Category: Uncategorized
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We're Back
Well, we’re back on the air after a three-day interruption of service. The interruption was due to bogosity at SpamCop, which I’ll explain more fully in the next post.
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Fuzzy Language, Fuzzy Thinking
One of the things I’ve learned in working with lawyers is that the language you use to describe something can powerfully shape your listeners’ ideas about it. Unless you’re very careful, you can fool yourself in the same way. Many have remarked upon the rhetorical trick of using the word “piracy,” which denotes a type…
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Microsoft Does The Right Thing
Microsoft has decided not to try using the DMCA to censor a paper by former MIT student Andrew “Bunnie” Huang about security mechanisms in Microsoft’s Xbox videogame console. (See this announcment.) Good for Microsoft! If more companies behave like Microsoft did in this case, the DMCA would do less harm. Let’s not forget, though, that…
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Serendipity
I’ve been reading recently about the history of technology. That history is filled with lessons for policy-makers now. Here is one: One of the reasons we should be wary about banning technologies is that it’s often very hard to tell what a new technology will be good for. It might take a decade or more…
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Self-Help
Lawyers use the term “self-help” to refer to all of the little steps people take to protect themselves. Locking your bicycle is self-help – even though it would not be necessary in a world where everyone obeyed the law, it’s a good idea in the real world. Fences and burglar alarms are self-help too. Self-help…
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RIAA To Do The Right Thing?
Fortune reports on the RIAA’s stunning new anti-infringement strategy of suing actual infringers: “The RIAA is considering a far riskier strategy–suing individuals who share large numbers of files on Kazaa, Grokster, or Morpheus. It’s a tactic guaranteed to infuriate and alienate music fans, and it underscores the awful bind record labels are in.” Assuming the…
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British Bill to Ban Mods to Cellphone ID Numbers
The British Parliament is now considering a bill that would make it illegal to change the IMEI number on a cell phone. Each phone has a unique IMEI which it uses to identify itself to the cell network; it’s like a serial number for the phone. If you report your phone stolen, the cell operator…
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Pro-Tinkering Speech from White House Cybersecurity Czar
Richard Clarke, the White House cybersecurity czar, in a speech today at the Black Hat conference, called for legal protection for tinkering by security researchers. According to an Associated Press article by D. Ian Hopper, Clarke “encouraged the nation’s top computer security professionals and hackers Wednesday to try to break computer programs, but said they…
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Vaidhyanathan: Copyright as Cudgel
Nice article on copyright abuses by Siva Vaidyanathan in the latest Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle is read mostly by professors, so the article talks at length about the harm to scholarship caused by the recent copyright expansion. Vaidhyanthan identifies two common arguments used by those opposed to copyright expansion. The first, which he…
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Berman-Coble Bill: Green Light for Cyber-Attacks
In the current climate of concern about cyber-attacks, it’s astonishing that Congress is considering a bill that would legalize a wide range of cyber-attacks – yet that is just what the proposed Berman-Coble bill would do. The bill allows the owner of a copyright to interfere with the computer or network of anybody who is…