Tag: Technology and Freedom
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Schoen vs. Stallman on "Trusted Computing"
Seth Schoen raises two interesting issues in his response to Richard Stallman’s essay on “trusted computing.” (To see Seth’s posting, click here and scroll down to the “Trusted computing” heading.) Stallman says [Trusted computing] is designed to stop your computer from functioning as a general-purpose computer. Schoen responds: Neither of these concerns is applicable at…
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Costs of a GPL Ban: An Example
Many people have criticized the recent proposal from some congressmen to ban the use of the GNU Public License (GPL) on federally funded software projects. There’s one disadvantage of this proposal that I haven’t seen discussed. I’ll illustrate it with a real example. Brent Waters and I are currently doing research on a method for…
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Edison's World
Lately I’ve been reading a biography of Thomas Edison, one of history’s great tinkerers. (I recommend the book: Edison by Matthew Josephson.) I’m amazed at how little the basic nature of the high-tech business has changed since Edison’s day. The products are different, but the business seems very much the same. Edison coped with –…
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Paper on Copy-Protected CDs
Alex Halderman, a senior here at Princeton, has written a very interesting paper entitled “Evaluating New Copy-Prevention Techniques for Audio CDs.” Here is the paper’s abstract: Several major record labels are adopting a new family of copy-prevention techniques intended to limit “casual” copying by compact disc owners using their personal computers. These employ deliberate data…
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More on the Almost-General-Purpose Language
Seth Finkelstein and Eric Albert criticize my claim that the fallacy of the almost-general-purpose computer can best be illustrated by analogy to an almost-general-purpose spoken language. They make some good points, but I think my original conclusion is still sound. Seth argues that speech (or a program) can be regulated by making it extremely difficult…
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Schoen: Palladium Can Have an "Owner Override"
Seth Schoen argues that “trusted systems” like Palladium can have a sort of manual override that allows the owner to get all of the data on a machine, even if it is protected by DRM. As Seth points out, the main implication of this is that it is possible to build a system like Palladium…
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Give Us Analog. No Wait, We Meant Digital.
Remember when Hollywood wanted to ban digital outputs on media devices? The rationale was that digital outputs were uniquely copyable. Here’s Jack Valenti addressing a congressional hearing back in April: But it is digital piracy that gives movie producers multiple Maalox moments. It is digital thievery, which can disfigure and shred the future of American…
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White House Cybersecurity Czar Urges DMCA Reform
Today’s Boston Globe reports, in an article by Hiawatha Bray, on comments made at a “town meeting” yesterday by Richard Clarke, the head of the White House’s Office of Cybersecurity: At the town meeting, Clarke responded to a question about the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The act makes it illegal to publicize the existence…
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Seth Schoen Makes a Doubleplusgood Point
Following up on Arnold Kling’s observation about non-general-purpose languages, Seth Schoen reminds us that Orwell’s 1984 featured a language called “Newspeak,” in which it was supposedly impossible to express subversive thoughts. Seth offers this quote from 1984: Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc,…
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Kling: The Fallacy of the Almost-General-Purpose Language
In a previous posting, “The Fallacy of the Almost-General-Purpose Computer,” I asked readers for help in finding a way to explain to non-techies why non-general-purpose computers are so vastly inferior to general-purpose ones. Many readers responded with good suggestions. But Arnold Kling’s explanation is by far the best: Trying to design a limited-purpose computer is…