And you thought Facebook’s Beacon was intrusive? How about Beacon for the real world? While I agree that there are many good and valid uses for RFID I am not in agreement that the regulations or security are in place for it just yet. Point?

According to a Press Release from Rep. Jeff Morris (D - Mount Vernon) a new law in Washington will hereby may malicious RFID scanning illegal (this seems like a no brainer to me) such as for the purposes of identity theft. The law states that it would be a Class C felony to “intentionally scan another person’s identification remotely without his or her knowledge and consent, for the purpose of fraud, identity theft, or some other illegal purpose”.

The bummer side? The opt-in requirements for retailers to provide consumer protection by not scanning a customer, their ID, credit card, shoes, products, or whatnot without their expressed permission has been left out of the language due to heavy lobbying by corporations.

I find this completely unacceptable and think the consumers need to do a little mass lobbying of their own. Please consider contacting Rep. Jeff Morris or his staff to voice your support of the opt-in measure even if you aren’t in Washington. His contact information is available on the original press release.

Additional Reading:

• RFID Hack Hits 1-Billion Digital Access Cards Worldwide
• RFID Position Statement of Consumer Privacy and Civil Liberties Organizations

Flickr image from midnightcomm under CC

Apparently the ELSPA has decided to take a page out of the books of the MPAA and RIAA and make up crazy statistics to boost their cause (as well as their pocketbook).

From Escapist Magazine:

John Hillier of the European industry group Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) has claimed that 90 percent of Nintendo DS owners in America are using pirated games.

Not only does that number sound ridiculously bloated, but that would mean that nine out of ten DS owners in the US are using illegal games on a modded DS. According to those numbers I would then have to assume most of my friends that have the Nintendo DS are pirates especially since they are technical types who are more into modding their tech. Out of the 25+ people I know with a DS, not one of them are playing pirated games and no one is using the R4 chip as stated later in the article.

Speaking to the Sunday Post about the R4 “pirate chip” for the DS, Hillier, manager of the association’s Intellectual Property Crimes Unit, said, “In America it’s thought 90 percent of Nintendo DS users are playing pirated games because of R4s. Takings from Nintendo DS games in the U.S. are lower than any other console and no doubt it will have a similar impact (in the U.K.).”

See there, “in America it’s thought”… THOUGHT - in other words, we make up the numbers because people aren’t buying the sucky games we sell for bloated costs. I am applying for a high ranking job in one of these companies because I can make up ridiculous numbers for shock value  therefore justifying my expenses and salary (see resume under skills and qualifications: grossly inflate statistics to scare consumers into sending us money).

How many awesome games have come out for the DS? Animal Crossing WW was a big hit, that cooking game, Brain Age… just because your sales are down, does not mean people are stealing rampantly. Apparently the new business model is to support an old failing business model by screaming piracy and collecting unearned profits from people too afraid, too monetarily restricted, or too uneducated to defend themselves from the false prosecution. See also patent trolls and other such business models that requires little actual innovation or work but has the potential to reap big rewards. This is a modern scam artist tactic under a big corporate umbrella of legitimacy.

Pirate:

• commandeer: take arbitrarily or by force
• Piracy is robbery committed at sea, or sometimes on the shore, by an agent without a commission from a sovereign nation. Although the terms are often used interchangeably, the difference between a pirate and a privateer is that the privateer was commissioned by a government and the pirate was non-commissioned. (See Privateer)

Who’s the pirate now?

While searching for the means to combat the spam attacks that hit my WordPress blogs on a daily basis I was led to the site VilliageIdiot. What I found were some awesome tips (I was looking for htaccess rewite rules) and lots of nifty plugins for WordPress. What I also found was that the site owner has been involved in a nasty legal battle that could have happened to just about anyone I know. She is now in debt $35,000 to lawyers who worked to prove her innocence after being named in a “John Doe” case.

Check out Her site, read the tips, and review the plugins. If you found the site as useful as I did, please consider donating to help her with her legal fees and as a nice gesture to return a little bit to someone who provides all these awesome things that help us run our sites a little better. Every amount helps. Got a dollar? Consider sharing it. It will get you good Karma points in the long run. ;)

Note: My deepest apologies for the original post which I mistakenly called her a dude. ;P Even MORE reason to share the love- geek chicks RULE!

Holy cow how did this get this far?! A headline at ArsTechnica tonight proclaims Bill tying financial aid to antipiracy efforts passes House committee

“The House Education and Labor Committee unanimously passed the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007. Among other things, the COAA would require colleges and universities to adopt strict antipiracy policies and possibly offer students access to subscription-based music services like Napster.”

This could effectively place the RIAA and others in bed with them in control of college access to those who need it most. It is no secret that the majority of RIAA accusations and demands have been made to individuals who are more likely to settle or cave in to the demands rather than fight in out in court due to financial stature.

