Category: Uncategorized
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Don't Be Evil, Yet
Mike at TechDirt writes: As everyone is talking about Google’s (not particularly surprising or interesting) move into offering hosted business apps (basically taking their existing mail and calendar apps, and allowing you to run them for your business), it seems that the story of AOL’s new download software being criticized for secretly installing plenty of…
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Next-Gen DVD Support Yanked from 32-Bit Vista
Microsoft has announced that the 32-bit version of its forthcoming Windows Vista operating system product won’t support playing commercially-produced next-generation DVDs (i.e., HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs), according to Dan Warne’s story at APC. 32-bit Vista will be able to access the discs, reading and writing ordinary content, but they won’t be allowed to access DRM-encoded…
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Great, Now They'll Never Give Us Data
Today’s New York Times has an interesting article by Katie Hafner on AOL’s now-infamous release of customers’ search data. AOL’s goal in releasing the data was to help researchers by giving them realistic data to study. Today’s technologies, such as search engines, have generated huge volumes of information about what people want online and why.…
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Attacks on a Plane
Last week’s arrest of a gang of would-be airplane bombers unleashed a torrent of commentary, including much of the I told you so variety. One question that I haven’t heard discussed is why the group wanted to attack planes. The standard security narrative has attackers striking a system’s weak points, and defenders trying to identify…
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PRM Wars
Today I want to wrap up the recap of my invited talk at Usenix Security. Previously (1; 2) I explained how advocates of DRM-bolstering laws are starting to switch to arguments based on price discrimination and platform lock-in, and how technology is starting to enable the use of DRM-like technologies, which I dubbed Property Rights…
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DRM Wars: Property Rights Management
In the first part of my invited talk at Usenix Security, I argued that as the inability of DRM technology to stop peer-to-peer infringement becomes increasingly obvious to everybody, the rationale for DRM is shifting. The new argument for DRM-bolstering laws is that DRM enables price discrimination and platform lock-in, which are almost always good…
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DRM Wars: The Next Generation
Last week at the Usenix Security Symposium, I gave an invited talk, with the same title as this post. The gist of the talk was that the debate about DRM (copy protection) technologies, which has been stalemated for years now, will soon enter a new phase. I’ll spend this post, and one or two more,…
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Blocked by Barracuda
Reader Jason Green reports that this site is blocked by Barracuda Spyware Firewall version 210. They say it’s a hacking site. Here’s a screenshot. UPDATE (August 4): Barracuda has acknowledged its error and says it is propagating an update to customers to fix it.
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Bill Gates: Is he an IP Maximalist, or an Open Access Advocate?
Maybe both. On July 20, the Wall Street Journal reported: Frustrated that over two decades of research have failed to produce an AIDS vaccine, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates is tying his foundation’s latest, biggest AIDS-vaccine grants to a radical concept: Those who get the money must first agree to share the results of their…
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The New Yorker Covers Wikipedia
Writing in this week’s New Yorker, Stacy Schiff takes a look at the Wikipedia phenomenon. One sign that she did well: The inevitable response page at Wikipedia is almost entirely positive. Schiff’s writing is typical of what makes the New Yorker great. It has rich historical context, apt portrayals of the key characters involved in…