Web 2.0 is the buzzword of the moment (well, one of the buzzwords). Social networks are one of the forms of Web 2.0 to which most importance is attached. There are many forms of social networking, like Facebook, which is basically a friends' gathering, or Linkedin, which is more "professional", or Plaxo, which is more a tool to gather and share information from a variety of sources connected to any participant.

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Ho già detto "Tutte le cose buonetm prima o poi finiscono"? Sì, l'ho fatto, ovviamente. Dopo 33 anni di indiscussa leadership nel più grande produttore di software al mondo, Willam H. Gates III -- al secolo Bill Gates --, si è dimesso da ogni carica esecutiva in Microsoft.

Nonostante vanta credito per almeno un paio di capelli grigi sulla sua ancora folta chioma -- e forse un paio di decimail dal suo portafoglio azionario -- devo dire che la fine di un'era getta un'ombra di tristezza su di me. Ma almeno il personaggio è in buona salute, così come apparentemente la sua creatura.

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Introducing Fossbazaar:

FOSSBazaar is an open source community of technology and industry leaders who are collaborating to accelerate adoption of free and open source software in the enterprise. Specifically, FOSSBazaar aims to:

• Expand upon the open source value proposition for a richer, safer, less expensive, better overall IT experience.
• Focus on timely issues such as license management and support as open source software matures and is adopted more widely in IT environments.

Lunedì 9 Giugno all'Università di Trento parlerò di diritto antitrust, interoperabilità e Software Libero (open source).

Per maggiori dettagli:
http://www.jus.unitn.it/dsg/altri_eventi/open_source_vezzoso.pdf

L'Ordine degli Avvocati di Udine, in collaborazione con il Comune di Udine, la Facoltà di Scienze Matematiche Fisiche e naturali dell'Università di Udine e l'Associazione Nazionale Laureati in Scienze dell'Informazione e Informatica, Organizza l'incontro sul tema "i vantaggi del software libero, una risorsa per pubblica amministrazione e professionisti".  È disponibile la locandina.

Udine, 23 maggio 2008 sala Ajace - ore 15.00

Nell'occasione farò un breve intervento introduttivo su cos'è il Software Libero dal punto di vista legale.

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Belle notizie da Monaco

Harald Welte, uno dei titolari di parti importanti di GNU/Linux (come NetFilter/Iptables) ha promosso una causa contro Skype per la violazione delle condizioni di licenza del proprio software, ovvero, per violazione della GNU GPL. Con l'assitenza dell'esperto in diritto del Software Libero Dr. Till Jaeger, aveva ottenuto un'ingiunzione definitiva da parte di una corte inferiore, ma Skype si era appellata all'istanza superiore. Oggi vi è stata l'udienza. I giudici hanno chiarito che le chances di vittoria erano così basse che gli avvocati di Skype hanno deciso di abbandonare il giudizio e rinunciare all'appello.

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Vedrete a sinistra (per chi usa un browser non testuale) un banner "Vota per il Software Libero". Non temete, non si tratta del centunesimo partito. È un'iniziativa di Assoli che tende a segnalare qualunque partito in cui almeno un candidato abbia sottoscritto un impegno a promuovere il Software Libero (da alcuni chiamato "open source") in qualche modo. Non è di destra né di sinistra, di sopra o di sotto. È solo informazione: quali partiti hanno quanti membri che, almeno a parole, dicono di volere più Software Libero.

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EFF Urges Appeals Court to Protect Innovation

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a brief urging the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a recent ruling that endangers features like search customization and user feedback on interactive web services.

The ruling came in a housing discrimination lawsuit against Roommate.com, which runs Internet forum where users can search for potential roommates. A three-judge panel held that Roommate.com could be held liable for the activity of its users because it "suggested, encouraged, or solicited" and then sorted and categorized content that may have violated fair housing law. But this reasoning threatens both current and future Internet innovators with potentially insurmountable liability problems -- impacting everything from search engine functionality to the ability to tag content on media sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr -- and is directly contrary to federal law. As EFF argued Friday in its amicus brief in support of appeal, Roommate.com is immune to liability for its users' activities under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which specifically protects hosts of interactive computer services.

"Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was passed specifically to help the Internet continue to grow without being tied down by regulation," said EFF Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "If service providers have to worry about potentially crushing liability, it will strongly discourage the development of new tools for online users. In fact, many of the tools we use already would be impacted by this ruling, potentially crippling innovations in search and customization."

Search engines, for example, are designed to categorize and sort content, features potentially at risk under the Ninth Circuit's ruling. Sites that solicit user feedback and opinions and allow searching by user ranking could also run afoul of the new ruling.

"Courts across the country have recognized the critical role that Section 230 plays in Internet innovation," said Zimmerman. "The 9th Circuit should take this appeal and clarify that its strong protections remain in full force."

