Author: Ed Felten
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CITP Seeks Visiting Faculty, Scholars or Policy Experts for 2010-2011
The Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) at Princeton University seeks candidates for positions as visiting faculty members or researchers, or postdoctoral research associates for the 2010-2011 academic year. About CITP Digital technologies and public life are constantly reshaping each other—from net neutrality and broadband adoption, to copyright and file sharing, to electronic voting and…
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iPad to Test Zittrain's "Future of the Internet" Thesis
Jonathan Zittrain famously argued in his book “The Future of the Internet, and How to Stop It” that we were headed for a future in which general purpose computers would be replaced by locked-down computing appliances. Apple’s new iPad will put Zittrain’s thesis to the test. The iPad, as announced, has aspects of both an…
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Census of Files Available via BitTorrent
BitTorrent is popular because it lets anyone distribute large files at low cost. Which kinds of files are available on BitTorrent? Sauhard Sahi, a Princeton senior, decided to find out. Sauhard’s independent work last semester, under my supervision, set out to measure what was available on BitTorrent. This post, summarizing his results, was co-written by…
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A Free Internet, If We Can Keep It
“We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And we recognize that the world’s information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it. ” These two sentences, from Secretary of State Clinton’s groundbreaking speech on Internet freedom, sum up beautifully the challenge facing our…
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Information Technology Policy in the Obama Administration, One Year In
[Last year, I wrote an essay for Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, summarizing the technology policy challenges facing the incoming Obama Administration. This week they published my follow-up essay, looking back on the Administration’s first year. Here it is.] Last year I identified four information technology policy challenges facing the incoming Obama Administration: improving cybersecurity, making…
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Google Threatens to Leave China
The big news today is Google’s carefully worded statement changing its policy toward China. Up to now, Google has run a China-specific site, google.cn, which censors results consistent with the demands of the Chinese government. Google now says it plans to offer only unfiltered service to Chinese customers. Presumably the Chinese government will not allow…
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TV Everywhere: Collusion Anywhere?
FreePress and the National Cable and Telecom Association (NCTA) are talking past each other about TV Everywhere, a new initiative from the cable TV industry. FreePress says TV Everywhere is the cable industry’s collusive attempt to limit competition; the NCTA says it’s an exciting new product opportunity for consumers. Let’s unpack this issue and see…
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Predictions for 2010
Here are our predictions for 2010. These are based on input from Ari Feldman, Ed Felten, Alex Halderman, Joseph Lorenzo Hall, Tim Lee, Paul Ohm, David Robinson, Dan Wallach, Harlan Yu, and Bill Zeller. Please note that individual contributors (including me) don’t necessarily agree with all of these predictions. (1) DRM technology will still fail…
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2009 Predictions Scorecard
As usual, we’ll kick off the new year by reviewing the predictions we made for the previous year. Here now, our 2009 predictions, in italics, with hindsight in ordinary type. (1) DRM technology will still fail to prevent widespread infringement. In a related development, pigs will still fail to fly. By tradition this is our…
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Another Privacy Misstep from Facebook
Facebook is once again clashing with its users over privacy. As a user myself, I was pretty unhappy about the recently changed privacy control. I felt that Facebook was trying to trick me into loosening controls on my information. Though the initial letter from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg painted the changes as pro-privacy — which…