Month: November 2002
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Rubenfeld on Copyright and the Constitution
October’s Yale Law Review has an interesting article by Jed Rubenfeld, entitled “The Freedom of Imagination: Copyright’s Constitutionality.” (Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer and not a legal scholar, so I’m not fully qualified to judge the scholarly merit of the article. What you’re getting here is my semi-informed opinion.) Rubenfeld argues, convincingly in my view,…
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Tech Provisions in Homeland Security Bill
Orin Kerr, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, summarizes some tech-related provisions in the new Homeland Security bill. The bill changes the sentences that can be assessed for some computer crimes. The effect of these changes is unclear but will likely be small. The widely discussed life-sentence-for-hacking provision applies only in cases when the crimes deliberately…
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Why I Wike the Web
Evewy so often you discovew an onwine sewvice that you nevew knew you needed. My discovewy today is the Diawectizew, which twanswates any web page into one of eight mostwy humowous diawects. Oh, dat scwewy wabbit! To wead the west of Fweedom to Tinkew in Ewmew Fudd diawect, cwick hewe.
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Pavlovich Decision
The California Supreme Court has ruled that Matt Pavlovich can’t be sued in California state court for posting DVD decryption software (though he can probably be sued elsewhere). Apparently, the key issue was whether Pavlovich’s knowledge that his action would affect California companies was by itself enough to give California courts jurisdiction. The Court ruled…
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The Slashdot Effect
I read Slashdot every day. It’s one of the best sources for tech news, and it contains many nuggets of useful information and informed commentary. If anything interesting happens in the tech world, Slashdot will discuss it. Sadly, the treasures of Slashdot are often buried in a vast wasteland of speculation, misinformation, and irrelevant blathering.…
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Slate: Just Say No to Politics
Slate, a smart online magazine that normally urges citizen involvement in politics, published today a commentary by Paul Boutin, urging citizens who happen to be geeks not to participate in the political process. Boutin argues (as others have before) that geeks should stick to writing code – that freedom is a Simple Matter of Programming.…
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DarkNet
Lots of buzz lately about the DarkNet paper written by four Microsoft Research people. The paper makes a three-part argument. First, there is really no way to stop file sharing, as long as people want to share files. Second, in the presence of widespread file sharing, a copy-prevention technology must be perfect, for the presence…
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Crackdown at the Naval Academy
According to The Capital, which appears to be a local newspaper in Annapolis, officials at the Naval Academy have seized the computers of nearly 100 midshipmen (i.e., students at the Academy) because of suspected file sharing activity. Some people paint this as an “RIAA goes after the Navy” story. But based on the newspaper article,…
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Blog Comment Spam
I saw my first blog-comment spam today. David Weinberger’s posting on open spectrum had one comment: a standard-issue Nigerian scam message. How much longer before we see Trackback spam?
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Lobbyists to Solve Copyright Problem
Declan McCullagh at news.com reports that “Technology and entertainment lobbyists will sit down at the negotiating table [today] to seek a resolution to the long-running political spat over digital copyright.” The article makes the alarming but unstated assumption that the last Congress’s refusal to pass any “anti-piracy” bills is actually a problem. When Congress rejects…