This year’s winner is no less than George Thacker whose work in particular on the Alto at Xerox PARC had a profound impact on the personal computer even as we see and use them today. The New York Times Bits blog has an excellent summary of Thacker’s career and solicits some of his thoughts on the history of the personal computer and its possible future.

Congratulations, Mr. Thacker!

Share

Previously:

• March 7, 2010 -- TCLP 2010-03-07 News
• February 28, 2010 -- TCLP 2010-02-28 News
• January 1, 2010 -- WIZZYWIG 3 Is Now Available
• December 15, 2009 -- An Internet Time Capsule
• December 14, 2009 -- First Two Volumes of WIZZYWIG Now Free

I would have really liked to see much more consideration on the values inherent in open source. Mostly he sticks to how this informs opportunities for sharing credit and managing interactions between contributors and users. Maybe I am thinking beyond his simple proposition, considering the hacker ethic more than the common denominator open source methodology. I think adding that ethos could help address some of the other criticisms of transparency, namely the idea that technology can produce beauty and, more importantly, effect change may help fix focus on outcomes as much as process.

Share

Previously:

• October 6, 2009 -- Federal Register Opens Its Data, Apple Reverses on Politically Charges App, And More
• October 1, 2009 -- Cyberbullying Bill’s Chilly Reception, Open Sourcing Publicly Funded Books, and More
• September 30, 2009 -- Music Inspired by a Computer Game, Portland Backs Open Data, and More
• September 17, 2009 -- Freeing Locked Down Public Data, Protecting Your Anonymous Online Speech, and More
• September 10, 2009 -- Hands on with Retro Computing, Experimenting with eBooks, Facebook Opening Sources Voluntarily and Otherwise, and More

This is actually very consisted with some of the earliest thought on Piracy, as explained by the dark net paper. Published in 2002 by some folks at Microsoft, the hypothesis they put forward was that attempts to stop piracy of digital goods would merely encourage those exchanges to move to less regulated spaces, to dark nets.

If nothing else, Hadopi is proving to be an interesting experiment in advance of other countries looking to adopt three strikes laws. I am still skeptical that this or any other research will have more than a negligible impact on the policy making. That is the nature of panics, they defy reasoned persuasion based on substantiation, common sense and logic.

Share

Previously:

• November 24, 2009 -- End of Life for the Cell Processor, Debunking the Cat Brain Simulation, and More
• October 8, 2009 -- Three Strikes Hypocrisy, PATRIOT Act Reforms Falter, and More
• March 6, 2010 -- Massive Copyright Crackdown on the Web
• March 2, 2010 -- Web Comic on How DRM is Really Defective
• March 1, 2010 -- The History of Unintended Consequences of IP Terrorism

The example he provides is multiples browser tabs with many embedded Flash and Silverlight objects. When one Flash object crashes, they all crash even though the Silverlight objects and the surrounding content remain unaffected. This actually seems like a decent compromise as using a process for each instance of a plugin could get pretty demanding of the underlying operating system.

Ryan also points out that Mozilla is looking for testers of this build, so if you don’t mind working with a bleeding edge version, check out the link.

Share

Previously:

• March 4, 2010 -- Firefox Personas May Add Dynamic Update Capability
• March 1, 2010 -- Mozilla Shoring Up Performance for JavaScript beyond TraceMonkey
• February 21, 2010 -- Quick Security Alerts for the Week Ending 2/21/2010
• February 8, 2010 -- Quick Security Alerts for Week Ending 2/7/2010
• January 31, 2010 -- Quick Security Alerts for the Week Ending 1/31/2010

Now Cryptome has had its account suspended by PayPal, according to The Register. The theory I’d heard to explain this repeatedly happening to Wikileaks is a run in with PayPal’s torturous rules on handling donations for some classes of organizations. There aren’t any details, yet, from PayPal on this case but I suspect it is for similar reasons.

I wonder if other not-for-profits have been experiencing similar problems and this is a bias in coverage because of the sensational nature of Wikileaks and Cryptome or this is part of genuine discrimination on the part of the payment processor, disguised as some impenetrable bureaucracy.

Share

Previously:

• February 25, 2010 -- Microsoft Takes Down Cryptome but It Is Already Back
• January 25, 2010 -- WikiLeaks Able to Receive Donations Again

The Register has some details on why the servers went down. This is apparently an intentional act, a protest of the new DRM. I suspect this will cancel out the attack’s intended effect, that Ubisoft will write it off as atypical rather than a poor design or operational choice. They fact that they appear to be downplaying the effect, too, as the article notes, tends to support that hypothesis.

