Category: Uncategorized
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Tauzin Circulating Draft "Broadcast Flag" Bill
Rep. Billy Tauzin is circulating a draft of a bill that would restrict digital technology. One effect of the bill would be to mandate “broadcast flag” technology. The bill has not yet been introduced.
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Misleading Term of the Week: "Trusted System"
The term “trusted system” is often used in discussing Digital Rights/Restrictions Management (DRM). Somehow the “trusted” part is supposed to make us feel better about the technology. Yet often the things that make the system “trusted” are precisely the things we should worry about. The meaning of “trusted” has morphed at least twice over the…
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Lessig/DRM/End-To-End Debate: Resolved?
Larry Lessig and I had a brief blog-discussion last week about the meaning of the end-to-end principle(s), and how end-to-end applies to DRM. The discussion continued off-line, and we ended up in pretty close agreement. Here is my version of what we agree on: (1) End-to-end is not a single principle, but a cluster of…
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Ernest Miller on Lessig/DRM
Great new entry in the Lessig/DRM debate, from Ernest Miller at Lawmeme. This is starting to turn from a narrow debate about Lessig’s piece into a wider discussion of how to think about DRM and Palladium. I’m eager to see this wider discussion start.
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Low-Tech DRM
Today’s New York Times reports that Epic Records has taken a decidedly low-tech approach to DRM in pre-releasing two new albums to critics: … the CD’s [are] already inside Sony Walkman players that have been glued shut. Headphones are also glued into the players, to prevent connecting the Walkman to a recording device. Needless to…
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Network Centric DRM
Remember when I promised not to post anymore on Lessig’s DRM piece? I lied. I just have to respond to a comment from Lessig himself. He writes: … Felten is skeptical that copyprotection would be placed in the network. “From an engineer standpoint, that assumption looks wrong to me,” he says. But what if we…
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Etzioni: Reply to Spammers
Oren Etzioni has an op-ed in today’s New York Times about spam. His proposal: Though spammers hope to lure us with their dubious propositions (“URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS PROPOSAL”), they rely on those of us who don’t want to participate to delete their messages quietly and go about our daily business. What would happen if…
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"Network-Based" Copy Protection
One more comment on Lessig’s Red Herring piece, then I’ll move on to something else. Really I will. Lessig argues that one kind of DRM is less harmful than another. He says To see the point, distinguish between DRM systems that control copying (copy-protection systems) and DRM systems that control who can do what with…
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Lessig/DRM/Palladium Summary, at Copyfight
Donna Wentworth offers a pithy summary of the commentary on Lessig’s DRM piece, over at Copyfight.
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Lessig, DRM, and Palladium
As I noted yesterday, Lessig’s Red Herring piece on Palladium has generated a lot of interesting talk among techno-law-bloggers. (See e.g. Copyfight, Ernie the Attorney, Lessig, and Frank Field.) This is all interesting, but it’s very speculative. As Bruce Schneier points out, in the best technical perspective on Palladium I’ve seen, we really know very…