Tag: Technology and Freedom
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Dornseif: Technological Definitions in the Law
Maximillian Dornseif offers some comments following up on my previous posts about Source vs. Object Code, and definitions in the Berman-Coble bill. A brief excerpt: The court system and legal doctrine is built all arround definitions. While defining things like cruelty, carelessness and such stuff is a well understood problem for lawmakers and courts, technical…
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The Other Digital Divide
Long and well-written articleby Drew Clark and Bara Vaida in the National Journal’s Tech Daily, about the history of the current Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley battle over copy protection. If you’re still coming up to speed on this issue, the article is a great scene-setter. Even if you know the issue well, you still might…
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"Peer to Peer" in the Berman-Coble Bill
Yesterday’s defense of the Berman-Coble bill resurrected the argument that the bill only hurts the bad guys, because it authorizes hacking only of peer to peer file trading networks. And we all know that “Decentralized P2P networks were designed specifically (and ingeniously) to thwart suits for copyright infringement by ensuring there is no central service…
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More on China's Blocking of Google
Several readers responded to my previous entry on China’s censoring of Google. Jeremy Leader pointed out that Google offers a cached copy of any page on the Web. Google’s cache would allow easy access to any blocked page, so any effective blocker must block Google. Seth Finkelstein points to his previous discussion of overblocking due…
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Preliminary Injunction Against Aimster
A Federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction against the Aimster file sharing service. The judge found it likely that Aimster will ultimately (after all the evidence is heard) be found liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. Based on a quick reading, it looks like this is based on Aimster’s involvement in promoting the…
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Defense of Berman-Coble Bill Offered
In Politech today, Congressman Berman (through an aide) offers a defense of the proposed Berman-Coble bill. (This bill would legalize certain forms of hacking by copyright owners against users of file-sharing systems.) The gist of the defense is that the bill would only shelter copyright holders from liability to the extent that they were actually…
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Adobe Files DMCA Challenge
Adobe has filed a federal lawsuit seeking a declaratory judgment that its Acrobat product does not violate the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions. (Here’s Adobe’s press release. I don’t have a link to the court papers yet.) Here is the story, as far as I can tell at this point: Any TrueType-compatible font can be labeled with…
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Greece Bans Electronic Games
CNet reports that Greece has banned all electronic games, including ones that run on PCs or on mobile phones, apparently in an effort to crack down on gambling. This is yet another example of the inflationary theory of censorship. A ban on gambling would be too hard to enforce, because there is no way to…
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Sites Blocked In China
Jonathan Zittrain and Ben Edelman at Harvard have a site listing URLs that are blocked in China. In addition to some obvious sites (related to things like Chinese dissidents, the Taiwanese government, and Falun Gong), there are some curious sites on the block list, including the U.S. Federal Court system (uscourts.gov). You can go to…
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The Inflationary Theory of Censorship
China’s recent decision to block its citizens’ access to Google has been much discussed. Google does not itself offer “subversive” content, so the goal must have been to keep people from finding “subversive” content from elsewhere. This illustrates a general truth about attempts to censor general-purpose communication technologies like the Net. These technologies are so…