I remain unconvinced that DRM has any effect on outright thieves. To the extent that no-sales reduce revenue to the point where creators choose not to create, I think there have to be better solutions. And I don’t necessarily think no-sales have such an impact on the bottom line though I am open to empirical evidence otherwise.

Share

Previously:

• March 4, 2010 -- Ubisoft Hefty DRM Cracked within Hours
• March 2, 2010 -- Web Comic on How DRM is Really Defective
• February 28, 2010 -- TCLP 2010-02-28 News
• February 22, 2010 -- Considering the Likelihood of a DMCA Exemption for Jail Breaking iPad
• February 18, 2010 -- Ubisoft’s DRM as Annoying as Expected

The scan quality is pretty good though I found the lack of a way to browse the issues by date a bit annoying. However, with over a century of content, search is probably going to be a way more useful means of locating articles of interest.

Share

Previously:

• February 25, 2010 -- Free Audiobook Publisher Raising Funds
• January 20, 2010 -- Project for Making Public Domain Music Friendlier
• January 7, 2010 -- Open Source Media Player Partners with Device Maker
• October 20, 2009 -- Doctorow’s DIY Experiment, Asking Oracle to Let MySQL Go, and More

To me, the whole conversation highlights the importance to engage readers, listeners and viewers not just in the primary discussion around the content itself, but to be candid about what is needed to support producing it. The Ars piece reveals that they do have conversations about ads in their forums. They need to extend that conversation to the advertisers, as well. Masnick sets a good example of holding the advertisers to some kind of standard, one with which fans can live. I am not suggesting that publishers be captive to readers’ interests or so on up the food chain, but there at least be the sort of engagement that will lead to situations that better serve more interests.

Masnick also reminds us that fans serve more of a purpose than generating filthy lucre. Focusing too closely on revenue, in whatever form it is generated, presents the risk of losing sight of that fact. Without engagement in the first place, there is no business model, ad driven or otherwise.

The one other though I had that I have not seen addressed is how much bad ads of the past may have trained the current default of blocking without thought. At the very least, as flawed as it may have been, the experiment by Ars re-visits the question of what is an acceptable or tolerable ad, one that I think is worth re-considering every so often.

Share

Previously:

• March 7, 2010 -- TCLP 2010-03-07 News
• February 25, 2010 -- Advertising Experiment
• February 11, 2010 -- Flat Rate Micro-Payments
• February 3, 2010 -- Three Fantasy Authors Launch E-Book Store
• January 22, 2010 -- Nina Paley v. Jaron Lanier

In the intro, a huge thank you to Chris Miller for his ongoing donation. Also inspired by my latest appearance on The Secret Lair to discuss free content and supporting artists, some brief thoughts on my own views towards the show and earning something from it.

This week’s security alerts are a several OpenSSL flaw and research on statistical attacks on security questions. I recommend treating security answers where they are required like passwords, storing them in a password vault and securely, randomly generating them.

In this week’s news a fan sequel to King’s Quest is shutting down (the original publisher playing a large role in Steven Levy’s “Hackers” which I reviewed previously), a hearing was schedule last week to discuss internet freedom abroad including circumvention though we might do well to apply the same standards at home, two storied about plugless brain-computer interfaces with a compelling first hand account of one, and Google search index to go real time.

Following up this week the USTR responds to Senator Wyden’s letter about ACTA with some good analysis and the problems with a revised censorship amendment to the DEB that now targets weblockers.

Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Share

Previously:

• March 7, 2010 -- Following Up for the Week Ending 3/7/2010
• February 28, 2010 -- Following Up for the Week Ending 2/28/2010
• February 21, 2010 -- Following Up for the Week Ending 2/21/2010
• February 15, 2010 -- Following Up for the Week Ending 2/14/2010
• January 24, 2010 -- Following Up for the Week Ending 1/24/2010

Share

Previously:

• January 24, 2010 -- Following Up for the Week Ending 1/24/2010
• March 7, 2010 -- TCLP 2010-03-07 News
• February 28, 2010 -- Following Up for the Week Ending 2/28/2010
• February 21, 2010 -- Following Up for the Week Ending 2/21/2010
• February 15, 2010 -- Following Up for the Week Ending 2/14/2010

Share

While I cannot quibble with the legal basis of this effort nor find it practically different from similar undertakings by other players in the world of big content, I am concerned about the knock on effects. The web works by linking and to a lesser degree excerpting. I personally don’t think 100% utilization is morally sustainable but this plan has already moved towards just 80% re-use. I may also be more sanguine about that fraction as it still would tend to target folks re-posting the heart of an article rather than adding their own value through additional commentary and analysis while preserving an incentive to click through to the original material. How long, though, before the triggering portion drops to a level that get fuzzier and fuzzier, encroaching on what would commonly be considered a fair use?

