Is ignorance a valid legal defense for file-sharing?

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

A 16 year old girl has successfully managed to have her fine for file sharing reduced after she argued she was too young to understand that her music downloading was unlawful.   Which raises the question – is ignorance a valid legal defense?

Whitney Harper will now only have to pay $200 per downloaded song instead of $750 which was the penalty demanded by the record labels.   $200 is still an outrageous amount for a single song, but I suppose most of it is a deterrent and a penalty for what she has done.

Her lawyer argued in court that “a person her age could not understand the illegality of her acts and could therefore not be capable of intentionally infringing the copyright in the music.”

Harper told the court in a statement that she had had “no knowledge or understanding of file trading, online distribution networks or copyright infringement”.   She went even further and said that she believed programs like KaZaA “to be similar to online radio stations”

The judge believed her.

I’m leaning towards the notion that the judge is a moron and that 16 year old Whitney has taken him for a ride.  Show me one 16 year old that doesn’t know what a file sharing network is?   Show me one 16 year old that doesn’t rip CD’s, that doesn’t have illegal MP3’s on their iPod’s and MP3 players?    Every 16 year old knows what a file sharing network is and what it does!  I bet if the judge has children, they’re probably at home right now downloading Season 3 of Prison Break.

Do you agree?   Or is ignorance really a valid Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card?   Can a person really be too young to know what they are doing in things like this?



Google Maps gets its Georgia’s mixed up

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

This will probably go down in journalism history as one of the classics and Google will never live this down.  Plus you’ve probably still got the crazies in Georgia, USA hiding in the bushes with their shotguns waiting for the Russian tanks to come rumbling past muttering to themselves “that Google map thingie said they were coming!  Gotta stay vigilant!”

Google Maps, when used in an Associated Press Report about the Georgia conflict (that’s the Georgia near Russia), got mixed up and decided to use Georgia in the United States instead.    Therefore, the story ended up looking like this :

General confusion reigned.   One USA Georgia resident got worked up and posted a question on Yahoo Answers asking where the tanks were.   Even today, if you put “Russians invade Georgia” into Google Maps, you’ll get this.

But Google shouldn’t be too embarrassed.   UK’s Sky News made exactly the same mistake.    Be sure to check out their disclaimer at the bottom :

So if you’re living in Georgia, you’d best pack and start heading for the border!    According to Google and Wikipedia, you’re about to be visited by the Russian Army!

DefCon Presentation on Subway Hacking Exposes Critical Weaknesses

By PatB
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

A gag order prevented three MIT students from presenting their findings to a Defcon audience on a penetration test at Boston’s Subway system. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority filed a lawsuit to stop the speech and a U.S. District Court granted the temporary injunction, which kept the vulnerabilities in the farecard systems and security violations discovered from becoming public.

Continue reading ›



The Online World of CitySpace

Liveplace.com has recently released a clip presenting their yet-to-be-launched online world, CitySpace. Check it out in the following video:

What is really great about this online world is that the environment it features can be accessed via a conventional browser and is fully rendered server-side, allowing relatively weak devices such as phones and PDAs to load the game without problems. The video you saw above was streamed on Treo 700 at 240kbps.

Twitter Spam is a Growing Problem

By Jimmy Rogers
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

If you are a regular Twitter user, you might have noticed a surprising number of “hot babes” have started following you.  On top of this, your new follower has only have three tweets in her profile and one of them is a link to a rather shady site.  Yes, you sir have been the victim of “follow spam.”

Twitter has been working on a solution to this kind of problem and thus far they have begun two new practices.  First, they are shutting down accounts that are clearly spammy.  Second, they have implemented “follow limits” that restrict the number of people you can follow.  Remember, this does not affect the number of people that can follow you, just the number of people YOU can follow.  The current limit is 2000 accounts.

There has been some controversy over the limits being imposed.  First of all, by banning all of those users, the number of followers I have has been drastically reduced.  Ok, so that isn’t a legitimate greivance, but here are a few real ones:

  1. A number of accounts have reason to follow more than 2000 users: namely bots that serve some purpose and actively monitor all of your tweets.
  2. Some people just want to be able to follow anyone and everyone, especially those who have thousands of followers themselves.

According to Webmonkey’s monkey_bites blog, the limit is a little bit flexible.  Apparently if you already have more than 2000 followers, you are allowed the ability to follow more than the usual number.  This may help out some of the bots (but not all of them) because most of the connections are one-to-one.

