Category: Uncategorized
-
Grokster Loses
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Grokster, finding the company’s actions to be illegal. (Reported by SCOTUSblog.) Expect an explosion of discussion in the blogosphere. My usual one-post-a-day limit will be suspended today. Unanimous opinion of the Court (written by Souter) Concurrence of Ginsburg (joined by Rehnquist and Kennedy) Concurrence of Breyer (joined by Stevens…
-
Book Club Discussion: Code, Chapters 3 and 4
This week in Book Club we read Chapters 3 and 4 of Lawrence Lessig’s Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace. Now it’s time to discuss the chapters. I’m especially eager to see discussion of this week’s chapters, and not just general reflections on the book as a whole. You can chime in by entering a…
-
Content Filtering and Security
Buggy security software can make you less secure. Indeed, a growing number of intruders are exploiting bugs in security software to gain access to systems. Smart system administrators have known for a long time to be careful about deploying new “security” products. A company called Audible Magic is trying to sell “content filtering” systems to…
-
Regulation by Software
The always interesting James Grimmelmann has a new paper, Regulation by Software (.pdf), on how software relates to law. He starts by dissecting Lessig’s “code is law” argument. Lessig argues that code is a form of “architecture” – part of the environment in which we live. And we know that the shape of our living…
-
Another reason for reforming the DMCA
I’ll be signing off my guest-blog stint at Freedom to Tinker now. (Thanks for your hospitality, Prof. Felten.) Before I go, I wanted to point you to a chapter excerpt from “Darknet” I just posted here It tells the story of how the vice president of Intel Corp. violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)…
-
Grokster fever
From Monday’s New York Times: The Court of Online Opinion Has Its Say on File Sharing. This is the third piece in the Times this weekend about the Supreme Court’s soon-coming Grokster decision. The article quotes Prof. Felten briefly: Mr. Snyder’s instructor at Princeton, Prof. Edward W. Felten, a frequently read blogger, was less enthusiastic.…
-
How to license graffiti
A member of Ourmedia.org this morning raised an interesting question that has both legal and ethical dimensions: How should photos of graffiti be licensed, if at all? Among the points he raises is that under U.S. law (as well as other jurisdictions), you can’t profit from an illegal activity like graffiti, so the graffiti artist…
-
Book Club Discussion: Code, Chapter 2
This week in Book Club, we read Chapter 2 of Lessig’s Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace. Rather than kick off the discussion with an essay, I’ll just open the floor for discussion. (To say something, add a comment below.) I’ll chime in with my opinions as the discussion develops. For next Friday, we’ll read…
-
DRM and 'casual piracy'
Some background on a major transformation taking place in the music industry, even as most mainstream media organizations print not a word about it: Reuters article, May 31: Sony BMG tests technology to limit CD burning. As part of its mounting U.S. rollout of content-enhanced and copy-protected CDs, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is testing technology…
-
Tinkering with personal media
Did everyone here catch the Editorial Observer item in Sunday’s New York Times?: A New Magazine’s Rebellious Credo: Void the Warranty! The article recounted the launch of Make Magazine, a throwback quarterly that celebrates the almost-forgotten idea of the creative impulse inside us all. Make, its makers will tell you, is part of a grass-roots…