Tag: Technology and Freedom

This one leaves me speechless. According to a fascinating story over at ComputerWorld, tech journalist Brian McWilliams has admitted to running a hoax website that claimed to be the site of a scary real-world terrorist group. He even arranged to have the fake site “defaced” by (fictitious) anti-terrorist hackers, and he created a hoax message…

If you’re interested in technology regulation, don’t miss Derek Slater’s interview with MPAA chief Jack Valenti, in Harvard Political Review. Slater asks only four questions about copyright and technology, but in answering those four short questions Valenti manages to display amazing ignorance of both copyright law and technology. Don’t believe me? Here is Valenti on…

The February issue of Wired has an interesting feature on Sony’s struggle to figure out its position on technology, media, and copyright. As a consumer electronics maker, Sony wants to make products that give people flexible use of their recorded music and video. As a content provider, Sony wants to enforce limits on that flexibility.…

Once again, somebody has attacked the RIAA’s web site, knocking it out this time for three days. The bozos who did this probably think it’s a clever way to retaliate against the RIAA. Instead, they’re just reinforcing the caricature of the RIAA’s opponents as amoral punks. There are plenty of constructive ways to contribute to…

The judge in the SearchKing v. Google case has denied SearchKing’s request for a preliminary injunction. (See the bottom of this posting for background on the case.) James Grimmelmann at LawMeme analyzes the ruling. The court ruled that Google’s page rankings are opinions and so are protected by the First Amendment. It’s interesting that the…

The EFF has posted a copy of the New York state court’s ruling in the Network Associates case that I wrote about previously. The court’s ruling makes three main points. (1) The contract clause, which forbids customers from reviewing the product or publishing the results of benchmarking it, is unenforceable. (The court doesn’t expand on…

A court has thrown out a software contract clause prohibiting customers from publishing reviews of a product, report Matt Richtel at the New York Times and Lisa Bowman at CNet. A New York state court made the ruling in a suit brought by the New York Attorney General’s office. The clause in question says, “The…

The conventional wisdom is that yesterday’s deal between the RIAA and tech companies includes an agreement to oppose government mandates of DRM such as the Hollings CBDTPA. But look at this sentence from paragraph 6 of the joint statement (italics added): The role of government, if needed at all, should be limited to enforcing compliance…

Often, when people say they oppose regulation, what they really mean is that they like the regulation we already have and don’t want it changed. By implicitly defining “regulation” to mean changes in regulation, they make anti-regulation rhetoric serve a pro-regulation cause. Yesterday’s statement of principles from the RIAA and some tech companies provides a…