I love my new @pebble watch!
And I thought it would be useful to let people know how to put the pebble in sleepmode at night in case they don’t want it vibrating at 2am 🙂
Simply follow these steps:
1) Go to Menu
2) Go to Settings
3) Go to Bluetooth
4) Select top item (Bluetooth On)
5) Selected this will put the pebble in Airplane mode, and you won’t receive notifications
6) Done.
Aaron’s Law Takes Shape | TechCrunch
Aaron’s Law Takes Shape
![Aaron Swartz [Photo by Fred Benenson via Wikipedia]](https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/250px-aaron_swartz_profile.jpg?w=432&h=600)
Aaron Swartz [Photo by Fred Benenson via Wikipedia]
Digital activist Aaron Swartz took his own life on January 11. Swartz was facing federal hacking charges after being arrested for downloading millions of articles from JSTOR from MIT’s network in excess of his access. Since Swartz’s suicide, activists, scholars and legislators have been at work on reforms to the law under which he was prosecuted—the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA.
Calls to reform the CFAA are not brand new. Villanova law professor (and my former boss) Michael Risch wrote about the CFAA’s “scary” implications in 2011. Risch wrote that, in his opinion, the most accurate interpretation of the CFAA was “Anyone using a website who starts using information from it in a way that the web operator clearly does not desire could theoretically be criminally liable. Now that’s scary.”
That is essentially the scenario in which Swartz and Andrew Auernheimer found themselves. Swartz had access to JSTOR through an account, but exceeded his access level by downloading content in massive quantities. Auernheimer accessed an AT&T login page with a simple exploit that made it spill over 100,000 iPad owners’ email addresses—arguably exceeding authorized access because AT&T only authorized use of the site to actually log in, not to harvest email addresses.
Professor Orin Kerr, a former prosecutor and expert in computer crime law at George Washington University, evaluated the charges against Swartz in a long piece he wrote shortly after his death. Kerr concluded that “the legal charges against Swartz were pretty much legit” and “what Swartz was alleged to have done fits pretty well with the charges that were brought.” (Not all commentators agree.)
Together, Swartz’s suicide, his stature in the activist and tech communities, and perhaps the growing recognition that his prosecution was legally sound, have catalyzed efforts to reform the CFAA. On January 16—just five days after Swartz’s death—Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-OR) posted a draft bill to revise the CFAA, dubbed “Aaron’s Law,” on Reddit.
Professor Kerr took issue with Lofgren’s bill and made his own initial reform recommendations on January 16, which he followed up with a more thorough proposal on January 20. Notably, Kerr would entirely eliminate liability for “exceeding authorized access”—leaving only liability for the much cleaner scenario of access “without authorization”—and also would drop the law’s civil liability provision. The EFF also marked up Lofgren’s bill with its own clarifications, focusing on assuring that violations of a terms-of-service agreement aren’t a crime.
Jennifer Granick, a scholar and computer crime defense attorney at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society, addressed Kerr’s proposal in a January 23 post, calling it “a great second step.” However, Granick took issue with Kerr’s definition of “accesses without authorization,” which focused on “circumvent[ing] technological access barriers.” Granick believes this still casts too wide a net, and would catch people who do some sort of circumvention for legitimate reasons, including security researchers or terms-of-service violators. Granick echoes the EFF’s position there, stating that TOS violations must be clearly excluded from the reach of criminal law.
Professor Kerr posted again on January 27, looking to further refine the definition of “accesses without authorization” by polling his readers on whether six hypothetical scenarios should result in criminal liability—a sort of regression testing for legislation.
Rep. Lofgren posted an updated draft of her bill on February 1. The update incorporated many of Kerr’s and EFF’s comments, but both were still quick to pick apart the new text. The EFF wanted more clarity on beneficial circumvention and penalties, and Kerr found flaws in Lofgren’s complex definition of “access without authorization.”
