CITP Blog is hosted by Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, a research center that studies digital technologies in public life. Here you’ll find comment and analysis from the digital frontier, written by the Center’s faculty, students, and friends.
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A judge has nixed Bertelsmann’s purchase of Napster. This looks like the end of the road for Napster. From now on Napster will be nothing but a cautionary example –…
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Source Code and Object Code
[This item is long and geeky. Sorry about that. I hope that at least some of you will find it interesting. The rest of you can skip right to the…
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Misleading Term of the Week: "Content Owner"
Many discussions of copyright refer to “content owners.” The language of ownership is often misused in these contexts, for example by saying that Disney “owns” The Lion King, or by…
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Greece Bans Electronic Games
CNet reports that Greece has banned all electronic games, including ones that run on PCs or on mobile phones, apparently in an effort to crack down on gambling. This is…
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Sites Blocked In China
Jonathan Zittrain and Ben Edelman at Harvard have a site listing URLs that are blocked in China. In addition to some obvious sites (related to things like Chinese dissidents, the…
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The Inflationary Theory of Censorship
China’s recent decision to block its citizens’ access to Google has been much discussed. Google does not itself offer “subversive” content, so the goal must have been to keep people…
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Apple Uses DMCA Threat Against Competing Product
Declan McCullagh at news.com reports on Apple’s use of a DMCA threat to force a useful product off the market. Apple’s iDVD application allows the user to burn DVDs –…
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Business Week: Internet is Evil
Business Week has an amazing article characterizing the Internet as a cesspool of crime and depravity. The article approvingly quotes somebody saying “[More than] 70% of all e-commerce is based…
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Who Controls Your PC?
One of the most interesting issues in technology today is the battle for control over users’ computers. Ray Ozzie offers some thoughts, and a nice tutorial.
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Misleading Term of the Week: "Broadcast Flag"
[This posting inaugurates a new feature. Each week I will dissect one widely used but misleading bit of terminology. See my previous posting on the term “piracy” for more on…