From monica at sarai.net Mon Jun 2 18:43:17 2003 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2003 18:43:17 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Fwd: Envisional Digest - May 2003 Message-ID: A thousand pounds to know what kazaa is upto! best M >Delivered-To: monica at sarai.net >From: "Envisional Digest" >Reply-To: digest at envisional.com >To: monica at sarai.net >Subject: Envisional Digest - May 2003 >Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2003 00:00:00 +0100 >X-Priority: 3 >X-Spam-Level: >X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.53 (1.174.2.15-2003-03-30-exp) >X-Sanitizer: Mail Sanitizer > >Envisional Digest - May 2003 >---------------------------- > >Contents >-------- > >1. Introduction >2. New: Envisional's Kazaa Report >3. Brave New World >4. IP News from May 2003 > >Introduction >------------ >Welcome to Envisional's regular newsletter, designed to keep our >customers, >partners and other contacts up to date with the latest developments in the >world of intellectual property protection. In this issue, we talk about >the >online distribution (legitimate and not so legitimate) of music. I hope >you >enjoy this newsletter, and find it useful - please do let us know what you >think. > >Envisional's Kazaa Report: advertisement >---------------------------------------- > >Envisional has a substantial amount of experience relating to Internet >piracy and trademark abuse. We produce a large number of reports for >clients >on the ways in which their brands and copyright material are used and >abused >online. We have used this expertise to produce a series of specialist >reports on Internet piracy issues. The first of these reports concerns >Kazaa, the most popular peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing system available >(http://www.kazaa.com/). Kazaa has recently become the most downloaded >program in history, with over 230 million recorded downloads. Envisional's >report explores the technical workings of the Kazaa system, its rapid >growth >and the accompanying legal challenges facing its owners, and the online >communities that have been established in its wake. > >To obtain a copy of this report, please fill in the order form on our >web >site at http://www.envisional.com/order/kazaa or call and ask to speak to >a >sales representative on 01223 569700. Alternatively, you can simply reply >to >this email with your contact details, and we will contact you. The report >costs £1,000 + VAT. If you would like to speak to us about having >personalized reports produced for your business, please contact us in the >same way. > > >Brave New World for Music - Utopia or Dystopia? >----------------------------------------------- > >Since the rise and fall of Napster, the ways in which we buy, sell and >distribute music have changed dramatically, possibly forever. Napster's >original file-sharing system was shut down by the American courts because >it >was deemed to be contributing to copyright infringement in allowing the >distribution of music files. Napster was offering a way for people to get >music for free, which naturally had a great popular appeal, but was not so >popular with the music industry. > >In the past year or so, a number of record companies have set up sites >that >let users buy music legitimately online, but the number of services that >let >users download music without paying continues to increase. Recently the >computer manufacturer Apple entered the fray by launching its new online >music store, iTunes Music Store, based on their popular iTunes audio >player. > >Using iTunes, Apple are now offering an online music service that lets >subscribers pay to download music - 99 cents per song. This money is then >correctly distributed to the rights holders. Unfortunately, hackers found >a >way to use the iTunes system to share music with other users, thus using >the >system as a peer-to-peer file-sharing tool. Apple has since released a new >version of the software with the relevant feature disabled. iTunes has >proved phenomenally popular. Even though it is only available to users of >Apple Macintosh computers in the United States, the venture sold over 1 >million individual songs in its first week of operation. Apple plans a >Windows version for later in the year. > >During May, a Spanish company launched a service called Puretunes, which >offers unlimited music downloads at rates of just a few pennies per hour >(or >a few pennies per day if you subscribe for a year). Puretunes claims to be >exploiting a loop-hole in Spanish law that enables it to sell the music >without the record companies' permission. The record companies do not >agree. >The people behind Puretunes say they have sought approval from Spanish >music >industry bodies, but the record industry pointed out that this does not >give >them permission to sell music online worldwide, for which they would need >explicit permission from the record companies. > >Clearly consumers have become used to new ways of obtaining music, and >the >demand for online availability of albums and singles is only going to >increase. Eventually, legitimate channels will become more widely >established, and will be better understood by consumers. > >Useful links: >http://daily.linnwood.org/yesterday/2003/05/13.html >http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2003-05-20-kazaa_x.htm >http://www.pressplay.com >http://www.apple.com/itunes/ >http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30884.html >http://www.net-security.org/news.php?id=2752 > > > >IP News from May 2003 >--------------------- > >Film pirates face hi-tech crackdown > >icNewcastle.co.uk reported on various measures being taken by the film >industry to help to cut down on film piracy: > >http://icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/sundaysun/page.cfm?objectid=1 >294 >5877&method=full&siteid=50081 >New P2P tools mean quicker downloads >A number of news sources have reported recently on the ease with which >episodes of television series, like films, music, books and software, can >be >downloaded on the Internet, using tools like BitTorrent and eDonkey: > >http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t278-s2135249,00.html >http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/3006619.stm > >The official sites for eDonkey and BitTorrent are: > >http://www.edonkey2000.com/ >http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/ > >While BitTorrent has become famous for being involved in the piracy of >films >and television programs, it is also a legitimate tool used for >transferring >large files over the Internet. For example, it was used recently to >distribute the latest upgrades for Red Hat Linux: > >http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/rh9.html > >Matrix sequel pirated online > >The BBC reported that the new Matrix film, the Matrix Reloaded, was >available for free download. According to Cnet it was available before its >official theatrical release. Envisional was able to verify the film's >presence on various protocols on the day of its US release. >http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/2940270.stm >http://news.com.com/2100-1026-1001562.html > >Fake Viagra Sold Online in Miami > >The Moscow Times reported on a shipment of counterfeit Viagra that was >sold >on the Internet in America: >http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/05/28/053.html > >North Carolina cracks down on copycats > >A local North Carolina news source reported that officials had arrested >a >man who had been selling fake designer goods, including handbags and >watches, online. Envisional does a great deal of work in helping to track >down the online sale of counterfeit goods of all kinds. >http://rdu.news14.com/content/headlines/?ArID=29951&SecID=2 > >------------------------------------------ > >Request for Comments >-------------------- >We would like to make this newsletter as useful and worthwhile as possible >for our partners and clients. If you have any questions you would like to >see answered, or any comments, criticism or suggestions you would like us >to >pass on, then please do send them to Ben Coppin (ben at envisional.com) or >Brian Earle (brian at envisional.com). > >If you received this email in error, or do not wish to be included in >future >mailings from Envisional, please reply to this mail with the subject >"remove". If you would prefer to receive this newsletter in plain text >format in future, please reply with the subject "plaintext". > >If you would like to speak to someone from Envisional to receive further >information on Envisional software, products and services, either visit >our >website www.envisional.com, or reply to this message with the subject -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From thehindu at web1.hinduonnet.com Sun Jun 1 15:07:11 2003 From: thehindu at web1.hinduonnet.com (thehindu at web1.hinduonnet.com) Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2003 15:07:11 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Article sent from The Hindu Message-ID: <200306010937.h519bBc3010145@web1.hinduonnet.com> an unlikely mascot for the open source movement! ============================================================= This article has been sent to you by Sudhir ( sudhir75 at hotmail.com ) ============================================================= Source: The Hindu (http://www.hinduonnet.com/2003/06/01/stories/2003060100701100.htm) National    Kalam backs `open' software initiatives By Anand Parthasarathy Bangalore May 31. In a subtle departure from the practice of past Indian Presidents — distancing themselves from the nuances of government policy — the current incumbent has come out unequivocally for the use of open source computer software, and has pulled no punches in airing his unhappiness that the country is still mostly using proprietary software solutions. Predictably, the global Information Technology community has been quick to note his words. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam used his speech in Pune last week, at the dedication function of the International Institute of Information Technology (I{+2}IT) to express his concern that so many sectors, including government and education, were still dependent on costly proprietary software packages, calling it a "most unfortunate thing'' and adding: ``In India, open sourcecode software will have to come and stay in a big way for the benefit of our billion people.'' He also reminded the IT industry of the importance of Indian language computing solutions: "We must have (Indian) search engines, word processing tools, optical character recognisers, speech recognisers and machine translators''. Dr. Kalam's remarks on open source which were apparently triggered during his walk around the I{+2}IT, when he saw most PCs running Windows and similar software, have been quickly picked up by IT news services abroad: The U.S.-based CNET yesterday carried a dispatch which highlighted a remark the President made in his Pune speech about his interaction with the Microsoft Chairman, Bill Gates, when the latter visited India in November last. It was picked up the same day by : "While walking in the Mughal Gardens we were discussing the future of information technology including... software security.... I made a point that we look for open source codes ... our discussions became difficult since our views were different''. This was about as candid as an Indian President has ever been about his interactions with one of his high profile guests. Dr. Kalam's strength of conviction and clear perceptions about the nation's techno-road map may perhaps explain his bold statement in an area where the Government has hitherto been quite ambivalent. He adds that while the Indian IT industry can proudly claim that 260 of the Fortune 500 companies are its clients, he would rather like to hear that "260 of the Fortune 500 are Indian multinational companies''. The fact that his speech is so quickly reported by the technical media abroad is again something for which the President must be given credit. Since he assumed charge in June 2002, the official website of the President has been jazzed up and the text of his Pune speech as well as later speeches are available for perusal. Indeed the CNET news item provided a link to the full text (http://presidentof india.nic.in/S/html/speeches/ others/may28_2003.html). Unlike the political classes the current President possibly does not feel the need to leave any escape avenues open so that he can later claim he was `misquoted'. Copyright: 1995 - 2002 The Hindu Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the consent of The Hindu From sunil at mahiti.org Thu Jun 12 13:35:31 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: 12 Jun 2003 13:35:31 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] How to become a patent millionaire Message-ID: <1055405131.644.67.camel@sunil> http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/09/BU213833.DTL Dennis Fernandez has come up with an idea for TV sets with built-in cameras and small screens that would let viewers talk to one another while watching a show. "Let's say we're both watching a 49ers game," said the 42-year old Menlo Park attorney. "You and I will show up in this bubble picture. You'll have a head shot, and I'll have a head shot, and we're talking to each other during the game. It's as if you and I are in a virtual chat room watching the same broadcast event." Fernandez has no intention of actually building such a device. But the idea is his -- and he has a certificate from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to prove it. If a company decides to build a product based on his idea, it might have to buy the patent from him, pay him a licensing fee or face him in court. It's part of a legal tactic called "offensive blocking patents" in which businesses or individual entrepreneurs use patents not so much as tools to build new products, but as legal roadblocks or bargaining chips against competitors or