Category: Uncategorized
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FCC Tome on Net Wiretapping
The FCC has released its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on Internet wiretapping. (Backstory here.) The NPRM outlines a set of rules that the FCC is likely to issue, requiring certain online service providers to facilitate (properly authorized) government wiretapping of their customers. The document is a dense 100 pages, and it touches on issues…
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WSJ Opposes Induce Act
The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial today, has come out against the Induce Act. (Sorry, I don’t have an online pointer to the editorial, since I’m not a subscriber.)
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Online Principles
Susan Crawford recently proposed a list of “online principles” to guide development of the online world. Seth Finkelstein comments, “Been there, done that, doesn’t work”; but John Palfrey counters that Susan’s effort is worthwhile. Surely it’s worthwhile for almost any group to spend at least a tiny fraction of its time talking about its overall…
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State AGs Warn P2P Vendors
Yesterday, the National Association of [state] Attorneys General sent a letter to P2P United, a trade association of peer-to-peer vendors, chiding the P2P industry for fostering porn, spyware, and copyright infringement. Though the letter does make a few good points, overall it’s an embarrassment to the attorneys general. For starters, the letter contains some real…
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Lawprofs Predict Future of Copyright Law
Tim Wu, guest-blogging over at Larry Lessig’s site, reports: So today copyright scholar Joe Liu at Boston College asked a room full of law professors an interesting question. What did we think copyright would look like in 8 years? Here were some of the main categories of predictions (some contradict): 1. Primarily a criminal regime…
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Kerry and Copyright
Tim Wu, guest-blogging on Larry Lessig’s site, asks hypothetically whether President Kerry would veto the Induce Act. Tim, quoting some vague pro-technology language from Kerry’s website, suggests that Kerry might veto the Act. This is wishful thinking. The fact is that the record of Kerry, and the Democrats in general, on the copyright/innovation issue is…
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Apple Threatens Real
Pay attention now, ’cause this story gets kinda complicated. See, Apple had this product called iPod that lets you listen to music. That sounds like a good idea. But Apple thought it would be better if the iPod could do less. So their engineers pulled a bunch of all-nighters to make sure that the iPod…
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Blogiversary
Monday was the second anniversary of Freedom to Tinker. Two years seems like a long time, but I still enjoy doing this. Thanks to all of you for your attention, and for keeping me alert and honest with your comments and feedback. Here are the obligatory statistics about the site: 604 posts; 1409 comments; 3.2…
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Wiretapping the Net
Another interesting day at the Meltdown conference. John Morris of CDT gave an eye-opening talk about online wiretapping and the policy debate over how to apply CALEA to VoIP services. Let me explain the jargon. CALEA is the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which says that telecommunications providers must design their networks…
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Too Much Spam, Not Enough Identification
Lots of good stuff yesterday at the Meltdown conference. Rather than summarize it all, let me give you two random observations about the discussion. The security session descended into a series of rants about the evil of spam. Lately this seems to happen often in conference panels about security. This strikes me as odd, since…