Author: Ed Felten
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RFID on DVDs
A group at UCLA is studying how to deter DVD copying by putting RFID chips on DVDs, according to a story in RFID Journal by Mary Catherine O’Connor. (Noted by Rik Lambers at CoCo.) The article doesn’t say much about what they are planning. Reading between the lines, it looks like the group hasn’t reached…
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Newsweek Fails AP Math
Newsweek just released its list of the top 100 U.S. high schools. Like the more famous U.S. News college rankings, Newsweek relies on a numerical formula. Here is Newsweek’s formula: Public schools are ranked according to a ratio devised by Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement and/or International Baccalaureate tests taken by all students…
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Nobody Disputes This Post
Friday’s debate between Dean Garfield (MPAA’s head lawyer) and Wendy Seltzer (EFF lawyer) at Princeton was fairly interesting. I’m hoping video will be available sometime soon. At one point, though, Dean Garfield said something that totally floored me. He was talking about technologies like Audible Magic that claim to be able to detect and block…
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A View from DMP World
The “6th General Assembly of the Digital Media Project” recently released a set of documents “providing an Interoperable DRM Platform”. I’ve written before about the self-contradictory nature of their goal (A Perfectly Compatible Form of Incompatibility). Now we get to see how they plan to achieve the goal. And I have to say, the documents…
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Fear-to-Peer, Art and Science at Princeton
“Fear-to-Peer at Princeton: A Debate about Filesharing on Campus” will be held Friday, May 6, at 3:30 P.M., in Friend Center 101 on the Princeton campus. (directions) Dean Garfield, VP and Director of Legal Affairs at the MPAA, will square off against Wendy Seltzer, an intellectual property attorney with the EFF. I’ll be the moderator.…
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Frist Filibuster
Last night about 9:30 I was walking across campus, and I came across the Frist filibuster, an event that had until then existed only in the media for me, even though it has been going on for nearly a week, no more than 500 yards from my office. The filibuster is a clever bit of…
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Mobile Network Providers Flirt with (Self-)Regulation
Mobile phone networks in the U.S. are developing a rating and filtering system to apply to content on their networks, according to a Reuters story by Antony Bruno. The Federal Communications Commission oversees the distribution of wireless spectrum to U.S. operators, and wireless carriers do not want the [FCC’s] indecency campaign against radio, TV and…
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New ClipBlog Site
My clipblog has moved to DashLog, a new clipblogging site. My clipblog gives quick pointers to interesting sites or pages, with only minimal commentary. It’s designed as a complement to this blog. New addresses for my clipblog: HTML: http://www.dashlog.com/logs/tinker RSS: http://www.dashlog.com/dash/feed.php?log=tinker
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U.S. Considering Wireless Passport Protection
The U.S. government is “taking a very serious look” at improving privacy protection for the new wireless-readable passports, according to an official quoted in a great article by Kim Zetter at Wired News. Many people, including me, have worried about the privacy implications of having passports that are readable at a distance. The previously proposed…
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Recommended Reading
Following the lead of other bloggers, I’ll be writing occasionally to recommend books or articles that I found interesting. Today, I’m recommending two books that could hardly be more different in topic and tone. The 9/11 Commission Report This book was a real surprise. I started reading from a sense of obligation, but I was…