CITP Blog - Formerly Freedom to Tinker

Year: 2013

  • Open-Source 3D Printing and Copyright Reform: It’s Time to Revisit Personal Use Copying

    – by

    Comments

    Last week, I attended MSU’s Fifth Annual Conference on Innovation and Communications Law, where I saw a wonderful presentation by Joshua Pearce, an engineering and material sciences professor from Michigan Tech, on “distributed open-source digital manufacturing” (a.k.a. open-source 3D printing). The hardware Joshua presented is called RepRap: RepRap takes the form of a free desktop…

  • Blocking of Google+ Hangouts Android App

    – by

    Comments

    ,

    Earlier this week, online news sites started reporting the apparent blocking of Google’s Google+ Hangout video-chat application on Android over AT&T’s cellular network [SlashGear, Time, ArsTechnica]. Several of the articles noted the relationship to an earlier controversy concerning AT&T and Apple’s FaceTime application. Our Mobile Broadband Working Group at the FCC’s Open Internet Advisory Committee…

  • CALEA II: Risks of wiretap modifications to endpoints

    – by

    Comments

    Today I joined a group of twenty computer scientists in issuing a report criticizing an FBI plan to require makers of secure communication tools to redesign their systems to make wiretapping easy. We argue that the plan would endanger the security of U.S. users and the competitiveness of U.S. companies, without making it much harder…

  • Who Owns the Future? Not the Middle Class

    – by

    Comments

    Jaron Lanier, in the latest contribution to the public conversation about how we live with technology, blames the Internet for the fall of the middle class.  Only the problem is he’s wrong. In his new book Who Owns the Future? Lanier–often described with the word visionary–argues that the information economy in general and network technologies…

  • Design is a poor guide to authorization

    – by

    Comments

    James Grimmelmann has a great post on the ambiguity of the concept of “circumvention” in the law. He writes about the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) language banning “exceeding authorized access” to a system. There are, broadly speaking, two ways that a computer user could “exceed[] authorized access.” The computer’s owner could use words…

  • A Response to Jerry: Craig Should Still Dismiss

    – by

    Comments

    [Cross-posted on my blog, Managing Miracles] Jerry Brito, a sometimes contributor to this blog, has a new post on the Reason blog arguing that I and others have been too harsh on Craigslist for their recent lawsuit. As I wrote in my earlier post, Craigslist should give up the lawsuit not just because it’s unlikely…

  • Collateral Freedom in China

    – by

    Comments

    OpenITP has just released a new report—Collateral Freedom—that studies the state of censorship circumvention tool usage in China today. From the report’s overview: This report documents the experiences of 1,175 Chinese Internet users who are circumventing their country’s Internet censorship—and it carries a powerful message for developers and funders of censorship circumvention tools. We believe…

  • Dear Craig: Voluntarily Dismiss with Prejudice

    – by

    Comments

    [Cross-posted on my blog, Managing Miracles] Last summer, Craigslist filed a federal lawsuit against the company Padmapper (and some related entities). Padmapper.com is a site that, among other things, allows users to view Craigslist postings on a geographical map. It is a business premised on providing value added services to Craigslist postings — with some…

  • Copyrights, Fundamental Rights, and the Constitution

    – by

    Comments

    There was a lot to take issue with in Scott Turow’s recent op-ed in The New York Times. Turow, who is currently President of the Authors Guild, took to The Times to criticize the Supreme Court’s decision in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, which brought physical books manufactured and sold abroad within the protective…

  • Are There Countries Whose Situations Worsened with the Arrival of the Internet?

    – by

    Comments

    Are there countries whose situations worsened with the arrival of the internet?  I’ve been arguing that there are lots of examples of countries where technology diffusion has helped democratic institutions deepen.  And there are several examples of countries where technology diffusion has been part of the story of rapid democratic transition.  But there are no…