UK taken to court over web ’secret surveillence’

British ministers face an embarrassing showdown in court after the European Commission accused Britain of failing to protect its citizens from secret surveillance on the internet.

The legal action is being brought over the use of controversial behavioural advertising services which were tested on British Telecom’s internet customers without their consent to gather commercial information about their web-shopping habits.

Under the programme, the UK-listed company Phorm has developed technology that allows internet service providers (ISPs) to track what their users are doing online.

ISPs can then sell that information to media companies and advertisers, who can use it to place more relevant advertisements on websites the user subsequently visits. The EU has accused Britain of turning a blind eye to the growth in this kind of internet marketing. Read more at www.nzherald.co.nz

GPLv2 - copyright code or contract?

Open source legal minds unravel license

Two prominent IP lawyers have warned that the all-pervasive General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) contains legally ambiguous wording that may be problematic for licensees.

They claim GPLv3 and AGPLv3 are much better suited for the realities of modern open source software. Read more at www.theregister.co.uk

News archives can lose libel protection as stories change

A newspaper which continued to publish a defamatory article on its website after its subject was cleared in an investigation lost its right to claim a special journalistic defence against libel, the High Court has said.

The ruling makes it clear that while responsible journalism is given some libel protection, that protection can evaporate if the crucial facts of the case change. Web archives of stories must change to reflect this, the ruling said.

The online version of the article carried a warning in red capital letters which read: “Warning this article is subject to legal dispute. It should not be relied on or repeated.” The Court said, though, that this did not exonerate it of responsibility for the defamation contained in the piece. Read more at www.theregister.co.uk

Nokia sues Apple for patent infringement

The world’s top cellphone maker Nokia has accused Apple of infringing Nokia patents in its iPhone.

Nokia dominates the global handset market but it has lost some ground to new smartphone entrants like Apple which entered the market with its iPhone in mid-2007.

The patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption and are infringed by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was introduced in 2007, Nokia said.

“By refusing to agree appropriate terms for Nokia’s intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation,” Ilkka Rahnasto, Vice President for Legal & Intellectual Property at Nokia, said in a statement. Read more at www.stuff.co.nz

Preparing for the digital afterlife

How should we deal with web users’ Facebook, PayPal and other accounts when they log off for good?

Although people increasingly live their lives online, few bother to specify what should happen to their digital assets once they log off for good. But failure to plan for the digital afterlife can cause problems for those left to sort out the affairs of the deceased. Without a username and password family members can struggle to access valuable web domains, online accounts – even photographs and documents on a PC.

“People aren’t very aware of what you might call their living online legacy – potential employers looking at their Facebook accounts, for example. The issue of what happens to that information after their death is an extension of that,” says Yorick Wilks, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. Read more at www.guardian.co.uk