An earlier post at ArsTechnica states:

“A massive education bill (747-page PDF) introduced into Congress contains a provision that would force colleges and universities to offer “technology-based deterrents” to file-sharing under the pain of losing all federal financial aid. Section 494 of the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 is entitled “Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention” that could have just as easily been called “Motion Picture and Recording Industry Subsidies,” as it could force schools into signing up for subscription-based services like Napster and Rhapsody.”

This bill represents several problems:

1. Even with special grants, preventing file sharing on a college network will involve large expenses for the purchase of technology and additional staffing. Students frequently use their own personal devices on wired and wifi college networks. Scanning traffic for digital signatures should not be the responsibility of the college.
2. Education is the number one priority of an educational institution. Safeguards for health and safety on campus are services that ensure access to education. Preventing file sharing does not fall under services that ensure access to education. Implementing technology to prevent file sharing on college owned equipment is already in place in most, if not all colleges. Policing student devices crosses that line. Holding a college to student’s personal devices and/or personal activities is similar to revoking financial aid to a college if a student is caught shoplifting.
3. College costs are rising and federal financial aid assists financially deserving students in their pursuit of higher education that might be unattainable otherwise.
4. Forcing an educational institution to purchase access to a subscription based commercial media service to avoid penalties is unacceptable.
5. To take education away from any person because of the possibility of sharing material that is protected under copyright is unacceptable.

This is a threat to revoke funding if an institution of higher education does not take enough precautions to prevent the possibility of illegal file sharing. Who will be the organization policing the policies and precautions in place at the colleges? The RIAA? Contact your congress person today and take action. This poses a dangerous precedent.

In response to the RIAA and MPAA’s campaign against file-sharing, the University of Kansas has announced a stringent policy for students found sharing copyrighted content on the university network. Students fingered for file-sharing would be kicked off of the residence hall network, although they would still be able to use campus computer labs.

A brief notice on the University of Kansas ResNet site explains the university’s new position very succinctly. “If you are caught downloading copyrighted material, you will lose your ResNet privileges forever,” reads the notice. “No second notices, no excuses, no refunds. One violation and your ResNet internet access is gone for as long as you reside on campus.” Presumably, the University is referring to illegally downloaded copyrighted material, as there is plenty of copyrighted material that can be downloaded legally.

Read the full article at Ars Technica

An article on Wired today caught my attention while scanning my feeds (FBI’s Secret Spyware Tracks Down Teen Who Made Bomb Threats) however, it was the following paragraph that concerned me even more:

“Under a ruling this month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, such surveillance — which does not capture the content of the communications — can be conducted without a wiretap warrant, because internet users have no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the data when using the internet.”

Digging around in this ruling, I find information regarding IP addresses and routing info in email address headers. According to the “secret spyware” story.

“Sanders wrote that the spyware program gathers a wide range of information, including the computer’s IP address; MAC address; open ports; a list of running programs; the operating system type, version and serial number; preferred internet browser and version; the computer’s registered owner and registered company name; the current logged-in user name and the last-visited URL. “

Now I am left asking, how the heck does this apply to installing software on a person’s computer and tracking information such as programs used and users logged in? This is like looking through someone’s underwear drawer when your warrant says the closet.

You will notice that I put the word Internet in parenthesis because once you are snooping around on the computer’s activities, it is no longer just the “Internet” user with the privacy issue. Monitoring offline applications is not the same as monitoring online activities nor is it monitoring visited URLs or the IP addresses found in an email header. I am left a tad bit confused as to how the ruling applies to the logic used by the FBI to install the “spyware” on the computer other than they are counting on the accused and the Courts lacking the technical information to see the difference. I lock down my system as much as possible, therefore I DO have a reasonable expectation of privacy for many of these items that this program reports on.

What do you think?

Closed door negotiations left net radio with a glimmer of hope but it hasn’t solved the problem of crazy high fees for streaming music.  The following article from Webware has the details:

But contrary to some published reports traversing the blogosphere on Thursday and Friday, SoundExchange, the nonprofit group charged with collecting the payments, has not made any sort of blanket pledge to delay enforcing the contentious new Webcaster payments established earlier this year by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board, according to spokesman Richard Ades.

“There is a misunderstanding, and SoundExchange is making it very clear that everybody is expected to comply with the law,” Ades told CNET News.com Friday.

The CRB ruling at issue requires Internet radio operators to pay additional fees to SoundExchange, which passes them on to artists and record labels, retroactive to 2006 and through 2010. Webcasters opposed to the new rules say the changes could drive up their mandatory payments by as much as 300 percent for larger entities and 1,200 percent for smaller ones, arguing such increases could put them out of business.

Get all the details by reading the full article here…