Judge orders Gmail account deactivation

Incredible bank screw up, but innocent party is sued. Be afraid.

Mediapost reports that a California judge has ordered Google to release the ownership details of a Gmail account user, and deactivate the account.

A bank in Wyoming wants the details because it has accidentally emailed personal financial records to this Gmail address. It then emailed to try to get them deleted, but didn’t hear anything.

Wired backgrounds the story.

So, just a few issues here then:

I wouldn’t respond if a bank I’d never heard of started asking me to get in touch. That’s called Phishing.

Why was the bank emailing unencrypted files around the open internet?

What would have happened if they had posted the material to the wrong physical address? Would they send the police round to change the locks?

Why should an innocent party lose access to their email in this way?

Definitely not the end of this story yet.

OFCOM’s 9 day consultation period??

Get in quick or lose HD on Freeview

OFCOM are currently requesting comment from stakeholders in the UK’s digital terrestrial TV network.  As tax and licence-fee payers, that’s most of us.

They are being asked by the BBC to authorise a change in the way the new high definition multiplexes are operated to allow for the use of encryption.

I’m not a fan of this plan, many others aren’t either, including Tom Watson MP and other vocal bloggers.

Encrypting HD-DTT risks stunting the growth of high-definition in this country and threatens to criminalise anyone who’s using any sort of non-standard cheap-and-cheerful reception equipment (which by law you are required to have a TV licence for).  If you’re using open source receiver software, you can kiss that goodbye should this change go through.

What amazes me is that OFCOM published their letter on the 3rd of September and want  comments back by the 16th. Err, that’s today!

That’s 9 working days to get comments in on a proposal that has far-reaching ramifications on the way the system of TV distribution works in Britain. Does this indicate that OFCOM doesn’t grasp the serious implications of this change, that it just writes to the ‘industry’ and allows such a short time for responses?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a good background to why this request is being made.

And if you’re still reading this today, get some comments off to

Andrew.Dumbreck@ofcom.org.uk

Pirate Bay trial – live updates

The infamous bittorrent search site, The Pirate Bay, is on trial in Sweden accused of assisting copyright infringement.

There’s a good backgrounder to the case, and some live tweeting going on as well.

Firesharers small win against RIAA

Filesharing with shared computers may equal anonymity

An american judge has decided that the RIAA, who are seeking to prosecute illegal filesharers, may not have personal information from Boston University about who was using a particular computer.

There were too many people around who could have had access apparently.

So if you’re going to share files at university, make a party out of it!