, the availability of wireless location tech is bound to result in invasions of consumer privacy." [Privacy Digest]