corporate giants. Some legal experts, including those representing big corporations, are skeptical of this approach, which they say is impractical because of the enormous costs associated with inventions and patents. Still, the tactic underscores the growing importance of patents as a competitive weapon in the technology industry, as demonstrated by the recent $35 million judgment in favor of a Virginia inventor who sued EBay for alleged patent infringement. Inventor Tom Woolston accused the San Jose online auction operator of using programs he developed for processing certain sales. Typically, patent attorneys help companies patent technologies to protect them from rivals. Fernandez, who is also an electrical engineer and inventor, and other Silicon Valley attorneys are taking a more aggressive approach: They help clients analyze their rivals' technology and then try to obtain patents to make it harder for them to move forward. "It's a more valuable patent that covers your competitor's products (rather) than your products," Fernandez, founding partner of Fernandez & Associates in Menlo Park. Peter Eng, a senior associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a Palo Alto law firm, said that while most patent attorneys would simply cover what a client is working on, "those with foresight think ahead and predict where others may or may not go." THE BRICK WALL John Ferrell, founding partner of Carr & Ferrell in Palo Alto, likened a patent portfolio to a brick wall. "What I advise my clients to do is to analyze their competitors' road maps, " he said. "Successful companies become successful by spending time thinking about competitors and reacting to competitors proactively." He cited the standards of Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) technology, in which transmission speeds have been rapidly advancing during the past three years from 11 megabits per second in 1999 to more than 50. Wireless firms expect the standard to reach more than 100 megabits per second soon. "There will be technical challenges, so one way we might use our patent portfolio offensively is we might sit down with our smart guys to figure out what we need to do," Ferrell said. The company can then apply for patents on those inventions. An applicant must prove to a patent examiner in written statements and with drawings and diagrams that the invention is novel and original. But the applicant doesn't have to come up with a prototype. "You don't have to build it," Ferrell said. "You just have to conceive it. By filing a couple of patents, you essentially have co-opted the standards road map. Anybody who wants to go from G to X has to get through your toll road." Fernandez said that because his clients and their competitors talk to the same customers, "you know what holes need to be plugged, and you plug it up." ATTORNEYS' INSPIRATION He and other patent attorneys say they were partly inspired by Jerry Lemelson, the controversial Nevada inventor who obtained more than 550 patents, including such technologies as the bar code and the crying baby doll. Portrayed as a hero of inventors, he was also scorned by big business, which had to pay him hundreds of millions in royalty fees, even after his death in 1997. Jerry Hosier, an attorney representing the Lemelson Medical Education and Research Foundation Limited Partnership in Incline Village, Nev., scoffed at the idea of using the patent system as a legal roadblock. It can take an enormous amount of time and money to get a patent approved, he said. Preparing and filing a patent application can cost between $8,000 and $15, 000, mostly in legal fees, Fernandez said. Hosier said it's also virtually impossible to predict the emergence of new markets for inventions. Lemelson had to wait years before collecting royalties for some of his ideas, such as the bar code. "This notion (of offensive blocking patents) is just incredibly naive," Hosier said. Small companies seeking to enforce their patents against big firms could end up with millions of dollars in legal costs. Big corporations could also use their patent portfolios as leverage, either to accuse rivals of possible violations or to bargain for access to their inventions. Jerry Rosenthal, IBM's vice president for intellectual property and licensing, said it would be a gamble for small companies to invest thousands in filing patents that may not yield any profit. "I'm not sure I understand the value of doing that," he said. "If anybody did come to us with a patent for that purpose, we believe we can use our patent portfolio to trade." When faced with a patent infringement complaint from a smaller company, a giant like IBM can use its portfolio of 30,000 patents to strike a deal by giving the firm access to its intellectual property or threatening a counterclaim by citing patents of its own that the other party may be infringing upon. LESS TO LOSE Independent inventors may be harder for big corporations to deal with because they may not have much to lose, Rosenthal said. "You have to spend more time and effort offsetting these challenges," he said. "A lot of them are with contingency law firms. It's like betting on oil wells. 'Where do we get a hit here? We bet on all of them and hope one or two come up.' It's a problem." In fact, some of the more enterprising attorneys who subscribe to offensive blocking tactics have applied for their own patents. Eng applied for a patent for a touch-screen cell phone more than a year before it became a common feature on some phones, but didn't pursue it and never got the patent. "If I had just seen this through, I could be retired by now," he said by telephone. Fernandez has filed more than a dozen applications for blocking patents. Each filing entailed months of research, he said. He also had to ensure his patent applications do not cover areas in which his clients operate. But because he's his own attorney, he only had to pay the filing fee of about $400 for each application. One pending application describes a system for monitoring remote objects using global positioning systems and Webcam technologies. A patent for a digital television system with video conferencing features was approved in January 2002. GOAL IS TO MAKE MONEY Fernandez wants to make money eventually by licensing his patents or selling them to companies that may need them, but he has yet to cash in on his inventions. Mike Marion, deputy general manager of Philips Electronics' intellectual property and standards department, said he had not heard of Fernandez's invention. A company spokesperson declined to comment on whether Philips was working on a such a device, saying the company's future product road maps are highly confidential. Marion added that the Netherlands firm often gets letters from inventors claiming that it is infringing on their patents, but said these claims often turn out not to be relevant to Philips. "Very few of them are pioneering inventions," he said. "They usually improve on something that already exists or does something that you can find a lot of other ways to do." Patents have become more important to the technology industry during the past decade. The number of patents filed in the United States went up 91 percent, from 186,507 in 1992 to 356,493 in 2002, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The number of grants has gone up 72 percent from 107,394 in 1992 to 184,379 in 2002. In a sign of Silicon Valley's growing interest in intellectual property, the number of patents granted to California inventors has more than doubled, from 9,105 in 1992 to 21,236 in 2002. Marion said many inventors want to come up with an idea that eventually becomes commercially viable and valuable to companies with deep pockets. "That's certainly the maximum position to be in, but that doesn't happen often," he said. But Fernandez said it's worth the gamble. "It's hard to invent the future," he said, but "sometimes you just come up with ideas, and it's a shame to let them go to waste." E-mail Benjamin Pimentel at bpimentel at sfchronicle.com. · Printer-friendly version · Email this article to a friend Business & Finance --Get Quote: Symbol Lookup -- Main Business & Finance Page: Stock quotes, portfolio, funds and more... -- SFGate Technology: It's a high-tech world - - we just plug you into it... Bay Recruiter Top Jobs BIOTECH Associate Director Research Chiron OFFICE ASST P/T, Detail & customer svc orie LOANS LOAN PROCESSORS AMERIQUEST COMMUNICATIONS DEPUTY DIRECTOR $115,145 - $140,064 PEACE CORPS ASSIGNMENTS AVAILABLE PEACE CORPS AUTO SALES MANAGER for top performing, do HOTEL Come join the 4th largest hotel Co. PHYSICAL THERAPIST Occupational Therpaist Select Medical CONSTRUCTION KJM & Associates, has an immediate o RESTAURANT Cook / Chef Yellowstone NUTRITIONIST SENIOR This pos. is very dynamic & w HEALTHCARE RN'S & LVN'S Sutter VNA HEALTHCARE Multiple positions available Self-Help REAL ESTATE SELL REAL ESTATE ANTHONY SCHOOLS SALES BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT REP GREATLAND CORP. SALES SUMMER PT/FT Start-up co. seeks moti CONSTRUCTION INSPECTOR Junior-level const. inspec LAW ENFORCEMENT DEPT OF HOMELAND SECURITY US BORDER PATROL AUTO PAINTER East Bay Body Shop Managent Oppty PRUDENTIAL California Realty Independently Owne AUTO SERVICE MANAGER Growing luxury/exoti NURSING ICU ST. MARY'S MED CNTR FINANCIAL Several Positions Available DRIVERS MOVERS: Class A,B,C - Local Regional NURSES SINCE 1979 RN/TECH OR PACU ICU CPD Y About Top Jobs View All Top Jobs -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw Shaw From sunil at mahiti.org Fri Jun 13 18:23:05 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: 13 Jun 2003 18:23:05 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Copyright Conundrum Message-ID: <1055508785.638.631.camel@sunil> Is downloading copyrighted music tantamount to stealing? Lawrence Lessig, an expert on Internet law from Stanford University's Law School, and Matt Oppenheim, senior vice president of business and legal affairs for the Recording Industry Association of America, answer your questions about this heated debate. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/june03/copyright.html -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw Shaw From sunil at mahiti.org Fri Jun 13 22:59:01 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: 13 Jun 2003 22:59:01 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Brutish Telecom Message-ID: <1055525341.646.877.camel@sunil> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/5/31163.html BT blows out in new patent challenge By Tim Richardson Posted: 12/06/2003 at 10:25 GMT BT has begun legal action in the US concerning patents for blowing fibre optic cables down bores and conduits. The action was filed in Delaware earlier this month, reports Light Reading, against Broadwing Inc., Level 3 Communications Inc., Qwest Communications International Inc., SBC Communications Inc., Touch America Holdings Inc., and Verizon Communications Inc. In a statement to The Register BT has confirmed the legal action alleging that the named companies have infringed its patents in its "blown cable patent portfolio". The company said: "BT takes the protection of its extensive and valuable intellectual property assets very seriously. "We've approached the companies concerned over the use of the blown cable patent but in the absence of satisfactory responses have litigated to enforce our rights." BT's "blown cable" technology uses compressed air and other gasses to blow fibre optic cables down conduits, as opposed to pulling them through using ropes, for example. No doubt BT's action will raise eyebrows among those who saw the UK's dominant telco make a fool of itself last year by pursuing its "patent" of hyperlinks. That challenge - to get US ISPs to cough up for using hyperlinks - was thrown out last year by a US judge who ruled that BT's "hidden page" patent did not cover what we know today as "hyperlinks". BT did not appeal the decision. ® -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw Shaw From sunil at mahiti.org Sat Jun 14 20:19:52 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: 14 Jun 2003 20:19:52 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] German Penguins Launch Successful Counter-Attack in SCO v Linux War Message-ID: <1055602193.704.99.camel@sunil> http://mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-18-Injunction_Story01.html The German Linux community is taking SCO-Caldera head on and winning. Has the German Linux community taken a page out of the playbook that says the best defense is a good offense? In any event, the German penguins have called SCO-Caldera CEO Darl McBride's, bluff. And so far SCO-Caldera and McBride have come up short. Apparently a letter Darl McBride and SCO-Caldera sent out to at least 1,500 companies, including Fortune 500 and Forbes 1000 top companies, precipitated the German Linux community counterattack against SCO-Caldera. That letter, dated 12 May 2003, states in part: Linux is, in material part, an unauthorized derivative of UNIX . . . We have evidence that portions of UNIX System V software code have been copied into Linux . . . legal liability that may arise from the Linux development process may also rest with the end user . . . We intend to aggressively protect and enforce these rights . . . we are prepared to take all actions necessary to stop the ongoing violation of our intellectual property or other rights. Penguins Counter-Attack On May 28, Univention GmbH obtained a preliminary injunction from the Bremen, Germany, Regional Court. The order prohibits SCO-Caldera from circulating: the idea that the Linux Operating System illegitimately acquired and contains the Intellectual Property of SCO UNIX and/or that the end users of LINUX can be made liable for patent/copyright infringements against SCO's intellectual Properties. Further, the Bremen Court Order provides for a fine of up to 250,000 Euros (around $250,000 U.S.) or jail time for every violation of the Court Order: each case of the offence carries a fine of