Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Microsoft Acquires Credentica’s U-prove

Posted on March 6, 2008 by Michael Froomkin

Big news to the folks who care about such things: Microsoft acquires Credentica's U-prove technology.

Bravo to Stefan.

Posted in Cryptography | Comments Off

Proposed Italian Law Would Effectively Shut Down Most Blogs

Posted on March 6, 2008 by Michael Froomkin

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.

Posted in Law: Free Speech | 2 Comments

Council of Europe Sips at the Censorship Kool-Aid

Posted on March 6, 2008 by Michael Froomkin

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….

Second Life Claims Another Vicitm

Posted on March 6, 2008 by Michael Froomkin

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.

Posted in Blogs, Virtual Worlds | 1 Comment