Category: Uncategorized
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Online Symposium: Future of Scholarly Communication
Today we’re kicking off an online symposium on The Future of Scholarly Communication, run by the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton. An “online symposium” is a kind of short-term group blog, focusing on a specific topic. Panelists (besides me) include Ira Fuchs, Paul DiMaggio, Peter Suber, Stan Katz, and David Robinson. (See the…
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attack of the context-sensitive blog spam?
I love spammers, really I do. Some of you may recall my earlier post here about freezing your credit report. In the past week, I’ve deleted two comments that were clearly spam and that made it through Freedom to Tinker’s Akismet filter. Both had generic, modestly complementary language and a link to some kind of…
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Infinite Storage for Music
Last week I spoke on a panel called “The Paradise of Infinite Storage”, at the “Pop [Music] and Policy” conference at McGill University in Montreal. The panel’s title referred to an interesting fact: sometime in the next decade, we’ll see a $100 device that fits in your pocket and holds all of the music ever…
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Jury Finds User Liable for Downloading, Awards $9250 Per Song in Damages
The first Recording Industry v. End User lawsuit to go to trial just ended, and the industry won big. Jammie Thomas, a single mother in northern Minnesota, was found liable for illegally downloading 24 songs via Kazaa, and the jury awarded damages of $222,000, or $9250 per song. It’s always risky to extrapolate much from…
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Amazon’s MP3 Store Wisely Forgoes Watermarks
Last week Amazon.com launched a DRM-free music store. It sells tracks from two major labels and many independents in the unprotected MP3 file format. In addition to being DRM-free, Amazon’s songs are not individually watermarked. This is an important step forward for the music industry. Some content companies see individualized watermarks as a consumer-friendly alternative…
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One Laptop Per Child (New Version), Reviewed by 12-Year-Old
[Today we welcome back SG, a twelve-year-old who previously reviewed the B2 version of the One Laptop Per Child computer. SG had a chance to examine the latest (B4) version of the OLPC machine and write a new review. As before, the review is unedited, just as SG wrote it. – Ed] After my first…
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Major Intrusion at MediaDefender
MediaDefender, a company providing technical countermeasures and intelligence gathering for copyright owners, suffered a severe cyber-intrusion over the past year or so. This was revealed last week when the intruders released what appears to be most of MediaDefender’s email from this calendar year, along with the source code for its products, and even one of…
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On freezing your credit reports
In my last post, where I discussed the (likely) theft of my SSN from the State of Ohio, I briefly discussed the possibility of “freezing” my credit report. I’ve done some more investigation on how, exactly, this works. Details seem to vary from state to state (Consumer’s Union has a nice summary), but you generally…
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On stolen data with privacy-relevant information
I just received a first-class letter from the State of Ohio, telling me: The State of Ohio has confirmed that your name and social security number was contained on a computer back-up device that was stolen. It is unlikely that someone can access the data contained in the device without specialized knowledge and equipment. Because…
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Why Don't NFL Teams Encrypt Their Signals Better?
Yesterday the National Football League punished the New England Patriots and their coach, Bill Belichick, for videotaping an opposing team’s defensive signals. The signals in question are used by coaches to tell their on-field defensive unit how to line up and which tactics to use for the next play. The coach typically makes hand signals…