up to 250,000.00 Euros, or as a substitute, detention of the Managing Directors (CEO) of the defendant could be imposed. Then, on 5 June 2003, Tarent GmbH obtained a preliminary injunction against SCO-Caldera from the Munich Regional Court. These preliminary injunctions against SCO-Caldera granted by the German courts apply only to Germany. However, if others follow the German Linux community's example and start filing similar court proceedings in their countries, SCO-Caldera could find itself embroiled in a lawsuits nightmare. In the United States at least fifty such suits could be filed, one in each of the fifty states. Actually, it is likely that every company, organization, and individual affected by SCO-Caldera's anti-Linux war could file similar suits. However, if thousands of lawsuits were to be filed against SCO-Caldera it is likely the courts in various states might join similar suits filed in the same court together. According to a Tarent announcement: "The Munich I regional court justified this [preliminary injunction] by the fact that by SCO could not make a convincing argument, that SCO's core rights had been hurt by Linux", said attorney Dr. Till Jaeger of Jaschinski, Biere, Brexl Chambers, who represents Tarent GmbH, a medium-size software provider who focus on free software. SCO-Caldera's Response to the Counterattack We asked SCO's Director of Corporate Communications, Blake Stowell, about the German preliminary injunctions. MozillaQuest Magazine: What is your response to these German preliminary injunctions? Blake Stowell: This applies to us under German law only in Germany. We have free reign to circulate this outside of Germany. We are complying with this until we can have it removed in a court of law in Germany. MozillaQuest Magazine: As I understand the German injunction process, you have six-months to appeal the imposition of the preliminary injunctions. Will SCO be appealing these preliminary injunctions (or whatever the process is to have the injunctions dissolved)? Blake Stowell: Yes. Univention's Peter Ganten Discusses the Preliminary Injunction Against SCO We discussed the Univention GmbH preliminary injunction with its CEO, Peter H. Ganten, via e-mail from 31 May through 6 June 2003. Please keep in mind when reading this discussion that some German words do not translate directly into English words. Same thing goes for the translations of court orders and announcements from German to English. MozillaQuest Magazine: To what in English does "GmbH" translate? Peter H. Ganten: My dictionary says: Limited (Ltd.), Incorporated (Inc.), Public Limited Company (PLC) MozillaQuest Magazine: I guess this is a temporary or preliminary injunction, is that correct? Peter H. Ganten: As I understand my lawyers, it does not really expire. SCO now has the chance to appeal the court's decision. If that happens, the court will conduct a hearing. If they do not appeal, we need to act again after some time (can't say when, yet). -- MozillaQuest Magazine: What happens if they do not appeal and you do not act? -- Peter H. Ganten: As my lawyers told me, the court's decision will expire after half a year. If they do not appeal, we will try to get a declaration from SCO that they will conform to the court's decision in the future. Should they not sign the declaration, we need to get a permanent court decision in a lawsuit. -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw Shaw From lawrenceliang at vsnl.net Fri Jun 13 23:18:35 2003 From: lawrenceliang at vsnl.net (lawrenceliang at vsnl.net) Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 22:48:35 +0500 (IST) Subject: [Commons-Law] PIL filed against windows in Jharkand Message-ID: <20030613174835.0B49A4FE4D@bom6.vsnl.net.in> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030613/ddccb250/attachment.pl From lawrenceliang at vsnl.net Wed Jun 18 09:57:32 2003 From: lawrenceliang at vsnl.net (Lawrence Liang) Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 09:57:32 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Patents vote: Green party press release] Message-ID: <3EEFEA34.6010300@vsnl.net> -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: James Heald Subject: [Patents] Patents vote: Green party press release Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 15:33:15 +0100 Size: 5656 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030618/bd2d40ef/attachment.mht From lawrenceliang at vsnl.net Wed Jun 18 09:59:16 2003 From: lawrenceliang at vsnl.net (Lawrence Liang) Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 09:59:16 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] IP Insurance Message-ID: <3EEFEA9C.5080302@vsnl.net> This had to happen at some point of time, there s now a insurance business for IP Lawrence Dear Madam/Sir: I am please to announce you the creation and soonly-availability of the first IP insurance for patents (and trademarks, industrial designs, commercial names and domain names) named CHRYSTOL. Don't hesitate to ask me for more details/comments/remarks... Regards, Jean-Bernard Condat CHRYSTOL B.P. 59, 93402 Saint-Ouen Cedex, France condat at chrystol.com tél:/fax: +33 153013874 __________from the "Betterley Report," ©2003_______________ At the last minute, we uncovered a new product that will be launched soon in France. The particulars as reported to us by Jean-Bernard Condat: . Name of the product-CHRYSTOL . Future Web site-www.chrystol.com (beginning of Sept. 2003) . Contact-M. Jean-Bernard Condat, condat at chrystol.com, fax: +33 1 53013874, phone: +33 607238628, Chrystol, B.P. 59, 93402 Saint-Ouen Cedex, France . Three kinds of products-offensive, defensive, package for SME. For all three cases, patent, trademarks, drawings, and domain-names infringement, AOC, etc. . Carrier-Confidential pending final negotiations . Volume/kind of customers- 1.) attorneys with IP specialization or business transactional agreement activities (120 in France), 2.) mandatories (420 in France) with the legal INPI agreement, 3.) legal consultants in-house for large group (or head of IP service), 4.) all CAC40 and top 500 companies in France, and 5.) SME with at least a domain name and a company name (registered in the French national company directory called RCS), 6.) All European attorneys with IP specialization. . Target Markets-Industry-all French companies with at least one employer . Counsel selected by insured (pre-approved) . No copyright or software problems covered at this time . All kinds of (re-)examination in patent office of named insured's patent covered. . Coverage Territory-France, cited countries in La Hague or Madrid deposits; U.S. or common law-based countries excluded in all procedures . Major exclusion-no payment of annual patent fees From badri at eff.org Wed Jun 18 12:18:42 2003 From: badri at eff.org (Badri Natarajan) Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 23:48:42 -0700 Subject: [Commons-Law] Intro Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.1.20030617231901.00acd468@giasmd01.vsnl.net.in> Hi all, I just joined this list and I thought I'd post an intro, although a look at the subscriber list suggests that quite a few of you would already know me.. I'm a lawyer - I graduated from the National Law School in 2002, and spent a year doing a judicial clerkship with Justice SSM Quadri in the Supreme Court. I'm spending this summer working at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco on issues related to intellectual property, technology, and the public domain among other things. So I guess I have some of the same interests as a lot of people on this list. I'm joining the London School of Economics for my LL.M in October. I heard about this list from my classmate Venkatesh quite a while ago, but I only just got around to joining, and I'm glad I did..from the archives, it looks like an interesting place to be.. Badri From sunil at mahiti.org Sat Jun 21 02:28:55 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: 21 Jun 2003 02:28:55 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Sad day... GIF patent dead at 20 Message-ID: <1056142745.1150.1.camel@sunil> Sad day... GIF patent dead at 20 (Internet) http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/6/19/35919/4079 By it certainly is Thu Jun 19th, 2003 at 11:20:58 AM EST I just heard some sad news on talk radio - GIF patent US4,558,302 was found expired in its patent office filing cabinet this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the internet community will miss it - even if you didn't enjoy the litigation, there's no denying its contribution to bandwidth conservation. Truly a compression icon. On Friday, 20th June 2003, the death knell sounds for US patent number 4,558,302. Having benefitted its owner, the Unisys Corporation for 20 years, the contents of the patent are entered into the Public Domain and may be used absolutely freely by anyone. Officially titled "High speed data compression and decompression apparatus and method", it is more commonly known as the LZW patent or Unisys's GIF tax. History: A timeline of the GIF/LZW patent saga runs like so: May 1977: [LZ77] published. Most popular compression techniques build on this technique and most archivers (e.g. ZIP, ZOO, ARC, gzip, LhA, CAB, Arj, RAR, StuffIt) include it in their compression methods. I only mention this to tell you it's unrelated to LZ78 or LZW. September 1978: [LZ78] published. Virtually nobody uses the technique given directly (or the implementation given in [US4,464,650]), but the LZW derivative is widely used. 20th June 1983: LZW patent filed. Terry Welch has been working for the Sperry Research Center and invents a derivative of LZ78 with much simplified, faster dictionary handling. He calls it LZW, after the names of the inventors, Lempel-Ziv-Welch. June 1984: Terry Welch's article A Technique for High-Performance Data Compression appears in IEEE Computer magazine. If you're reading these links, you'll note that the article is very well written, much more readily understandable than the math-laden monstrosities that are [LZ77] and [LZ78]. The article includes a justification for data compression, an overview of common methods, and a detailed explanation and runthrough of the LZW algorithm. At no point does it mention the pending patent application! 5th July 1984: UNIX compress version 1.2 is released by Spencer Thomas, after the LZW article was published but before LZW was patented. Like many IEEE Computer readers, Spencer decided to implement the LZW algorithm he read in the magazine, completely unaware that there was a patent pending on the technique. compress later replaced pack as the de-facto UNIX compression tool, at least until gzip took the throne. 10th December 1985: LZW patent is granted. September 1986: The Sperry Corporation (owners of the Sperry Research Center) and the Burroughs Corporation merge to form Unisys. 15th June 1987: Bob Berry and the team at Compuserve release a new graphics file format called GIF (Graphics Interchange Format). It can handle anything from 2 to 256 colours -- wow! -- and the graphics data is compressed with LZW. Just like Spencer, they had read the LZW algorithm in a magazine and had wrongly assumed that it wasn't patented. Unisys does nothing. 1988: Unisys does nothing. The GIF format becomes even more popular. 1989: Unisys does nothing, although Raymond Gardner tries to bring up the issue in public. Unisys have been ensuring hardware manufacturers (e.g. V.42bis modem manufacturers and Postscript printer manufacturers) are licensed. The GIF format becomes even more popular. 1990: Unisys says nothing. The GIF format becomes even more popular. 1991: Unisys says nothing. The GIF format becomes even more popular. 1992: Unisys says nothing. The GIF format becomes even more popular. 1993: Unisys says nothing. The GIF format becomes even more popular. 1994: Unisys says ... no, wait, on 24th December 1994, Unisys and Compuserve jointly announce that any developers writing software that creates or reads the GIF file format will have to license the LZW patent from Unisys! It's a GIF tax! Burn all GIFs! Merry Christmas! That's enough history. I didn't even mention IBM's duplicate LZW patent. You can get a similar chronology from lzw.info or burnallgifs.org. One down, seven to go: So the US patent has expired. What does this leave? The European patent EP0,129,439 covers Germany, France, Britain and Italy and expires on the 18th June 2004. The Canadian patent CA1,223,965 expires on the 6th June 2004. The Japanese patents 2,123,602 and 2,610,084 expire on the 20th June 2004. This creates an interesting legal situation where LZW-based sofware is legal to distribute in the United States, but risks patent infringement claims in or when exported to Europe, Canada and Japan. Oh no! The world's going to end! What can be done? Calm down. Firstly, the persistent threat of expensive litigation just for having GIF images on your website hasn't diminished GIF's popularity in the slightest. Webmasters are completely and utterly unwilling to move to the replacement PNG format. What happened to the "BURN ALL GIFS" rallying cry? It has been forgotten. There are all sorts of excuses; "It's too much hassle to convert all my graphics and their links", "Internet Explorer doesn't support PNG properly", "PNGs can't do animation and nobody supports MNGs". The best one of all: "Unisys will never sue me!". I wish Unisys a happy year squeezing the very last drops out of their monopoly. Further information: PNG home page Burn All GIFs Slashdot relaying Unisys's position on GIF-using webmasters Unisys's published position on GIF and LZW The Free Software Foundation's position on GIF files The League for Programming Freedom's position on GIF files The GIF Controversy: A Software Developer's Perspective Dr Ross Williams's list of compression patents or "Why He Stopped Writing Compression Software". Jean-Loup Gailly's opinion on compression patents given in interview References: [LZ77] Abraham Lempel, Jacob Ziv; A Universal Algorithm for Sequential Data Compression, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory May 1977. [LZ78] Abraham Lempel, Jacob Ziv; Compression of Individual Sequences Via Variable-Rate Coding, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory September 1978. [US4,464,650] Willard Eastman, Abraham Lempel, Jacob Ziv, Martin Cohn; Apparatus and Method for Compressing Data Signals and Restoring the Compressed Data Signals, US patent 4,464,650 filed August 10, 1981 -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw Shaw From badri at eff.org Fri Jun 20 07:02:45 2003 From: badri at eff.org (Badri Natarajan) Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 18:32:45 -0700 Subject: [Commons-Law] Intro In-Reply-To: <20030618072804.66904.qmail@web13604.