Law X.0

PC Mag's 100 Favorite Blogs

PCMag.com's Blog Editor Brian Heater has compilied a list of blog content destinations. Check out the list. [JH]

Should Google Police Itself?

Check out What Computers Can't Do (and Google Should) by Frank Pasquale on Concurring Opinions. [JH]

Blogging Best Practices

The New York Times offers 10 things to consider before launching your blog:

1. Determine what you have to offer.
2. Decide if your blog will be a marketing tool.
3. Define your editorial vision.
4. Consider the content.
5. Share your thought leadership.
6. Be a credible source.
7. Decide who will be the writer.
8. Choose your partnerships wisely.
9. Learn how to engage your readers.
10. Know what matters to your readers.

[RJ]

What Google Knows: Privacy and Internet Search Engines

Omer Tene has deposited What Google Knows: Privacy and Internet Search Engines in SSRN. Here's the abstract:

Search engines are the most important phenomenon on the Internet today and Google is the gold standard of search. Google evokes ambivalent feelings. It is adored for its ingenuity, simple, modest-looking interface and superb services offered at no (evident) cost. Yet increasingly, it is feared by privacy advocates who view it as a private sector big brother posing perhaps the biggest privacy problem of all times. Google is an informational gatekeeper harboring previously unimaginable riches of personal data. Billions of search queries stream across Google's servers each month, the aggregate thoughtstream of humankind, online. Google compiles individual search logs, containing information about users' fears and expectations, interests and passions, and ripe with information that is financial, medical, sexual, political, in short – personal in nature. How did Google evolve from being a benevolent giant seeking to do no evil into a privacy menace reviled by human rights advocates worldwide? Are the fears of Google's omniscient presence justified or overstated? What personal data should Google be allowed to retain and for how long? What rules should govern access to Google's database? What are the legal protections currently in place and are they sufficient to quell the emerging privacy crisis? These are the main issues addressed in this article.

CALI Selects Law Professors to Produce Criminal Procedure Lessions

From the press reslease: CALI has selected a group of law professors for the CALI Criminal Procedure Fellowship. The fellowship will produce computer-based legal education materials in Criminal Procedure. From a talented and diverse group of law professor applicants, CALI selected these five:

• Edwin J. Butterfoss, Professor of Law, Hamline University School of Law
• Steven L. Chanenson, Professor of Law, Villanova University School of Law
• Tom Lininger, Associate Professor of Law, University of Oregon School of Law
• Raneta Lawson Mack, Professor of Law, Creighton University School of Law
• David M. Siegel, Professor of Law, New England School of Law

[JH]

New Book Offers Analysis of the Culture and History of the Computer Virus Phenomenon

Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses
by Jussi Parikka

List Price: $35.95
Paperback: 327 pages
Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing (June 2007)
ISBN-10: 0820488372
ISBN-13: 978-0820488370

Book Description: Digital Contagions is the first book to offer a comprehensive and critical analysis of the culture and history of the computer virus phenomenon. The book maps the anomalies of network culture from the angles of security concerns, the biopolitics of digital systems, and the aspirations for artificial life in software. The genealogy of network culture is approached from the standpoint of accidents that are endemic to the digital media ecology. Viruses, worms, and other software objects are not, then, seen merely from the perspective of anti-virus research or practical security concerns, but as cultural and historical expressions that traverse a non-linear field from fiction to technical media, from net art to politics of software. Jussi Parikka mobilizes an extensive array of source materials and intertwines them with an inventive new materialist cultural analysis. Digital Contagions draws from the cultural theories of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Friedrich Kittler, and Paul Virilio, among others, and offers novel insights into historical media analysis.

[JH]