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EU

Submission+-EU privacy watchdog to ICANN: Law Enforcement WHOIS demands "unlawful" (domainincite.com)

Submitted by benyacrick
benyacrick writes: WHOIS was invented as an address book for sysadmins. These days, it's more likely to be used by Law Enforcement to identify a perpetrator or victim of an online crime. With ICANN's own study showing that 29% of WHOIS data is junk, it's no surprise that Law Enforcement have been lobbying ICANN hard to improve WHOIS accuracy.

The EU's privacy watchdog, the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, has stepped into the fray with a letter claiming that two of Law Enforcement's twelve asks are "unlawful". The problem proposals are data retention — where registrant details will be kept for up to two years after a domain has expired — and re-verification, where a registrant's phone number and e-mail will be checked annually and published in the WHOIS database.

The community consultation takes place at ICANN 45 in Toronto on October 15th.
Security

Submission+-Data disasters more likely to strike in summer (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: The turbulent summer weather leads to a surge in data loss incidents, according to industry experts. Kroll Ontrack claims that it traditionally deals with around 12% more data recovery requests in the summer months than it does in the spring, with the weather largely to blame. "The stress on electrical devices increases if you elevate the temperature," Ontrack engineer Robert Winter told PC Pro. "If you have devices that are going to fail, the failure may be induced by the elevated temperature." Winter claims failure rates tend to be higher among personal and small business users, rather than large companies, which tend to have air conditioning and humidity control. Laptops and disk drives being left in direct sunlight or in the back of cars is another common cause of failure, the Ontrack engineer added. Power surges caused by electrical storms and failure to cover adequately for holidaying IT staff are other contributory factors, Ontrack claims.

Submission+-Tenenbaum's final brief: $675k award too high (blogspot.com)

Submitted by NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: The final brief (PDF) filed by the defendant Joel Tenenbaum in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum seems to put the final nail in the coffin on the RIAA's argument that 'statutory damages' up to $150,000 can be awarded where the record company's lost profit is in the neighborhood of 35 cents. Not only do Tenenbaum's lawyers accurately describe the applicable caselaw and scholarship, something neither the RIAA nor the Department of Justice did in their briefs, but they point out to the Court that the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit — the appeals court controlling this matter — has itself ruled that statutory damages awards are reviewable for due process considerations under the guidelines of State Farm v. Campbell and BMW v. Gore. The brief is consistent with the amicus curiae brief filed in the case last year by the Free Software Foundation.

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The meat is rotten, but the booze is holding out. Computer translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

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