There’s an interesting new podcast up on Intellectual Property Colloquium, and it includes a terrific lineup of guests:
Statutory Damages and the Tenenbaum Litigation
- SHARE:
-
-
-
-
A-Rod, Rihanna, and Confidentiality
Over at Emergent Chaos, Adam Shostack raises an interesting issue regarding Alex Rodriguez (A-Rod) and confidentiality. According to the rules in place about the baseball steroid testing back in 2003, the results of these tests were supposed to be confidential. According to Gregg Doyel at CBS:
- SHARE:
-
-
-
-
FreeCreditReport.com Spoof Song
I’ve blogged in the past about FreeCreditReport.com and the fact that I think it ought to be shut down. This is one of the rather obnoxious attempts by the credit reporting agencies to exploit people’s fears of identity theft as a tool to generate money.
FreeCreditReport.com is not free. You can get your free credit report at the official site, AnnualCreditReport.com.
- SHARE:
-
-
-
-
The Vexing Problem of Shared Personal Data
I blogged earlier about the recent privacy kerfuffle with Facebook’s potentially permanent control over user data. In that post, I critiqued the “trust us” response that Facebook and so many companies make when responding to issues involving the use of people’s data.
- SHARE:
-
-
-
-
Facebook Recants
The other day, I blogged about Facebook’s change in its Terms of Service, indicating it would keep user data potentially forever. In response to a public backlash, Facebook is restoring its old Terms of Service and will work to revise its Terms of Service to better define user rights. From CNN:
- SHARE:
-
-
-
-
“Please Trust Us”: Facebook and Control of Personal Data
Recently, Facebook changed its Terms of Service (TOS). According to the New York Times:
- SHARE:
-
-
-
-
Why the Innocent Are Punished More Harshly Than the Guilty
The AP reports on a really tragic case of wrongful conviction:
A man who died in prison while serving time for a rape he didn’t commit was cleared Friday by a judge who called the state’s first posthumous DNA exoneration “the saddest case” he’d ever seen. . . .
[Timothy] Cole was convicted of raping a Texas Tech University student in Lubbock in 1985 and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He died in 1999 at age 39 from asthma complications.
DNA tests in 2008 connected the crime to Jerry Wayne Johnson, who is serving life in prison for separate rapes. Johnson testified in court Friday that he was the rapist in Cole’s case and asked the victim and Cole’s family to forgive him. . . .
The Innocence Project of Texas said Cole’s case was the first posthumous DNA exoneration in state history.
- SHARE:
-
-
-
-
Criminalizing Google’s YouTube in Italy
In Italy, a rather disturbing prosecution is taking place. Google officials, including Chief Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer, are being criminally prosecuted for a video somebody else uploaded to YouTube. According to an article by Tracey Bentley in the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ The Privacy Advisor:
- SHARE:
-
-
-
-
Justice Scalia’s Conception of Privacy
Justice Scalia recently spoke about privacy at a conference hosted by the Institute of American and Talmudic Law. The event sounded quite interesting, and I wish I could have been there. An AP report provides a brief overview of Scalia’s views on privacy:
- SHARE:
-
-
-
-
Herring v. United States, the Exclusionary Rule, and Errors in Databases
Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Herring v. United States, a case examining whether the exclusionary rule should apply to a search that was based on an error in a database.
In particular, due to a negligent error in a computer database indicating that there was an outstanding felony arrest warrant for Bennie Herring, he was arrested and a search incident to arrest revealed drugs and a gun (which he was not permitted to possess since he had a previous felony conviction).
- SHARE:
-
-
-
-