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20030618072804.66904.qmail@web13604.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <721333152.20030619183245@eff.org> Hey, Thanks for the welcome from everyone..it is good to be here. Lawrence, I won't be here in September, but I'd certainly like to get in touch with any "interesting friends" in the Bay Area. Dev, will certainly get in touch when I land up in England. I was actually in St.Catz for a couple of days in late April, but didn't get to see you..you may have been on vacation still.. Frederick, didn't we correspond a few months ago about the Indian Supreme Court using Linux systems across the board for its computing needs? I'll try to keep updating everyone on interesting things as they come up - currently we are waiting for the US Supreme Court decision in the library filtering case to be released soon. (Federal government wants all public libraries receiving federal funding to install blocking/filtering software to "protect children", despite the free speech issues involved, *and* the well known problems with blocking software. Challenged by ACLU/EFF,etc) -- Badri Natarajan Legal Intern Electronic Frontier Foundation From badri at eff.org Fri Jun 20 07:09:10 2003 From: badri at eff.org (Badri Natarajan) Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 18:39:10 -0700 Subject: [Commons-Law] Fwd: Sweden: compulsory license AND P2P illegal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47063725.20030619183910@eff.org> What could they have been thinking with this legislation? If you establish a presumptive levy to compensate for copyright violation (something which I personally think is a good idea by itself), why do you also make illegal the activity which leads to it? I mean, either ban P2P downloading, or compensate for violations, but both? Incidentally, the EUCD (EU Copyright Directive) is an interesting area to watch as each of the EU countries rolls out its own version of the US DMCA's "anti-circumvention" provisions and lobbying groups line up on either side of the fence.. > SWEDEN INTRODUCES IMPLEMENTATION OF COPYRIGHT DIRECTIVE > Sweden has introduced its implementation of the European > Union Copyright Directive, going even further than the > directive requires. The Swedish implementaiton would make > it illegal to download copyrighted material from P2P > networks and establish a new levy on blank digital media to > compensate copyright owners for lost revenues. > http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/4190.cfm -- Badri Natarajan Legal Intern Electronic Frontier Foundation From lawrenceliang at vsnl.net Fri Jun 20 14:29:22 2003 From: lawrenceliang at vsnl.net (lawrenceliang at vsnl.net) Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 13:59:22 +0500 (IST) Subject: [Commons-Law] censorship by other means Message-ID: <20030620085922.E149A4FED3@bom6.vsnl.net.in> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030620/4cb0947a/attachment.pl From badri at eff.org Sat Jun 21 06:58:07 2003 From: badri at eff.org (Badri Natarajan) Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 18:28:07 -0700 Subject: [Commons-Law] censorship by other means In-Reply-To: <20030620085922.E149A4FED3@bom6.vsnl.net.in> References: <20030620085922.E149A4FED3@bom6.vsnl.net.in> Message-ID: <642242751.20030620182807@eff.org> Hi all, Ah yes, the ClearPlay case (the actual hardware that does the muting and stuff - basically you program it with the scripts for each movie that you watch so that it "knows" that somebody is going to utter a profanity 3 mins and 24 seconds into the movie and automatically mutes the sound for a couple of seconds at that point.). It is a completely ridiculous idea of course - copyright holders have the right to control PUBLIC performance/display of their works, not PRIVATE performance at home (Otherwise reading aloud to your children at home, or singing in the shower would be a copyright violation. That is why the plaintiffs are claiming that a derivative work is created, (even if it wasn't) because copyright holders DO have the exclusive right to control reproductions of their work and derivative works (subject to fair use). There is no derivative work created by using the ClearPlay technology because the so-called "edited version" of the movie is not fixed in any tangible form - once the movie is over, the DVD hasn't been changed at all. This is (as Jason points out in the amicus brief), analogous to briefly covering a child's ears during a loud scene in a movie if the child is sensitive to loud noises. Friday, June 20, 2003, 1:59:22 AM, you wrote: lvn> Public Has Right to Skip or Mute Movie Scenes lvn> Electronic Frontier Foundation Defends Consumer Rights lvn> San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today asked a federal court to rule that people have the right to use technology to skip scenes or mute language they find disturbing lvn> while viewing movies they have obtained lawfully. lvn> The case, entitled Huntsman v. Soderbergh, involves consumer use of software and hardware to skip scenes of sex and violence and to mute profanity on DVDs of films they have purchased. lvn> "If I buy a DVD and want to use some software to skip or mute parts of a movie I'm watching at home with my family, I should be able to do so," said EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz. lvn> EFF filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case to counter the claim of the eight major Hollywood studios that technology vendors are creating a "derivative work" of movies by allowing lvn> consumers to use software and hardware to skip and mute movie scenes. Specifically, the brief points out that copyright owners should have no control over how people choose to watch movies in lvn> the privacy of their own homes. -- Badri Natarajan Legal Intern Electronic Frontier Foundation From cha_mathyoo at hotmail.com Sat Jun 21 08:43:15 2003 From: cha_mathyoo at hotmail.com (Mathew M. Chacko) Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 08:43:15 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] censorship by other means ?? Message-ID: Has anybody read Politics By Other Means ... by Kenneth Abel - the book outlines the use of the judiciary to legitimise actions which should logically have been considered illegal - even outrageous . ( its actually a case study on discimination in South Africa) Does anybody know of any similar study on the evolution of the law of copyright .. mebbe Economics By Other Means ? ====== 'And they both looked the same.' _________________________________________________________________ Take this online tour. Win an HCL Beanstalk PC. http://server1.msn.co.in/sp03/hclbeanstalktour/amazing_winxp.html From sunil at mahiti.org Sun Jun 22 20:13:49 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: 22 Jun 2003 20:13:49 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Orrin Hatch: Software Pirate? Message-ID: <1056293030.1106.50.camel@sunil> http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59305,00.html Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) suggested Tuesday that people who download copyright materials from the Internet should have their computers automatically destroyed. But Hatch himself is using unlicensed software on his official website, which presumably would qualify his computer to be smoked by the system he proposes. The senator's site makes extensive use of a JavaScript menu system developed by Milonic Solutions, a software company based in the United Kingdom. The copyright-protected code has not been licensed for use on Hatch's website. "It's an unlicensed copy," said Andy Woolley, who runs Milonic. "It's very unfortunate for him because of those comments he made." Hatch on Tuesday surprised a Senate hearing on copyright issues with the suggestion that technology should be developed to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Net. Hatch said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights," the Associated Press reported. He then suggested the technology would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer." Any such technology would be in violation of federal antihacking laws. The senator, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested Congress would have to make copyright holders exempt from current laws for them to legally destroy people's computers. On Wednesday, Hatch clarified his comments, but stuck by the original idea. "I do not favor extreme remedies -- unless no moderate remedies can be found," he said in a statement. "I asked the interested industries to help us find those moderate remedies." Just as well. Because if Hatch's terminator system embraced software as well as music, his servers would be targeted for destruction. Milonic Solutions' JavaScript code used on Hatch's website costs $900 for a site-wide license. It is free for personal or nonprofit use, which the senator likely qualifies for. However, the software's license stipulates that the user must register the software to receive a licensing code, and provide a link in the source code to Milonic's website. On Wednesday, the senator's site met none of Milonic's licensing terms. The site's source code (which can be seen by selecting Source under the View menu in Internet Explorer) had neither a link to Milonic's site nor a registration code. However, by Thursday afternoon Hatch's site had been updated to contain some of the requisite copyright information. An old version of the page can be seen by viewing Google's cache of the site. "They're using our code," Woolley said Wednesday. "We've had no contact with them. They are in breach of our licensing terms." When contacted Thursday, Woolley said the company that maintains the senator's site had e-mailed Milonic to begin the registration process. Woolley said the code added to Hatch's site after the issue came to light met some -- but not all -- of Milonic's licensing requirements. Before the site was updated, the source code on Hatch's site contained the line: "* i am the license for the menu (duh) *" Woolley said he had no idea where the line came from -- it has nothing to do with him, and he hadn't seen it on other websites that use his menu system. "It looks like it's trying to cover something up, as though they got a license," he said. A spokesman in Hatch's office on Wednesday responded, "That's ironic" before declining to put Wired News in contact with the site's webmaster. He deferred comment on the senator's statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which did not return calls. The apparent violation was discovered by Laurence Simon, an unemployed system administrator from Houston, who was poking around Hatch's site after becoming outraged by his comments. Milonic's Woolley said the senator's unlicensed use of his software was just "the tip of the iceberg." He said he knows of at least two other senators using unlicensed copies of his software, and many big companies. Continental Airlines, for example, one of the largest airlines in the United States, uses Woolley's system throughout its Continental.com website. Woolley said the airline has not paid for the software. Worse, the copyright notices in the source code have been removed. "That really pisses me off," he said. A spokesman for Continental said the airline would look into the matter. Woolley makes his living from his software. Like a lot of independent programmers, he struggles to get people to conform to his licensing terms, let alone pay for his software. "We don't want blood," he said. "We just want payment for the hard work we do. We work very, very hard. If they're not prepared to pay, they're software pirates." -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw Shaw From badri at eff.org Tue Jun 24 11:18:52 2003 From: badri at eff.org (Badri Natarajan) Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 22:48:52 -0700 Subject: [Commons-Law] US Supreme Court upholds library Internet blocking Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.1.20030623224525.00ae8988@giasmd01.vsnl.net.in> The US Supreme Court has upheld a law requiring libraries that receive federal government funds to install filtering software to protect minors, as the EFF press release given below explains. One thing to note - the Supreme Court judgment also makes it clear that any library patron (an adult that is) can request to have the filters turned off for him so that he has unfettered access to the Internet. Early indications suggest that this will affect the free speech rights of website publishers who are blocked (justifiably or otherwise) more than it will affect people who actually use the Internet in libraries. Supreme Court Supports Library Internet Blocking Law Damages Free Speech of Library Patrons and Web Publishers Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release San Francisco - The Supreme Court ruled today that a federal statute requiring Internet blocking, also known as filtering, in libraries receiving certain federal funds or discounts is constitutional. Reversing a lower court decision by the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the court noted that the use of Internet blocking to comply with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) in libraries is constitutional because the need for libraries to prevent minors from accessing