Do you read the License?

Open Content Movement Finds a Poster Child From MTV
In early March, the District Court of Amsterdam ruled that Dutch gossip magazine Weekend infringed the copyright in four photos which were posted on photography website flickr. Adam Curry, who, among other things, is a former MTV "video jockey," had posted the photos under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, which allows photos to be used freely (with attribution) for non-commercial purposes, but not for commercial purposes (such as the use by Weekend). Weekend defended Curry's action by arguing that it was misled by the notice "This photo is public" that was posted with the photos, and therefore did not click on the Creative Commons "CC" symbol accompanying a "some rights reserved" notice (also posted with the photos), which led to a summary of the terms of the license. The court rejected this argument, stating that "it may be expected from a professional party like [the publisher of Weekend] that it conduct a thorough and precise examination before publishing in Weekend photos originating from the internet." The Curry decision thus holds (at least under Dutch law) that not only are Creative Commons licenses valid, but more suprisingly that publishers are under a duty to understand and investigate such licenses even in the face of a confusing statement like "This photo is public."

Source: Steptoe & Johnson LLP. Steptoe & Johnson LLP

The first move in the direction of web accessibility standards

Separating coders from cowboys with PAS 78

A guide published earlier this month about how to commission accessible websites will transform web accessibility in the UK, according to Chris Rourke of User Vision. The firm is also seeking your views in a short online survey.

P2P Crackdown - soon in South Africa?

Crackdown on corporate P2P users in Britain - Is your company addressing this risk?!

The Federation Against Software Theft is about to take action against a number of companies in the UK that have been caught making illegal copies of software available for download from their networks – which may come as a complete surprise to the companies.

IMPORTANT - Cryptography Regulations

As of Friday 10 March 2006, providers of cryptography products or services will have to register at the Department of Communications certain information before they can provide cryptography services and/or cryptography products.

It is important to know that failure to register could lead to fine or up to two years imprisonment.

If you are unclear whether you are a cryptography service / product provider - here are the definitions as per the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 2002:

This is according to the cryptography regulations published in the government gazette on 10 March in terms of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act of 2002 (ECT Act):
"cryptography provider" means any person who provides or who proposes to provide cryptography services or products in the Republic.

"cryptography service" means any service which is provided to a sender or a recipient of a data message or to anyone storing a data message, and which is designed to facilitate the use of cryptographic techniques for the purpose of ensuring
a) that such data or data message can be accessed or can be put into an intelligible form only by certain persons;
b) that the authenticity or integrity of such data or data message is capable of being ascertained;
c) the integrity of the data or data message; or
d) that the source of the data or data message can be correctly ascertained.

"cryptography product" means any product that makes use of cryptographic techniques and is used by a sender or recipient of data messages for the purposes of ensuring-
a) that such data can be accessed only by relevant persons;
b) the authenticity of the data;
c) the integrity of the data; or
d) that the source of the data can be correctly ascertained;

Contact van Gaalen Attorneys today to find out about their special offer to register you / your organisation as a Cryptography Service- / Product provider

Tel: 011 782 9511/2
Fax: 086 631 8898
email: info@vangaalenlaw.co.za (heading - cryptography special offer)

Security 'not a problem' for IT managers

The top two IT-related problems facing companies today are operational incidents and staffing issues, according to a study commissioned by the IT Governance Institute (ITGI).

Communications bill ushers in demise of Telkom’s monopoly

COMPETITION in the telecoms industry will get a major boost from the Electronic Communications Bill now awaiting presidential approval, the chairman of Parliament’s communications portfolio committee believes.

No TV licence fees for IPTV

Those planning to receive TV on their mobile devices or PCs using broadband technology will not have to pay a TV licence fee for this.

OSS: The alternative in digital forensics?

Open source software (OSS) tools can be credible and reliable in digital forensics, says Cobus Venter, senior researcher at The Cyber Security Science Centre, a division of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

Morgan Stanley offers $15m to make up for missing emails

Investment bank Morgan Stanley has offered to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) $15m to settle an investigation by the regulator into an alleged failure by the firm to produce email evidence during a legal dispute.

