Check out Flip This Lawsuit for new discovery documents online for the Trademark Properties v. A&E Television Networks court case.

Kevin Poulsen of Wired has a great article that shows the result of a PERL script he created to cross reference MySpace profiles with the National Sex Offender Public Registry. He’s idetified over 700 known sex offenders already and assisted in one arrest. Just another example how free software (PERL) can enhance and protect our lives.

In May, I began an automated search of MySpace’s membership rolls for 385,932 registered sex offenders in 46 states, mined from the Department of Justice’s National Sex Offender Registry website — a gateway to the state-run Megan’s Law websites around the country. I searched on first and last names, limiting results to a five mile radius of the offender’s registered ZIP code.

The code swept in a vast number of false or unverifiable matches. Working part time for several months, I sifted the data and manually compared photographs, ages and other data, until enhanced privacy features MySpace launched in June began frustrating the analysis.

I imagine it wouldn’t take much work to do some rudimentary facial recognition to aid in moving higher percentage matches to the top of the pile for additional verification.

Today’s investigatory target, 39-year-old Andrew Lubrano, has been less careful, and now he faces his fourth arrest for a sex crime. Lubrano was sentenced to three years probation in 1987 for sexual abuse against a 7-year-old boy, according to police. In 1988, he got another probation term for second-degree sex abuse. In 1995, he earned a 3 to 9 year prison term for sexually abusing two boys he’d been babysitting, one 11, the other 9.

The parole board turned Lubrano down three times, and he was cut loose in September 2004 largely unsupervised, having served every day of his nine-year max. By November 2005 he was on MySpace, making friends.

But I thought these people could be rehabilitated? Hmmm, guess not…

Five of the sex offenders are listed as “absconded” — one of those still logs in regularly. Others are listed as “in custody,” and last logged into MySpace shortly before their arrest. Some are fresh out of custody. One North Carolina user went to prison in 1999 for rape and “indecent liberties with a minor.” When he got out this year, he was on MySpace within two months — though so far his only friend is MySpace’s Tom.

Maybe those absconded ones can be tracked down now. I’d also be interested to know if the ones in custody committed any crimes against their MySpace “friends”. The best part is, MySpace said none of this could be done. Not only has it been done, it’s been done with no cooperation from MySpace or any Law Enforcement agency (apart from providing the websites). This should be looked up as a disgrace to MySpace for not even attempting to combat a major issue with “social networking” sites.

Clearly loading up spyware and adware on a customer’s computer through browser exploits is more important than protecting their users. That’s not to say that the customers or parents don’t bear some responsibility, but it should stand to reason that people have to right to exist with out being targeted for a crime. When you provide a service that can clearly be used as a tool to commit a crime you have a moral obligation to do everything within reason to insure the safety of your customers.

By not responding to initial requests to scan for known sex offenders, MySpace has put profits above customers and I find that irresponsible. Of course, NewsCorp will probably bear the brunt of this criticism even though this problem existed well before they purchased MySpace. However this type of disregard should come as no surprise since MySpace was really founded by a known SPAM organization (ResponseBase/eUniverse/Intermix Media).

In any event, please check out the article.

An interesting article on MSNBC reports that a New York City Judge has ruled that surfing the Internet at work is not a fireable offence. The plantiff in the case was a New York Department of Education employee who had ignored instructions from his supervisors to stop browsing the Internet. They don’t mention how much time he spent web surfing, only the types of sites he surfed. The other interesting point is, they get his browsing history from his computer, not from the web filtering software (which I would imagine every government office should have).

Judges ruling:

In his decision, Spooner wrote: “It should be observed that the Internet has become the modern equivalent of a telephone or a daily newspaper, providing a combination of communication and information that most employees use as frequently in their personal lives as for their work.”

He added: “For this reason, city agencies permit workers to use a telephone for personal calls, so long as this does not interfere with their overall work performance. Many agencies apply the same standard to the use of the Internet for personal purposes.”

via Slashdot:

Kailash Nadh writes “The Internet archive, which has been storing snapshots of millions of webpages since 1996 has been sued by the firm Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey, Philadelphia. The firm was defending Health Advocate, a company in suburban Philadelphia that helps patients resolve health care and insurance disputes, against a trademark action brought by a similarly named competitor. In preparing the case, representatives of Earley Follmer used the Wayback Machine to turn up old Web pages - some dating to 1999 - originally posted by the plaintiff, Healthcare Advocates of Philadelphia. Last week Healthcare Advocates sued both the Harding Earley firm and the Internet Archive, saying the access to its old Web pages, stored in the Internet Archive’s database, was unauthorized and illegal.”

