Category: Uncategorized
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30th Anniversary of First Spam Email; No End in Sight
Today marks the 30th anniversary of (what is reputed to be) the first spam email. Here’s the body of the email: DIGITAL WILL BE GIVING A PRODUCT PRESENTATION OF THE NEWEST MEMBERS OF THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY; THE DECSYSTEM-2020, 2020T, 2060, AND 2060T. THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY OF COMPUTERS HAS EVOLVED FROM THE TENEX OPERATING SYSTEM AND…
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spammers gone wild
I’m sure this sort of behavior is old news, but it’s still really annoying. Starting last night and continuing as I’m writing this, some annoying spammer has been forging my email address as the “From” line of a variety of spams. This is causing a staggering volume of backscatter, mostly of the “Delivery Status Notification…
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Bizarre Undervote on iVotronic in France
In France, most municipalities use paper ballots in elections, but a few places have begun using DRE (direct-recording electronic) machines. Pierre Muller, a French computer scientist, has recently sent me a report of a malfunction by an ES&S iVotronic machine in a recent municipal election. In this spring’s elections (and he believes this also happened…
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voting ID requirements and the Supreme Court
Last week, I posted here about voter ID requirements. There was a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court on the same topic. It seems Indiana was trying to require voters to present ID in order to vote. Lawsuit. In the end, the court found that the requirement wasn’t particularly onerous (the New York Times’s…
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Future of News Workshop, May 14-15 in Princeton
We’ve got a great lineup of speakers for our upcoming “Future of News” workshop. It’s May 14-15 in Princeton. It’s free, and if you register we’ll feed you lunch. Agenda Wednesday, May 14, 2008 9:30 – 10:45 Registration 10:45 – 11:00 Welcoming Remarks 11:00 – 12:00 Keynote talk by Paul Starr 12:00 – 1:30 Lunch,…
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Voluntary Collective Licensing and Extortion
Reihan Salam has a new piece at Slate about voluntary collective licensing of music (which was also the topic of an online symposium organized by our center at Princeton). I’m generally a fan of Reihan’s work, but this time I think he got it wrong. His piece starts like this: What would you do if…
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How can we require ID for voters?
Recently, HR 5036 was shot down in Congress. That bill was to provide “emergency” money to help election administrators who wished to replace paperless voting systems with optically scanned paper ballots (or to add paper-printing attachments to existing electronic voting systems). While the bill initially received strong bipartisan support, it was opposed at the last…
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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…