Metatags and Trademark Infringement

Any business with an Internet presence wants to increase its website traffic. And one of the best ways to do this is to rely on something web surfers never see -- a bit of HTML coding called a "metatag" that describes the content of a website. Search engines use these small pieces of hidden coding to index web pages according to content so web surfers can be directed to web pages with the content they request. Where things can get problematic, though, is when businesses manipulate hidden metatags to draw more eyes to their websites. One way to do this, for instance, is to use the trademark of a competitor in your metatags to attract that competitor’s customers. But that clever tactic just ran into a roadblock, when a federal court in Ohio ruled that the use of a competitor's mark in metatags to pull consumers to a website constitutes trademark infringement, even if consumers eventually realized that the site was not that of the competitor. This decision could have major -- and negative -- ramifications for Google and other search engines that allow companies to use competitors' marks as keyword search terms, so that their own paid ads (and links) are displayed when someone searches for the competitor's name

How to avoid Open Source Licensing pitfalls

Open Source software can offer users greatcommercial advantages when care is taken to address the intellectual property issues andminimise contractual risks.

Open source has long held an imprtant place in fulfilling

Why SCO has no case

"IT directors shouldn't worry about SCO Group's latest sallies in its legal war on Linux vendors IBM Corp. and Novell Inc., says attorney Thomas Carey. It's just more posturing, or as Shakespeare said, a tale "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Liable For Your Employee's Porn Addiction??!

With specific reference to our own Films and Publications Act (Amended), employers in South Africa should be aware of similar actions in South Africa - see below, information received from the USA:
Employers' monitoring of their employees' online activity is nothing new. And neither is reprimanding an employee for visiting pornography websites at the office. But thanks to a recent court decision, employers may now have a legal obligation to halt such activity by employees, or they could be liable if that activity "result[s] in harm to innocent third parties." On December 27, in Doe v. XYC Corp., the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, ruled that "an employer who is on notice that one of its employees is using a workplace computer to access pornography, possibly child pornography, has a duty to investigate the employee's activities and to take prompt and effective action to stop the unauthorized activity." The court held that no privacy interest of the employee stood in the way of this duty. Although the ruling has serious implications for any company that offers Internet service in the workplace, it may be of special interest to Internet service providers -- who already have their own child pornography notification obligations under 42 U.S.C. § 13032, and who may come across illegal activity not only on the part of their employees but also on the part of their subscribers. And the court's reasoning could extend beyond pornography to any illegal or harmful conduct engaged in by employees from their work computers.

U.S. Government Pushes Banks to Tighten up Online

E-Commerce Times: The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, a federal agency that includes the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the National Credit Union Administration, and oversees banking regulations in the U.S., issued guidelines in late 2005 calling for online banks to implement two-factor identity authentication. Now the agency has announced that it will begin evaluating banks for compliance with the guidelines later this year. The guidelines were issued because the FFIEC felt that single-factor authentication is not secure enough for online banking applications.

Interesting numbers!!

15 percent
Proportion of IT budgets to be allocated toward compliance projects in 2006, up from less than 5 percent in 2004, according to Gartner projections.Source: CRN
1,031
Number of companies restating their earnings in 2005 as of October, as compared to 650 for all of 2004 and 270 for all of 2001.Source: International Herald Tribune
90 percent
Proportion of companies that go under within two years of losing data, according to research firm Baroudi Bloor International.Source: Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Journal

Overhaul of GPL set for public release

A major revamp of the General Public License is scheduled for public release next week, a move that's expected to kick off a long and vocal debate over the key foundation of open-source programming.

Software Thief Admits To Crimes

Nathan Peterson took on some of the world's largest computer software companies, and for a while, he won.

One-quarter of Internet users targeted in phishing scams monthly

About one in four Internet users are hit with e-mail scams every month that try to lure sensitive personal information from unsuspecting consumers, a study says.

IM worms up again in November

The number of worms that targeted instant-messaging services hit 62 in November, up 226 percent from October and hitting a new record, Akonix Systems said Tuesday. Of the worms, 58 were variants of previous pests, and four were new. In the same month, a total of 14 attacks hit peer-to-peer networks, such as Kazaa and eDonkey, according to Akonix, which sells security software and appliances.

ISPs may not carry int’l calls over VoIP

The Ministry of Communications has instructed Internet service providers (ISPs) to ensure that their systems do not carry international calls over VoIP, which bypass Israel’s authorized international calls carriers. The ministry sent the instruction following complaints.