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Music

Submission + - Congress to Fight Piracy with Education Funds

Submitted by Nomihn0
Nomihn0 writes: The RIAA has announced that the House Education and Labor committee is considering an amendment, HR1689, to the Higher Education Act of 1965. The proposal would allocate federal education funds to anti-piracy measures on college campuses. Most concerning is the bill's wording. It's claimed that the proposal would "save telecommunications bandwidth costs." In other words, the government will fund private packet filtering and preferential bandwidth allocation.
The Internet

Submission + - Woman has house robbed after fake Craigslist post

Submitted by flanksteak
flanksteak writes: The Seattle Times is reporting that a woman in nearby Tacoma had her rental property stripped of almost everything after someone posted a fake craigslist announcement that everything in the house could be hauled away no questions asked. When contacted, craigslist said they would release data about the poster if they were issued a subpoena.
Security

Submission + - How Apple orchestrated web attack on researchers

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=451 Apple continued to claim that there were no vulnerabilities in Mac OS X but came a month later and patched their Wireless Drivers (presumably for vulnerabilities that didn't actually exist). Apple patched these "non-existent vulnerabilities" but then refused to give any credit to David Maynor and Jon Ellch. Since Apple was going to take research, not give proper attribution, and smear security researchers, the security research community responded to Apple's behavior with the MoAB (Month of Apple Bugs) and released a flood of zero-day exploits without giving Apple any notification. The end result is that Apple was forced to patch 62 vulnerabilities in just the first three months of 2007 including last week's megapatch of 45 vulnerabilities.
Privacy

Submission + - FBI: No need for paper trails on phone records

Submitted by WerewolfOfVulcan
WerewolfOfVulcan writes: According to this Washington Post article, the FBI says that it doesn't have to comply with even the unconstitutional provisions of the Patriot Act when asking for phone records. Apparently that whole due process thing doesn't include them. Funny thing is, they've apparently already been doing it for years.

From the article:

Under past procedures, agents sent 'exigent circumstances letters' to phone companies, seeking toll records by asserting there was an emergency. Then they were expected to issue a grand jury subpoena or a 'national security letter,' which legally authorized the collection after the fact. Agents often did not follow up with that paperwork, the inspector general's investigation found.

The new instructions tell agents there is no need to follow up with national security letters or subpoenas. The agents are also told that the new letter template is the preferred method in emergencies but that they may make requests orally, with no paperwork sent to phone companies. Such oral requests have been made over the years in terrorism and kidnapping cases, officials said.
The Internet

iFilm Infringement Could Blunt Viacom's YouTube Argument 119

Posted by Zonk from the throwing-stones-glass-houses-you-know-the-drill dept.
Radio Silence writes "Infringing videos on iFilm could undermine Viacom's case against YouTube. Although it's arguably not a nest of infringement like YouTube, iFilm appears to host more than a handful of videos for which its corporate parent Viacom does not own the copyright. More importantly, Viacom isn't engaging in the kind of proactive infringement identification practices it expects of YouTube, which may cause problems for them in court. 'if Viacom isn't willing to take the same steps with iFilm that it wants YouTube to take with copyrighted content, Viacom may have a harder time making its case before the judge presiding over the case. "It would have some persuasive value with a judge if YouTube says 'look, they're ranting and raving about all this infringement occurring on my site and they're not doing anything about it themselves,'" said copyright attorney Greg Gabriel.'"
Communications

Submission + - ISPs Fighting To Keep Broadband Gaps A Mystery

Submitted by Aaron
Aaron writes: Broadband Reports notes how Maryland was working on a law that would force ISPs to show exactly where they offer service and at what speed. The goal was to help map coverage gaps, since FCC broadband data traditionally isn't accurate. Cable and phone company lobbyists have scuttled the plan, convincing state leaders the plan would bring "competitive harm," "stifle innovation," and even close local coffee shops. Of course the real reason is they don't want the public to know what criteria they use to determine the financial viability of your neighborhood — as they roll out next-generation services to only the most lucrative areas (aka cherry pick). The Center for Public Integrity is trying to obtain the unreleased raw FCC penetration data, but these companies are also fighting this tooth and nail.

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