MPAA Kills Anti-Pretexting Bill
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Movie industry lobbyists quietly push California lawmakers to quash a measure that would have outlawed HP-style tactics designed to fraudulently obtain private information about consumers. The MPAA argues its antipiracy efforts would be harmed. By Ryan Singel.
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The US Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out a bid by journalists and professors to challenge the legality of the US administration's wire-tapping program.
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The House passed legislation Tuesday to combat the criminal use of Internet spyware and scams aimed at stealing personal information from computer users
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A federal judge threw out on Friday a Pennsylvania law requiring Internet service providers to block Web sites containing child pornography, saying the tools to do so also cause "massive suppression" of constitutionally protected speech.    Enacted in 2002, the law gave Pennsylvania's attorney general the power to require that companies like America Online Inc...
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Those who illegally download movies and music could have their Internet service cut off under a forthcoming recommendation that could be used to craft legislation.
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WASHINGTON - The Justice Department on Wednesday shut down a network allegedly used to illegally share copyrighted music, movies, software and games and, separately, has embarked a nationwide campaign against purveyors of e-mail "spam."   In the copyright case, search warrants were executed by the FBI in Texas, New York and Wisconsin. The case marks the first federal criminal copyright action taken against a peer-to-peer, or P2P, network in which users can access files directly from the hard drives of fellow users' computers...
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The Federal Trade Commission has asked a Florida federal court to permanently ban telephone "pretexting" -- the practice of obtaining phone records under false pretenses that came to light during last year's HP boardroom scandal.
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After more than eight months in limbo, a bill that would criminalize the practice of lying to obtain the telephone records of private citizens passed the Senate late Friday.
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The Motion Picture Ass. of America (MPAA) will today launch a legal attack on BitTorrent users in a bid to prevent ripped DVDs being shared across the network.
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Congressional negotiators stripped a  measure to strengthen 1960s-era hate crimes law from a massive  defense bill, likely killing for this year the effort to  broaden hate crimes protections for gay people and the  disabled, lawmakers said on Thursday.
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House Republican leaders blocked and appeared to kill a bill Saturday that would have enacted the major recommendations of the Sept.
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SACRAMENTO, California  - A California Senate committee voted on Monday to kill a closely watched bill that would have provided health-care insurance to millions of state residents at an estimated cost of more than $14 billion.
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Using video cameras to record films in movie theaters would become a federal crime punishable by up to six years in prison under a bill passed Tuesday by the House.    The legislation, called the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act, also would make it easier for the Justice Department to prosecute Internet users who illegally distribute large amounts of music and other copyrighted works...
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(InfoWorld) - Defendants convicted in copyright infringement cases in Hong Kong and Japan were sentenced this week, resulting in jail time and a fine, respectively. In Hong Kong, Chan Nai-ming lost an appeal in Tuen Mun Magistrates' Court, after he was convicted in November of illegally distributing copyrighted material using a peer-to-peer network (p-to-p), specifically BitTorrent's file sharing software. Chan began serving his three-month jail sentence on Dec. 12, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) said Wednesday. Chan used BitTorrent software to distribute Hollywood movies, but did not use a BitTorrent-affiliated or operated network to do so. The case was the first of its kind, with a defendant tried and convicted for illegal distribution over aÂ p-to-p network. Originally the pirates' software of choice, BitTorrent isÂ making itself into a legitimate competitorÂ in the online content business. Late last month, the company announced free and fee-based content distribution deals with a number of major Hollywood film and television studios. On Wednesday, the Kyoto District Court found Isamu Kaneko, the developer of the "Winny"Â p-to-p system popular in Japan, guilty of aiding and abetting the infringement of Japan's Copyright Law, the MPA said. Kaneko was fined Â¥1.5 million ($12,832), the MPA said. The MPA estimated that its member companies lost $6.1 billion worldwide in 2005 to illegal reproduction or downloading of movies. In Asia-Pacific, it lost $1.2 billion. The figures are based on what the MPA projects consumers would spend on cinema tickets, DVDs, and other film-viewing opportunities if pirated film products were not available. The MPA is the international arm of the Motion Picture Association of America, the American film industry's lobbying group. It is comprised of Hollywood's largest film studios: Buena Vista International; Paramount Pictures; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; Twentieth Century Fox International; Sony Pictures Releasing International; Warner Brothers International Theatrical Distribution; and Universal International Films.
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(InfoWorld) - When the U.S. Congress adjourned in the early morning hours Saturday, it left a number of technology-related bills unfinished, including two bills addressingÂ fraudulent access to personal telephone records. Despite pressure from members of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, the full House failed to act on the Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act. The law would have allowed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to seek civil penalties against businesses that obtain personal data under false pretenses. The committee has been looking into privacy concerns related to so-called pretexting since early this year, but the issue came to a head last month, whenÂ Hewlett-Packard revealedÂ it had used questionable investigative techniques in the surveillance of board members, employees, and reporters. With pretexting, private investigators or identity thieves pretend to be customers of mobile phone carriers or other companies in order to gain access to personal records such as call logs. Congress still has more time to act on the pretexting legislation or six related bills this year, however. After a month-plus break allowing lawmakers to focus on the Nov. 7 election, Congress will return for a lame-duck session Nov. 9. Democrats last week complained that the House Republican leadership had held up the pretexting legislation, but Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican and Energy and Commerce chairman, said he'd continue to push for the legislation. Congress alsoÂ failed to pass a wide-ranging broadband billÂ that would replace local franchise rules with a national system for telecom providers launching Internet Protocol-based television services in competition with cable TV. And although U.S. President George Bush called on Congress to pass legislation authorizing a controversial National Security Agency (NSA)Â surveillance program, two bills making it easier for the government to conduct surveillance without court-ordered warrants also stalled. One piece of Internet-related legislation did pass early Saturday. The Senate passed a bill providing money for seaport security, and added to the bill was a provision prohibiting U.S. banks and credit-card companies from processing payments to online gambling sites. A group of professional poker players had asked Congress to reject the bill, but a group of House Republicans pushed for the legislation, saying offshore gambling sites were breaking U.S. gambling-control laws. Bush had called for legislation to authorize the NSA program, which has listened in on the electronic communications of U.S. residents without court-ordered warrants, as a way to head off multiple lawsuits targeting the program. He has argued the program is necessary to help keep U.S. residents safe from terrorism. The HouseÂ passed one surveillance bill, but the Senate failed to act. The House bill would allow federal law enforcement officials to spy on U.S. residents for up to 90 days without a court order in the period after a terrorist attack. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a civil liberties and privacy advocacy group, said it was happy to see the surveillance and broadband bills stall. Republicans supporting the surveillance bill were pushing it as a way to show they were focused on national security during the last weeks of the congressional campaign, said Nancy Libin, a staff counsel at CDT. "Now that they've gone home, I'm not sure what kind of priority it will be when they come back," she said. Several civil liberties groups had opposed the broadband bill as it lacked protections for so-called net neutrality. Net neutrality advocates want a law that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing service to Web sites offering competing content, and they have successfully halted the Senate version of the broadband bill, despiteÂ heavy lobbying from large broadband providers.
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Lobbyists: 1, Consumers: 0. In a not so surprising move, AT&T, Microsoft and others managed to kill a proposed Indiana state pro-consumer identity theft bill.
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A bill that would make it easier to  sue online file-trading networks like Kazaa appeared on Friday  to have died a quiet death, but other copyright bills sought by  the entertainment industry continued to advance.