obscene materials outweighs the free speech rights of library patrons and website publishers. The CIPA law requires all schools and libraries that receive federal funds or discounts to install and use a technology for blocking Internet speech that is obscene, child pornography, or in the case of minors, "harmful to minors." However, based on extensive evidence, the lower court in this case found that many studies report that Internet blocking software is incapable of blocking only the materials required by CIPA, a conclusion supported by many independent studies. The CIPA law is also problematic because speech that is harmful to minors is still legal for adults, and not all library patrons are minors. "The Supreme Court today dealt a tremendous blow to the free speech rights of child and adult library patrons and Internet publishers by supporting Congress' mandate that libraries must install faulty Internet blocking software to obtain federal funding or discounts," said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Attorney Kevin Bankston, an Equal Justice Works / Bruce J. Ennis Fellow. "The tragedy is that millions of library patrons now join the millions of students, many of them no longer minors, who face the Internet blocking barrier to obtaining a proper education at schools nationwide," said EFF Media Relations Director Will Doherty. "The Children's Internet Protection Act holds library patrons and students hostage to faulty blocking software created with arbitrary standards foreign to their own communities." EFF participated as co-counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union in the case. http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Censorware/20030623_eff_cipapr.php Badri From badri at eff.org Tue Jun 24 11:29:53 2003 From: badri at eff.org (Badri Natarajan) Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 22:59:53 -0700 Subject: [Commons-Law] US Supreme Court upholds library Internet blocking Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.1.20030623225946.00ae9748@giasmd01.vsnl.net.in> The US Supreme Court has upheld a law requiring libraries that receive federal government funds to install filtering software to protect minors, as the EFF press release given below explains. One thing to note - the Supreme Court judgment also makes it clear that any library patron (an adult that is) can request to have the filters turned off for him so that he has unfettered access to the Internet. Early indications suggest that this will affect the free speech rights of website publishers who are blocked (justifiably or otherwise) more than it will affect people who actually use the Internet in libraries. Supreme Court Supports Library Internet Blocking Law Damages Free Speech of Library Patrons and Web Publishers Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release San Francisco - The Supreme Court ruled today that a federal statute requiring Internet blocking, also known as filtering, in libraries receiving certain federal funds or discounts is constitutional. Reversing a lower court decision by the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the court noted that the use of Internet blocking to comply with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) in libraries is constitutional because the need for libraries to prevent minors from accessing obscene materials outweighs the free speech rights of library patrons and website publishers. The CIPA law requires all schools and libraries that receive federal funds or discounts to install and use a technology for blocking Internet speech that is obscene, child pornography, or in the case of minors, "harmful to minors." However, based on extensive evidence, the lower court in this case found that many studies report that Internet blocking software is incapable of blocking only the materials required by CIPA, a conclusion supported by many independent studies. The CIPA law is also problematic because speech that is harmful to minors is still legal for adults, and not all library patrons are minors. "The Supreme Court today dealt a tremendous blow to the free speech rights of child and adult library patrons and Internet publishers by supporting Congress' mandate that libraries must install faulty Internet blocking software to obtain federal funding or discounts," said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Attorney Kevin Bankston, an Equal Justice Works / Bruce J. Ennis Fellow. "The tragedy is that millions of library patrons now join the millions of students, many of them no longer minors, who face the Internet blocking barrier to obtaining a proper education at schools nationwide," said EFF Media Relations Director Will Doherty. "The Children's Internet Protection Act holds library patrons and students hostage to faulty blocking software created with arbitrary standards foreign to their own communities." EFF participated as co-counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union in the case. http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Censorware/20030623_eff_cipapr.php Badri From developerworks at dataridge.com Mon Jun 23 21:30:37 2003 From: developerworks at dataridge.com (IBM developerWorks) Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 21:30:37 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] IBM developerWorks technology, Issue 51 - 2002 December 19 Message-ID: <200306231600.h5NG0ZV26070@iiitmk.ac.in> End of linux-india-help Digest0 individual testcases and a test driver to automate execution of the tests. License: GNU General Public License (GPL) URL: http://freshmeat.net/projects/ltp/ - % - % - % - % - [047] - Mambo 4.0 Build 7 BETA by Mambo Open Source Project (http://freshmeat.net/users/miromiro/) Friday, November 8th 2002 19:42 Database Internet :: WWW/HTTP :: Dynamic Content Internet :: WWW/HTTP :: Site Mana -------------- next part -------------- ***** NOTE: An attachment named 1.txt.scr was deleted from this message because it possibly contained a windows executable or other potentially dangerous file type. Contact root at sarai.net for more information. From sunil at mahiti.org Tue Jun 24 12:35:06 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: 24 Jun 2003 12:35:06 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] SCO staff join Linux protests Message-ID: <1056438307.1019.3.camel@sunil> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/31366.html SCO staff join Linux protests By Andrew Orlowski Posted: 23/06/2003 at 10:11 GMT Click Here SCO employees in Provo, Utah have made clear their distaste for the company's war on Linux. Staff greeted protesters from the Provo Linux User Group with signs such as "Give communism a try - free Linux", "My son stole code - and published it" and, best of all, "Stealing Software Is Not A Crime" below which is written, "In Iraq and parts of France". The latter is a reference to Iraq's liberal copyright laws, which are full of social provisions, but which are now being revised with the help of the Recording Industry Association of America's Hilary Rosen. SCO identified its holy war with that of the music 'industry' last month. And we can only guess how Rosen can improve these provisions. If only the Revolutionary Leadership Council, which passed the laws in 1971, could have helped liberate the United States from Hollywood. ® -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw Shaw From sunil at mahiti.org Tue Jun 24 12:29:46 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: 24 Jun 2003 12:29:46 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Microsoft appeals French piracy fine Message-ID: <1056437986.1013.1.camel@sunil> Microsoft appeals French piracy fine http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/31372.html Microsoft went to court in France last week to appeal its conviction in 2001 for software piracy, for which it was ordered to pay $425,000 in damages, costs and interest. Today we publish an eyewitness account of the appeal by Lionel Berthomier, who has been covering the case almost single-handedly since 1996. But first some background. In 1994, Microsoft bought the company Softimage Creative Environment. It sold the company on to Avid in 1998. Softimage’s code illegally included proprietary software from another company. Raymond Perrin and Isabelle Cuadros, 3D animation software developers and authors of the misappropriated software have been fighting the case for six years. June 17th, 2003 the "Microsoft piracy" case is brought before the 12th Chamber of the Versailles Appeal Court. Here are Judge Denis Coupin, his clerk, the plaintiffs, their lawyer, a computer specialist, Microsoft's lawyers, a Softimage engineer, two journalists and a curious passer-by: the place is empty! No one could have expected a US$19 million piracy suit would attract so few people. However, the audience will proceed in a small committee room. 2:30 PM: after Judge Coupin's opening statement, the floor is open to Ms. Renard, a brilliant Parisian lawyer acting on behalf of Microsoft. The main argument: "only the code is copyrightable... and a software's functionalities cannot be protected by author rights.". To prove her point, the young lawyer, silently supported by her colleagues of law firm August & Debouzy uses the "elevator trick". All elevator makers around the world have developed the functionality that enables to reach the desired floor by pushing the corresponding button, without having to sue each other. She explains that her client, "totally rewrote and copied the functionalities" in question, when the contract tying the company to the plaintiffs was breached. On the unfair competition indictment, she uses a judicial subtlety: one cannot use this as "protection vs. counterfeiting". In regards to parasitism, Ms. Renard guarantees her client "did not try and obtain a determining advantage with the eight asserted functionalities". She adds: "In 1995, these functionalities were already considered as standard". Then, a Softimage engineer, who came in straight from Quebec, proceeds to present the functionalities and, in an effort to communicate with the audience, recalls the great commercial success of his employer, citing Jurassic Park, for instance. Ms. Renard claims that Microsoft, "the undisputed anti-piracy champion", had seen its image tarnished in this affair "by a press campaign". And she concludes that in the name of "the free course concept" regarding the redeveloped functionality, her client's conviction for counterfeiting in 2001 should be dismissed. Judge Coupin then turns to Mr. Alterman, lawyer for Perrin and Cuatros. Alterman builds his advocacy on concrete facts such as the settlement proposal for the asserted functionalities, made to his clients on the eve of Softimage's acquisition by Microsoft, or the contract requesting that Softimage "drop them in case of contract breach". Alterman goes down Memory Lane. He explains how Raymond Perrin and Isabelle Cuadros were "seduced" by Softimage after the projection of "The Puppet" movie in Montreal in the early 1990s. He wonders why the asserted functionalities are qualified today by Microsoft's defense as "not of great interest", but are nevertheless the object of so many attempts at transaction. And regarding author rights, he reminds the hearing that the organic descriptions and the detailed analysis of the functionalities developed by his clients were registered at the APP (the French association for software protection). How Much? Furthermore, Alterman questions the level of expertise which resulted in Microsoft's conviction in 2001, pointing out that the difference found while comparing the two source codes was not 16,000 bytes as mentioned in the official report, but exceeded 110,000 bytes. Finally, whereas Ms Renard had called into question the method Alterman had used to estimate his clients' prejudice, qualifying it as "unjustified", he reminded the court that three concurring experts showed that the asserted functionalities corresponded to 6 per cent to 8 per cent of Softimage's software value. This was scaled back to 5 per cent of the software's value during the period until Softimage's sale to Avid (1998), while applying the usage fee specified in the initial contract (50%), it all adds up to about 2.5% of the turnover generated by the software (a little over US$790 million), that is to say US$19 million. This is precisely what he requests before the Appeal Court as damage and interest for Raymond Perrin and Isabelle Cuadros, along with the unconditional removal of the pirated functionalities, knowing that should the case go criminal, damage and interests would correspond to the full amount of the software's turnover! The session ends. It is 4:30 PM in Versailles on June 17th, 2003. The Appeal Court will announce its verdict on October 9. ® -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw Shaw From badri at eff.org Tue Jun 24 13:22:15 2003 From: badri at eff.org (Badri Natarajan) Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 00:52:15 -0700 Subject: [Commons-Law] Microsoft appeals French piracy fine In-Reply-To: <1056437986.1013.1.camel@sunil> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.1.20030624004907.00aa5520@mail.lawentrance.com> At 12:29 PM 6/24/2003 +0530, you wrote: >Microsoft appeals French piracy fine >http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/31372.html >Microsoft went to court in France last week to appeal its conviction in >2001 for software piracy, for which it was ordered to pay $425,000 in >damages, costs and interest. Today we publish an eyewitness account of >the appeal by Lionel Berthomier, who has been covering the case almost >single-handedly since 1996. I know absolutely nothing about the background of this case, but this account of it is hardly what I'd call unbiased journalism. The Register claims they are publishing an eyewitness account of the case, which is fine, but the whole thing reads like "If It's Microsoft, They Must Be Guilty". Everything Microsoft claims or says is treated as an allegation or a claim, while everything the other side says is treated as fact. Now that might actually be the true state of facts, but the whole tone of the article leaves me suspicious about believing a lot of it. I don't think Microsoft are Nice People - far from it - but they are not in the wrong every single time. Badri Natarajan Legal Intern Electronic Frontier Foundation. Law School Tutorials Website Main Page: http://www.lawentrance.com Discussion Forum: http://www.lawentrance.com/phpbb Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): http://www.lawentrance.com/faqs.htm (Please read this!) From monica at sarai.net Wed Jun 25 14:59:22 2003 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 14:59:22 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] mail legalese Message-ID: Hi all, Just asking for a spot of professional advice here. As you know sarai runs a number of open lists, including commons-law. Recently, someone posted some info about what was a filmmaking organisation on the reader-list. The result was a flaming letter to that poster from them, demanding that the reference be removed from the archives and that no such post be made in the future. In this instance we did remove the post as the poster forwarded the list the flame with an apology, but what is the locus of a hoster in such a situation? Are we legally bound to remove anything if someone asks us to do so? best M -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From lawrenceliang at vsnl.net Wed Jun 25 20:08:19 2003 From: lawrenceliang at vsnl.net (lawrenceliang at vsnl.net) Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 19:38:19 +0500 (IST) Subject: [Commons-Law] mail legalese Message-ID: <20030625143819.B09A14FFDC@bom6.vsnl.net.in> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030625/b4b9e7f0/attachment.pl From shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in Thu Jun 26 01:41:51 2003 From: shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?=) Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 21:11:51 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Commons-Law] mail legalese In-Reply-To: <20030625143819.B09A14FFDC@bom6.vsnl.net.in> Message-ID: <20030625201151.97211.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com> hi lawrence and monica, you're right-i dont think there are any cases in india dealing specifically with this (apart from the stray criminal complaint against rediff in pune)-though isp/nsp liab is dealt with by the IT act and would presumably cover a list web-host as well. if i remember corrently though, this section (72??) uses the words "knew" or "should have known"-so i guess the position would be that you're not obliged to monitor-but once you're put on notice, you're bound to take it off. definitely raises an interesting question of free speech as well-how is the web host to know that my claim is right in law-i could be pulling a fast one or just trying my luck. the upshot is that costs of legal due diligence of webhosts are up-and you're expected to bank on your lawyer to find out the relative merits of a letter that puts you on notice. if this is too much of a hassle, the best way out would be to "take down" as soon as you receive notice-this would be playing it safe. as for related cases in the uk, there was godfrey vs demon sometime back-establishing the common law position that there was no liability, unless you put the isp on notice. and for free speech concerns and wrongful take downs, there was an issue with google taking down some stuff a while back-dont know what came of it though. hope this helps. shamnad lawrenceliang at vsnl.net wrote: Hi all I have not come across any case in India which deals with liability of web hosts of email lists. There is some development in the US for liabilty of ISP's and web hosts , but mostly for IP issues. In this case presuming that the action available to the aggrieved party is defamation, then we will need to speculatively consider the liability of a list administrator for allegedly defamatory material. In the case of defamation in classical print media for instance the writer, editor, publisher and printer can all be held liable if an article that is published in a magazine is held to be defamatory. My guess would be that the situation would more or less be the same in the case of a person hosting an email lists since it amounts to making public an allegedly defamatory statement. This is of course dependent on whether or not the statement was defamatory in the first place. Defamation is defined as making or publishing any imputation about a person, intending to harm the reputation of that person, or knowing or having reason to believe that the imputation will harm the reputation of the person. The imputation can be either spoken or written or by visual representations or signs. There are a series of exceptions with respect to defamation. The first is that the imputation is true and public good requires this truth to be made or published. The next is that the imputation expresses, in good faith, the public conduct of public officials. It is also an exception to defamation to show that the statements made relates to the conduct of any person regarding a public question and about his character as reflected by his conduct. Assuming a web host has safegueards such as disclaimers, more often than not the disclaimers would contain statements saying that "if any material is found to be defamatroy etc etc , then the content would be reomved on probision of notice" so to that extent, yes you would have to remove the contentious material. quoting a relevant extract from an article, full article reproduced thereafter: "In the meantime, service providers would be well advised to protect themselves in three ways. First, as is prudent in all legal matters, get everything in writing. Specify that hosted web sites must not contain any offensive material and that they will be removed if they are found to do so. Protect yourself with appropriate disclaimers which at least move you one level farther from potential liability for web site content". any one else with some info on any developments specefically on list admins etc, it would be great to have the info Lawrence SMS using the Yahoo! Messenger;Download latest version. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030625/2a9e331c/attachment.html From badri at eff.org Thu Jun 26 04:29:35 2003 From: badri at eff.org (Badri Natarajan) Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 15:59:35 -0700 Subject: [Commons-Law] mail legalese In-Reply-To: <20030625201151.97211.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com> References: <20030625143819.B09A14FFDC@bom6.vsnl.net.in> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.1.20030625155202.00a9cb18@mail.lawentrance.com> At 09:11 PM 6/25/2003 +0100, you wrote: >hi lawrence and monica, you're right-i dont think there are any cases in >india dealing specifically with this (apart from the stray criminal >complaint against rediff in pune)-though isp/nsp liab is dealt with by the >IT act and would presumably cover a list web-host as well. if i remember >corrently though, this section (72??) uses the words "knew" or "should >have known"-so i guess the position would be that you're not obliged to >monitor-but once you're put on notice, you're bound to take it >off. definitely raises an interesting question of free speech as >well-how is the web host to know that my claim is right in law-i could be >pulling a fast one or just trying my luck. the upshot is that costs of >legal due diligence of webhosts are up-and you're expected to bank on your >lawyer to find out the relative merits of a letter that puts you on >notice. if this is too much of a hassle, the best way out would be to >"take down" as soon as you receive notice-this would be playing it >safe. as for related cases in the uk, there was godfrey vs demon >sometime back-establishing the common law position that there was no >liability, unless you put the isp on notice. and for free speech concerns >and wrongful take downs, there was an issue with google taking down some >stuff a while back-dont know what came of it though. hope this >helps. shamnad There was an issue with Google taking down some stuff criticizing the Church of Scientology - is that what you're referring to, Shamnad? Specifically on the US law for protection of ISPs/web hosts against liability for defamation, here's a passage from an article by Jonathan Zittrain who is a Harvard Law professor: (The entire article is actually very good - an overview of where copyright law in the US is heading today) In terms of Indian law - I too don't remember anything specific, except that Pune case Shamnad mentions - where the "Asian School of Cyberlaws" sued Rediff under the novel theory that a search engine (like Rediff) was guilty of obscenity because they provided the users access to such obscenity. I don't remember the specific outcome of the case, but I don't think they were taken very seriously. I think the law is evolving in the direction of the telephone company and the postal department - an ISP is not responsible for carrying defamatory material any more than the phone company is responsible for transmitting it. (I don't know though..a web HOST could be construed to be publishing the defamatory material and follow that model of liability..) http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/July-August-2003/feature_zittrain_julaug03.html But publishers are also taking the battle to other fronts, to Internet Service Providers, or ISPs. ISPs have little interest in becoming the Net police. They exist to move data around or to host it. A group with a decent amount of political power—whose members include Verizon, Comcast, AOL, MCI, and, of course, Microsoft—ISPs obtained a federal exemption in 1996 from nearly any liability under state common law for hosting defamatory or other harmful content. If someone posts a message on AOL calling another company's CEO a cheat and a fraud, depressing that company's stock price, AOL is under no obligation to take down the posting, even if the company has pointed out its manifest falsity. ISPs have no such blanket exemption from liability for hosting or carrying unauthorized copyrighted material. No statute clearly sets out what is legally required of ISPs—and courts have interpreted the obligations of ISPs in different and conflicting ways. CEOs or university administrators providing Internet access to their employees or students don't know what their legal responsibilities are. When they receive letters insisting that they stop allegedly illegal activity on their networks, they gravitate towards a statutory "safe harbor" and take down challenged material—or deny network access to anyone accused of bad copyright behavior. Badri Law School Tutorials Website Main Page: http://www.lawentrance.com Discussion Forum: http://www.lawentrance.com/phpbb Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): http://www.lawentrance.com/faqs.htm (Please read this!) From badri at eff.org Thu Jun 26 05:40:19 2003 From: badri at eff.org (Badri Natarajan) Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 17:10:19 -0700 Subject: [Commons-Law] U.S. Court Limits Defamation Scope in Internet Case In-Reply-To: <20030625201151.97211.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com> References: <20030625143819.B09A14FFDC@bom6.vsnl.net.in> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.1.20030625170851.00a9e820@mail.lawentrance.com> Talk about topical decisions: Tue June 24, 2003 09:44 PM ET SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - In what was hailed as a victory for free speech on the Internet, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Tuesday that a person who distributes another's e-mail cannot be sued for libel based on its content. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=2983392 Badri Natarajan Law School Tutorials Website Main Page: http://www.lawentrance.com Discussion Forum: http://www.lawentrance.com/phpbb Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): http://www.lawentrance.com/faqs.htm (Please read this!) From cha_mathyoo at hotmail.com Thu Jun 26 06:59:46 2003 From: cha_mathyoo at hotmail.com (Mathew M. Chacko) Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 06:59:46 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] mail legalese Message-ID: Im not too sure of the relevance of the IT Act Section (72 ??) ... I thought the Act reffered only to the offenses under the Act ?? Mathew ====== 'And they both looked the same.' _________________________________________________________________ Take this online tour. Win an HCL Beanstalk PC. http://server1.msn.co.in/sp03/hclbeanstalktour/amazing_winxp.html From lawrenceliang at vsnl.net Thu Jun 26 11:27:48 2003 From: lawrenceliang at vsnl.net (lawrenceliang at vsnl.net) Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 10:57:48 +0500 (IST) Subject: [Commons-Law] mail legalese Message-ID: <20030626055748.CC132502C8@bom6.vsnl.net.in> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030626/accf7a5a/attachment.pl From shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in Thu Jun 26 12:32:35 2003 From: shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?=) Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 08:02:35 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Commons-Law] mail legalese In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030626070235.80831.qmail@web8007.mail.in.yahoo.com> while the bill was being drafted, this was in fact one of the major criticisms -in that it did not cover IP, defamation etc. there was one view however that the elements of the section could be transposed to cover cases not strictly covered by the IT act. quite controversial in teh case of IP-since we do have specific legislations here-but an easier argument in the context of defamation. even otherwise, being a common law tort, we are likely to mirror the british position-according to which liability hinges on knowledge-so either way the position is likely to remain the same. shamnad "Mathew M. Chacko" wrote: Im not too sure of the relevance of the IT Act Section (72 ??) ... I thought the Act reffered only to the offenses under the Act ?? Mathew ====== 'And they both looked the same.' _________________________________________________________________ Take this online tour. Win an HCL Beanstalk PC. http://server1.msn.co.in/sp03/hclbeanstalktour/amazing_winxp.html _______________________________________________ commons-law mailing list commons-law at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/commons-law SMS using the Yahoo! Messenger;Download latest version. