Posts Tagged ‘Law’

Last week, some of Silicon Valley’s top movers and shakers (in the VC world) had a discreet meeting at a bar in San Francisco. Whether these meetings will have antitrust implications or not is debatable, but one thing is for sure: these “secret” meetings indeed took place and at least some of the discussions therein were about competition.

My antitrust professor’s words echo in my head, “just attending the meeting is half way to a violation.” At least one attendee has already renounced his involvement and aired his concerns in the public fora.

Right now, most of the attendees are on the hot seat at TechCrunch’s Disrupt 2010, where they are undoubtedly being barraged with questions and allegations.

Some of the attendees have been willing to speak publicly about the meetings. If nothing else, this entire story is a testament to the Internet industry’s ability to disseminate information and facilitate dispute resolution.

On the other hand, some of these guys’ statements could probably be seen as party admissions. I guess these guys should seek counsel before going out for a drink (or hitting the ‘Tweet‘ button).

We have all seen the e-mails from “The Prince of Nigeria” or “his secretary”, trying to con us out of our hard-earned money. These “419 scammers” (typical advance-fee fraudsters), often located somewhere in Africa, have been around since before the internet and continue to thrive by sending out fraudulent correspondence through all channels of the Internet in hopes to wrangle in a sucker dumb enough to cough up some bills. Although you may think the world would be aware of such scams by now, many people are fooled each day and millions are lost each year to these scammers.

What interests me, however, are the people who deliberately set out to “bait” the scammers. Their purpose is simple: to waste a scammer’s time so that there is one less scammer in the world. “Scambaiters,” as they are often called, will get a scammer’s hopes up so much that the scammers do some pretty hilarious things with the presumption of a largely unearned (and ill-gotten) profit in return.

It works like this: A scammer sends out an email to your inbox. You see their ridiculous claim and turn the tables on them by making up an equally or slightly less ridiculous response that involves instead promising them some sort of payout provided they do something for you. If you are good enough at it, you can get a scammer to do some pretty funny things, provided the irony the whole situation. I have read stories about scammers getting symbols tattooed on themselves, scammers traveling over 3000 miles, getting arrested at airports, and other nuisances as they seek their precious fortune, which never even existed in the first place.

All in all, I think scambaiting is a fun and effective way to not only bring awareness to these types of injustices, but it’s also something to do when you’re bored which is always nice. Whether or not it is legal to lead people on in this way is another story, but you also have to consider the nature of your first contact with said scammers in the first place before giving it too much thought.

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Apparently judge Tomas Norström from the Pirate Bay trial has been a member of several copyright groups and other intellectual property engagements. For some reason, he did not see himself in a conflict of interest when asked to take the case. Interestingly enough, he presented three other attorneys with the question of whether or not they were involved in any media or copyright protection organizations, to which one of them belonged and as a result was asked to pass on the case. Looks like script kiddies everywhere may get the re-trial that they were hoping for.

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-lawyer-is-biased-calls-for-a-retrial-090423/

Just minutes ago the verdict in the case of The Pirate Bay Four was announced. All four defendants were accused of ‘assisting in making copyright content available’. Peter Sunde: Guilty. Fredrik Neij: Guilty. Gottfrid Svartholm: Guilty. Carl Lundström: Guilty. The four receive 1 year in jail each and fines totaling $3,620,000.

Very interesting they decided not to hear any technical explanations and judged this solely on intent. We’ll probably see much more of that as the web becomes more and more tangled. Under that premise, the notion that “all ISPs are guilty of the same thing” is hardly logical. ISPs are not knowingly and willingly facilitating illegal file sharing like these guys clearly were. The only part that astounds me is how long it’s been able to go on (oh, I’m also astounded at how many kids are acting behooved at the ruling).  I also disagree with the idea that you kill one and two more pop up in its place. You kill a big violator such as this, and you’ve killed one. If other fools feel like stepping up and rolling the dice, well maybe they will have to pay the piper like these guys do.

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Ars sits down with “Billion Dollar Charlie” Nesson, the Harvard Law professor who’s taking on the RIAA in federal court. Winning his case would be great, but Nesson’s thinking even bigger. He wants nothing less than a national, Internet-enabled conversation about copyright and damages in the digital age.

Charlie Nesson will likely break ground with this case, providing new insight into internet copyright law and how it applies to different usage cases. By using the internet to broadcast each meeting, conference, and deposition, he may just get the publicity he needs to open a real discussion. His argument is backed by logic, but it appears there is a web of technologies and technicalities (no pun intended) to work through before finding justice for the plaintiff. No matter what the outcome, I believe this will be a landmark case in the complexities of modern copyright law.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/billion-dollar-charlie-vs-the-riaa.ars

It’s reassuring to hear some progress is being made in way of monitoring and cracking down on those who abuse their outsourcing laws and rights to provide truly equal opportunity employment.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/02/feds-finally-cracking-down-on-h-1b-abuses.ars

Let’s say that an H-1B-free labor market has set a price on a year’s worth of work from a programmer with a bachelors degree and two years experience at US$35,000 + $12,000 (benefits like health insurance for a family of four) = $47,000. Now let’s say that companies acquire the ability, via the introduction of the H-1B program, to import foreign labor of comparable quality. The average imported worker is willing provide the same work for $35,000, but instead of benefits she wants health insurance for herself only ($3,000/year) plus a green card. Thus the promise of a green card to the H-1B worker is valued by the market at $9,000/year, and you can and must factor this in to account for the H-1B employee’s total compensation.

The cost of the green card to the employer is much less than the cost of the American worker’s insurance coverage, plus the foreign worker is obligated to work for the employer for a set period if she wants to get the promised green card. This is a win-win for the employer and the H-1B worker, but not for the American employee, to whom the green card is worth exactly US$0. The American has been priced out of the market because the H-1B will sell her labor at what amounts to a steep discount in exchange for a green card.

Here in New Zealand a new copyright act went into effect on 1st November. The most controversial clause has been delayed until 28th February. This clause says that an ISP must have a policy of disconnecting anyone repeatedly accused of copyright infringment.

I agree that this act would place the responsibility of judge in the hands of the ISP. But without some governing body working with the ISPs instead of against them, it seems the RIAA is setting the ISPs up for some muddy waters.

Within the wishlists of RIAA is making ISPs liable for copyright infringement that happens through their networks.. This we need to be very vocal about. How’s an ISP to know what that packet you pull is a copyright infringement?? by only allowing you to talk to sony.com + apple.com ?

This I can also agree with, to an extent. Without the pressure to localize and enforce copyright infringement on the Internet, then those committing the crimes won’t have any reason not to do it. The right thing to do notwithstanding, the world is faced with a new twist on an old problem. I believe the legislation will eventually balance itself out, and freedom/justice will find it’s way to Internet.

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The three internet giants Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google are joining together by agreeing to a common set of principles concerning conducting business with nations that restrict free speech and expression. They are basically trying to protect people’s information overseas with oppressive governments. I was interested to learn that the Human Rights First and Committee to Protect Journalists and nonprofits the Center for Democracy and Technology and Business for Social Responsibility took part in the formation of this humbly crafted entity known as the Global Network Initiative. What I found troubling was the lack of specific implications and obligations pertaining to these companies. Some other points of interest are the restrictions on citizenship and how that plays into this decision making. I would also like to hear the CCIPS chime in.

At least one human rights organization that didn’t sign onto the plan said it doesn’t go far enough. “More serious questions have to be asked about these company’s legal obligations,” said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA. For instance, he said he would have liked the document to address whether Internet companies are violating U.S. or international laws by complying with requests from certain governments.

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