Tag: Technology and Freedom
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Report from Agenda 2003
Dan Gillmor notes my posting on almost-general-purpose computers, and says Felten would have been rolling his eyes yesterday at the Agenda 2003 conference, where three members of the Hollywood establishment proved their absolute cluelessness about technology while confirming the prevailing Washington “wisdom” – the notion that we can somehow stop one kind of copying without…
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Washington Post on Tech Regulation
Today’s Washington Post quotes Fred von Lohmann of the EFF as saying that putting Hollywood in charge of technological progress would be like “putting the dinosaurs in charge of evolution.” The Post article also includes this artfully constructed paragraph: Hollywood wants to add a “digital flag,” or identifier, to coming digital television broadcasts, that would…
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Don't Blame "The Government"
Some people have interpreted my previous posting, “The Fallacy of the Almost-General-Purpose Computer” as saying that the U.S. government views general-purpose computers as a threat. That’s not quite what I meant to say. What I meant to say was that in Washington law/policy/lobbyist circles, the proposition that general-purpose computers might be too dangerous is now…
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The Fallacy of the Almost-General-Purpose Computer
I was at a conference in Washington, DC on Friday and Saturday. Participants included some people who are reasonably plugged in to the Washington political process. I was stunned to hear one of these folks sum up the Washington conventional wisdom like this: “The political dialog today is that the general purpose computer is a…
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Bricklin: Copy Protection Robs the Future
Dan Bricklin explains how copy restriction technology frustrates archiving of historically interesting works. Archivists normally preserve works by copying them; so works that can’t be copied may never be archived. Bricklin tells a sobering story about his attempts to recover an original copy of VisiCalc (the first spreadsheet program, of which Bricklin himself was the…
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Two From Steven Levy
Two very nice articles by Steven Levy in the latest Newsweek. The first, I Was a Wi-Fi Freeloader, discusses the law and ethics of using open wireless networks. (I wrote about this topic previously.) The second, Glitterati vs. Geeks, is about the Eldred case.
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D-Day For Eldred
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court hears oral argument in Eldred v. Ashcroft, the lawsuit challenging the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act, a law that added twenty years onto the life of every current and new copyright. Larry Lessig will argue for Eldred, and Ted Olson, the U.S. Solicitor General, will argue for the government. The…
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Discovery vs. Creation
Last week I had yet another DMCA debate, this time at the Chicago International Intellectual Property Conference. Afterward, I had an interesting conversation with Kathy Strandburg of DePaul Law School, about the different mindsets of DMCA supporters and opponents. DMCA supporters seem to think of security technology as reflecting the decisions of its creators, while…
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LawMeme's "Law School in a Nutshell"
LawMeme is running a wonderful continuing feature, written by James Grimmelmann, to teach non-lawyers, and especially techies, how to read a legal brief: Future lawyers spend three years in law school learning how to read and write legalese, but what serious geek has that kind of time to spare? This series will cover the basics…
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Garfinkel on Wireless Tags
Simson Garfinkel has an interesting short article in Technology Review about wireless tags. He advocates a sort of consumers’ bill of rights, that would protect people against being observed or tracked against their will. Wireless tags are an important and potentially scary technology. As I’ve written before, I think we need more discussion of their…