CITP Blog is hosted by Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy, a research center that studies digital technologies in public life. Here you’ll find comment and analysis from the digital frontier, written by the Center’s faculty, students, and friends.
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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…
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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…
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iPhone Unlocking Secret Revealed
The iPhone unlocking story took its next logical turn this week, with the release of a free iPhone unlocking program. Previously, unlocking required buying a commercial program or following a…
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Intellectual Property and Magicians
Jacob Loshin has an interesting draft paper on intellectual property among magicians. Stage magic is a form of technology, relying on both apparatus and technique to mislead the audience about…
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HR 811 Up For House Vote Tomorrow
H.R. 811, the e-voting bill originally introduced by Rep. Rush Holt, is reportedly up for a vote of the full House of Representatives tomorrow. Passing the bill would be an…
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New business models in the recording industry
The New York Times Sunday Magazine has a fascinating piece that interviews and discusses Columbia Records’ hiring of Rick Rubin as their new studio chieftain. Rubin has been a well-known…
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Debate: Will Spam Get Worse?
This week I participated in Business Week Online’s Debate Room feature, where two people write short essays on opposite sides of a proposition. The proposition: “Regardless of how hard IT…
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Does Apple Object to iPhone Unlocking?
I wrote Monday about efforts to “unlock” the iPhone so it worked on non-AT&T cell networks, and the associated legal and policy issues. AT&T lawyers have aggressively tried to stop…
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iPhone Unlocked; Legal Battle Looming?
In the past few days several groups declared victory in the battle to unlock the iPhone – to make the iPhone work on cellular networks other than AT&T’s. New Jersey…
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Why Was Skype Offline?
Last week Skype, the popular, free Net telephony service, was unavailable for a day or two due to technical problems. Failures of big systems are always interesting and this is…