ReadWriteWeb

Last week was the first time I'd ever been called for jury duty. I put it on the RWW team calendar weeks in advance. I figured I'd miss one day at my desk. I'd spend it sitting in a waiting room, voraciously reading Twitter and shouting from the sidelines. I was wrong. I was chosen for a jury trial that lasted all week. I sat in the voir dire session, answered questions honestly, and before I knew it, I was in the booth.

Before long, I could tell why I was chosen. It was a civil case, and practically all the character evidence was in the form of email, Facebook and Myspace posts. That's all we had to juxtapose with the in-person testimony and figure out who was telling the truth. It was a bit embarrassing at first. What did this have to do with justice? But that became clear. There are lots of new lessons to learn about being civil in an online society, and judges and juries are how we common-law countries work that stuff out.

Last week we told you about Microsoft's admission that, if compelled by the U.S. Patriot act, the company would hand over data stored outside the U.S. to U.S. authorities. The Patriot Act requires that U.S. companies comply with requests for information, even if that information is stored overseas, and companies may be required to provide that information to U.S. authorities without notifying customers that data was being accessed.

This week some further complication was added to the matter: Computer World reports that European Union officials believe the Patriot Act conflicts with the Data Protection Directive, which requires organizations to inform users when personal information is disclosed.

Last Friday, just before a holiday weekend in the U.S., Dropbox made a change to its Terms of Service. Part of the updated ToS gives Dropbox a license to use your data in ways critics believe can be interpreted too broadly. The line in question read: "You grant us (and those we work with to provide the Services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent we think it necessary for the Service."

Despite being a holiday weekend announcement, news of the ToS change spread rapidly and Dropbox quickly updated it yet again to read: "You grant us (and those we work with to provide the Services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent reasonably necessary for the Service. This license is solely to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services."

But even this wording could still be cause for concern.

The Protect IP Act is a bill proposed by Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont as replacement for the failed Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA). The bill was passed by committee today but blocked by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon. Wyden also blocked COICA.

Among the various proposals in the act is one that would use The Domain Name System (DNS) to block blacklisted websites. This element of the proposal has come under fire from several security researchers who have published a paper titled Security and Other Technical Concerns Raised by the DNS Filtering Requirements in the PROTECT IP Bill.

In British law, a "superinjunction" is a gag order on the press that extends even to reporting on the fact that there is a gag order on the press. In U.K. courts, these superinjunctions are apparently handed out like popcorn on behalf of any strutting boob with enough pounds sterling or screen time to get the judge's attention. This can hardly be surprising for a country whose libel laws are so biased that they have given birth to "libel tourism."

Now, the Twitterverse has no such law. I think you can figure out what happened next. Although newspapers have been fighting against superinjunctions for some time, with one, the Sun, even kicking at the boundaries, one Twitter user just up and pegged it right in the gear.

India's New Laws Silence Online Speech. An innocuous-sounding set of rules called the "Information Technology (Electronic Service Delivery) Rules, 2011" [pdf] went quietly into effect last month in India. These rules, possessing the force of law, practically guarantee that no user of electronic communications in one of the world's largest countries will ever be completely safe from persecution again.

Under the new rules, anyone who objects to content online will be able to effect that content's immediate removal. The justifications for removal are so extensive and so vague that virtually anything will qualify for removal.

• Touchscreen finger signatures: Valid? Legally-binding? http://bit.ly/ghCWFa @betanews
• Q&A with Al Jazeera English's online producer Bilal Randeree: http://bit.ly/dNIcQ7 via @kdmc
• Truth in advertising: When was the last time you stopped to question some of the fundamental truths in digital media? http://bit.ly/gAf1Fp via @jasondpg
• "Last week we had a cyberlaw-fiesta in the Silicon Valley, the likes of which have been rarely (if ever) seen before." http://bit.ly/eKq6ti via @ericgoldman
• Augmented reality for the totally blind: http://bit.ly/dWgIKd via @seeingwithsound

Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private who allegedly passed classified documents to the whistle-blowing site Wikileaks, has just been charged with 22 additional counts, according to his attorney, Lieutenant Colonel David Coombs. Among these are "aiding the enemy," a capital offense.

Before we go on, you should understand two things. First, I am Son of Regular Navy. Second, I am not a fan of Wikileaks. Both of these things are relevant to my understanding of what has happened to Manning.

Last week a U.S. Justice Department court order was made public that directed Twitter to provide information on several of its users. The subpoena was made in conjunction with an investigation the U.S. Attorney General is making into the actions of the whistle-blower site Wikileaks and its leader, Julian Assange.

The document demands user information for "rop_g; ioerror; birgittaj; Julian Assange; Bradley Manning; Rop Gonggrijp; Birgitta Jonsdottir for the time period from November 1, 2009 to present."

WikiLeaks surfaced legal issues that are good to consider about cloud computing in general. Like anything else in business, cloud computing poses its own set of legal issues that customers are required to consider before signing with a service.

The blog Digital Inspiration reviews some legal questions to ask. It's a good introduction to thinking about the legal issues that cloud computing customers will face.