Private Lock Network

Shaping IP Laws by Not-So-Gentle Persuasion: The Special 301 Report: Via EFF.org Updates.

At the end of this month the United States Trade Representative's Office will release its annual Special 301 report, a review of global intellectual property protection and enforcement standards conducted by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). Since 1989, the USTR has used the Special 301 Report to intimidate other countries into adopting more stringent copyright and patent laws by singling out particular countries for their "bad" intellectual property policies, naming them on a tiered set of "watch lists," resulting in heightened political pressure and in some cases, the potential for trade sanctions, to encourage changes to their laws.

In previous years, the the USTR has relied heavily on submissions from the entertainment and pharmaceutical industries to compile the rankings for the Special 301 report. This has resulted in particularly unbalanced assessment criteria.

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Praising, cursing ACTA: reactions roll in: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.

Ars has already dived deep into the bowels of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and our findings were about as pretty as that metaphor suggests.

The agreement has already been improved under public pressure, so what's the broader reaction to its release? We rounded up some of the most interesting reactions. If you want a sense of how the debate over ACTA will play out over the rest of this year, consider these talking points a sneak preview.

Read Original Article:(Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.)

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ACTA Backs Away From 3 Strikes: Via Threat Level.

A proposed global intellectual-property treaty no longer nudges the international community to develop “three strikes” protocols to suspend internet connections of customers caught downloading copyrighted works, according to a draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement released Tuesday.

The official draft of the proposed intellectual property accord was released after months of leaks and assertions by the Obama administration that it was a classified national security secret.

Still, critics of the proposal said Tuesday that a controversial theme in the draft (.pdf) remains: that the United States was “attempting to export a regulatory regime that favors big media companies at the expense of consumers and innovators,” according to Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C., digital rights group.

The group and others were, in part, referring to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Under the DMCA, internet service providers are responsible for the infringing material hosted on their networks if they fail to remove the content at the rights holder’s request.

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North Carolina Wants to Know What You Bought from Amazon: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

On Monday, Amazon.com sued the State of North Carolina after the state issued a summons that would, according to Amazon, require it to identify what books, CDs and DVDs its customers in North Carolina had purchased. The North Carolina Department of Revenue had requested this information to ensure that Amazon is in full compliance with the state's sales and use tax laws

We were alarmed at this news, because what people choose to read is deeply personal, and reader privacy is strongly protected by the First Amendment.

After the ACLU of North Carolina sent the state Department of Revenue a letter warning that it would be unconstitutional for the state to gain overbroad access to customer records, the state responded to Amazon's lawsuit, denying that it wanted to know the specific titles and subject matters of books. We are relieved that the state appears to recognize the inappropriate, intrusive and constitutionally suspect nature of such a demand.

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"America's Tiniest Terrorist"?: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Sometimes, it feels like we at the ACLU are fighting an uphill battle when we try to draw attention to just how bloated and ineffective the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) airline watchlist is. We've pointed out that dead people, heads of state, U.S. senators, and little kids are on the list.

Well, add 6-year-old Allison Mosher to that unfortunate group.

The Boston Herald reports that when Allison's father Peter tried to print out boarding passes for their family's vacation to the Grand Canyon, he was unable to print out Allison's. When he called the airline, the employee told him that Allison "had been flagged by TSA security," and that she's on the no-fly list.

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Expert: Invalid Warrant Used in Raid on iPhone Reporter’s Home: Via Threat Level.

Police raided the house of an editor for Gizmodo on Friday and seized computers and other equipment. The raid was part of an investigation into the leak of a prototype iPhone that the site obtained for a blockbuster story last week. Now, a legal expert has raised questions about the legality of the warrant used in the raid.

On Friday, officers from California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team in San Mateo, California, appeared at the home of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen while he was not there and broke open the front door.

Chen and his wife discovered the officers when they returned from dinner around 9:45 that evening. According to an account he posted online, Chen noticed his garage door was partly open, and when he tried to open it completely, officers came out and told him they had a warrant to search the premises. The warrant had been signed just hours earlier, at 7:00 p.m., by a San Mateo County Superior Court judge. It allowed the police to search Chen, his residence and any vehicle in his control.

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Feds Say Judge Hampering Webcam Spy Probe: Via Threat Level.

Prosecutors are claiming that a federal judge is hampering a criminal investigation into a webcam scandal at a Philadelphia suburban school district.

The evidence prosecutors are seeking is connected to a federal civil lawsuit in which the plaintiff’s lawyers claim that the Lower Merion School District secretly snapped thousands of webcam images of students using school-issued laptops without the pupils’ knowledge or consent.

U.S. District Judge Jan DuBois, who is presiding over the civil case, two weeks ago ordered that evidence should only be disseminated to those connected to the civil lawsuit. (.pdf) U.S. Attorney Michael Levy wrote the judge, saying Friday that her freeze order “interfered with the government’s obligation to investigate possible criminal conduct occurring within this district.”

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