Year: 2009
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Being Acquitted Versus Being Searched (YANAL)
With this post, I’m launching a new, (very) occasional series I’m calling YANAL, for “You Are Not A Lawyer.” In this series, I will try to disabuse computer scientists and other technically minded people of some commonly held misconceptions about the law (and the legal system). I start with something from criminal law. As you…
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New USACM Poilcy Recommendations on Open Government
USACM is the Washington policy committee of the Association for Computing Machinery, the professional association that represents computer scientists and computing practitioners. Today, USACM released Policy Recommendations on Open Government. The recommendations offer simple, clear advice to help Congress and the new administration make government initiatives—like the pending recovery bill—transparent to citizens. The leading recommendation…
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Obama's CTO: two positions?
Paul Blumenthal over at the Sunlight Foundation Blog points to a new report from the Congressional Research Service: “A Federal Chief Technology Officer in the Obama Administration: Option and Issues for Consideration”. This report does a good job of analyzing both existing positions in federal government that have roles that overlap with some of the…
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Please participate in research project — requires only one click
As part of a research project on web browser security we are currently taking a “census” of browser installations. We hope you’ll agree to participate. If you do participate, a small snippet of JavaScript will collect your browser’s settings and send them to our server. We will record a cryptographic hash of those settings in…
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New Site Tests Crowd-Sourced Transparency
Some of my colleagues here at CITP have written about the importance of open data formats for promoting government transparency and achieving government accountability. Another leading thinker in this area is my friend Jerry Brito, a George Mason University scholar who contributed a post here at Freedom to Tinker last year. Jerry wrote one of…
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District Court Ruling in MDY v. Blizzard
Today, an Arizona District Court issued its ruling in the MDY v. Blizzard case, which involves contract, copyright, and DMCA claims. The claims addressed at trial were fairly limited because the Court entered summary judgment on several claims last summer. In-court comments by lawyers suggest that the case is headed toward appeal in the Ninth…
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The Supreme Court and Software Patents
I’m very excited that Doug Lichtman, a sharp law professor at UCLA, has decided to take up podcasting. His podcast, Intellectual Property Colloquium, features monthly, in-depth discussions of copyright and patent law. The first installment (mp3) featured a lively discussion between Lichtman and EFF’s inimitable Fred von Lohmann about the Cablevision decision and its implications…
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The (Ironic) Best Way to Make the Bailout Transparent
The next piece of proposed bailout legislation is called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Chris Soghoian, who is covering the issue on his Surveillance State blog at CNET, brought the bill to my attention, particularly a provision requiring that a new web site called Recovery.gov “provide data on relevant economic, financial, grant,…
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CA SoS Bowen sends proposals to EAC
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen has sent a letter to Chair Gineen Beach of the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) outlining three proposals that she thinks will markedly improve the integrity of voting systems in the country. I’ve put a copy of Bowen’s letter here (87kB PDF). Bowen’s three proposals are: Vulnerability Reporting –…
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DRM In Retreat
Last week’s agreement between Apple and the major record companies to eliminate DRM (copy protection) in iTunes songs marks the effective end of DRM for recorded music. The major online music stores are now all DRM-free, and CDs still lack DRM, so consumers who acquire music will now expect it without DRM. That’s a sensible…