The other issue I take with this plan is that it is attempting to solve the wrong problem. I seriously doubt extensive quotation is solely or even largely responsible for the failing revenues that publishers feel are forcing them down this path. In fact, I am convinced that some soul searching on why at least some infringers are so heavily re-quoting may inspire innovative changes by the original publishers. I will concede that this consideration has natural limits, there are a class of pirates who are simply outright thieves resistant to any reason whatsoever to participate in financially supporting content production.

That doesn’t change my conviction that a more constructive response is to look at the piracy first as free market research and at least combine efforts for reducing the outright thievery with a more compelling offering that gives readers and re-linkers more of a reason to shore up advertising revenues and other sources of income for those bearing the burden of producing original content online.

Share

Previously:

• March 1, 2010 -- The History of Unintended Consequences of IP Terrorism
• January 7, 2010 -- France Considers Media Levy for the Internet
• December 15, 2009 -- One Sided Meeting over Piracy Concerns
• November 24, 2009 -- End of Life for the Cell Processor, Debunking the Cat Brain Simulation, and More
• November 11, 2009 -- A Directory of Public Participation, Microsoft Patents sudo, and More

I am glad that Google is supporting development of Tor but I’d be happier still if they would contribute some servers and bandwidth to the network of relays that is key to its operation. The biggest complaint that I have with Tor, a common gripe from its fans and users, is that it is slow as dirt. There simply are never enough relays in the network to make it usable for any but the most critical needs.

If you’ll indulge me, I’d also like to share another petty criticism of this post. It reads as a little self serving to me. More than once it trots out this rhetorical line that runs to the sentiment of: “Tor is useful for dealing with services that don’t respect your privacy, unlike Google who totally respects your privacy and lets you opt-out and stuff.” Don’t get me wrong, the bulk of the post focuses on some very important issues that Tor is tackling and Google supports, I just don’t see the need for Google to emphasize its own non-evilness. Especially in a post where they are supporting such an excellent tool for evading evil intentions.

This post also made me think back to Ethan Zuckerman’s recent post suggesting circumvention alone is not enough to foil censorship. Worth bearing in mind as we read up on the latest news about such tools.

Share

Previously:

• September 29, 2009 -- Bletchley Park Receives Lottery Grant, China Finally Starst Blocking Tor, and More
• February 28, 2010 -- TCLP 2010-02-28 News
• February 17, 2010 -- France Introduces Safety Law that Includes Online Censorship
• February 11, 2010 -- Google Refuses to Block YouTube Videos in Australia
• February 8, 2010 -- Following Up for the Week Ending 2/7/2010

The latest version of StatusNet is already using OStatus and it appears to work quite well. I am optimistic that the shift to build on protocols that are gaining traction will see OStatus picked up by services that are using those protocols. I am still hopeful that I will eventually be able to maintain a single social presence on a site I prefer to use for its features and policies but have my social graph and information flow widely distributed instead of having to maintain multiple presences and duplicate a lot of other as I do now.

Share

Previously:

• March 7, 2010 -- Quick Security Alerts for the Week Ending 3/7/2010
• March 1, 2010 -- Is There a FLOSS License Suitable for E-Voting?
• February 25, 2010 -- Wikipedia’s Notability Requirement Fails for FLOSS
• February 23, 2010 -- Happy Birthday, Apache
• February 18, 2010 -- Twitter Doesn’t Love Open Source as Much as StatusNet

There is a certain amount of overlap with Sixth Sense, about which I’ve written previously. It has me wondering if the systems could be combined in a complementary fashion. The ability to input data without the projector active seems like a huge plus on top of everything else Sixth Sense can do with output and interaction.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Harrison’s system is as compact, though that may improve as it makes its way to market. The Singularity Hub author, who also noted the similarity between the two systems and a third from Microsoft, also considers the other difference that occurred to me, that Sixth Sense is open source. The author, Aaron Saenz, looks at it as possibly helping Harrison bootstrap his work to market the same way Pranav Mistry is trying to do.

I think just one of them being open might facilitate a fruitful combination of the two. If they were both open, who knows what sort of wild, post-human augmentation they might unleash. Eventually.

Share

Previously:

• No Related Post

Silent Hunter 5 was released on Tuesday and just a few hours later a cracked version of the game was published on many file-sharing sites. Ubisoft, worrying that DRM-haters would download the game illegally, quickly responded to the news about the cracked DRM and released a statement in which they downplay ‘the issue’.