There is actually a correction to this original article:

“Internet archive … has been sued by the firm Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey.” Fingas was one of several readers (thanks to all!) to correct me on this, writing “According to the linked article that isn’t the case; instead they are being sued by Healthcare Advocates, represented by the firm McCarter & English. Further, the article says that Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey is actually being sued along with the Internet Archive..”

This is so ridiculous. Anyone can prevent their pages from being archived by using the ubiquitous robots.txt. In the event your administrator is too incompetent to know about robots.txt you can simply request to have your content removed.

The Internet Archive is an important part of our Internet history, we’re so fortunate to have such a place to see the evolution of probably the greatest communication tool ever invented. It’s a shame that sue happy jerks like Healthcare Advocates could jeopardize the future of such an important historical tool.

It seems that it’s every day I hear about a meth operation, but never heard of one like this before. PunditGuy has an article on a Grays Harbor County Deputy Sheriff who shows a class how to make crystal meth.

It is supposed to be part chemistry class and part drug enforcement, however I think they could have found a better way to get their point across, maybe using chemistry to detect narcotics? Of course the article goes on to say that no recipe is disclosed and it’s just a generalization. The Deputy also goes into the hazards of making meth.

In any case, I’m sure you could find a basic recipe or two on the Internet if you were so inclined.

Anyway, it’s a good article if you care to take a visit.

Sure you’ve read these reports already:

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution reported:

The cost of the search for runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks is likely to be substantial, authorities said Sunday.

The number of local, state and federal agencies participating in the four-day effort to find the 32-year-old woman may make an exact accounting difficult, but police in Duluth said Sunday they have begun calculating the hours of overtime and expenses. Most of the Gwinnett city’s 47 uniformed officers and all four of the city’s detectives worked overtime to find Wilbanks, Maj. Don Woodruff said.

And then this:

Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter said Sunday he may file criminal charges against Wilbanks if he determines she misled local authorities by saying she had been kidnapped. Wilbanks could be charged for reporting her kidnapping story over the phone to Belcher, Porter said.

Here’s the problem…maybe… Technically there should not be much that any Georgia agency can do about the initial search for her, as the family had the search initiated, and not her. Initially she was simply missing, and she left no “clues” that it was an abduction.
(more…)

AppleInsider is reporting that Apple Computer has been slapped with a lawsuit by Tiger Direct, the mail order comuter retailer, for allegedly infringing its trademark with the new Mac OS X “Tiger” operating system scheduled to be released on Friday.

Unfortunatly for Tiger Direct, the preliminary injunction hearing is slated for Tuesday, May 3, which is a few days after the official release date of OS X Tiger.

This is just plain stupid; I hope it gets squashed and Tiger Direct loses a lot of money over it.

Like there was any other option… He’s getting off easy in my opinion.

Well, unless you’re his attorney:
Defense attorney Maj. David Coombs told jurors that a sentence of life without parole would allow Akbar to be treated for mental illness and possibly rehabilitated.

He’s right, there is a good treatment program available for him which is surprisingly cost effective and has a 100% success rate, it’s called death by lethal injection. Let’s stop wasting time and let the healing begin!

From Fox News:

FORT BRAGG, N.C. — A military jury sentenced a soldier to death Thursday for a grenade and rifle attack on his own comrades during the opening days of the Iraq invasion, a barrage that killed two officers and that prosecutors said was driven by religious extremism.

Wow, we’re wasting money with all this abstinence teaching or free condoms… Let’s just give kids baseball bats!

I was just reading an article at FindLaw coverage on this case from Michigan .

The pregnant individual in this case - whom I will call “Janie Roe” - allegedly asked her boyfriend Johnnie to help terminate her pregnancy by hitting her in the abdomen. Reportedly, Johnnie went along with the plan, the six-month-old fetus died, and the couple buried the body.

I think the proper way to end this was with them both holding a lit stick of dynamite, but that’s just me…