Is some hacking justified?

Jonathan Bowers, March 6th 2007, 10:24AM

A former judge in California has been sentenced to 27 months in jail on Internet child abuse charges. The ground breaking thing about the case is that some of the evidence was provided by a Canadian hacker who planted a Trojan Horse on an Internet newsgroup visited by paedophiles that was then downloaded by 66-year-old Ronald C Kline.

In following the case, Sophos ran a poll to see whether the public thought that it was justified to use hacking in this circumstance.

The results of 233 votes show that almost two thirds believe that hacking is unacceptable in any circumstance. I wonder however what the results would be if another website ran the poll. We have to remember that people using the Sophos website are likely to have cyber crime on the mind and this could create a negative bias.

In order to catch a thief you often have to think like a thief and even behave like one. So should the laws be black and white when it comes to hacking. Could there be an acceptable use policy?

Tags: cybercrime, internetlaw
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The road to web transparency

Jonathan Bowers, January 31st 2007, 12:05PM

When I visit a website and there are no contact details that place the company in a geographical area or names of company members I am always immediately suspicious of the legitimacy of the business. Transparency is something that has always split the web between those who are open and those who seem guarded.

There are two articles in today's news that support the shift towards transparency. Studies by both Booz Allen Hamilton and Nielsen//NetRatings are warning us that businesses are not people friendly enough for the online environment.

Another step in the right direction are the new rules on disclosure of company details, which were extended to cover websites and emails at the start of this year. This means that businesses have to display their corporate name place of registration, registered number and the address of its registered office in legible characters.

E-commerce sites have additional rules to comply to as well, which all serve to help us as consumers feel safer about spending money or building relationships with the businesses that we find online.

Tags: internetlaw, trust
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Suing the Internet

Jonathan Bowers, July 4th 2006, 10:07AM

Have a look at some of the big stories about the Internet so far this week. Here are a few headlines and links:

Rank outsider sues Google over zero score
Music industry to sue Yahoo China
UK lawsuit proceeds against Russian MP3 site
Image-based spam on the rise

Yesterday, I promoted the opportunity for people to tell ICANN, the Internet's 'ruling body' what they think ICANN should stand for and should be championing on behalf of the online world.

Probably one of the biggest issues is that of bringing into line with each nation an industry that connects us. Internet Law has to be one of the most difficult areas but most important to clarify.

As businesses, we know that loopholes in the law can often bring opportunities and increased wealth. The Internet seems full of loopholes that we are only just beginning to discover - or at least, official bodies are only just beginning to try and close.

Is there a way to create Internet Law and maintain it as a global community? Or are we going to see content restricted to specific geographical areas (as we already have in China).

When I bought a few cassettes from a Turkish market back in 1991, they were a fraction of the price they would be in the UK and yet there was no outcry or talk of the courts. The global reach of sites like allofmp3.com will be addressed in the British courts and beyond and then we will see the movie industry going through much of what the music industry has, unless Internet Laws are established and agreed upon.

But can you see this happening? And should the same competitive environment exist online that countries experience offline?

Tags: allofmp3.com, google, icann, internetlaw, music, spam, yahoo!
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How should the Internet be run?

Jonathan Bowers, July 3rd 2006, 6:10PM

With the US reviewing the role of ICANN at the end of July, it seems we all have a very small window of opportunity to have our own say on who should run the Internet and how.

Both ICANN and the NTIA - an arm of the US government's department of commerce are illiciting the world's thoughts. Have a look at what people are saying and post up yourself at the ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee site.

Or alternatively, you can email the NTIA with your thoughts - but hurry, you only have until this Friday (7th July).

Tags: icann, internetlaw
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The Internet as a set of communities

Jonathan Bowers, April 20th 2006, 6:06PM

Just the like world, the Internet grows as a set of communities. Many of the largest, the big portals are like the countries of the net and in order to participate in them we have to play by their rules.

EBay has just announced that it has a community of 200m. MySpace also has a huge following, Yahoo! of course is one of the superpowers as is MSN. So should disputes online be dealt with by these communities or by our more earthly communities?

EBay is in the news today for allowing people to sell .eu domains that perhaps should not belong to them. Nestle and Disney are both considering suing the website for providing a marketplace for rowntrees.eu and euroDisneyParis.eu respectively.

However, the rules of the Internet allowed people to purchase the domain names without being affiliated to the companies in question - so shouldn't eBay be allowed to act as a provider in this way?

I suspect that in the end it may buckle in the same way that it did about Live8 tickets last year - but we shall see.

Tags: communities, internetlaw
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