Thursday, March 25, 2004

Copyright-banned music The Downhill Battle people have started a site to catalog and distribute .torrents of music that can't be liegally distributed due to copyright restrictions, such as the Grey Album. Link (via Trubble) [bOing bOing] 9:21:22 PM    comment []

Update on Melanie Mills (a.k.a., Elisabeth von Hullessem, alias Lisa Hackney) Con artist wanted for trying to run over mom: U.S. sheriff on hunt for 'dangerous woman'. Kerry Williamson, With files from Jeff Bell, Calgary Herald. Elisabeth von Hullessem, 49, appeared in a Victoria, B.C., courtroom Wednesday, a day after being picked up on a warrant in a local park. Von Hullessem, who goes by at least 16 aliases, is wanted in two American counties for a variety of alleged criminal wrongdoings and could be extradited to the United States. Her last run-in with the law came in November, when she appeared in a Banff courtroom charged with seven counts of fraud, two counts of false pretense and one count of theft. Those charges related to the phoney Banff Writers Conference, an event von Hullessem advertised for Banff and used to take money from seven individuals. She also attempted to woo people to a fake charity event, where she promised such luminaries as Barbra Streisand, Elton John, Rod Stewart and Celine Dion. Von Hullessem pleaded guilty to one fraud charge, spent a day in jail and was ordered to pay restitution of $7,083.78. She was free until Tuesday when she was picked up by Victoria police acting on a tip. She may now be shipped back to Madison County, Ark., where she is charged with first-degree battery, aggravated assault and theft, and failing to appear in court. Lawyer John Green said outside the Victoria court Wednesday that his client, who used the known alias Melanie Mills, would be seeking bail and has not been scheduled for a hearing to discuss extradition. Von Hullessem will appear in court again today. Madison County Sheriff Phillip Morgan was unaware of von Hullessem's arrest when reached on Wednesday. That is good news, said Morgan, who said he will likely seek extradition. She is a dangerous woman and she needs to be off the streets. See also the Melanie Mills/Elisabeth von Hullessem/Lisa Hackney entry at Writers' Alerts. (Edited later to take out the original url, which not only broke in transit, but was also (it is reported to me) breaking some folks' RSS feeds. Weird. Thanks, biffster, for the clue.) 2:48:09 PM    comment []

Dutch Internet blackmailer gets 10 years, by Jan Libbenga, The Register. A 46-year-old Dutch chip programmer who tried to blackmail dairy giant Campina using the most up-to-date Internet technologies, has been jailed for 10 years by a Dutch court on blackmail charges and five counts of attempted murder. The blackmailer put agricultural poison in Campina Stracciatella desserts in a bid to extort €200,000. To conceal his tracks he used a US anonymizer - a privacy service that allows users to visit web sites without leaving a trail. In this case, however, it didn’t quite work out like that. The man was convinced he was going to commit the perfect crime. He forced Campina to open a bank account and asked them to deposit € 200,000. Campina was issued with a credit card for the account which the blackmailer intended to use to withdraw the cash. But not the original card. To avoid breaking cover, he asked Campina to buy a credit card reader and extract the information from the card's magnetic stripe. The output, together with the card's pin code, was sent to him electronically via steganography - a technology for encoding information into pictures. Campina received an envelope containing a floppy with a stego program and some instructions. The company then had to encode the credit card data into a picture of a VW Golf in an online advertisement for used cars. The blackmailer downloaded the picture, decoded the information it contained, created his own copy of the card, and finally went to withdraw the cash. To download the online picture, he used the Anonymizer.com service, believing the company’s privacy policy would protect him. Not so. Dutch police worked closely with the US company and the FBI to track him down. He was caught red-handed last year when he withdrew the money from a cash machine using his copy of the credit card. Which just goes to show that even criminal masterminds can make simple mistakes. The error, experts say, could have been easily avoided if the blackmailer had visited an internet café to download the encoded picture, rather than using his own PC. What's more, he paid for the Anonymizer service through Paypal, giving his personal email address. 10:47:18 AM    comment []