Ernesto at TorrentFreak also has a good survey of reactions to the DRM system itself which range from skeptical to downright irked. Not surprisingly, this latest attempt at IP terrorism has only resulted in more users seeking the better experience afford by pirated versions of the game.

We’re seeing a lot of that lately, aren’t we?

Share

Previously:

• February 18, 2010 -- Ubisoft’s DRM as Annoying as Expected
• March 8, 2010 -- Ubisoft’s Authentication Servers Go Down
• March 2, 2010 -- Web Comic on How DRM is Really Defective
• February 28, 2010 -- TCLP 2010-02-28 News
• February 22, 2010 -- Considering the Likelihood of a DMCA Exemption for Jail Breaking iPad

Several ideas are under consideration for future development that are as equally meh-worthy as the idea of Personas itself. One stands out, adding the ability to incorporate ambient information into a Persona. What that would mean exactly is still somewhat vague. In other applications, ambient information is typically data that is aggregated and displayed in a highly visual, usually very simplistic way. Think about a widget that changed color from cooler shades to warmer as a stock you are tracking swings upwards in price. That would be a pretty good example.

I like this idea of using subtle aspects of Firefox’s appearance to enrich the information being viewed. I think it would do best for omnipresent information, like perhaps the response rate on your social message stream, or specific to what your are viewing. Imagine a Persona that could alter its appearance to cue you in to the ratio of ads to actual content in a page or the number of inbound links to help you develop a sense of how authority ebbs and flows over time.

In that vein, I see the ambient info suggestion for Personas as part of a very interesting cluster of features that have been explored by the lizard wranglers. It is very consistent with discussions around the semantic web, extracting, sensing and digesting information beyond the mere textual content that makes up even the most dynamic sites we are used to viewing today.

Share

Previously:

• February 21, 2010 -- Quick Security Alerts for the Week Ending 2/21/2010
• November 9, 2009 -- Happy Birthday, Firefox
• March 9, 2010 -- Mozilla Delivers Plugin Crash Proofing
• March 1, 2010 -- Mozilla Shoring Up Performance for JavaScript beyond TraceMonkey
• February 8, 2010 -- Quick Security Alerts for Week Ending 2/7/2010

No listener feedback this week.

Due to the length of the interview, there is also no new hacker word of the week this week.

The feature this week is an interview with my good friend and fellow podcaster, Chris Miller. Chris has provided me with conference reports twice before, for Google I/O in 2008 and SCALE 7x in 2009. This time he joins me to report on his experience at PyCon 2010. In the course of the discussion, we mention his employer, The Linux Outlaws, Watts Humphrey’s Personal Software Process, David Beazley’s presentation on the Python GIL, Mark Shuttleworth, and Catherine Devlin’s presentation on cmd2.

If you want to hear more conversation between Chris and myself on less technical but still crunchy subjects, check out episode 24 of The Secret Lair.

Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Share

Previously:

• No Related Post

While they cannot today produce original, new music that is part of the long term plan. One idea branching off from that would be to produce interactive versions of famous musicians with whom users could potentially jam.

Eliot does a pretty good job of digging into the copyright situation with the re-recordings and looking forward to wholly original new works by these virtual musicians. The approach Zenph is taking is pretty conservative, basically looking at what they can produce today as belonging to the heirs or assigns of the original artists. The latent ambiguities for future applications go far beyond the simple question of why Zenph is being so timid. In the past, similar innovations have defied original rights holders on the basis that entirely new markets were spawned that expanded value rather than taking away from existing revenue potential.

Far more interesting is the question he begs about licensing of musical style, something that today isn’t even addressed by copyright law on the books or common contractual practices. There may be a moral dimension to honoring the descendants of a great musician but thankfully Eliot added an update clarifying Zenph’s view. They are not suggesting or pursuing any ideas about a new right covering musical style. Whether the heirs agree in the long wrong remains to be seen.

Share

Previously:

• November 19, 2009 -- Disturbing Details of UK Digital Economy Bill, First Look at Chrome OS, and More
• October 12, 2009 -- Open Source Neural Networking Tool, Behavioral Ads without Tracking, and More
• September 13, 2009 -- TCLP 2009-09-13 News
• March 7, 2010 -- Following Up for the Week Ending 3/7/2010
• March 6, 2010 -- Massive Copyright Crackdown on the Web

Beyond the wealth of detail Bright digs out, he also links to an hour long presentation by Dr. Stefan Brands who created the framework, U-Prove, and a free book available for download. Identity is an area where I actually am impressed with the caliber of talent Microsoft has been able to attract and the interesting research they have produced. As Bright points out, this hasn’t always led to successful products, but that doesn’t diminish the thought leadership in the space.

