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Censorship

Submission + - Illinois Anti-Gaming Law Goes Down in Flames

An anonymous reader writes: A federal court has struck down an Illinois law which criminalized the sale of "sexually explicit" video games to minors. In reaching this decision, the court held that the Illinois law was too broad, because it could be read to encompass any game which displayed a female breast, even for a brief second. Interestingly, the court chose the game God of War as the model of gaming art which must be protected. As the court explained "because the SEVGL potentially criminalizes the sale of any game that features exposed breasts, without concern for the game considered in its entirety or for the game's social value for minors, distribution of God of War is potentially illegal, in spite of the fact that the game tracks the Homeric epics in content and theme. As we have suggested in the past, there is serious reason to believe that a statute sweeps too broadly when it prohibits a game that is essentially an interactive, digital version of the Odyssey."
Security

Submission + - Mac OS X Spyware Sample Discovered

Steve Minko writes: "eWEEK is reporting on the discovery an adware/spyware program capable of launching browser windows on Apple Computer's Mac OS X. According to a warning from F-Secure, the proof-of-concept program could be silently installed on a Mac's User account and hooked to each application used by that account. The company said the sample, named iAdware, successfully launched the Mac's built-in Safari Web browser whenever applications were being used."
The Courts

Submission + - Federal Court: Kiddie Porn Laws Reward Ignorance

An anonymous reader writes: Under federal anti-child porn laws, a person must know they are downloading child porn and storing it on their workstation in order to be subject to prosecution. This fact saved a Montana pedophile several months in prison after he was caught with 110 images of child pornography in his personal folders, and as many as 19,000 in his web browser's cache. Because the pedophile did not know that his browser was storing the images in a cache folder on his hard drive, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that he could not be held responsible for them under federal law. Accordingly, he could only be found guilty of downloading the 110 images in his personal files, and he received a much lighter sentence.

Of course Slashdot readers are much savier internet users than this schmuck, and they know full well how their web browsers work. Let that be a warning to any of us who would look at naked children.
Security

Submission + - An Apple .dmg Exploit?

bouncinglime writes: "The BBC website is carrying an interesting story about a possible exploit in the Mac OSX kernel.

From the article: "The flaw involves the way OS X handles disk images and could be used to crash or take over a vulnerable machine. So far the DMG bug has only been shown to work under laboratory conditions and has not been seen in the wild."

The full article is available for free at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6187302.stm ."

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