Subpoena for student records

Prosecutors Say Students Paid Witness to Aid Case – NYTimes.com

Prosecutors said they wanted to determine whether students believed they would receive better grades if they provided evidence to help exonerate the convict… [and have] subpoenaed the grades, e-mail messages and records of students who investigated the murder conviction for the university’s Medill Innocence Project. … Professional journalism groups are concerned that the students may have to submit information they gathered during reporting.

Between student privacy, protection for journalist work materials, bribing a witness, this case sounds like a real tangle.

GPL Enforcement: Don’t Jump to Conclusions

GPL Enforcement: Don’t Jump to Conclusions, But Do Report Violations – Bradley M. Kuhn

Brad Kuhn has an interesting post on the interplay between law, norms, and negotiation in GPL (a particular type of open source license) violations. He suggests that, when a violation is found, start with an assumption that there was no malicious intent and not to publicly “out” the violator.

I think a lot of geeks get religious about freedom in the open source movement.  Usually this is for good reason, but occasionally the mob mentality can turn into something like a witch trial. With so few lawyers, they are a group that’s perhaps not as used to negotiation. It’s good to have even keeled people around to remind us (Slashdotters) to “remember that the primary goal of the GPL is encourage more software freedom in the world.”

Justice Dept. Asked For News Site’s Logs

Justice Dept. Asked For News Site’s Visitor Lists – Taking Liberties – CBS News

In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day. The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site “not to disclose the existence of this request” unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.

This is an amazing story… I really think it speaks for itself.

News Corp. May Shield All Content From Google

News Corp. May Shield All Content From Google – Media News Summaries | Newser

News Corp. honcho Rupert Murdoch wants to put a permanent end to “parasite” Google’s “kleptomania” when it comes to content on his newspapers’ websites.

I agree with Battelle–this is a lot of “bluster.”  Barely one line of text in a file on their servers would achieve this end–why do they need to tell everyone about it?