geekwench - Slashdot User

Spam Lawsuit's Last Laugh is at Hormel's Expense 172

Posted by Zonk on Friday November 30, 2007 @01:43PM from the junk-email-junk-email-eggs-and-junk-email dept.

Brian Cartmell writes "An article at the Minneapolis — StarTribune site covers a significant setback for the Hormel food company, in a case that's being closely watched by security companies across the country. Seattle-based Spam Arrest has gone up against the creator of the food substance in court, fighting for the right to use the word spam in its company name. The US Trademark Trial and Appeal board has sided with the spam fighters, agreeing that consumers of the Spam product would never confuse the food with junk email. 'Derek Newman, Spam Arrest's attorney, said the decision opens the door for many other anti-spam software companies ... "Spam Arrest fought this battle for the whole software industry," Newman said.'"

Canada's New DMCA Considered Worst Copyright Law 234

Posted by kdawson on Thursday November 29, 2007 @11:31AM from the outdoing-the-southern-neighbours dept.

loconet writes "The government of Canada is preparing to attempt to bring a new DMCA-modeled copyright law in Canada in order to comply with the WIPO treaties the country signed in 1997. (These treaties were also the base of the American DMCA.) The new Canadian law will be even more restrictive in nature than the American version and worse than the last Canadian copyright proposal, the defeated Bill C-60. Among the many restrictive clauses in this new law, as Michael Geist explains, is the total abolishment of the concept of fair use: 'No parody exception. No time shifting exception. No device shifting exception. No expanded backup provision. Nothing.' Geist provides a list of 30 things that can be done to address the issues."

EMI May Cut Funding To RIAA, IFPI 158

Posted by kdawson on Thursday November 29, 2007 @10:10AM from the return-on-investment dept.

Teen Bainwolf notes a report that Big Four record label EMI, which is under new ownership, is considering a big cut in its funding for the IFPI and RIAA. Each of the labels reportedly contributed over $132 million per year to fund industry trade groups, and EMI apparently believes that money could be better spent elsewhere. "One of the chief activities of the RIAA is coordinating the Big Four labels' legal campaign, and those thousands of lawsuits have done nothing but generate ill will from record fans, while costing the labels millions of dollars and doing little (if anything) to actually reduce the amount of file-sharing going on."

Journal SPAM: Reported malfunction in PayPal Security Key 1

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday November 29, 2007 @01:54AM

In association with VeriSign, PayPal rolled out their one-time-password Security Key earlier this year. Generating six random digits every 30 seconds, the small electronic token provided an additional layer of authentication against phishing attacks. But, according to an IT administrator who has used the PayPal Security Key for several months now, a bug could allow phishers to bypass the measure. Chris Romero s

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