Lofgren has said she plans to introduce Aaron’s Law in Congress soon, but whatever she introduces will be just the first input in a long process. One takeaway from the collaborative drafting process so far is that, despite inviting input from the entire Internet, the most useful and influential comments have come from traditional non-profit advocacy groups and academia. I suspect this is mostly because understanding complex statutes like the CFAA is just hard.
For those interested, Lawrence Lessig is scheduled to give a webcast lecture about Aaron’s Law from Harvard Law School on February 19, and, later the same day, Stanford is holding an event on the CFAA including Jennifer Granick, Brewster Kahle, and Ed Felten.
Why Bad Weather Is Good for Productivity (Blizzards Notwithstanding)
RT @ikidapps: The Best Interactive Kids eBook for iPad! Get Clouds Journey to the Sky today! http://bsa.ly/11qr *ad
If you’re an online seller, this spells trouble… glad I’m not in the ebay biz anymore!
U.S. Postal Service to Cut Saturday Mail – WSJ.com
WASHINGTON—The U.S. Postal Service will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to deliver packages six days a week under a plan aimed at saving about $2 billion.
In an announcement scheduled for later Wednesday, the service is expected to say the Saturday mail cutback would begin in August.
The move accentuates one of the agency’s strong points—package delivery has increased by 14% since 2010, officials say, while the delivery of letters and other mail has declined with the increasing use of email and other Internet use.
Under the new plan, mail would still be delivered to post office boxes on Saturdays. Post offices now open on Saturdays would remain open on Saturdays.
Over the past several years, the Postal Service has advocated shifting to a five-day delivery schedule for mail and packages—and it repeatedly but unsuccessfully appealed to Congress to approve the move. Though an independent agency, the service gets no tax dollars for its day-to-day operations but is subject to congressional control.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the service could eliminate Saturday mail without congressional approval.
But the agency clearly thinks it has a majority of the American public on its side regarding the change.
Material prepared for the Wednesday press conference by Patrick Donahoe, postmaster general and CEO, is expected to say Postal Service market research and other research has indicated that nearly 7 in 10 Americans support the switch to five-day delivery as a way for the Postal Service to reduce costs.
State Reaches Deal With Amazon On Sales Tax – Courant.com
State Reaches Deal With Amazon On Sales Tax
Governor Says Amazon Plans To Build New Facility That Will Mean Hundreds Of Jobs
The Hartford Courant
Amazon will begin collecting sales tax in the state as part of an agreement that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy says will mean hundreds of new jobs and $50 million in investment in Connecticut over two years, the governor’s office announced Monday.
Amazon will begin collecting sales taxes on Connecticut purchases in November 2013.
“All in all, this is a win for our state’s taxpayers, our main street retailers, and our workforce,” Malloy said in a statement. “Their agreement to begin collecting revenue is a great step, but federal action on this issue is still necessary.”
The statement refers to Amazon’s “construction and operation ” of a future “facility” but does not elaborate.
The agreement allows the state to address an issue over collection of online sales tax. Out-of-state retailers are not required to collect taxes on sales to Connecticut.
Paul Misener, Amazon vice president, global public policy, said in a statement that the company looks “forward to working with Governor Malloy toward passage of the legislation now being considered by Congress that would finally resolve the sales tax issue, level the playing field for all retailers, protect states’ rights and allow states to collect the revenue owed.”
“This has been one of our top priorities for over a year now,” said Department of Revenue Services Commissioner Kevin Sullivan. “It’s a great result for our consumers and businesses, state and local revenue, new investment and new jobs.”
@CVecchioFX: Twitter hoaxes w/ no followers move markets now- Block Says Tweet Hoax `Reflection of Our Times’: Video – Bloomberg – http://bloom.bg/Xh6lCm
Shared via TweetCaster
@HuffingtonPost: Famous groundhog makes his prediction http://huff.to/11fhQSY
Shared via TweetCaster
