It is ridiculously difficult in Windows XP to map a network drive to a Webdav-enabled folder on the Internet that is password protected.
Having tried and failed to do so on two computers, despite trying a host of client-side hacks, I'm grumpy about it.
Thanks to two of said hacks, I can see the folder as a “network connection” but even so I still can't map it. Alas, I need to map it to make some convenient things happen.
And, yes, I should use Unix. But I depend on WordPerfect…
UK ISPs to Spy on Google Users (and Others):
Greetings. Given the CCTV surveillance fetish in the UK these days, it seems somehow sickly appropriate that British ISPs are in the forefront when it comes to spying on the content of their subscribers' Web browsing — and it appears that Google users are in the bull's-eye.
Most of the related media attention so far has revolved around the manner in which the three largest UK ISPs have gone to bed with “Phorm” — toward the goal of monetizing Web browsing habits of subscribers and providing targeted ads ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_roundup/ ).
Of course, there's a lot “soothing” promotional blather on the BT site claiming that the data collected regarding the sites that you visit is quickly deleted or anonymized. And while officially the ISPs claim that they haven't made a decision about opt-out vs. opt-in, the current British Telecom limited deployment — they call the “service” “Webwise” ( http://webwise.bt.com/webwise/index.html ) and promote it as mainly an anti-phishing system — appears to be opt-out (requiring either maintaining a special cookie in your browser or blocking all cookies from a particular site).
Third-party tracking of the Web sites that you visit is bad enough, but Webwise (and presumably the other incarnations of the Phorm system) go one big step farther — they actually spy on your Web content and extract for their own use the search terms that you enter into search engines:
“We [Webwise] use the website address, keywords and search terms from the page viewed to match a category or area of interest (e.g., travel or finance).”
Given that the vast majority of searches these days are conducted with Google, it's obvious that this ISP-based system will be attempting to monetize the vast number of search transactions between users and Google, in a technical manner that seems eerily similar to wiretapping.
What is this, an epidemic?
Big news to the folks who care about such things: Microsoft acquires Credentica's U-prove technology.
Bravo to Stefan.
Beppe Grillo — a writer who is new to me — warns of The Levi-Prodi law and the end of the Internet:
Ricardo Franco Levi, Prodi's right hand man, undersecretary to the President of the Council, has written the text to put a stopper in the mouth of the Internet. The draft law was approved by the Council of Ministers on 12 October. No Minister dissociated themselves from it. On gagging information, very quietly, these are all in agreement.
The Levi-Prodi law lays out that anyone with a blog or a website has to register it with the ROC, a register of the Communications Authority, produce certificates, pay a tax, even if they provide information without any intention to make money.
As Grillo writes, the law, were it to be passed by the Italian Parliament, would set up conditions so onerous that most bloggers would just shut down.
I have some doubts that such a rule would be consistent with either Italy's obligations to the EU or especially to the ECHR, but I don't know either body of law well enough to be sure.
Maybe Robert Waldmann knows more about the Italian politics behind this, and whether the bill has any realistic prospects of enactment?
Addendum: Not that Wikipedia is the most reliable source, but this entry for Beppe Grillo is certainly colorful.
Milton Mueller — a reliable source — writes, Council of Europe Works to Criminalize Political Expression:
The Council of Europe is pushing to extend the Cybercrime Convention to impose criminal sanctions on what it considers to be unacceptable forms of political or religious expression. The Cybercrime Convention was originally negotiated to respond to transnational problems such as theft of data, breaking into computers, computer-based financial fraud and the like. But now the Council is engaged in bulk unsolicited emails to promote the idea that web site content that is insulting or xenophobic is a cybercrime of the same order.
The bulk emails were sent to promote an April 1st meeting in Strasbourg, where the Council will promote its “Additional Protocol concerning the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems.” Note the less than honest language: what the Council is targeting are not harmful “acts” of racism or xeonophobia, but the distribution of “written material, ideas or theories” which “insult publicly, through a computer system, (i) persons for the reason that they belong to a group distinguished by race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, as well as religion, if used as a pretext for any of these factors; or (ii) a group of persons which is distinguished by any of these characteristics.”
There's lots more.
The COE has autonomous ideas, and this might be one of them, but it is also a place that the USA uses as a policy laundry. The way it works is that when our government wants something they can't get from Congress, they go to the COE (or WIPO, or whatever), get it adopted in Europe, then go to Congress and say we our allies want us to conform to their standard….
After a very engaging start to his/her blogging career, Lucky Jim, J.D. wrote on Dec. 15, 2007 that s/he'd started to explore Second Life,
I’ve recently begun to explore Second Life. My cover story is that I’m engaged in fieldwork for socio-legal research on law and informal regulation in virtual communities. There’s more than a grain of truth in that. I am in fact interested in that topic, am in fact working on research in that vein, and do in fact believe there’s plenty of interest along those lines in Second Life. There’s even a Second Life Bar Association and a Second Life Law School.
But, the pathetic truth is that I’ve also found my initial forays to be surprisingly enjoyable.
And the blog hasn't been updated since.
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