Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled

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• Would you trust Zamzar with your data?

  Kevin writes about Zamzar , a free web-based service that converts audio, video and documents from one format to another (via Download Squad ). Sounds cool, but would you trust them with your sensitive data? I don't know about you, but I barely trust Google or Microsoft with this information. Should I trust what appears to be a UK-based startup whose company page provides little, if any, information about the company? In their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy , they make allusions to "respect[ing] the intellectual property rights of others" - though the language seems to be more related to a third party's protected work as opposed to any protected work you are personally uploading. The Privacy Policy also discusses, sort of, how the files are stored and accessible. Storage of User Files When users upload files to be converted Zamzar stores those files on its servers until such time as those files have been converted to the new file format. As soon as this has been done Zamzar removes... Posted Nov 03 2006, 08:37 AM by Tim with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Security, Copyright, Web 2.0, Innovation, Privacy

• Who's reading your e-mail?

  Your ISP can read your e-mail. That's what a federal district court decided in 2003, and what the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld last week. A little history: Back in 1998, an online bookseller gave free e-mail accounts to book dealers and then secretly copied all messages that came in from Amazon.com. While two employees plead guilty to wiretapping charges, a supervisor fought the charges. He said he wasn't aware of the scheme and should not be held liable, but even if he were, the federal wiretapping law didn't apply. Because the messages were saved on the company's hard drive while being processes, he argued, they should be considered stored communication. This distinction is important. The federal wiretapping laws ban a company from monitoring its customers' communications, but it does not apply to stored communications. The reasoning there is that there is an inherent loss of privacy once the e-mail is stored. By putting e-mail in this category of stored communication, the courts... Posted Jul 11 2004, 07:35 AM by Tim with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Security, Privacy