Month: January 2003
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DVD-Jon Acquitted
A Norwegian court has found Jon “DVD-Jon” Johansen not guilty of criminal charges relating to the creation of the DeCSS program for reading encrypted DVDs. CNN has the story.
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Long DRM Article in Today's NYT
Today’s New York Times offers a long article by Amy Harmon on DRM, or “digital armor” on recorded media. It’s mostly a backgrounder for people less up-to-speed on DRM issues than most of my readers (probably) are, but there are a few new nuggets worth noting. First, Jack Valenti tries yet another analogy: “We need…
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NYT Changes Copyright-Expiration Story
On Thursday I critiqued a New York Times story (which appeared in the print edition on Friday) about the expiration of some European copyrights on recorded music. Joe Liu points out that the Times has changed the story to address one of the issues I raised. The original story said: Defenders of the copyright laws,…
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News Flash: Some Copyrights to Expire
An article by Anthony Tommasini at the New York Times (online) reports that the European copyrights on many musical recordings for the 50’s will be expiring soon. Some paint this as a disaster for the recording industry. This is one of those articles that just cries out for skeptical analysis. Several points leap to mind.…
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Everything Is Not Possible
Ted Shelton points out the unintended irony in HP’s new “Everything is Possible” ads running alongside articles about abuses of technology. Something else about the “Everything is Possible” slogan bugs me more. The slogan is, well, wrong. Technology does not make everything possible. Some things are impossible, and some cannot be done without harmful side-effects.…