Berkman’s Stop Badware project just released a new study, in which they report the “paradox” that most users feel safe online, despite a rash of malefactors and potential mishaps:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 31, 2008 - Nearly 90 percent of Americans say they feel safe online despite the rising tide of spyware, phishing and other badware threatening Internet users, according to a new poll sponsored by StopBadware.org, the consumer protection initiative aimed at combating dangerous software.

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“What we have here is an Internet security paradox,” said Maxim Weinstein, who manages the StopBadware.org team at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. “Americans see themselves as safe online, even as we see an ongoing trend of organized criminal elements using the Internet to target unsuspecting users.” Weinstein will testify at the Federal Trade Commission on April 1 about how to better educate users about the dangers of phishing, a deceptive practice responsible for $2.1 billion in identity theft damages last year, according to Consumer Reports.

I wonder, though, do we think that mistaken feeling of safety is a bad thing? I don’t — I think it’s great that we have enough of a safety net that people who don’t have the technical competence to deal with PC security threats nonetheless are being generative and participatory. I don’t think we’d gain by scaring those Internet users, even through education. While malware problems are often compared to public health, we don’t have a solution that’s as easy and effective as one-time vaccination to make computer users safer.

I’d suggest instead that social insurance and systematic efforts to prosecute criminal use of malware are better responses than demanding that individual Internet users pay attention, educate themselves, and stay vigilant against ever-mutating threats.

Whether it’s holidays or the close of the tax year that motivates, it’s a good time for generosity to non-profit causes. Here are some of mine:

The Tor Project, Inc. develops anonymity software to help users navigate the web without being tracked — helping whistleblowers blog anonymously and dissidents browse past national firewalls. The Tor Project will be concluding its first year as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and I’m proud to be on its Board of Directors. While your there, download the Tor software and add a node to the anonymity network.

Electronic Frontier Foundation relies on members’ donations to champion online freedoms in the courts. Its litigation against AT&T for participation in warrantless wiretapping has helped to expose the depth of the administration’s evasions. While you’re there, keep the pressure on congress to let the public hold telecommunications carriers accountable when they break the law.

Creative Commons celebrates five years of helping creators to share their works and the public to find them, through standard copyright-permissions licenses. Science Commons is extending this spirit to enable web-like collaboration in scientific research. While you’re there, search for CC-licensed work or license a work of your own.

One Laptop Per Child Through the end of the year, donors to OLPC can give one and get one — give one laptop to a child in a developing country and get one of their rugged yet open-source machines for your (inner) child.

Free Software Foundation produces both great software and the original great legal hack — copyleft. Grab some free software while you’re there.

American Civil Liberties Union isn’t tax-deductible, but we need allies lobbying for our rights in Washington too.

The first for Simon Rattle, the Berlin Philharmonic, Ben Heppner, and Thomas Quasthoff, in a spectacular performance of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde at Symphony Hall. The audience didn’t want it to end, letting the last notes hang in the air as Sir Simon held the baton out, then roaring to their feet to call the performers back out several times.

The second for Barack Obama, who spoke to an enthusiastic crowd in Manchester, NH, to launch his education plan. As a teacher, I appreciate his thought to the many phases of education, from support for early-childhood development through training and supporting teachers as true professionals. I’ve also been impressed by Obama’s technology policy, including Network Neutrality and patent reform.

Entertainment lobbyists have dumped a nasty trojan horse into the Higher Education bill scheduled for markup Wednesday in the House Committee on Education and Labor. On page 412 of the massive 747-page “College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007″ is a requirement that educational institutions spend their scarce resources to

develop a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.

So even as the committee asserts it wants to “make college more affordable and accessible,” it frustrates that purpose by letting Hollywood-driven mandates suck money away from the educational mission of colleges and universities. While “encourag[ing] colleges to rein in price increases,” the bill would force campuses to spend money exploring broken anti peer-to-peer technologies that make their networks less useful. Colleges that don’t fall into line risk losing federal student aid.

“Technology-based deterrents” are bound to be both over- and under-inclusive: blocking true educational uses while failing to stop piracy. A school cannot screen or filter all its Internet traffic without seriously impeding network innovation and research. If the “deterrents” block unknown communications, they stop students from experimenting on an end-to-end network, blocking the development of lawful peer-to-peer applications in the mold of Skype, distributed search, or LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), a library archival system. If they block encrypted traffic, they compromise privacy and security. If they don’t, they’re trivially circumvented.

Finally, there’s no automated way to determine whether “unauthorized” uses are fair. Even were a technology to have perfect access to all Internet traffic for comparison against a corpus of works, it would not be able to incorporate the judge necessary to determine whether a given use were fair, transformative, educational, or merely substitutive and unfair.

Half-baked ideas like these have no place in an education bill. Rather than forcing schools to spend scarce resources on entertainment companies’ agendas, Hollywood should do its own homework, offering students enough compelling, compatible alternatives that they choose authorized access.

Meanwhile, you should call congress to keep this mess out of our schools. Educause provides a page of resources including committee member phone numbers.

The Associated Press reports that presidential candidate John McCain has rejected Fox’s call to “cease and desist” from using Fox debate footage in a campaign ad.

Fox is apparently claiming infringement by the use of 18 seconds from a 90 minute debate, in which Sen. McCain is the speaker. Political argument, even in the heated sound-bite form of campaign ads, is at the core of First-Amendment protected speech. This kind of commentary use, of newsworthy material available only from Fox, suggests that not only McCain, but the general public should have greater access to debate footage.

Let’s hope this run-in with overreaching intellectual property demands inspires McCain to pursue IP balance beyond this one campaign ad.