Category: Uncategorized
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P2P Still Growing; Traffic Shifts to eDonkey
CacheLogic has released a new report presentation on peer-to-peer traffic trends, based on measurement of networks worldwide. (The interesting part starts at slide 5.) P2P traffic continued to grow in 2005. As expected, there was no dropoff after the Grokster decision. Traffic continues to shift away from the FastTrack network (used by Kazaa and others),…
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Secrecy in Science
There’s an interesting dispute between astronomers about who deserves credit for discovering a solar system object called 2003EL61. Its existence was first announced by Spanish astronomers, but another team in the U.S. believes that the Spaniards may have learned about the object due to an information leak from the U.S. team. The U.S. team’s account…
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RIAA, MPAA Join Internet2 Consortium
RIAA and MPAA, trade associations that include the major U.S. record and movie companies, joined the Internet2 consortium on Friday, according to a joint press release. I’ve heard some alarm about this, suggesting that this will allow the AAs to control how the next generation Internet is built. But once we strip away the hype,…
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Acoustic Snooping on Typed Information
Li Zhuang, Feng Zhou, and Doug Tygar have an interesting new paper showing that if you have an audio recording of somebody typing on an ordinary computer keyboard for fifteen minutes or so, you can figure out everything they typed. The idea is that different keys tend to make slightly different sounds, and although you…
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Aussie Judge Tweaks Kazaa Design
A judge in Australia has found Kazaa and associated parties liable for indirect copyright infringement, and has tentatively imposed a partial remedy that requires Kazaa to institute keyword-based filtering. The liability finding is based on a conclusion that Kazaa improperly “authorized” infringement. This is roughly equivalent to a finding of indirect (i.e. contributory or vicarious)…
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Back in the Saddle
Hi, all. I’m back from a lovely vacation, which included a stint camping in Sequoia / King’s Canyon National Park, beyond the reach of Internet technology. In transit, I walked right by Jack Valenti in the LA airport. He looked as healthy as ever, and more relaxed than in his MPAA days. Blogging will resume…
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Recommended Reading: The Success of Open Source
It’s easy to construct arguments that open source software can’t succeed. Why would people work for free to make something that they could get paid for? Who will do the dirty work? Who will do tech support? How can customers trust a “vendor” that is so diffuse and loosely organized? And yet, open source has…
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Recommended Reading: Crime-Facilitating Speech
Eugene Volokh has an interesting new paper about Crime-Facilitating Speech (abridged version): “speech [that] provides information that makes it easier to commit crimes, torts, or other harms”. He argues convincingly that many free-speech cases pertain to crime-facilitating speech. Somebody wants to prevent speech because it may facilitate crime, but others argue that the speech has…
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ICANN Challenged on .xxx Domain
The U.S. government has joined other governments and groups in asking ICANN to delay implementation of a new “.xxx” top-level domain, according to a BBC story. Adding a .xxx domain would make little difference in web users’ experiences. Those who want to find porn can easily find it already; and those who want to avoid…
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DMCA, and Disrupting the Darknet
Fred von Lohmann’s paper argues that the DMCA has failed to keep infringing copies of copyrighted works from reaching the masses. Fred argues that the DMCA has not prevented “protected” files from being ripped, and that once those files are ripped they appear on the darknet where they are available to everyone. I think Fred…