Hollywood private investigator Anthony Pellicaon was convicted yesterday of federal racketeering and other charges for digging up dirt for his wealthy celebrity clients to use in legal suits, divorce cases and contract disputes.

Pellicano had been accused of eavesdropping on celebrities like Sylvester Stallone and running targeted names of other stars through law enforcement databases to help clients in legal cases.

Pellicano was found guilty of 76 of the 77 counts against him.

The jury found Pellicano guilty of racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, wiretapping, wire fraud, identity theft, conspiracy to intercept or use wire communications as well as the manufacture or possession of a wiretapping device.

Pellicano was acquitted on a charge of unauthorized computer access.

Fourteen people altogether were charged in relation to the Pellicano case and seven, including film director John McTiernan and former Hollywood Records president Robert Pfeifer, pled guilty to charges of perjury and conspiracy.

However, the biggest Hollywood names that had links to Pellicano, like entertainment attorney Bert Fields, Paramount studio head Brad Grey and agent Michael Ovitz, insisted they didn’t know about his methods and were never charged in the case.

During the case, Pellicano acted as his own attorney and called only one witness and rarely raised objections to the prosecution.

Source: MyWay.com

Daniel Solove is a George Washington University Law Professor, who specializes in information privacy law, and the author of “The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor & Privacy on the Internet”.

In this interesting 30 minute interview with C-SPAN, Daniel Solove discusses a range of legal issues relating to the conflicts between freedom and privacy in the “wild, wild west” world of web 2.0, blogs, social networks and wired mass communication.

Throughout the interview Solove relates a number of fascinating anecdotes that highlight the problems with current internet and privacy laws, involving social networks, blogs, online access to public records, personal information providers, cyber cops, wired mobs, electronic lynchings, personal privacy.

Solove deals with these topics in an interesting, informed manner and without the alarmism that typically goes with discussions on freedom and privacy issues.

If you are interested in internet law, web 2.0 topics, privacy issues or public records access, this is one of the best YouTube videos you can view. Take 30 minutes out of your wired schedule to watch it below.

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Believe it or not, some German politicians are seeking to criminalize virtual violence in video games with laws aimed at punishing game creators and players.

From arstechnica.com –

Players and creators of video games could face imprisonment for acts of virtual violence under draft legislation being drawn up by two of Germany’s state governments.

Politicians in Bavaria and Lower Saxony have proposed a new offence that will punish “cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters” inside games. Early drafts suggest that infringers should face fines or up to 12 months’ jail for promoting or enacting in-game violence.

The scheme comes in response to a shooting last month in the town of Emsdetten on the Dutch border, where Sebastian Bosse, an 18-year-old games fan, stormed into his former school and wounded 37 people before killing himself.

Source: German gamers face jail for acts of virtual violence

CNET is reporting that the US Senate passed a bill last Friday that criminalizes pretexting.

From the article –

The Senate passed legislation Friday night that would make it a federal crime to obtain a person’s telephone records without permission, an act known as pretexting.

The measure, which was approved by unanimous consent last night and is similar to a bill passed earlier in the House, imposes a fine of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to 10 years for duping telephone companies into divulging the calling records of private individuals. The penalties can go up under special circumstances, like cases involving domestic abuse.

The support for the legislation comes in the aftermath of the spying scandal at Hewlett-Packard. The company, eager to ferret out purported leaks to journalists from within its board, used private detective firms to retrieve phone records of directors, managers and journalists.

Companies convicted under the Senate legislation face fines of up to $500,000.

The legislation includes penalties and a prison sentence of up to 10 years for individuals who sell or buy phone records knowing the lists were obtained through deceptive means. Passage, which came just days before the conclusion of the Republican-led Congress, is a victory for privacy advocates and regular phone users concerned about the confidentiality of their records.

Source: Senate passes bill to criminalize pretexting

The Register is reporting that bugging offices in the UK is not a crime.

Bugging offices in the UK is not a criminal offence, according to surveillance and legal experts speaking to OUT-LAW radio. While recording a phone conversation is a criminal offence, someone could place a recording device in an office legally, they said.

In an investigation into corporate surveillance techniques, the weekly technology law podcast OUT-LAW discovered that no offence is committed by placing a bug in a workplace to secretly record conversations.

Source: Bugging offices is not a crime (in UK)

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You can find out more about NewsPoint as well as download the software from NewsPoint.

The Daily Bulletin is reporting that the US Government is keeping Mexican officials informed about Minutman border patrol locations.

From the article —

While Minuteman civilian patrols are keeping an eye out for illegal border crossers, the U.S. Border Patrol is keeping an eye out for Minutemen — and telling the Mexican government where they are.

According to three documents on the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Web site, the U.S. Border Patrol is to notify the Mexican government as to the location of Minutemen and other civilian border patrol groups when they participate in apprehending illegal immigrants — and if and when violence is used against border crossers.

You can read the entire aticle @ U.S. tipping Mexico to Minuteman patrols.

Here’s a unique story from The Korea Times. Korean courts are testing the idea of trying court cases through online blog postings. The issues, arguments and facts of each case would be posted online in blog format, saving everyone involved the trouble of entering a courtroom.

From the article –

Weblogs, or Internet diaries, are about to gain more than just curious readers. Korean courts are now experimenting whether they could operate court trials and hearings just through Internet postings, saving everybody the trouble of actually entering the courtroom.

The Seoul Administration Court recently designated one of its court units, which rules on labor-management relations and industrial accidents, to develop a prototype model for Internet-based trial models by the end of this month.

Although the court has not yet decided on a detailed framework, it plans to allow the parties in lawsuits to submit their list of evidence, legal documents and other data on Weblogs or Internet message boards to be operated by the court. The court decisions will also be announced online.

The court also plans to allow people to buy court documents and other requirements in preparing for their lawsuits through the Internet by credit card or mobile-phone payments.

Korea has one of the largest Internet populations in the world, with the penetration rate reaching over 70 percent.

“If the courts are able to develop a way to handle some of the court trials entirely through the Internet, we believe it will save a significant amount of time and also reduce costs in legal procedures in areas such as document deliveries,’’ said Judge Kim Sang-jun of the Seoul Administration Court.

“Internet-based trials will also help the public understand how our legal system works and what we are trying to do. It’s not that we believe we can expand the Internet-based model in all cases, but we are looking for ways to take advantage of the advancements in technology,’’ he said.

The plans for the Internet-based trial systems were first suggested by the Supreme Court last year, as part of initiatives to reduce complications in legal procedure and better educate the public on court matters, including how lawsuits are set in motion, the rules of trial conduct, and the procedure for pursuing appeals. The court established an Internet site (exdoc.scourt.go.kr) to experiment the electronic-filing of court documents.

You can read the entire article @ Courts Test Internet Trials.

This article from WebProNews.com is both instructive and entertaining. The article reports on a testy email exchange between a young attorney and an experienced legal eagle with his own law firm that has now become public news in the online world of blogs.

From the article —

The summary - a young lawyer applies for a position with a firm, which extends an offer, then cuts the offered salary; the young lawyer fires off an email declining the position, after which the fun really began.

You can read the entire article by David Utter with WebProNews.com @ When Lawyers Attack With Email.