Category: Uncategorized
-
New Site Tests Crowd-Sourced Transparency
Some of my colleagues here at CITP have written about the importance of open data formats for promoting government transparency and achieving government accountability. Another leading thinker in this area is my friend Jerry Brito, a George Mason University scholar who contributed a post here at Freedom to Tinker last year. Jerry wrote one of…
-
District Court Ruling in MDY v. Blizzard
Today, an Arizona District Court issued its ruling in the MDY v. Blizzard case, which involves contract, copyright, and DMCA claims. The claims addressed at trial were fairly limited because the Court entered summary judgment on several claims last summer. In-court comments by lawyers suggest that the case is headed toward appeal in the Ninth…
-
The Supreme Court and Software Patents
I’m very excited that Doug Lichtman, a sharp law professor at UCLA, has decided to take up podcasting. His podcast, Intellectual Property Colloquium, features monthly, in-depth discussions of copyright and patent law. The first installment (mp3) featured a lively discussion between Lichtman and EFF’s inimitable Fred von Lohmann about the Cablevision decision and its implications…
-
The (Ironic) Best Way to Make the Bailout Transparent
The next piece of proposed bailout legislation is called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Chris Soghoian, who is covering the issue on his Surveillance State blog at CNET, brought the bill to my attention, particularly a provision requiring that a new web site called Recovery.gov “provide data on relevant economic, financial, grant,…
-
CA SoS Bowen sends proposals to EAC
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen has sent a letter to Chair Gineen Beach of the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) outlining three proposals that she thinks will markedly improve the integrity of voting systems in the country. I’ve put a copy of Bowen’s letter here (87kB PDF). Bowen’s three proposals are: Vulnerability Reporting –…
-
DRM In Retreat
Last week’s agreement between Apple and the major record companies to eliminate DRM (copy protection) in iTunes songs marks the effective end of DRM for recorded music. The major online music stores are now all DRM-free, and CDs still lack DRM, so consumers who acquire music will now expect it without DRM. That’s a sensible…
-
Optical-scan voting extremely accurate in Minnesota
The recount of the 2008 Minnesota Senate race gives us an opportunity to evaluate the accuracy of precinct-count optical-scan voting. Though there have been contentious disputes over which absentee ballot envelopes to open, the core technology for scanning ballots has proved to be extremely accurate. The votes were counted by machine (except for part of…
-
Tech Policy Challenges for the Obama Administration
[Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School asked me to write a short essay on information technology challenges facing the Obama Administration, as part of the School’s Inaugural activities. Here is my essay.] Digital technologies can make government more effective, open and transparent, and can make the economy as a whole more flexible and efficient. They can also…
-
Wu on Zittrain's Future of the Internet
Related to my previous post about the future of open technologies, Tim Wu has a great review of Jonathan Zittrain’s book. Wu reviews the origins of the 20th century’s great media empires, which steadily consolidated once-fractious markets. He suggests that the Internet likely won’t meet the same fate. My favorite part: In the 2000s, AOL…
-
The Perpetual Peril of Open Platforms
Over at Techdirt, Mike Masnick did a great post a few weeks back on a theme I’ve written about before: peoples’ tendency to underestimate the robustness of open platforms. Once people have a taste for what that openness allows, stuffing it back into a box is very difficult. Yes, it’s important to remain vigilant, and…