Re: [CTRL] You got mail from Wired News
-Caveat Lector- But who will guard the guardians? What happens if the film is edited (like 60 Minutes)? W I R E D N E W S - - - - - - - - - - Big Brother Is Your Friend by Chris Gaither BERKELEY, California -- The omnipresent cameras are coming, says science fiction writer David Brin. The question isn't when, but what they'll be pointing at. Surveillance cameras will be perched on every lamppost and windowsill, beaming the minutiae of daily life to police headquarters. Street crime will plummet, Brin says. See also: First Amendment? Not on the Job After all, look at the low crime rate in Britain, where watchful bobbies have access to more than 500,000 cameras. It doesn't stop there in Brin's future world. Everyone carries a camera, beaming images straight to the Internet. A cop pulls over a kid for speeding, and the whole scene is played out in the public domain. "What will the result be when this happens? A dramatic increase in professionalism and in legitimate arrests, and also an incredible renaissance in sarcasm on our city streets," Brin said at Saturday's California First Amendment Assembly at the University of California, Berkeley. "Because nothing like this will ever change human nature." "Now,you may not like this image, but anybody who tries to harm you is going to get caught," he said. Brin, an astrophysicist and author of such novels as The Postman, painted this surreal vision for attendees pondering whether freedom and privacy can coexist in the next millennium, when businesses and the government will probably know more about you than you know about yourself. Because whether we like it or not, Brin said, the cameras are imminent. The government already uses them as its eyes and databases as its memory. "All you accomplish by banning them is making sure that elites have the powers of gods, and that you don't," he said. Take, for example, increased monitoring in the workplace, where bosses can count their employees' keystrokes and time their bathroom breaks. Here's Brin's solution: Turn the cameras around to the top 50 execs in the company. Bosses can still spy on you, but you get to spy right back. "Given a choice between privacy and accountability, all of us can be relied upon to choose privacy for ourselves and accountability for everybody else," Brin said. Brin's vision was not universally shared. Earlier in the day, an attorney with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation put forth the alternative solution to what she called the rash of "data Valdez incidents that spill information out to anyone who wants to see it." Citing such security breaches as Microsoft's baring of millions of Hotmail accounts and the exposure of customers' credit cards numbers on an Italian smut site, assistant staff counsel Deborah Pierce pushed for stricter limitations of information sharing. She called for banks and other consumer services to curtail their creation of mammoth personal-info databases and for Big Brother to chill out -- a view Brin would find naive. "We need to stop the government's current fetish for collecting more information than it really needs," she said. But the information flow works both ways, Brin said. To prove his point, he laid out this paradox: "In all of human history, no government has ever known more about its people than our government knows about us. And [yet] in all of human history, no people have ever been anywhere near as free." Open government, gadflies, and a vigilant press reconcile the conundrum, he said, because, "In all of human history, no people knew as much about their government." - - - - - - - - - - W I R E D N E W S Wired News is a real-time news service offering news briefs and in-depth reporting on politics, business, culture, and technology. For the most up-to-date coverage on the digital world, go to ... http://www.wired.com/news/ You are receiving this email because a friend or acquaintance sent it to you. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, please contact the sender, and not Wired News. Copyright 1999 Wired Digital, Inc. DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substancenot soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
[CTRL] You got mail from Wired News
-Caveat Lector- cobolmage sent you this message and story from Wired News. But the information flow works both ways, Brin said. To prove his point, he laid out this paradox: "In all of human history, no government has ever known more about its people than our government knows about us. And [yet] in all of human history, no people have ever been anywhere near as free." W I R E D N E W S - - - - - - - - - - Big Brother Is Your Friend by Chris Gaither BERKELEY, California -- The omnipresent cameras are coming, says science fiction writer David Brin. The question isn't when, but what they'll be pointing at. Surveillance cameras will be perched on every lamppost and windowsill, beaming the minutiae of daily life to police headquarters. Street crime will plummet, Brin says. See also: First Amendment? Not on the Job After all, look at the low crime rate in Britain, where watchful bobbies have access to more than 500,000 cameras. It doesn't stop there in Brin's future world. Everyone carries a camera, beaming images straight to the Internet. A cop pulls over a kid for speeding, and the whole scene is played out in the public domain. "What will the result be when this happens? A dramatic increase in professionalism and in legitimate arrests, and also an incredible renaissance in sarcasm on our city streets," Brin said at Saturday's California First Amendment Assembly at the University of California, Berkeley. "Because nothing like this will ever change human nature." "Now,you may not like this image, but anybody who tries to harm you is going to get caught," he said. Brin, an astrophysicist and author of such novels as The Postman, painted