Year: 2004
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DVD Jon Strikes Again
Jon Johansen, known widely as “DVD Jon” for his work on DVD decryption utilities, has released a tool that lets anyone stream music to the Apple Airport Express. The Airport Express is a slick little gizmo that plugs into any electrical outlet, and can receive content wirelessly and output it on standard connectors to a…
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MS To Offer Crippled Windows in Asia
Microsoft plans to offer a reduced-functionality version of Windows XP to customers in a few Asian countries, according to an AP story by Alisa Tang. The “XP Starter Edition” software will lack support for high-res graphic (beyond 800×600), home networking and printer sharing, and other features. It will also be able to run at most…
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FCC Tome on Net Wiretapping
The FCC has released its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on Internet wiretapping. (Backstory here.) The NPRM outlines a set of rules that the FCC is likely to issue, requiring certain online service providers to facilitate (properly authorized) government wiretapping of their customers. The document is a dense 100 pages, and it touches on issues…
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WSJ Opposes Induce Act
The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial today, has come out against the Induce Act. (Sorry, I don’t have an online pointer to the editorial, since I’m not a subscriber.)
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Online Principles
Susan Crawford recently proposed a list of “online principles” to guide development of the online world. Seth Finkelstein comments, “Been there, done that, doesn’t work”; but John Palfrey counters that Susan’s effort is worthwhile. Surely it’s worthwhile for almost any group to spend at least a tiny fraction of its time talking about its overall…
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State AGs Warn P2P Vendors
Yesterday, the National Association of [state] Attorneys General sent a letter to P2P United, a trade association of peer-to-peer vendors, chiding the P2P industry for fostering porn, spyware, and copyright infringement. Though the letter does make a few good points, overall it’s an embarrassment to the attorneys general. For starters, the letter contains some real…
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Lawprofs Predict Future of Copyright Law
Tim Wu, guest-blogging over at Larry Lessig’s site, reports: So today copyright scholar Joe Liu at Boston College asked a room full of law professors an interesting question. What did we think copyright would look like in 8 years? Here were some of the main categories of predictions (some contradict): 1. Primarily a criminal regime…
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Kerry and Copyright
Tim Wu, guest-blogging on Larry Lessig’s site, asks hypothetically whether President Kerry would veto the Induce Act. Tim, quoting some vague pro-technology language from Kerry’s website, suggests that Kerry might veto the Act. This is wishful thinking. The fact is that the record of Kerry, and the Democrats in general, on the copyright/innovation issue is…
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Apple Threatens Real
Pay attention now, ’cause this story gets kinda complicated. See, Apple had this product called iPod that lets you listen to music. That sounds like a good idea. But Apple thought it would be better if the iPod could do less. So their engineers pulled a bunch of all-nighters to make sure that the iPod…
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Blogiversary
Monday was the second anniversary of Freedom to Tinker. Two years seems like a long time, but I still enjoy doing this. Thanks to all of you for your attention, and for keeping me alert and honest with your comments and feedback. Here are the obligatory statistics about the site: 604 posts; 1409 comments; 3.2…