Category: Uncategorized
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May 14-15: Future of News workshop
We’re excited to announce a workshop on “The Future of News”, to be held May 14 and 15 in Princeton. It’s sponsored by the Center for InfoTech Policy at Princeton. Confirmed speakers include Kevin Anderson, David Blei, Steve Borriss, Dan Gillmor, Matthew Hurst, Markus Prior, David Robinson, Clay Shirky, Paul Starr, and more to come.…
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Online Symposium: Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music
Today we’re kicking off an online symposium on voluntary collective licensing of music, over at the Center for InfoTech Policy site. The symposium is motivated by recent movement in the music industry toward the possibility of licensing large music catalogs to consumers for a fixed monthly fee. For example, Warner Music, one of the major…
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Phorm's Harms Extend Beyond Privacy
Last week, I wrote about the privacy concerns surrounding Phorm, an online advertising company who has teamed up with British ISPs to track user Web behavior from within their networks. New technical details about its Webwise system have since emerged, and it’s not just privacy that now seems to be at risk. The report exposes…
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NJ Election Discrepancies Worse Than Previously Thought, Contradict Sequoia's Explanation
I wrote previously about discrepancies in the vote totals reported by Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines in New Jersey’s presidential primary election, and the incomplete explanation offered by Sequoia, the voting machine vendor. I published copies of the “summary tapes” printed by nine voting machines in Union County that showed discrepancies; all of them were…
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Bad Phorm on Privacy
Phorm, an online advertising company, has recently made deals with several British ISPs to gain unprecedented access to every single Web action taken by their customers. The deals will let Phorm track search terms, URLs and other keywords to create online behavior profiles of individual customers, which will then be used to provide better targeted…
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Music Industry Under Fire for Exploring EFF Suggestion
Jim Griffin, a music industry consultant who is in the unusual position of being recognized as smart and reasonable by participants across a broad swath of positions in the copyright debate, revealed last week that he’s working to start a new music industry organization that will urge ISPs to bundle a music licensing fee into…
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An Inconvenient Truth About Privacy
One of the lessons we’ve learned from Al Gore is that it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. We all like to tool around in our SUVs, but too much driving leads to global warning. We must all take responsibility for our own carbon emissions. The same goes for online privacy, except…
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Comcast and BitTorrent: Why You Can't Negotiate with a Protocol
The big tech policy news yesterday was Comcast’s announcement that it will stop impeding BitTorrent traffic, but instead will respond to network congestion by slowing traffic from the highest-volume users, regardless of what those users are doing. Comcast also announced a deal with BitTorrent, aimed at developing more effective ways of channeling peer-to-peer traffic through…
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California review of the ES&S AutoMARK and M100
California’s Secretary of State has been busy. It appears that ES&S (manufacturers of the Ink-a-Vote voting system, used in Los Angeles, as well as the iVotronic systems that made news in Sarasota, Florida in 2006) submitted its latest and greatest “Unity 3.0.1.1” system for California certification. ES&S systems were also considered by Ohio’s study last…
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Sequoia's Explanation, and Why It's Not the Whole Story
I wrote yesterday about discrepancies in the results reported by Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines in New Jersey. Sequoia issued a memo giving their explanation for what might have happened. Here’s the relevant part: During a primary election, the “option switches” on the operator panel must be used to activate the voting machine. The operator…