Woman: “Yes…uh… err, wait no!”

Officer: “Sorry Ma’am we are a PC only country, We are going to have to put her down.”

::Officer takes out gun, and proceeds to put three bullets into it::

Officer: “You are free to enter the country now.”

Ok, so maybe this Isn’t exactly what happened, but basically its just as stupid.

As I probably lack the ability to accurately describe what happened, I’ll let the woman describe her story herself. But in a nutshell: Woman visits Jerusalem. Gets stopped by boarder patrol because of where shes from. Gets asked a series of ridiculous questions. Border Patrol takes laptop into back room. Border Patrol proceeds to shoot Macbook, and then apologize for doing so.

I hope someone makes a spoof “I’m a Mac” commercial about this. I would cry.

For what it’s worth, Viacom’s General Counsel this week admitted to a group of Yale undergrades that suing P2P-users, “felt like terrorism.”

Also this week, or at least since the last Roundup, Apple Computer scored a major victory over hackintosh purveyors Psystar. Psystar was found to have violated Apple-held copyrights, in addition to violating the DMCA. There is plenty of legal-wrangling yet to be had, but precedent has been set squarely in Apple’s favor.

Finally, in a bit of off-policy-yet-equally-important news, the Large Hadron Collider is back in action. Don’t worry, the thing is still black-hole free. For now.

We’ll see you next week!

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At any rate, two standout items this week are the patenting of a particular flavor of the “sudo” UNIX command by Microsoft, and the MPAA-forced shutdown of a municipal WiFi network over one illegal download.

The Microsoft patent story was widely published earlier this week, due to initial concerns over the far-reaching impact of such a patent claim. Further investigation showed that MS only received the patent rights to their particular user-rights elevation implementation – User Account Control.

The second article, is frankly, crazy… Or at least illustrates the power Big Media has over ISPs as they exist today.  And while I understand that the municipal service used a routed VPN to allow multiple users access via one network address, and thus that one address drew the ire of the MPAA – I do not understand how the MPAA can abide by punishing hundreds of potential users over the actions of one individual. Especially given that, at least in Europe, access to the Internet is quickly becoming regarded a fundamental right.

Just something to chew over for the weekend. We’ll be back next week with with more legal minutiae.

Information has been appearing all over the ‘net about the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated between roughly 40 nations in Seoul, South Korea. Rumblings about ACTA have been going on for a while now, but it seems what is actually in the treaty is beginning to come to light. What is allegedly being discussed is terrifying – a global DMCA-like regime that makes ISP’s the watchdog for copyrighted content (lions), three strikes disconnect policy (tigers), the end or major changes to safe harbor provisions (bears), and other major changes that could dramatically change the internet forever (Oh my!).

The US Government has not been forthcoming with any information about ACTA for some time, which led the Electronic Frontier Foundation to file a Freedom of Information Act request for the information. This was met with stonewalling by the US Trade Representative, who claimed that the information was a state secret. Non-Disclosure agreements were a requirement by the USTR to be privy to the negotiations, which could be why the industry has been so very quiet about all this.

Internet users of the world, commence the shaking in your boots. I have a nasty feeling the proverbial “boom” will be lowered soon on us all.

Read more about ACTA:
from EFF
from Michael Geist, Canadian Law Professor
from Afterdawn
from HuffPost

Many states now require sex offenders to turn in their email addresses and screen names so that the government can keep track of them. However, this new Georgia law requires that all sex offenders also hand over their passwords. Sara Totonchi of the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights stated that “This essentially will give law enforcement the ability to read e-mails between family members, between employers.”

Many would argue that because the offender committed the act that he must forever pay the price. But the question that arises in my mind is… How far is too far?… What if the government started requiring them to have live video feeds in their houses that the government could watch?

Check out the article: Sex offenders must hand over passwords – Crime & courts- msnbc.com.