CNET News.com: Digital copyright law on trial (also see ACLU information on Edelman v. N2H2)

CNET News.com: Who owns your e-mail? (customer sues Canadian ISP that kept her account open for incoming e-mail but denied her access to the messages) (also see Privacy Commissioner of Canada ruling; Canadian privacy legislation; and the customer's own account of the incident)

CNET News.com: Promise of P3P stalls as backers regroup (also see Platform for Privacy Preferences project overview and CPSR's P3P FAQ)

Slashdot: First worm with a EULA? (also see McAfee virus profile and Symantec security response)

Wired News: Band can't sell own music on eBay

CNET News.com: Judge: Disabilities Act doesn't cover web (federal court rejects ADA suit challenging Southwest's inaccessible web site)

CNET News.com: Direct marketers want anti-spam laws (not surprisingly, the type of law favored by the DMA would simply prohibit forged message headers; the result would be to legitimize spam, and the quantity of spam would increase dramatically, so no legislation at all would be far better)

Wired News: Privacy czar: Past haunts present (Peter Swire compares war against terrorism to 1950s anticommunism)

Wired News: Spam masquerades as admin alerts (yet another Microsoft-related security vulnerability) (also see CNET News.com; Stop Messenger Spam; and Internet Privacy for Dummies)

Wired News: Man sues airlines for fare access (lawsuit contends that Southwest and American Airlines are violating Americans with Disabilities Act by designing their web sites to thwart access by screen reading programs)

CNET News.com: IBM flushes restroom patent (I thought this might be a joke, especially after noticing all of the bathroom humor in the article, but the patent is for real -- see U.S. patent no. 6,329,919, "System and method for providing reservations for restroom use")

Washington State U. Daily Evergreen, Oct. 3: Filipino-American history recognized ("The month of October is officially observed as Filipino-American History Month. On Oct. 18, 1587, the first Filipinos landed on the shores of Morro Bay, California on a Spanish galleon called the Nuestra Senora de Buena Esperanza, which translates to 'The Big Ass Spanish Boat.'")
Daily Evergreen, Oct. 4: Apology and retraction ("The story 'Filipino-American history recognized' stated that the 'Nuestra Senora de Buena Esperanza,' the galleon on which the first Filipinos landed at Morro, Bay, Calif., loosely translates to 'The Big Ass Spanish Boat.' It actually translates to 'Our Lady of Good Peace.' Parts of the story, including the translation above, were plagiarized from an inaccurate Web site.") (also see PinoyLife.com, from which the story was copied, and Seattle Times coverage)

Martin Schwimmer's Trademark Blog: 7th Circuit Fair Use Decision re: BARGAINBEANIES.COM (also see Ty v. Perryman [alternate link] (7th Cir. Oct. 4, 2002) [PDF])

Chicago Sun-Times: I-Pass has a new role: I spy

This court decision isn't particularly interesting if you're not a patent type ("In order to prevent the flexible elastic ring from being dislodged from its seating by the intense compression of the parts, the '657 patent discloses the use of an annular extension 33 on the cutting ring 14, and a corresponding annular extension 34 on the shutter mechanism 3, to hold the flexible elastic ring in place.") . . . but you gotta love the name of the case:  Schwing GmbH v. Putzmeister AG, ___ F.3d ___, 2002 WL 31109922, 2002 U.S. App. LEXIS 20205 (Fed. Cir. Sept. 24, 2002).