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030626/2598f253/attachment.html From kream77 at yahoo.com Fri Jun 27 05:48:51 2003 From: kream77 at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Aniruddha=20Shankar?=) Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 01:18:51 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Commons-Law] mail legalese - Sarai's options ? In-Reply-To: <20030626055748.CC132502C8@bom6.vsnl.net.in> Message-ID: <20030627001851.71165.qmail@web12301.mail.yahoo.com> --- lawrenceliang at vsnl.net wrote: > > > Hi all > > I am also uncertain about the applicability of the > IT act. While it is clearly applicable to ISP's, I > think we will have to look into whether a > distinction can clearly be made on the basis of the > act between an ISP and a list admin. In the Indian context, a highly likely scenario is this: Ms. X is a list admin for an email list called, say, hot-gossip-about-lawyers'-fetishes. This list is hosted by Yahoo! Groups. The identity of Ms. X, one of millions of Yahoo! subscribers, is effectively anonymous, so it's difficult to serve a summons on her. If Ms. X does actually attract legal heat, she could easily transfer the administrator rights to someone else, or, better yet, create a new account, and transfer the ownership of the list to that account. Unless the relevant provisions are interpreted in such a way as to say that "any person who is capable of expunging the allegedly defamatory material" - basically a list admin - is BOUND to ensure that defamatory ability does not get posted on the list (highly unlikely and totally unreasonable IMHO) it's extremely difficult to bugger the list admin for an allegedly defamatory message posted to members of the list. Another thought - the character of lists and webpages are vastly different. A list, by it's very character is composed of any number of distinct and separate communications broadcast to it's community of subscribers. Even if legal action is successfully pursued against the list admin, unlike a webpage where the content could be expunged, the maximum she could do is delete the email from the archives (and in the case of yahoo, not even that... as the list admin has no control over the archives of lists on Yahoo Groups) What Sarai Could Do ( in order to allow for great{er} freedom to post stuff and less anal pain for admins ): 1. Get our listserver hosted in the highly enlightened Netherlands ;-) (which it already is). 2. Get the list archived {for free} at marc.theaimsgroup.com or a similar service. MARC is the Mailing List Archive, and as of 2003-03-24, has 13 million emails across 1500 mailing lists, from just over a million different authors. It gets about 350,000 new mails per month. On the subject of deleting mails from it's archives, MARC has this to say : "We are very, very, very reluctant to make any changes to [our archives] once a message comes in. We've received threats from clueless companies' lawyers because of archived posts [from a computer security list] pointing out security flaws, for example. If we honor occasional "oops I didn't mean to post that" mails, we would be censoring content, and those clueless lawyers might have a leg to stand on. As a result, our position is that we will only remove a message for one of two reasons: >>-A list admin asks us to remove a private list we've accidentally made public archives for, in which case, poof, the whole list is gone (after we are sufficiently sure it's really the list admin requesting it, and not a forged mail, etc). >>-A court [with appropriate jurisdiction] orders us to remove a message. Again, once added [to the archive], [messages]'re [almost] never going away (insert comment about cold, dead hands here)". I'm uncomfortable with the idea of having to wipe out messages which appear bona fide from our list on the threats of arbitrary entities.... the steps outlined above *could* allow us, and list admins with similar concerns a way out. Any thoughts ? Aniruddha/Karim Shankar ________________________________________________________________________ Send free SMS using the Yahoo! Messenger. Go to http://in.mobile.yahoo.com/new/pc/ From shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in Fri Jun 27 12:47:03 2003 From: shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?=) Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 08:17:03 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Commons-Law] mail legalese - Sarai's options ? In-Reply-To: <20030627001851.71165.qmail@web12301.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20030627071703.31556.qmail@web8004.mail.in.yahoo.com> lawrence, if memory serves me right, the act uses the term "network service provider"-a term wider in scope than "ISP". kareem, a very smart solution. my only concern is this-as long as the list admin is identifiable (and in this case sarai is), the fact that it has control and could expunge messages would pose a problem, notwithstanding that the hosting itself is in a friendly netherlands. as i had mentioned earlier, you're not obliged to monitor-but once someone puts you on notice, it becomes tricky and the fact that you have control sufficient enough to enable you to remove such content should suffice for liability to accrue. what litigants normally do is to implead unknown parties as john does and force the host/list admin to reveal the name of the person responsible (at least to the extent that they have these details with them). shamnad Aniruddha Shankar wrote: --- lawrenceliang at vsnl.net wrote: > > > Hi all > > I am also uncertain about the applicability of the > IT act. While it is clearly applicable to ISP's, I > think we will have to look into whether a > distinction can clearly be made on the basis of the > act between an ISP and a list admin. In the Indian context, a highly likely scenario is this: Ms. X is a list admin for an email list called, say, hot-gossip-about-lawyers'-fetishes. This list is hosted by Yahoo! Groups. The identity of Ms. X, one of millions of Yahoo! subscribers, is effectively anonymous, so it's difficult to serve a summons on her. If Ms. X does actually attract legal heat, she could easily transfer the administrator rights to someone else, or, better yet, create a new account, and transfer the ownership of the list to that account. Unless the relevant provisions are interpreted in such a way as to say that "any person who is capable of expunging the allegedly defamatory material" - basically a list admin - is BOUND to ensure that defamatory ability does not get posted on the list (highly unlikely and totally unreasonable IMHO) it's extremely difficult to bugger the list admin for an allegedly defamatory message posted to members of the list. Another thought - the character of lists and webpages are vastly different. A list, by it's very character is composed of any number of distinct and separate communications broadcast to it's community of subscribers. Even if legal action is successfully pursued against the list admin, unlike a webpage where the content could be expunged, the maximum she could do is delete the email from the archives (and in the case of yahoo, not even that... as the list admin has no control over the archives of lists on Yahoo Groups) What Sarai Could Do ( in order to allow for great{er} freedom to post stuff and less anal pain for admins ): 1. Get our listserver hosted in the highly enlightened Netherlands ;-) (which it already is). 2. Get the list archived {for free} at marc.theaimsgroup.com or a similar service. MARC is the Mailing List Archive, and as of 2003-03-24, has 13 million emails across 1500 mailing lists, from just over a million different authors. It gets about 350,000 new mails per month. On the subject of deleting mails from it's archives, MARC has this to say : "We are very, very, very reluctant to make any changes to [our archives] once a message comes in. We've received threats from clueless companies' lawyers because of archived posts [from a computer security list] pointing out security flaws, for example. If we honor occasional "oops I didn't mean to post that" mails, we would be censoring content, and those clueless lawyers might have a leg to stand on. As a result, our position is that we will only remove a message for one of two reasons: >>-A list admin asks us to remove a private list we've accidentally made public archives for, in which case, poof, the whole list is gone (after we are sufficiently sure it's really the list admin requesting it, and not a forged mail, etc). >>-A court [with appropriate jurisdiction] orders us to remove a message. Again, once added [to the archive], [messages]'re [almost] never going away (insert comment about cold, dead hands here)". I'm uncomfortable with the idea of having to wipe out messages which appear bona fide from our list on the threats of arbitrary entities.... the steps outlined above *could* allow us, and list admins with similar concerns a way out. Any thoughts ? Aniruddha/Karim Shankar ________________________________________________________________________ Send free SMS using the Yahoo! Messenger. Go to http://in.mobile.yahoo.com/new/pc/ _______________________________________________ commons-law mailing list commons-law at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/commons-law SMS using the Yahoo! Messenger;Download latest version. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030627/2b79b7b8/attachment.html From kream77 at yahoo.com Fri Jun 27 19:10:46 2003 From: kream77 at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Aniruddha=20Shankar?=) Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 14:40:46 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Commons-Law] mail legalese - Sarai's options ? In-Reply-To: <20030627071703.31556.qmail@web8004.mail.in.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20030627134046.74836.qmail@web12307.mail.yahoo.com> wrote: > my only concern is > this-as long as the list admin is identifiable (and > in this case sarai is), True > the fact that it has control Would that be the case if the archives are hosted by MARC ? MARC won't remove a particular email from it's archives unless a court with appropriate jurisdiction (insert Private International Law nightmare here) orders it to do so. In the above case, Sarai would be the list admin and would merely perform the purely administrative duties of registering new members and removing unwanted subscribers. I am unsure as to why Sarai should host the archives at all. Sarai can transfer the resource intensive burden of hosting them to MARC, which will do so for free (and provide extensive search capabilities) - under the understanding that the only entity that can get individual emails expunged is a court with jurisdiction. Incidentally, MARC also hosts the archives of politech, a mailing list about technology and politics, dealing with issues such as free speech and intellectual property. Karim for more information http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?q=about#Privacy ________________________________________________________________________ Send free SMS using the Yahoo! Messenger. Go to http://in.mobile.yahoo.com/new/pc/ From kream77 at yahoo.com Fri Jun 27 19:29:17 2003 From: kream77 at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Aniruddha=20Shankar?=) Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 14:59:17 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Commons-Law] SCO v. IBM re Linux : Background & detailed timeline, RMS's thoughts, other stuff Message-ID: <20030627135917.46355.qmail@web12306.mail.yahoo.com> http://sco.iwethey.org/ <--- background on the whole galata. http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2914132,00.html <--- Richard Stallman on SCO v. IBM re Linux http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6956 <--- account of person who *saw* the allegedly infringing proprietary code by signing an NDA. Karim ________________________________________________________________________ Send free SMS using the Yahoo! Messenger. Go to http://in.mobile.yahoo.com/new/pc/ From shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in Fri Jun 27 20:37:01 2003 From: shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?=) Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 16:07:01 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Commons-Law] mail legalese - Sarai's options ? In-Reply-To: <20030627134046.74836.qmail@web12307.