Category: Uncategorized
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Designed for Spying
A Mark Glassman story at the New York Times discusses the didtheyreadit email-tracking software that I wrote about previously. The story quotes the head of didtheyreadit as saying that the purpose of the software is to tell whether an email reached its intended recipient. “I won’t deny that it has a potentially stealth purpose,” he…
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Wireless Unleashed
WirelessUnleashed is a new group blog, dedicated to wireless policy, from Kevin Werbach, Andrew Odlyzko, David Isenberg, and Clay Shirky. Based on the author-list alone, it’s worth our attention.
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E-Voting Testing Labs Not Independent
E-voting vendors often argue that their systems must be secure, because they have been tested by “independent” labs. Elise Ackerman’s story in Sunday’s San Jose Mercury-News explains the depressing truth about how the testing process works. There are only three labs, and they are overseen by a private body that is supported financially by the…
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The Creation of the Media
I just finished reading “The Creation of the Media,” by Paul Starr, a sociology professor here at Princeton. This is an important book and I recommend it highly. Starr traces the history of communications and the media in the U.S., from the 1700s until 1940. The major theme of the book is that the unique…
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Report from RIAA v. P2P User Courtroom
Mary Bridges offers an interesting report from a court hearing yesterday, in one of the RIAA’s lawsuits against end users accused of P2P infringement. She points to an amicus brief filed by folks at Harvard’s Berkman Center, at the Court’s request, that explains some of the factual and legal issues raised in these suits. [link…
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The Landsburg Amendment
Can this be a coincidence? This week, Congress prepares to vote on the Pirate Act, which would impose severe penalties for online copyright infringers and redirect the Department of Justice toward copyright enforcement and away from any other insignificant law enforcement problems facing the U.S. In the same week, Steven Landsburg advocates the death penalty…
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Landsburg's Modest Proposal
Steven E. Landsburg has a somewhat creepy piece over at Slate, calling for the death penalty for computer worm authors. Ernest Miller responds. UPDATE (12:15 AM): James Grimmelmann has some interesting thoughts on Landsburg’s proposal.
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Word Tracking Bug Demo and Remover
Alex Halderman has created a page about the Word tracking bugs I described yesterday. He offers an example Word tracking bug for you to examine, and a scanner program that can find and remove Word tracking bugs on your computer.
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Email Tracking: It Gets Worse
When I wrote Monday about the new didtheyreadit.com privacy-invading email tracking system, I had no idea that an even more invasive system has been on the market for two years or so. This system, called readnotify.com, was pointed out by commenter Brian Parsons. readnotify.com is an email tracking system that uses Web bugs (like didtheyreadit)…
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Must-Read Copyright Articles
Recently I read two great articles on copyright: Tim Wu’s Copyright’s Communications Policy and Mark Lemley’s Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Justifications for Intellectual Property. Wu’s paper, which has already been praised widely in the copyright blogosphere, argues that copyright law, in addition to its well-known purpose of creating incentives for authors, has another component…