Author: Ed Felten
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"Censorship" Bill Lifts Ban on Speech
The House has now joined the Senate in passing the Family Movie Act; the Act is almost sure to be signed into law soon by the President. (The Act is bundled with some unrelated provisions into a multi-part bill called the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act. Here I’ll focus only on Section 201, called the…
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Why Does Anybody Believe Viralg?
A story is circulating about a Finnish company called Viralg, which claims to have a product that “blocks out all illegal swapping of your data”. There is also a press release from Viralg. This shows all the signs of being a scam or hoax. The company’s website offers virtually nothing beyond claims to be able…
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Next-Gen DVD Encryption: Better, but Won't Stop Filesharing
Last week, specifications were released for AACS, an encryption-based system that may be used on next-generation DVDs. You may recall that CSS, which is currently used on DVDs, is badly misdesigned, to the point that I sometimes use it in teaching as an example of how not to use crypto. It’s still a mystery how…
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Texas Bill Would Close Meetings About Computer Security
A bill (HB 3245) introduced in the Texas state legislature would exempt meetings discussing “matters relating to computer security or the security of other information resources technologies” from the state’s Open Meetings Act. This seems like a bad idea. Meetings can already be closed if sufficient cause is shown. The mere fact that computer security,…
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Why Use Remotely-Readable Passports?
Yesterday at CFP, I saw an interesting panel on the proposed radio-enabled passports. Frank Moss, a State Department employee and accomplished career diplomat, is the U.S. government’s point man on this issue. He had the guts to show up at CFP and face a mostly hostile audience. He clearly believes that he and the government…
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RIAA Suing i2hub Users
Yesterday the RIAA announced lawsuits against many college students for allegedly using a program called i2hub to swap copyrighted music files. RIAA is trying to paint this as an important step in their anti-infringement strategy, but it looks to me like a continuation of what they have already been doing: suing individuals for direct infringement,…
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Measure It, and They Will Come
The technology for measuring TV and radio audiences is about to change in important ways, according to a long and interesting article, in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, by Jon Gertner. This will have implications for websites, online media, and public life as well. Standard audience-measurement technology, as used in the past by Nielsen and…
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Congressional Hearings on Music Interoperability
Yesterday a House subcommittee on “Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property” held hearings on interoperability of music formats. (The National Journal Tech Daily has a good story, unfortunately behind a paywall.) Witnesses spoke unanimously against any government action in this area. According to the NJTD story, [Subcommittee chair Rep. Lamar] Smith and other lawmakers who…
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Inducing Confusion
Alex, and others reporting on the Supreme Court arguments in the Grokster case, noticed that the justices seemed awfully interested in active inducement theories. Speculation has begun about what this might mean. News.com is running a piece by John Borland, connecting the court discussion to last year’s ill-fated Induce Act. The Induce Act, which was…
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ICANN Cut Secret Domain Deal
According to Michael Froomkin at ICANNWatch, evidence has come to light that ICANN secretly cut a deal with IATA, an airline industry association, to create a new “.travel” domain and give control of it to a front organization controlled by IATA. If true, this is a serious breach of ICANN’s own rules and undermines ICANN’s…