Four from BNA News: WTO ISSUES PRELIMINARY RULING AGAINST US ON NET GAMBLING The World Trade Organization has issues a preliminary finding against the United States in an action brought by Antigua over attempts to block Internet gambling. The trade organization ruled that gambling was covered under global service-sector agreements and that the U.S. must stop trying to thwart gambling companies' business. The U.S. says that it plans to appeal. siliconvalley.com and WSJ coverage. GERMAN COURT RULES METATAG USE NOT AN INFRINGEMENT BNA's Electronic Commerce & Law Report reports on a recent German appeals court decision in which the court ruled that the use of trademarks and firm name in Web page metatags did not constitute a violation of trademark law or competition law. The court reasoned that the use of the trademark and firm names in meta-tags was not an "exploitation" of the designation and that the practice of using the metatags to attract new customers was not an unfair or deceptive diversion. Article [or] For a free trial to source of this story, visit EU - MICROSOFT RULING - ANALYSIS OF THE DECISION The European Union has issued its ruling in the long-running case against Microsoft, fining the American software giant $613 million. The fine is the heaviest punishment in any European competition case to date. Microsoft now has 120 days to provide the information that rival server makers need to compete fairly, and it must continue to update this information in the future. Summary of the ruling [and] Coverage at CNET, Wired, and WSJ NSI OFFERS 100-YEAR NET ADDRESSES Network Solutions is allowing people to purchase domain names for 100 years. For a lump payment of $1,000 per name, Network Solutions says it will ensure a customer's Internet address registration stays active and within their control for 100 years. Washington Post (Edited to make hyperlinks instead of bare urls.) 10:47:13 AM    comment []

Kevin has a headline: FOR SOME INTERNET USERS, IT'S BETTER LATE THAN NEVER Once largely written off as a lost cause, older Americans are now coming into their own as Internet users. They are researching their family histories, sending e-mail, running virtual book clubs, reading about religion and travel, and pursuing other interests lifelong and new. According to a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a research organization in Washington, the ranks of Americans over 65 who use the Internet have jumped by 47% since 2000, making them the fastest-growing group to embrace the online world. But overall, just 22% of this group is online compared with 75% of ages 30-49. Susannah Fox, director of research at Pew, said the biggest factor pushing older Americans toward Internet use has been family. "Younger Internet users have probably encouraged their parents and grandparents to start communicating with e-mail, and many seniors have turned out to love it." There's much more at the NYTimes URL below or the full report [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Katie Hafner] (requires registration) (Marked up to do hyperlinks instead of naked urls, and the word "at" removed.) (See also the classes offered by The OASIS Institute.) 9:47:01 AM    comment []

Let slip the counterattack dogs. A round-up of news coverage about Richard Clarke's memoirs, detailing the Bush Administration's counter-terrorism policy. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories] 7:09:10 AM    comment []

Getting the Most Out of the Nation's Teachers. In their hiring of teachers, do the nation's public schools get what they pay for? By Virginia Postrel. [New York Times: Business] 7:03:40 AM    comment []

Less Jaw, Big Brain: Evolution Milestone Laid to Gene Flaw. Scientists say that around 2.4 million years ago a muscle gene underwent a disabling alteration, mutation that may amount to the beginning of the ancestral triumph of brain over brawn. By John Noble Wilford. [New York Times: Science] 7:00:36 AM    comment []

Scientists Report Evidence of Saltwater Pools on Mars. Mars was once a warmer, wetter place, with flowing pools of saltwater, scientists reported. The finding provided new hints that life might have existed there. By Warren E. Leary. [New York Times: Science] 7:00:27 AM    comment []

Hullo! "Free Culture" is. Thanks to the lessons explained by others (Cory), and the courage of a great publisher (Penguin), Free Culture launches today with a free online version of the book, licensed under a Creative Commons license. You can get the book here, though at the moment, only the bittorrent version is apparently up. Later today, there will be a direct download available from the Free Culture site, and from the Amazon site. [Lessig Blog] 6:57:56 AM    comment []

From TOURBUS, comes this pointer: Website developers and students who are working on papers will want to check out this site.  Readability.info produces quick readability scores for Web pages or MS Word documents.  If you're curious about how convoluted your documents or Web pages really are, you can use this tool to analyze the characteristics of your writing and get a variety of readability scores, or compare to other writing samples.    http://www.readability.info 6:55:50 AM    comment []