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20030627150701.66626.qmail@web8004.mail.in.yahoo.com> didnt the earlier posting on marc's policy stipulate something about it removing stuff upon the instructions of the list admin-it is this possibility that would cause a court to order sarai which in turn could ask marc to take it off-the crux is that so long as it within your power (whether directly or indirectly), there remains the possibility of liability. i think we really have to come out with something innovative here-if not, the only way out (and a very bad one) is to take down upon notice-subject of course, to it being a credible take down notice-which ascertainment again would be quite a hassle for sarai. shamnad Aniruddha Shankar wrote: wrote: > my only concern is > this-as long as the list admin is identifiable (and > in this case sarai is), True > the fact that it has control Would that be the case if the archives are hosted by MARC ? MARC won't remove a particular email from it's archives unless a court with appropriate jurisdiction (insert Private International Law nightmare here) orders it to do so. In the above case, Sarai would be the list admin and would merely perform the purely administrative duties of registering new members and removing unwanted subscribers. I am unsure as to why Sarai should host the archives at all. Sarai can transfer the resource intensive burden of hosting them to MARC, which will do so for free (and provide extensive search capabilities) - under the understanding that the only entity that can get individual emails expunged is a court with jurisdiction. Incidentally, MARC also hosts the archives of politech, a mailing list about technology and politics, dealing with issues such as free speech and intellectual property. Karim for more information http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?q=about#Privacy ________________________________________________________________________ Send free SMS using the Yahoo! Messenger. Go to http://in.mobile.yahoo.com/new/pc/ _______________________________________________ commons-law mailing list commons-law at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/commons-law SMS using the Yahoo! Messenger;Download latest version. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030627/829d63b7/attachment.html From badri at eff.org Sat Jun 28 00:37:32 2003 From: badri at eff.org (Badri Natarajan) Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 12:07:32 -0700 Subject: [Commons-Law] mail legalese - Sarai's options ? In-Reply-To: <20030627150701.66626.qmail@web8004.mail.in.yahoo.com> References: <20030627150701.66626.qmail@web8004.mail.in.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1737450267.20030627120732@eff.org> Friday, June 27, 2003, 8:07:01 AM, you wrote: SB> didnt the earlier posting on marc's policy stipulate something about it removing stuff upon the instructions of the list admin-it is this possibility that would cause a court to order sarai which SB> in turn could ask marc to take it off-the crux is that so long as it within your power (whether directly or indirectly), there remains the possibility of liability. i think we really have to come SB> out with something innovative here-if not, the only way out (and a very bad one) is to take down upon notice-subject of course, to it being a credible take down notice-which ascertainment again SB> would be quite a hassle for sarai. I think it said something like MARC will remove stuff upon the list-admin's request, if a PRIVATE list has mistakenly been made PUBLIC on MARC's servers..or something to that effect. I don't think a list-admin can just request a take down - that will make it the same as the list-admin's own webhost. And MARC seems to have been created with the express purpose of preserving people's words on mailing lists - "Once said, you canot retract it",etc. -- Badri Natarajan Legal Intern Electronic Frontier Foundation From shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in Sat Jun 28 01:44:11 2003 From: shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?=) Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 21:14:11 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Commons-Law] mail legalese - Sarai's options ? In-Reply-To: <1737450267.20030627120732@eff.org> Message-ID: <20030627201411.83609.qmail@web8004.mail.in.yahoo.com> "List administrators are invited to email us requests to cease archiving their list and/or making the archive publically accessable if they wish for any reason" perhaps this gives a cause for concern-usually in the context of defamation, it is the "publicly accessible" nature of the comment that pinches the most. so maybe this is good enough for a court to order sarai to in turn request marc to cease making this publicly accessible. shamnad Badri Natarajan wrote: Friday, June 27, 2003, 8:07:01 AM, you wrote: SB> didnt the earlier posting on marc's policy stipulate something about it removing stuff upon the instructions of the list admin-it is this possibility that would cause a court to order sarai which SB> in turn could ask marc to take it off-the crux is that so long as it within your power (whether directly or indirectly), there remains the possibility of liability. i think we really have to come SB> out with something innovative here-if not, the only way out (and a very bad one) is to take down upon notice-subject of course, to it being a credible take down notice-which ascertainment again SB> would be quite a hassle for sarai. I think it said something like MARC will remove stuff upon the list-admin's request, if a PRIVATE list has mistakenly been made PUBLIC on MARC's servers..or something to that effect. I don't think a list-admin can just request a take down - that will make it the same as the list-admin's own webhost. And MARC seems to have been created with the express purpose of preserving people's words on mailing lists - "Once said, you canot retract it",etc. -- Badri Natarajan Legal Intern Electronic Frontier Foundation _______________________________________________ commons-law mailing list commons-law at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/commons-law SMS using the Yahoo! Messenger;Download latest version. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030627/019121e1/attachment.html From sunil at mahiti.org Sat Jun 28 23:20:52 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 02:50:52 +0900 Subject: [Commons-Law] FSF Statement on SCO v. IBM - Eben Moglen Message-ID: <1056822652.3efdd57c15136@imeme.net> FSF Statement on SCO v. IBM Eben Moglen June 25, 2003 The lawsuit brought by the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) against IBM has generated many requests for comment by FSF. The Foundation has refrained from making official comments on the litigation because only the plaintiff's allegations have been reported; comment on unverified allegations would ordinarily be premature. More disturbing than the lawsuit itself, however, have been public statements by representatives of SCO, which have irresponsibly suggested doubts about the legitimacy of free software overall. These statements require response. SCO's lawsuit asserts that IBM has breached contractual obligations between the two companies, and also that IBM has incorporated trade secret information concerning the design of the UNIX operating system into what SCO calls generally ``Linux.'' This latter claim has recently been expanded in extra-judicial statements by SCO employees and officers to include suggestions that ``Linux'' includes material copied from UNIX in violation of SCO's copyrights. An allegation to this effect was contained in letters apparently sent by SCO to 1500 of the world's largest companies warning against use of free software on grounds of possible infringement liability. It is crucial to clarify certain confusions that SCO's spokesmen have shown no disposition to dispel. In the first place, SCO has used ``Linux'' to mean ``all free software,'' or ``all free software constituting a UNIX-like operating system.'' This confusion, which the Free Software Foundation warned against in the past, is here shown to have the misleading consequences the Foundation has often predicted. ``Linux'' is the name of the kernel most often used in free software systems. But the operating system as a whole contains many other components, some of them products of the Foundation's GNU Project, others written elsewhere and published under free software licenses; the totality is GNU, the free operating system on which we have been working since 1984. Approximately half GNU's components are copyrighted works of the Free Software Foundation, including the C-compiler GCC, the GDB debugger, the C library Glibc, the bash shell, among other essential parts. The combination of GNU and the Linux kernel produces the GNU/Linux system, which is widely used on a variety of hardware and which taken as a whole duplicates the functions once only performed by the UNIX operating system. SCO's confusing use of names makes the basis of its claims unclear: has SCO alleged that trade secrets of UNIX's originator, AT&T--of which SCO is by intermediate transactions the successor in interest--have been incorporated by IBM in the kernel, Linux, or in parts of GNU? If the former, there is no justification for the broad statements urging the Fortune 1500 to be cautious about using free software, or GNU programs generally. If, on the other hand, SCO claims that GNU contains any UNIX trade secret or copyrighted material, the claim is almost surely false. Contributors to the GNU Project promise to follow the Free Software Foundation's rules for the project, which specify--among other things--that contributors must not enter into non-disclosure agreements for technical information relevant to their work on GNU programs, and that they must not consult or make any use of source code from non-free programs, including specifically UNIX. The Foundation has no basis to believe that GNU contains any material about which SCO or anyone else could assert valid trade secret or copyright claims. Contributors could have made misrepresentations of fact in their copyright assignment statements, but failing willful misrepresentation by a contributor, which has never happened so far as the Foundation is aware, there is no significant likelihood that our supervision of the freedom of our free software has failed. The Foundation notes that despite the alarmist statements SCO's employees have made, the Foundation has not been sued, nor has SCO, despite our requests, identified any work whose copyright the Foundation holds-including all of IBM's modifications to the kernel for use with IBM's S/390 mainframe computers, assigned to the Foundation by IBM--that SCO asserts infringes its rights in any way. Moreover, there are straightforward legal reasons why SCO's assertions concerning claims against the kernel or other free software are likely to fail. As to its trade secret claims, which are the only claims actually made in the lawsuit against IBM, there remains the simple fact that SCO has for years distributed copies of the kernel, Linux, as part of GNU/Linux free software systems. Those systems were distributed by SCO in full compliance with GPL, and therefore included complete source code. So SCO itself has continuously published, as part of its regular business, the material which it claims includes its trade secrets. There is simply no legal basis on which SCO can claim trade secret liability in others for material it widely and commercially published itself under a license that specifically permitted unrestricted copying and distribution. The same fact stands as an irrevocable barrier to SCO's claim that ``Linux'' violates SCO's copyright on UNIX source code. Copyright, as the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized, covers expressions, not ideas. Copyright on source code covers not how a program works, but only the specific language in which the functionality is expressed. A program written from scratch to express the function of an existing program in a new way does not infringe the original program's copyright. GNU and Linux duplicate some aspects of UNIX functionality, but are independent bodies, not copies of existing expressions. But even if SCO could show that some portions of its UNIX source code were copied into the kernel, the claim of copyright infringement would fail, because SCO has itself distributed the kernel under GPL. By doing so, SCO licensed everyone everywhere to copy, modify, and redistribute that code. SCO cannot now turn around and argue that it sold people code under GPL, guaranteeing their right to copy, modify and redistribute anything included, but that it somehow did not license the copying and redistribution of any copyrighted material of their own which that code contained. In the face of these facts, SCO's public statements are at best misleading and irresponsible. SCO has profited handily from the work of free software contributors throughout the world. Its current public statement constitute a gross abuse of the principles of the free software community, by a participant who has employed all our work for its own economic benefit. The Free Software Foundation calls upon SCO to retract its ill-advised and irresponsible statements, and to proceed immediately to separate its commercial disagreements with IBM from its obligations and responsibilities to the free software community. Copyright © Free Software Foundation, 2003. Verbatim copying of this article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. Eben Moglen is General Counsel to FSF, and serves on its board of directors Return to GNU's home page. Support FSF's work by becoming an associate member. Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu at gnu.org. There are also other ways to contact the FSF. Please send comments on these web pages to webmasters at gnu.org, send other questions to gnu at gnu.org. Updated: $Date: 2003/06/27 22:02:10 $ $Author: bkuhn $ -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw From rahul.matthan at trilegal.com Mon Jun 30 21:32:41 2003 From: rahul.matthan at trilegal.com (Rahul Matthan) Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 16:02:41 -0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Harry Potter Copyright References: <1056822652.3efdd57c15136@imeme.net> Message-ID: <001c01c33f21$0d744460$fa01a8c0@trilegal> Interesting article on Harry Potter knock-offs around the world and the post WTO copyright issues. http://slate.msn.com/id/2084960/ Rahul Matthan Partner Trilegal Tel.: +91-80-353-6319 Fax: +91-80-363-3694 CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE The contents of this message may be legally privileged and confidential, for the use of the intended recipient(s) only. It should not be read, copied and used by anyone other than the intended recipient. If you have received this message in error, please immediately notify us at the above co-ordinates, preserve its confidentiality and delete it from your system. Thank you.