Month: September 2003
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Computers As Graders
One of my least favorite tasks as a professor is grading papers. So there’s good news – of a sort – in J. Greg Phelan’s New York Times article from last week, about the use of computer programs to grade essays. The computers are surprisingly good at grading – essentially as accurate as human graders,…
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RIAA Files 261 Suits
The RIAA launched its long-awaited lawsuit storm today. John Borland at CNet news.com reports that 261 copyright infringement suits were filed against individual defendants. Several of the suits have already settled, reportedly for around $3,000 each.
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P2P Porn
Yesterday’s New York Times reported that recording industry lobbyists are shocked, shocked to find porn on popular peer-to-peer networks. Naturally, they think P2P should be heavily regulated as a result. Somebody should send them a copy of Michael Kinsley’s classic Slate editorial on the most dangerous of all media: paper.
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RIAA to Grant Semi-Amnesty
The RIAA is reportedly planning to offer amnesty to file sharers. According to the reports, just after the RIAA launches its upcoming flurry of lawsuits against file sharers, it will offer a deal to everybody else: send a letter to RIAA admitting that you have infringed in the past, and in exchange RIAA will promise…
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Ruling in Garage-Door-Opener Case
An important ruling was issued yesterday in the Chamberlain v. Skylink lawsuit. (See this previous post for a summary of the case.) The court denied Chamberlain’s motion for summary judgment. Although this is only a ruling on a preliminary motion, the judge used it to offer her analysis of how the DMCA applies to the…
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Hacking, by Subpoena
James Grimmelmann at LawMeme explains a recent opinion by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, holding that a party that used an obviously improper subpoena to get information from a computer can be sued for breaking into that computer. If you think about this, it makes some sense, if the subpoena was used to defeat…
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The Scopes Trial, Revisited
This week, the Economist ran an odd piece comparing the SCO/IBM dispute to the Scopes “Monkey Trial.” SCO, for anyone who has never heard of the company, is pronounced “skoh”, as in Scopes. Indeed “the SCO case” of 2003 sounds increasingly like the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, which pitted religious fundamentalists against progressives…