For the full amicus brief:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/roomate.com/EFFroommateamicus.pdf

For more on this case:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/roommate.com

Contact:

Matt Zimmerman
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
mattz@eff.org

Friday Hearing to Finalize Sanctions, Revote in Contested Election

Oakland, Calif. - On Friday, July 13, at 9:30 a.m., a California judge will rule on sanctions against Alameda County for botching its response to a contested race conducted on Diebold electronic voting machines. In a tentative ruling issued Thursday, Judge Winifred Y. Smith said that the election results in the race were "nullified" and ordered a revote.

Americans for Safe Access and voters in the city of Berkeley brought a legal challenge seeking a recount after Measure R, an initiative addressing the operation of medical marijuana dispensaries, lost by fewer than 200 votes in the 2004 election. While the lawsuit was ongoing, election officials returned the voting machines to supplier Diebold Election Systems, and 96% of the election data was destroyed. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) helped analyze the remaining data, but too many questions remained.

"Without examining the redundant data, audit logs, and chain-of-custody records, no one can confirm whether any of the reported malfunctions were ever resolved or whether vote data was manipulated or lost," said EFF Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "As a result, no one can ever confirm whether the vote result announced by the county was correct."

Smith's tentative ruling orders the county to place Measure R on the ballot in the next general election, as well as to pay the costs for the incomplete recount. That ruling is likely to be finalized after Friday's hearing.

What:
Americans for Safe Access vs. County of Alameda

When:
9:30 a.m.
Friday, July 13, 2007

Where:
Wiley Manuel Courthouse
Department 114
661 Washington Street
Oakland, CA

Contacts:

Matt Zimmerman
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
mattz@eff.org

Gregory G. Luke
Attorney
Strumwasser & Woocher LLP
gluke@strumwooch.com

Rebecca Saltzman
Chief of Staff
Americans for Safe Access
rebecca@safeaccessnow.org

Caleb Dardick
CDA Strategies
caleb@cdastrategies.com

EFF Lawsuit Uncovers History of Surveillance Mistakes

Washington, D.C. - Documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) show years of chronic problems with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's use of National Security Letters (NSLs) to collect Americans' personal information and that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has long been aware of these problems.

The documents were disclosed after EFF sued the government under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) earlier this year for records related to a scathing Justice Department critique of FBI NSL activity. The records detail more than 40 instances of improper, unauthorized collection of information about individuals, including unlawful access to phone records and email. The records show that Gonzales himself was sent several of these problem reports, including one less than a week before he told a congressional committee that no civil liberties abuses have resulted from the USA PATRIOT Act. He also voiced surprise when the Justice Department report on NSL misuse was made public earlier this year.

"These chronic privacy problems have long been known within the Justice Department but still were kept secret from those who really needed to know -- members of the American public, including those who were surveilled," said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "The FBI can't be trusted to police its own agents. It's time for Congress to provide oversight to protect American citizens."

The FBI's use of NSLs was expanded under the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001, allowing federal agents to gather private records about anyone's domestic phone calls, emails, and financial transactions without any court approval -- as long as an FBI agent claims that the information could be related to a terrorism or espionage investigation. EFF submitted a FOIA request about the reported misuse of NSLs in March, and when no documents were forthcoming, EFF sued the FBI for their immediate release. Last month, a judge held that the FBI was required to release records related to the inspector general's report beginning on July 5, with more documents to be disclosed every 30 days. In all, 1138 pages of NSL records were released to EFF late last week in the first batch of documents complying with the court's order.

"This is by no means the whole story on NSL abuse," said EFF Senior Counsel David Sobel. "We're looking forward to receiving the rest of the documents. Americans deserve the whole story on the FBI's deeply flawed program to issue NSLs."

For the complete FBI documents and more analysis:
http://www.eff.org/flag/07656JDB/

Contacts:

Marcia Hofmann
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
marcia@eff.org

David Sobel
Senior Counsel
Electronic Frontier Foundation
sobel@eff.org

Rebecca Jeschke
Media Coordinator
Electronic Frontier Foundation
press@eff.org

Innocent Target of File-Sharing Lawsuit Racked Up Legal Fees Fighting Baseless Charges

Seattle - The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) should pay for a single mom's two-year legal ordeal fighting a baseless file-sharing lawsuit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) told Washington state court in an amicus brief filed Thursday.

The nightmare began for Dawnell Leadbetter in January of 2005, when she received a letter from the RIAA that accused her of illegally downloading copyrighted music and claiming she owed hundreds of thousands of dollars. Leadbetter contacted the RIAA to deny the baseless claims, and refused to pay any settlement monies. In response, the RIAA sued Leadbetter, and Leadbetter hired an attorney to fight the charges. After months of legal wrangling, the RIAA finally dropped the case in December of 2006. But in the meantime, Leadbetter had incurred significant attorney's fees.

