Category: Uncategorized
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E-Voting Bill Introduced
My Congressman, Rep. Rush Holt, has introduced an important e-voting bill, H.R. 2239. The bill would address the serious concerns raised by a broad coalition of computer scientists (including me) about the security and trustworthiness of electronic voting systems. The bill would do three main things. First, it would require that voting systems generate a…
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Colorado Governor Vetoes Super-DMCA
Colorado governor Bill Owens has taken the Rocky Mountain News’ advice and vetoed his state’s Super-DMCA bill. Linda Seebach writes: In his veto message [Owens] said the bill “could also stifle legal activity by entities all along the high tech spectrum, from manufacturers of communication parts to sellers of communication services.” He urges the legislature,…
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Self-Destructing DVDs
Last week a company called FlexPlay announced Self-Destructing DVDs (SD-DVDs), which oxidize themselves – and so become unplayable – 48 hours after removal from their package. (The official name is, amusingly, “EZ-D”.) The idea is to provide the equivalent of a rental, while saving the consumer the trouble of returning the disk to the rental…
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NYT and Google
Sunday’s New York Times ran a piece by Geoffrey Nunberg complaining about (among other things) the relative absence of major-press articles from the top ranks of Google search results. This has triggered online discussion of why the Times itself doesn’t get much Googlejuice. Speculation has centered on the fact that Times articles get moved to…
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A Challenging Response to Challenge-Response
One of the trendy ideas these days is challenge-response (CR) anti-spam technologies. The idea is simple: incoming email is intercepted before you see it, and a “challenge” email is returned to the sender. If the sender replies to the challenge message, then the original message is forwarded on to you; otherwise it is discarded. The…
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Kerr on Cybercrime Laws
Orin Kerr has written an.interesting paper, “Cybercrime’s Scope: Interpreting ‘Access’ and ‘Authorization’ in Computer Misuse Statutes,” in which he argues for a new way of understanding the prohibition, in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and other laws, on “access … without authorization” to a computer. It’s a long, dense law review article, but…
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Super-DMCA Update (Texas)
The Texas version of the Super-DMCA has been passed by the relevant committees in both the state House and Senate. It will probably come to a vote in the Senate later this week. If you’re a Texas resident, this would be good time to contact your state senator!
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iLoo: Joke, Blunder, or Both?
Business Week reports on the saga of iLoo, the Internet-enabled portable toilet announced last week by a British subsidiary of Microsoft. Microsoft is now claiming that this was just an April Fools’ joke, despite a body of evidence to the contrary. The ordinary custom is to announce April Fools’ jokes on April 1. This one…
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New Media: Success or Failure?
Mary Hodder at bIPlog points to Steve Lohr’s odd piece, “New Media: Ready for the Dustbin of History?” in Sunday’s New York Times. Mary argues that Lohr’s thesis – that the Internet has failed, except as a vehicle for e-commerce – is bunk. I agree. Lohr makes two errors. First, he mistakes the financial failure…
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Declan on Spam
Don’t miss Declan McCullagh’s column this week, in which he offers a particularly astute view of how to address the spam problem. In a nutshell, he argues that we need to change the economic incentives for the spammers, and he discusses some practical ways to do that.