this surreal vision for attendees pondering whether freedom and privacy can coexist in the next millennium, when businesses and the government will probably know more about you than you know about yourself. Because whether we like it or not, Brin said, the cameras are imminent. The government already uses them as its eyes and databases as its memory. "All you accomplish by banning them is making sure that elites have the powers of gods, and that you don't," he said. Take, for example, increased monitoring in the workplace, where bosses can count their employees' keystrokes and time their bathroom breaks. Here's Brin's solution: Turn the cameras around to the top 50 execs in the company. Bosses can still spy on you, but you get to spy right back. "Given a choice between privacy and accountability, all of us can be relied upon to choose privacy for ourselves and accountability for everybody else," Brin said. Brin's vision was not universally shared. Earlier in the day, an attorney with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation put forth the alternative solution to what she called the rash of "data Valdez incidents that spill information out to anyone who wants to see it." Citing such security breaches as Microsoft's baring of millions of Hotmail accounts and the exposure of customers' credit cards numbers on an Italian smut site, assistant staff counsel Deborah Pierce pushed for stricter limitations of information sharing. She called for banks and other consumer services to curtail their creation of mammoth personal-info databases and for Big Brother to chill out -- a view Brin would find naive. "We need to stop the government's current fetish for collecting more information than it really needs," she said. But the information flow works both ways, Brin said. To prove his point, he laid out this paradox: "In all of human history, no government has ever known more about its people than our government knows about us. And [yet] in all of human history, no people have ever been anywhere near as free." Open government, gadflies, and a vigilant press reconcile the conundrum, he said, because, "In all of human history, no people knew as much about their government." - - - - - - - - - - W I R E D N E W S Wired News is a real-time news service offering news briefs and in-depth reporting on politics, business, culture, and technology. For the most up-to-date coverage on the digital world, go to ... http://www.wired.com/news/ You are receiving this email because a friend or acquaintance sent it to you. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, please contact the sender, and not Wired News. Copyright 1999 Wired Digital, Inc. DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substancenot soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to
[CTRL] You got mail from Wired News
-Caveat Lector- ric carter sent you this message and story from Wired News. W I R E D N E W S - - - - - - - - - - Publisher Must Lay Down the Law by Oscar S. Cisneros While the press and the tech world concentrated on the Microsoft antitrust trial, a quieter legal battle was being waged for access to society's source code: the full text of the law. The case involved West Publishing, a tremendously powerful legal-information vendor that claimed a copyright on law's written word as printed in its publications. For generations, the Minnesota-based company jealously guarded its role as the almost exclusive publisher of federal court opinions. /P On 1 June, West lost its claims when the US Supreme Court declined to hear its arguments that it owns the text of the law as compiled in its books. The development effectively put the law back in the public domain. Armed with the latest technology, companies can now bring court opinions to the Web without fear of copyright-infringement suits from West. The upshot: easier and cheaper access to the law. "Within five years, all this information will be available for free," said Carl Hartmann, an attorney who argued and won the case against West. West, for its part, disagrees with the ruling. "Nobody should be able to rip off our products," said West spokesman Patrick Sexton. "We took what's absolutely public and made it so that lawyers can find the information quickly." If the courts won't allow West de facto ownership of American case law, the company may seek the succor of database legislation to achieve its ends. For all practical purposes, West and its cozy competitor Lawyers preparing for trial must turn to the companies to cite previous court rulings to bolster their cases. Why? Because the page numbers of West's books have become the standard for legal citation and are required by almost all courts. West didn't always have a reputation as a bully. In fact, at the turn of the century, many courts made the company their official court reporter based on its sterling reputation. The courts needed someone to take care of their paperwork headaches. As more courts turned to West, the page numbers in its publications became signposts to specific cases. It proved a lucrative situation for West, whose court-sanctioned monopoly put the bulk of the printed law exclusively in its hands, Hartmann said. Its books even became a symbol of prestige at law firms: attorneys paneled their walls with the latest and most complete West collections. By the mid-1980s, technological advances made it possible for online databases to search the law. What's more, West's huge revenue chummed the waters for would-be competitors. One such competitor was Lexis-Nexis, a giant online publisher of academic and professional documents that tried to muscle into West's business. West sued, but the companies settled out of court and, according to critics, practically split the market between them. The pair came to be known as "the Wexis Cartel" by frustrated lawyers. With Lexis in the picture, Hartmann said legal