"Ms. Leadbetter isn't the only innocent Internet user that has been ensnared by the RIAA's litigation dragnet. But she is one of the few who have fought back, resisting RIAA pressure to pay settlement monies for something she did not do," said EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz. "The RIAA's settlement offers are usually less that what it would cost to defend yourself, so it's a big commitment to hire a lawyer to clear your name. Reimbursing Ms. Leadbetter's attorney's fees could encourage other innocent lawsuit targets to stand up for themselves."

Since 2003, the RIAA has sued over 20,000 people for allegedly sharing music over the Internet. The industry uses questionable investigative methods tactics to find its targets, and then often employs erroneous legal theories in its quest for settlement monies. In Ms. Leadbetter's case, the suit against her included accusations of "secondary liability" -- putting her on the hook for anything that happened on her Internet account, whether she knew about it or not.

"The RIAA knows that this legal theory is wrong. But if innocent victims are too scared to hire an attorney and fight back, the public could suffer under the misconception that these bogus theories are legitimate," Schultz said. "Awarding attorney's fees to Ms. Leadbetter helps protect everyone's rights under copyright law."

The amicus brief was filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle in conjunction with attorney Derek Newman of Newman & Newman LLP.

For the full amicus brief:
http://eff.org/legal/cases/interscope_v_leadbetter

For more on the RIAA lawsuit campaign:
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/?f=riaa-v-thepeople.html

Contact:

Jason Schultz
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
jason@eff.org

Public Interest Groups Urge Court to Block Radical Expansion of Discovery Rules

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) urged a California court Friday to overturn a dangerous ruling that would require an Internet search engine to create and store logs of its users' activities as part of electronic discovery obligations in a civil lawsuit.

The ruling came in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by motion picture studios against TorrentSpy, a popular search engine that indexes materials made publicly available via the Bit Torrent file sharing protocol. TorrentSpy has never logged its visitors' Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Notwithstanding this explicit privacy policy, a federal magistrate judge has now ordered TorrentSpy to activate logging and turn the logged data over to the studios.

"This unprecedented ruling has implications well beyond the file sharing context," said EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. "Giving litigants the power to rewrite their opponent's privacy policies poses a risk to all Internet users."

The magistrate judge incorrectly reasoned that, because the IP addresses exist in the Random Access Memory (RAM) of TorrentSpy's webservers, they are "electronically stored information" that must be collected and turned over to the studios under the rules of federal discovery.

This decision could reach every function carried out by a digital device. Every keystroke at a computer keyboard, for example, is temporarily held in RAM, even if it is immediately deleted and never saved. Similarly, digital telephone systems make recordings of every conversation, moment by moment, in RAM.

"In the analog world, a court would never think to force a company to record telephone calls, transcribe employee conversations, or log other ephemeral information," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "There is no reason why the rules should be different simply because a company uses digital technologies."

The decision also threatens to radically increase the burdens that companies face in federal lawsuits, potentially forcing them to create and store an avalanche of data, including computer server logs, digital telephone conversations, and drafts of documents never saved or sent.

The magistrate judge in the case has stayed her order while TorrentSpy appeals the ruling. The case is Columbia Pictures Industries v. Bunnell, No. 06-01093 FMC, pending in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California before Judge Florence-Marie Cooper.

For the full amicus brief:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/torrentspy/EFF_CDT_amicus.pdf

Contacts:

Corynne McSherry
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
corynne@eff.org

Fred von Lohmann
Senior Intellectual Property Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
fred@eff.org

Vote to Authorize Subpoenas Sets Stage for Showdown Over Illegal Surveillance

San Francisco - The Senate Judiciary Committee voted today to authorize subpoenas related to the National Security Agency (NSA)'s domestic spying program, setting the stage for a Congressional showdown over the surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans. The subpoenas demand certain legal documents that the Administration has withheld despite Congress' repeated requests.

"This subpoena authorization is a critical first step toward uncovering the full extent of the NSA's illegal spying and the role that telecommunications companies like AT&T played in it," said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "Considering that it's been almost six years since the NSA started spying on Americans without warrants and over a year since that spying was revealed publicly, these subpoenas are long overdue. It's high time for Congress to get to the bottom of this mess."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is suing AT&T for illegally assisting in the NSA spying. The government has asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss EFF's case, claiming that the lawsuit could expose state secrets.

"Our case against AT&T includes evidence from a former employee that points to a massive spying program impacting millions of people -- a program far broader than the government has admitted to," said Bankston. "Americans deserve to know the truth about the NSA program."

For more on the class-action lawsuit against AT&T:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/

Contacts:

Derek Slater
Acting Media Coordinator
Electronic Frontier Foundation
derek@eff.org