[Image from hehe2.net]

Chance Meeting with a Space Shuttle

By Jimmy Rogers
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Sometimes an airline passenger in the right place on the right flight really hits the jackpot.  At least, that’s what happened to this Air Canada passenger with a window seat.  He has the perfect view of a space-bound shuttle.  I suggest kind of clicking ahead a little every once in a while unless you are truly awe-inspired (it’s a bit long).

From what I’ve been able to gather, this is likely the shuttle Discovery on STS-124 (the mission’s official designation).  The purpose of the mission is to complete the Kibo space laboratory on the International Space Station.  Very cool!

[PointNiner via Gizmodo]

Office worker jailed for exposing his ex-boss’s private emails

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

A Spanish office worker has been jailed for two years after he “hacked” into the computer of his ex-boss, retrieved hundreds of emails that the man had deleted and then sent them on to lots of other people.

The emails were said to be “highly personal” and contained details such as the man’s sex life.   But they then found their way to people such as the ex-boss’s wife, mistress, former colleagues and even the Mayor!

As well as the two year jail term, the villain was also ordered to pay a fine of €3,240 ($4,820) as well as €4,000 ($5,950) in compensation to the former Pointy-Haired Boss, whose reputation – and marriage – must be in tatters by now.

The case was able to be brought to court because of Spain’s strict privacy laws.   So as soon as the first email went out, the office worker was in deep doo-doo.   Never mind the fact that he hacked his way in.   They got him on the privacy violations instead.

A bit like getting Al Capone on tax violations instead of the gangster-related charges.    It’s always the little things that bring these people down.

Moral Of The Story – When you think the compromising email is deleted, perhaps it’s really not.  Check again!

The price of Internet integrity: Lower than you might think

By PatB
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

The Internet, and especially blogs, are quickly becoming recognized as a great source of debate and opinion on controversial topics.  Stories that begin in the mainstream media often spill over to blogs for discussion, and more and more often now, people form their own opinions after reading both sides of issues on blogs.

A perfect example of this is the debate over Comcast’s traffic shaping to suppress P2P applications.  Comcast ultimately stopped the practice and was fined by the FCC, but during the runup to the FCC hearings, many blogs, including this one, offered opinions on whether or not Comcast’s practices were against net neutrality or constituted normal traffic management.

I have written in this space previously that, in my opinion, what Comcast was doing was necessary as day to day management of their network.  What if it came out later that Comcast was paying me to write this on this blog?  (they didn’t.)  Wouldn’t that make you mad?  I know that it would make me mad if I found that such a biased piece was written on one of my favorite blogs.

But this is just what has been happening on other blogs and online newpapers, including The Harvard Crimson.  In this article here, author Mel King writes that FCC has been putting on a “dog and pony show” regarding Comcast’s traffic management.  Now he has been outed by CNET’s Declan McCullagh as a staunch supporter of net neutrality, and an opponent of federal legislation that would benefit Broadband Providers.  So why the opposing opinion piece for the Crimson?

According to McCullagh, its because he is a member of LawMediaGroup, a DC lobbying and public affairs firm that specializes in turning controversial issues into campaigns for corporate interests.  And Comcast hired LMG to campaign against the net neutrality message in the courts of public opinion.  According to LMG’s website, this is how they do it:

Most public affairs firms are “stovepipes” which specialize in discrete issues such as traditional lobbying, media buys, or often merely purchasing grassroots relationships with the clients’ funds.  By contrast, LMG uses a “political campaign model” that integrates expertise in the subject matter, message development, aggressive, research-driven paid and earned media, on-the-ground coalition building, preparation of analytical and other policy papers, and a host of next-generation services such as viral and online campaigns.  Our goal is to dominate the media environment on behalf of the client.“

In order to be a blogger for one of these types of media lobbying firms, you have to keep it a secret, but the job could be lucrative.  Again, according to McCullagh, op-ed pieces on blogs or newspapers can earn about $750 bucks per article.  Not bad work if you can get it, I guess.  But I didn’t know integrity had such a low price tag.

The Strangest Clip Ever Made

A while ago, Nokia launched a site that featured a strange box that could be unlocked by solving various puzzles. When opened, the box promised to present “The Weirdest Clip Ever Made”. Well folks, the mysterious clip has just been released to the public, and I must admit, it may really be one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. If you thought that those old PS3 ads looked weird, buckle your seatbelt, as this clip is bringing strangeness to a whole new level. Video after the jump. Continue reading ›