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An Orwellian Nightmare? The Proposed Cyber Law

Imagine that at any given moment, the State can enter your business, demand any document and information you have, instruct you on how to operate your IT system, seize computers,  communication systems and drives containing data, or even help itself to your workstations and operate them by itself. Imagine that your most guarded information – your bookkeeping system, Excel files ...

One Law for the State – Another for Startups


The well-known French saying “noblesse oblige” indicates that nobility obliges. Israel loves to be a “start-up nation”. It is therefore expectable that the Israeli domestic law be in line with a state that boasts its encouragement of business creativity and innovation. But it is not. When it comes to technology, the substantive law in Israel is often outdated. Even worse, ...

Dramatic Overhaul of Israeli Data Security Regulations

Last week, the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset) promulgated the Protection of Privacy Regulations (Data Security), 5777-2017 (the “Regulations”). This marks the consummation of a legislative process that began in 2010 with the Israeli Law, Information and Technology Authority (ILITA, the Israeli privacy regulator), when the first draft of the Regulations was published for public comment.

The Regulations introduce a far ...

Lessons from the Israeli Electronic Signature Law


10 years after the enactment of the Israeli Electronic Signature Law, electronic signatures are poorly adopted in Israeli e-commerce. The Law clearly failed to meet its expectations. Major projects include only two prominent ones by the government –
  • Reports made by public companies to the Israeli Securities Authority and the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange must be signed digitally. This required the ...

Red Hat Fails to Protect Fedora Logo

The Tel-Aviv District Court (Judge Shoshana Almagor) rejected a Red Hat lawsuit filed to protect its “Fendora Hat logo” registered trademark {D.C. 3768-12-10 .Red Hat Inc. v. Start Commercial Ltd. et. al}. This ruling marks a first attempt by the world renowned Linux company to defend its trademark rights in an Israeli court. The Court found, inter alia, that Red ...

The WordPress-Wix Dispute

The open source community is engaged in a heated dispute between Automatic (the company behind WordPress) and Wix, two of the most prominent developers of content management systems. Reading carefully through the posts of both companies, it seems that they may strike on a fundamental dispute within the Free Software community and legal professionals counseling on Open Source Software: just ...

Can I Attack the Attacker?


Your organization has been cyber-attacked. Sensitive business and customer information has been leaked. Your organization’s reputation and competitive edge suffers irreparable damage. You hire a cyber security firm to investigate. The firm traces the hackers’ tracks and is about to hack into their computer systems in order to mitigate the damage, uncover more information about the hackers’ methods, disable their ...

Monitoring employees email severely restricted

In a 91-page opinion the National Labour Court recently laid down a clear set of rules regarding an employer's right to monitor its employees' email messages and other employee uses of workplace IT systems.(1) The rules impose severe restrictions on employers' rights, subsequently calling for employers to consider modification and reform of their employee privacy policies.

Facts

The case ...
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