CITP Blog - Formerly Freedom to Tinker

Tag: Technology and Freedom

  • FreeConference Suit: Neutrality Fight or Regulatory Squabble?

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    Last week FreeConference, a company that offers “free” teleconferencing services, sued AT&T for blocking access by AT&T/Cingular customers to FreeConference’s services. FreeConference’s complaint says the blocking is anticompetitive and violates the Communications Act. FreeConference’s service sets up conference calls that connect a group of callers. Users are given an ordinary long-distance phone number to call.…

  • Judge Strikes Down COPA

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    Last week a Federal judge struck down COPA, a law requiring adult websites to use age verification technology. The ruling by Senior Judge Lowell A. Reed Jr. held COPA unconstitutional because it is more restrictive of speech (but no more effective) than the alternative of allowing private parties to use filtering software. This is the…

  • New Congress, Same Old Issues

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    With control of the House and Senate about to switch parties, everybody is wondering how the new management will affect their pet policy issues. Cameron Wilson has a nice forecast for tech policy issues such as competitiveness, globalization, privacy, DRM, and e-voting. Most of these don’t break down as partisan issues – differences are larger…

  • More on Meta-Freedom

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    Tim Lee comments: The fact that you can waive your free speech rights via contract doesn’t mean that it would be a good idea to enact special laws backing up those contracts with criminal penalties. I think you’re missing an important middle ground here. The choice isn’t between no tinkering rights and constitutionally mandated tinkering…

  • The Freedom to Tinker with Freedom?

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    Doug Lay, commenting on my last post, pointed out that the Zune buyout would help make a world of DRM-enabled music services more attractive. “Where,” he asked, “does this leave the freedom to tinker?” Anti-DMCA activism has tended to focus on worst-case, scary scenarios that can spur people to action. It’s a standard move in…

  • CleanFlicks Ruled an Infringer

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    Joe Gratz writes, Judge Richard P. Matsch of the United States District Court for the District of Colorado [on] Wednesday filed this opinion granting partial summary judgment in favor of the movie studios, finding that CleanFlicks infringes copyright. This is not a terribly surprising result; CleanFlicks’ business involves selling edited DVD-Rs of Hollywood movies, buying…

  • Does the Great Firewall Violate U.S. Law?

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    Clayton, Murdoch, and Watson have an interesting new paper describing technical mechanisms that the Great Firewall of China uses to block online access to content the Chinese government doesn’t like. The Great Firewall works in two parts. One part inspects data packets that cross the border between China and the rest of the world, looking…

  • Long-Tail Innovation

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    Recently I saw a great little talk by Cory Ondrejka on the long tail of innovation. (He followed up with a blog entry.) For those not in the know, “long tail” is one of the current buzzphrases of tech punditry. The term was coined by Chris Anderson in a famous Wired article. The idea is…

  • Freeing the Xbox

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    When Microsoft shipped its Xbox game console, Linux programmers salivated. The Xbox was a pretty nice computer, priced at $149. The Xbox had all the hardware needed to run Linux and its applications. Problem was, Microsoft had tried to lock down the Xbox hardware to prevent unauthorized programs – such as the Linux kernel –…

  • Princeton-Microsoft IP Conference Liveblog

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    Today I’m at the Princeton-Microsoft Intellectual Property Conference. I’ll be blogging some of the panels as they occur. There are parallel sessions, and I’m on one panel, so I can’t cover everything. The first panel is on “Organizing the Public Interest”. Panelists are Yochai Benkler, David Einhorn, Margaret Hedstrom, Larry Lessig, and Gigi Sohn. The…