Month: September 2004
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DMCA Ruling in BNETD Case
A Federal Court in Missouri has ruled on the BNETD case, which involves contract and DMCA claims, and issues of reverse engineering and interoperability. Because I played a role in the litigation (as an expert), I won’t comment on the court’s ruling. The rest of you are welcome to discuss it.
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Recorded Music Being Replaced by Other Media
The music industry likes to complain about sales lost to piracy, but figures that show huge sales declines only tell part of the story. Before we blame this trend on infringement, we have to make several assumptions, including that the demand for music (whether purchased or pirated) has remained steady. Figures available from the US…
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SunnComm Follies
Ashlee Vance at the Register tells the amazing story of SunnComm, the DRM company whose CD “protection” product was famously defeated by holding down a PC’s Shift key. It’s one of those true stories that would be hopelessly implausible if told as fiction. Here’s the opening paragraph: You might expect one of the world’s leading…
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A Roadmap for Forgers
In the recent hooha about CBS and the forged National Guard memos, one important issue has somehow been overlooked – the impact of the memo discussion on future forgery. There can be no doubt that all the talk about proportional typefaces, superscripts, and kerning will prove instructive to would-be amateur forgers, who will know not…
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Conservative Group Takes Conservative Position on Induce Act
The American Conservative Union, an influential right-wing group, has announced its opposition to the Induce Act, and is running ads criticizing those Republicans who support the Act. This should not be surprising, for opposition to the Act is a natural position for true conservatives, who oppose government regulation of technology products and support a competitive…
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The Least Objectionable Content Labeling System
Today I’ll wrap up Vice Week here at Freedom to Tinker with an entry on porn labeling. On Monday I agreed with the conventional wisdom that online porn regulation is a mess. On Tuesday I wrote about what my wife and I do in our home to control underage access to inappropriate material. Today, I’ll…
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Bots Play Backgammon Too
Responding to my entry yesterday about pokerbots, Jordan Lampe emails a report from the world of backgammon. Backgammon bots play at least as well as the best human players, and backgammon is often played for money, so the temptation to use bots in online play is definitely there. Most people seem to be wary of…
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Online Poker and Unenforceable Rules
Computerized “bots” may be common in online poker games according to a Mike Brunker story at MSNBC.com. I have my doubts about the prevalence today of skillful, fully automated pokerbots, but there is an interesting story here nonetheless. Most online casinos ban bots, but there is really no way to enforce such a rule. Already,…
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Voluntary Filtering Works for Us
It’s day two of porn week here at Freedom to Tinker, and time to talk about the tools parents have to limit what their kids see. As a parent, I have not only an opinion, but also an actual household policy (set jointly with my wife, of course) on this topic. Like most parents, we…
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Online Porn Issue Not Going Away
Adam Thierer at Technology Liberation Front offers a long and interesting discussion of the online porn wars, in the form of a review of two articles by Jeffrey Rosen and Larry Lessig. I’ve been meaning to write about online porn regulation for a while, and Thierer’s post seems like a good excuse to address that…