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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People have had lots of objections to Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology – centering mainly on its clumsiness and the futility of its anti-infringement rationale – but until recently nobody…
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You Can Own an Integer Too — Get Yours Here
Remember last week’s kerfuffle over whether the movie industry could own random 128-bit numbers? (If not, here’s some background: 1, 2, 3) Now, thanks to our newly developed VirtualLandGrab technology,…
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Why the 09ers Are So Upset
The user revolt at Digg and elsewhere, over attempts to take down the now-famous “09 F9 …” number, is now all over the press. (Background: 1, 2) Many non-techies, including…
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Digg Users Revolt Over AACS Key
I wrote yesterday about efforts by AACS LA, the entity that controls the AACS copy protection system used in HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs, to stop people from republishing a sixteen-byte…
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AACS Plays Whack-a-Mole with Extracted Key
The people who control AACS, the copy protection technology used on HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs, are apparently trying to shut down websites that publish a certain 128-bit integer. The number…
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Miracle Fruit: Tinkering with our Taste Buds
Miraculin, the extract of a West African fruit, is said to make sour foods taste sweet. It’s not sugary, but it’s said to trick your taste buds into misreporting the…
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Botnet Briefing
Yesterday I spoke at a Washington briefing on botnets. The event was hosted by the Senate Science and Technology Caucus, and sponsored by ACM and Microsoft. Along with opening remarks…
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Internet So Crowded, Nobody Goes There Anymore
Once again we’re seeing stories, like this one from Anick Jesdanun at AP, saying that the Internet is broken and needs to be redesigned. The idea may seem unthinkable, even…
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Is SafeMedia a Parody?
[UPDATE (Dec. 2011): I wrote the post below a few years ago. SafeMedia’s website and product offerings have changed since then. Please don’t interpret this post as a commentary on…
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Cablevision and Anti-Efficiency Policy
I wrote recently about the Cablevision decision, in which a judge appeared to draw a line between two kinds of Digital Video Recorder (DVR) technologies. (DVRs let home viewers record…