CITP Blog - Formerly Freedom to Tinker

Year: 2002

  • Economist Article

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    The article on me and my pro-tinkering work, from the June 20th issue of the Economist, is now available on line.

  • Dornseif on Source Code and Object Code

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    Maximillian Dornseif offers another comment on my source code vs. object code posting. He points out, correctly, that we can still define “source code” and “object code” reasonably. We can get some mileage out of these definitions, as long as we remember that a piece of code might be either source code, or object code,…

  • More on Berman-Coble's Peer-to-Peer Definition

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    In a previous posting, I remarked on the overbreadth of the Berman-Coble bill’s definition of “peer to peer file trading network”. The definition has another interesting quirk, which looks to me like an error by the bill’s drafters. Here is the definition: ‘peer to peer file trading network’ means two or more computers which are…

  • China Now Re-Routing Google Requests

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    Reuters reports that, since the weekend, some requests for Google from inside China are being rerouted to other, government-approved search engines. (Link at wirednews.com) UPDATE (3pm EDT, Sept. 10): Ben Edelman now has screenshots of redirected browsers. (Link thanks to greplaw.)

  • John Gilmore on Spam and Censorship

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    Politech has an interesting message from John Gilmore about the effect of anti-spam measures.

  • Wireless LANs, Security, and Intrusions

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    News.com has an article about drive-by spam. The idea is that a spammer will find a building with a wireless LAN. The spammer will then connect to that LAN, without permission, from outside the building, and use the building’s email server to send a big load of spam email. This is abusive behavior. The spammer…

  • China Blocks Altavista

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    The Great Firewall of China is now blocking Altavista too.

  • Dornseif: Technological Definitions in the Law

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    Maximillian Dornseif offers some comments following up on my previous posts about Source vs. Object Code, and definitions in the Berman-Coble bill. A brief excerpt: The court system and legal doctrine is built all arround definitions. While defining things like cruelty, carelessness and such stuff is a well understood problem for lawmakers and courts, technical…

  • The Other Digital Divide

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    Long and well-written articleby Drew Clark and Bara Vaida in the National Journal’s Tech Daily, about the history of the current Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley battle over copy protection. If you’re still coming up to speed on this issue, the article is a great scene-setter. Even if you know the issue well, you still might…

  • "Peer to Peer" in the Berman-Coble Bill

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    Yesterday’s defense of the Berman-Coble bill resurrected the argument that the bill only hurts the bad guys, because it authorizes hacking only of peer to peer file trading networks. And we all know that “Decentralized P2P networks were designed specifically (and ingeniously) to thwart suits for copyright infringement by ensuring there is no central service…