researchers had two options: pay West a lot of money, or pay Lexis a lot of money. "Every man, woman, and child basically pays a database tax to West or Lexis," said Hartmann. Other companies tried to bring competition and lower prices to the legal-data market. But West threatened lawsuits, asserting it owned the copyright to the text of court opinions printed in its books, Hartmann said. West also claimed a copyright on its page-numbering system, the standard way to index the law. Without access to its page-numbering system, rivals couldn't compete, he added. Undeterred, HyperLaw, a publisher of inexpensive legal CD-ROMs, fought West for almost 10 years, eventually winning a judgment in 1998 that declared West's copyright claims invalid. West tried to appeal the ruling before the Supreme Court, but the court refused to hear the case. In light of that development, nimble competitors, such as HyperLaw, VersusLaw, won the right to add West's page-numbering system to their databases. "Overall, this will make access to legal information easier and cheaper for the average person," said Alan Sugarman, president and founder of HyperLaw. "If the lawyer has to pay for access to legal information, he's going to pass it on to his client." West doesn't simply republish rulings and opinions, said Sexton, the company's spokesman. It employs dozens of expert legal editors who add enhancements, such as case summaries and cross-references to other cases. The editors also research specific points of law -- insurance fraud, for example -- and collate sometimes hundreds of relevant decisions to help lawyers build their cases. These products can't be replicated with software or search engines, so "the financial impact of the ruling is insignificant" to West Publishing, Sexton said. "We obviously don't have a copyright over the words
[CTRL] You got mail from Wired News
-Caveat Lector- ric carter sent you this message and story from Wired News. W I R E D N E W S - - - - - - - - - - Bills Would Fence Off the Facts by Oscar S. Cisneros A coalition of big money data vendors is pushing database protection bills through the US Congress that could fundamentally disrupt the basic functions of the Internet and radically alter how information can be shared. There are two competing bills that would protect data compilers by prohibiting the duplication of their databases. Critics fear the more restrictive of the two, Collections of Information Antipiracy Act (HR354), would make criminals of companies that collect and aggregate data -- companies like Yahoo and Amazon.com. Also: Publisher Must Lay Down the Law "The beauty of the Internet is that for the first time you have this huge engine for finding and aggregating information -- and HR 354 sort of throws a wrench in the works," said Jonathan Band, an attorney specializing in intellectual property at Morrison and Foerster. The measure gives ownership of lists of facts -- like CD prices or best-seller lists -- to a company or an individual that collects them, Band said. Even collections of links to other sites could be claimed as intellectual property, barring their use by anybody without a licensing agreement. A service like Best Book Buys, which canvasses the Web for book-price comparisons, could face criminal charges for using an unwilling company's price quotes, Band said. Even Internet service providers and Web site hosts like GeoCities could face huge liabilities if their users pirate a database. Until now, the Constitution has prohibited the copyrighting of facts. Critics charge that the bill would let anyone who claims to have compiled the facts actually own them. "The basic notion is that you give the author a limited monopoly in his expression in exchange for his dedication of the facts and ideas contained in his work to the public," Band said. "This is the constitutional philosophy underlying intellectual property, and this bill tries to subvert that philosophy." But database owners complain that protection for compilations -- which can be enormously costly to assemble -- is thin, thanks to a 1991 US Supreme Court "We have no law in the United States that protects databases," said Dan Duncan, a spokesman for the Software Information Industry Association, a group of more than 1,400 software and content-data vendors. "We need a law to protect ourselves." Not all database vendors want Draconian protection, however. Powerful organizations like Bloomberg, Harvard University, and Lycos (the parent company of Wired News) advocate a balanced approach to legislation and want just a bit more protection than what the Constitution currently affords. "Databases are items of commerce in their own right and are critical tools for facilitating electronic commerce, research, and education endeavors," a group of 132 signatories recently said in a They support a bill like Consumer and Investor Access to Information Act of 1999 (HR 1858), which would prevent the outright piracy of entire databases but would still allow the reuse of the underlying facts, provided they are used in new, innovative ways. Experts are watching developments in Congress closely. The outcome could upset the careful balance struck by the Founding Fathers between the creator's need for an incentive and the ability of future minds to build on his ideas. - - - - - - - - - - W I R E D N E W S Wired News is a real-time news service offering news briefs and in-depth reporting on politics, business, culture, and technology. For the most up-to-date coverage on the digital world, go to ... http://www.wired.com/news/ You are receiving this email because a friend or acquaintance sent it to you. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, please contact the sender, and not Wired News. Copyright 1999 Wired Digital, Inc. DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substancenot soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:]
