Category: Uncategorized
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A Freedom-of-Speech-based Approach To Limiting Filesharing – Part II: The Block List
On Wednesday we discussed the open structure of filesharing and its resulting vulnerability to spam. While there are some similarities between e-mail and gnutella spam, the spoof files have no analogue in e-mail. When MediaDefender puts up spoofs for Rihanna’s Disturbia, unless you are using gnutella to search for Disturbia – which you cannot legally…
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A Freedom-of-Speech Approach To Limiting Filesharing – Part I: Filesharing and Spam
[Today we kick off a series of three guest posts by Mitch Golden. Mitch was a professor of physics when, in 1995, he was bitten by the Internet bug and came to New York to become an entrepreneur and consultant. He has worked on a variety of Internet enterprises, including one in the filesharing space.…
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If You're Going to Track Me, Please Use Cookies
Web cookies have a bad name. People often complain — with good reason — about sites using cookies to track them. Today I want to say a few words in favor of tracking cookies. [Technical background: An HTTP “cookie” is a small string of text. When your web browser gets a file from a site,…
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Thoughtcrime Experiments
Cosmic rays can flip bits in memory cells or processor datapaths. Once upon a time, Sudhakar and I asked the question, “can an attacker exploit rare and random bit-flips to bypass a programming-language’s type protections and thereby break out of the Java sandbox?” A recently published science-fiction anthology Thoughtcrime Experiments contains a story, “Single-Bit Error”…
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Assorted targeted spam
You can run, but you can’t hide. Here are a few of the latest things I’ve seen, in no particular order. On a PHPBB-style chat board which I sometimes frequent, there was a thread about do-it-yourself television repair, dormant for over a year. Recently, there was a seemingly robotic post, from a brand new user,…
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CITP Announces 2009-10 Visitors
Today, I’m pleased to announce CITP’s visitors for the upcoming academic year. Deven R. Desai, Visiting Fellow: Deven is an Associate Professor of Law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and a permanent blogger at Concurring Opinions. Professor Desai’s scholarship centers on intellectual property, information theory, and Internet-related law. He plans to work on…
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Did the Sanford E-Mail Tipster or the Newspaper Break the Law?
Part of me doesn’t want to comment on the Mark Sanford news, because it’s all so tawdry and inconsistent with the respectable, family-friendly tone of Freedom to Tinker. But since everybody from the Gray Lady on down is plastering the web with stories, and because all of this reporting is leaving unanalyzed some Internet law…
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My Testimony on Behavioral Advertising: Post-Mortem
On Thursday I testified at a House hearing about online behavioral advertising. (I also submitted written testimony.) The hearing started at 10:00am, gaveled to order by Congressman Rush, chair of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection. He was flanked by Congressman Boucher, chair of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet ,…
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My Testimony on Behavioral Advertising
I’m testifying this morning at 10:00 AM (Eastern) at a Congressional hearing on “Behavioral Advertising: Industry Practices and Consumers’ Expectations”. It’s a joint hearing of two subcommittees of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce: the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection; and the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet . Witnesses at…
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CITP Seeking New Associate Director
In the next few days, I’ll be writing a post to announce CITP’s visiting fellows for the upcoming 2009-2010 academic year. But first, today, I want to let you know about a change in the Center’s leadership structure. After serving for two years as CITP’s first-ever Associate Director, David Robinson will be leaving us in…