Author: Ed Felten
-
NYT Expands Fritz's Hit List
In today’s New York Times, Matt Richtel adds to Fritz’s Hit List: the Barbie Travel Train. He also interrogates a five-year-old who is about to buy this piracy tool, along with employees of a store that is openly selling it.
-
Fair Use: A Rhetorical Black Hole?
Yesterday’s exchange with Ernest Miller got me to thinking about why I didn’t mention fair use in my initial posting. I realized there is another reason that I hadn’t stated before: that I was trying to avoid the rhetorical black hole that fair use has become. A rhetorical black hole is like an astronomical black…
-
More on Unbreakable DRM
Ernest Miller at LawMeme likes my explanation of why unbreakable codes don’t mean unbreakable DRM. But he takes me to task for writing a posting that ignores fair use and assumes that the customer is the enemy. I guess I should have been more explicit about my assumptions. I agree that fair use is important…
-
Just Ask
Sasha Volokh tells an amusing story about asking record companies for permission to tape recorded music. Once they realized he was serious, the companies almost all gave him permission and thanked him for asking. We should do more of this. When companies make silly overreaching claims about the extent of their copyrights, don’t just ignore…
-
You Are Where You Live
Ever wondered why you get so much junkmail that obviously isn’t designed for people like you? The website You Are Where You Live is an enlightening view into the world of marketing overgeneralization. Enter your ZIP code, and it will tell you which of about fifty demographic “clusters” you belong to, and what characterizes your…
-
Why Unbreakable Codes Don't Make Unbreakable DRM
It’s commonly understood among independent security experts that DRM (i.e., copy prevention) technology is fundamentally insecure, at least based on today’s state of the art. Non-experts often misunderstand why this is true. They often ask, “When you say DRM is insecure, isn’t that just another way of saying that any code can be broken?” Actually,…
-
Software and Export Control
Today’s New York Times, in an article by John Schwartz, reports on the availability of export-controlled software outside the U.S. Certain software that has defense applications is not allowed to be shipped to “pariah countries” such as North Korea and Iraq. Unauthorized copies of such software are available for sale in China, and presumably the…
-
Rubenfeld on Copyright and the Constitution
October’s Yale Law Review has an interesting article by Jed Rubenfeld, entitled “The Freedom of Imagination: Copyright’s Constitutionality.” (Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer and not a legal scholar, so I’m not fully qualified to judge the scholarly merit of the article. What you’re getting here is my semi-informed opinion.) Rubenfeld argues, convincingly in my view,…
-
Tech Provisions in Homeland Security Bill
Orin Kerr, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, summarizes some tech-related provisions in the new Homeland Security bill. The bill changes the sentences that can be assessed for some computer crimes. The effect of these changes is unclear but will likely be small. The widely discussed life-sentence-for-hacking provision applies only in cases when the crimes deliberately…
-
Why I Wike the Web
Evewy so often you discovew an onwine sewvice that you nevew knew you needed. My discovewy today is the Diawectizew, which twanswates any web page into one of eight mostwy humowous diawects. Oh, dat scwewy wabbit! To wead the west of Fweedom to Tinkew in Ewmew Fudd diawect, cwick hewe.