Bruce Schneier:

The outcry was so great that on Nov. 11, Sony announced it was temporarily halting production of that copy-protection scheme. That still wasn’t enough — on Nov. 14 the company announced it was pulling copy-protected CDs from store shelves and offered to replace customers’ infected CDs for free.

EFF:

Now compare that baseline with the world according to the Sony-BMG EULA, which applies to any digital copies you make of the music on the CD:

1. If your house gets burgled, you have to delete all your music from your laptop when you get home. That’s because the EULA says that your rights to any copies terminate as soon as you no longer possess the original CD.
2. You can’t keep your music on any computers at work. The EULA only gives you the right to put copies on a “personal home computer system owned by you.”
3. If you move out of the country, you have to delete all your music. The EULA specifically forbids “export” outside the country where you reside.
4. You must install any and all updates, or else lose the music on your computer. The EULA immediately terminates if you fail to install any update. No more holding out on those hobble-ware downgrades masquerading as updates
5. Sony-BMG can install and use backdoors in the copy protection software or media player to “enforce their rights” against you, at any time, without notice. And Sony-BMG disclaims any liability if this “self help” crashes your computer, exposes you to security risks, or any other harm.
6. The EULA says Sony-BMG will never be liable to you for more than $5.00. That’s right, no matter what happens, you can’t even get back what you paid for the CD.
7. If you file for bankruptcy, you have to delete all the music on your computer. Seriously.
8. You have no right to transfer the music on your computer, even along with the original CD.
9. Forget about using the music as a soundtrack for your latest family photo slideshow, or mash-ups, or sampling. The EULA forbids changing, altering, or make derivative works from the music on your computer.

Amazing… Bruce Schneier has more.

Kristian Knutsen usefully follows up with Tammy Baldwin’s press secretary, Jerilyn Goodman on HR 1606 and now HR 4194:

Though this might appear to be a niche issue, the ongoing war of words of FEC regulation of online communications, particularly with respect to blogs, forums, wikis, and other interactive formats, is a matter of general import. As the internet grows in importance as a communications and organizing medium, the application of federal regulations to the ether will have tremendous economic and political implications. On Nov. 2, Rep. Tammy Baldwin voted against H.R. 1606, titled the “Online Freedom of Speech Act.” Exempting all internet communications from the FEC regulatory sphere, the bill was promoted by online political pundits across the ideological spectrum, but particularly by the highest profile partisan bloggers, namely Democratic Party activist Markos Moulitsas and Republican Party activist Mike Krempasky (who is also a new Wal-Mart online PR hire).

I cannot imagine anything positive arising from regulation on this matter.

Slashdot:

California has filed a class-action lawsuit against Sony and a second one may be filed today in New York. The lawsuit was filed Nov. 1 in Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles by Vernon, CA. It asks the court to prevent Sony from selling additional CDs protected by the anti-piracy software, and seeks monetary damages for California consumers who purchased them. The suit alleges that Sony’s software violates at least three California statutes, including the “Consumer Legal Remedies Act,” which governs unfair and/or deceptive trade acts; and the “Consumer Protection against Computer Spyware Act,” which prohibits — among other things — software that takes control over the user’s computer or misrepresents the user’s ability or right to uninstall the program. The suit also alleges that Sony’s actions violate the California Unfair Competition law, which allows public prosecutors and private citizens to file lawsuits to protect businesses and consumers from unfair business practices. EFF has released a list of rootkit affected CD’s and Slashdot user xtracto also has a list.”

EFF:

It’s been two years since the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) started suing music fans who share songs online. Thousands of Americans have been hit by lawsuits, but both peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing and the litigation continue unabated.

In a report released Thursday, “RIAA v. The People: Two Years Later,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argues that the lawsuits are singling out only a select few fans for retribution, and many of them can’t afford either to settle the case or defend themselves. EFF’s report cites the case of a single mother in Minnesota who faces $500,000 in penalties for her daughter’s alleged downloading, as well as the case of a disabled veteran who was targeted for downloading songs she already owned.

Gizmodo:

First point: Sysinternals discovered that the DRM unisntaller requires you to put in all your specs and then gives you a “unique ID” to download the uninstaller. Then the uninstaller doesn’t run unless you shut down the DRM and you can’t shut down the DRM until you run the uninstaller. Ay! Lucy!

Second point: In an NPR interview:

Thomas Hesse, President of Sony’s Global Digital Business, literally says: “Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?”

So malicious intent and active contempt. Way to keep the faith.

Associated Press:

Twenty-five investment groups, representing about $21 billion in assets in the United States, Europe and Australia, are signatories to a “joint investor statement on freedom of expression and the internet,” an initiative spearheaded by the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders.

The statement comes after several instances in which technology companies have been criticized for cooperating with governments, notably China, in order to secure strong market positions.

“As shareholders, we need to feel confident that our companies are not complicit in human rights abuses, directly or indirectly, and that they’re not collaborating to effectively quell internet traffic, to harm their own good reputations and to reduce their long-term growth opportunities,” said Dawn Wolfe, social research and advocacy analyst for Boston Common Asset Management, one of the participating investment funds.

Although China and other countries have come under fire for limiting what their citizens can see or post on the web, China also is a particularly sought-after market, for the potential its vast population offers.

Microsoft and Google have been accused of helping the government there censor news sites and blogs. And in a recent case, Reporters Without Borders criticized Yahoo for allegedly helping the Chinese government trace the private e-mail account of a Chinese journalist who was later imprisoned for providing state secrets to foreigners. Yahoo has defended its move, saying it is obliged to comply with Chinese regulations.

Tom Zeller:

According to some technologists, including Dennis M. Kennedy, a lawyer and consultant based in St. Louis, (denniskennedy.com), metadata might include other bits of information like notes and questions rendered as “comments” within a document (“need to be more specific here,” for example, or in the case of my editors, “eh??”), or the deletions and insertions logged by such features as “track changes” in Microsoft Word.
“If you take the time to educate yourself a little and know the issues,” Mr. Kennedy said, “you can avoid problems pretty easily.”
With the Alito memo – which was distributed on a not-for-attribution basis, with no authors named – the D.N.C. was a little sloppy.

Barton Gellman

The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. “National security letters,” created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.
The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters — one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people — are extending the bureau’s reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.