Month: March 2006
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Conscientious Objection in P2P
One argument made against using P2P systems like Grokster was that by using them you might participate in the distribution of bad content such as infringing files, hate speech, or child porn. If you use the Web to distribute or read content, you play no part in distributing anything you find objectionable – you only…
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The French DRM Law, and the Right to Interoperate
Thanks to Bernard Lang for yesterday’s discussion of the proposed French DRM law. The proposed law has been widely criticized in the U.S. press. Assuming Dr. Lang’s translation is correct, this criticism is mostly (but not entirely) off the mark. Apple’s iTunes and iPod are good examples of the type of product that would be…
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Bernard Lang Reports on the Proposed French DRM Law
[Bernard Lang, a prominent French computer scientist and infotech policy commentator, sent me an interesting message about the much-discussed legislative developments in France. It includes the first English translation I have seen of the proposed French law mandating open access to DRM technologies. He has graciously given me permission to post his message here, with…
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Apples, Oranges, and DRM
Last week mp3.com reported on its testing of portable music players, which showed that playing DRM (copy-protected) songs drained battery power 25% faster in Windows Media players, and 8% faster on iPods, than playing the same songs using the unprotected MP3 format. As more information came to light, it became clear that they hadn’t done…
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Nuts and Bolts of Net Discrimination: Encryption
I’ve written several times recently about the technical details of network discrimination, because understanding these details is useful in the network neutrality debate. Today I want to talk about the role of encryption. Scenarios for network discrimination typically involve an Internet Service Provider (ISP) who looks at users’ traffic and imposes delays or other performance…
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Facebook and the Campus Cops
An interesting mini-controversy developed at Princeton last week over the use of the Facebook.com web site by Princeton’s Public Safety officers (i.e., the campus police). If you’re not familiar with Facebook, you must not be spending much time on a college campus. Facebook is a sort of social networking site for college students, faculty and…
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NYU/Princeton Spyware Workshop Liveblog
Today I’m at the NYU/Princeton spyware workshop. I’ll be liveblogging the workshop here. I won’t give you copious notes on what each speaker says, just a list of things that strike me as interesting. Videos of the presentations will be available on the net eventually. I gave a basic tutorial on spyware last night, to…
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RFID Virus Predicted
Melanie Rieback, Bruno Crispo, and Andy Tanenbaum have a new paper describing how RFID tags might be used to propagate computer viruses. This has garnered press coverage, including a John Markoff story in today’s New York Times. The underlying technical argument is pretty simple. An RFID tag is a tiny device, often affixed to a…
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Discrimination, Congestion, and Cooperation
I’ve been writing lately about the nuts and bolts of network discrimination. Today I want to continue that discussion by talking about how the Internet responds to congestion, and how network discrimination might affect that response. As usual, I’ll simplify the story a bit to spare you a lengthy dissertation on network management, but I…
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Where to Go, and What to Read
We don’t have a “real” post today, just plugs for two good things. (1) The NYU/Princeton interdisciplinary workshop on spyware will be next Thursday (evening) and Friday (day), in New York. It’s free and open to the public. Please let us know if you plan to come. (2) Students in my course on Information Technology…