U-Prove is not likely to succeed in the wild much better than its predecessors, at least initially. The article has a pretty clear explanation of the chicken-and-egg problem, or reverse network effect, that has to be surmounted first. I am more optimistic than the author, though, as we have a few examples that have managed this difficult feat–OpenID and OAuth.

My other concerns, about Microsoft using a promise instead of a license or grant, are tempered by the very clear nature of the Open Specification Promise as irrevocable. The SDKs being provided also use a very permissive BSD license. The languages supported aren’t necessarily the best to help with techie adoption, C# and Java, but may provide fodder, if there is sufficient interest, to re-implement in other languages.

Share

Previously:

• March 7, 2010 -- Quick Security Alerts for the Week Ending 3/7/2010
• March 3, 2010 -- MS Security Chief Suggests Computer Security Tax
• March 1, 2010 -- Post-Cryptome Takedown, Network Solutions Sows DMCA Confusion
• February 28, 2010 -- Security Alerts for the Week Ending 2/28/2010
• February 25, 2010 -- Microsoft Takes Down Cryptome but It Is Already Back

What amazes me is how issues like those informing the Steve Jackson Games raid by the Secret Service have only multiplied and accelerated since then. I feel a bit of pride in how informed, aware and active the info sphere largely is on these issues, due in no small part to EFF and the many other cyber-facing public interest groups that came after.

The gathering is next week, Tuesday, in Austin, TX. See Bruce’s post for the full details.

Share

Previously:

• February 16, 2010 -- EFF Checklist for Readers Considering Digital Books
• February 2, 2010 -- EFF 20th Birthday Party
• January 31, 2010 -- Following Up for the Week Ending 1/31/2010
• January 29, 2010 -- Loophole Could Neuter FCC Net Neutrality Rules
• January 27, 2010 -- New Research Project on Alternate Web Tracking

He does a fair job of characterizing the issues, especially that non-secure PC’s aren’t just a burden to their owners. If they become part of a botnet, then they burden the network which shares the pain even with connected but uninfected systems.

Where his thought process goes astray is in considering a healthcare-like model. You know, because that is working extraordinarily well right now and hasn’t added its own burden of arguments and complications.

I don’t necessarily disagree with the idea of using social systems, including education and advocacy. But we have those already in the form of projects like StopBadWare.org. He seems to be saying that ISPs should take on these additional roles and that cost is the only barrier. Cost, unfortunately, is the least part of the equation. Neither market based solutions or another of his ill-consdired ideas, a new tax on computer users, is going to magically conjure up the expertise that either ISPs or other outfits need to pursue any number of viable schemes to reactively deal with malware.

Of course, here is another thought–how about Microsoft uses a bit of its hefty margin and/or cash in the bank to address the security issues that stem almost entirely from their own operating system?

Share

Previously:

• March 7, 2010 -- Quick Security Alerts for the Week Ending 3/7/2010
• March 3, 2010 -- Microsoft Releases Open Source Identity Framework
• March 1, 2010 -- Post-Cryptome Takedown, Network Solutions Sows DMCA Confusion
• February 28, 2010 -- Security Alerts for the Week Ending 2/28/2010
• February 25, 2010 -- Microsoft Takes Down Cryptome but It Is Already Back

This sort of brain dead frustration is so common, it is just as likely the two were independently derived. Its another variation on piracy outcompete legitimate media or acting as the best, free market research to be had. It also reinforces what I have been saying for years–DRM is not about piracy at all. It is about controlling or suppressing disruptive innovation at the expense of the end user.

Oh, and someone must not have liked the original infographic, it looks like it was taken down by request. Thankfully, BoingBoing appears to have cached it on their servers along with their post about it.

Share

Previously:

• February 28, 2010 -- TCLP 2010-02-28 News
• March 9, 2010 -- Piracy Increases in France Despite Three Strikes
• March 8, 2010 -- Ubisoft’s Authentication Servers Go Down
• March 6, 2010 -- Massive Copyright Crackdown on the Web
• March 4, 2010 -- Ubisoft Hefty DRM Cracked within Hours

This workshop versed about the already (I hope famous) Charter authored during the 2009 Culture Forum in Barcelona. While we often are tempted to point out the bad and worse stuff of the current legislative initiatives, this Charter aims to be a positive reference document for discussing Copyright, A2K and Net Neutrality topics.

We discussed the need for such a document at the last CopyNight here in DC. It makes far more sense to help popularize and improve an existing work that might fulfill that purpose. There is also a good anecdote in the notes about a shift in business model initiated in a specific, personal case by free licensing. I think much more could be said in that discussion, Nina Paley has me thinking a lot about the tension between intellectual monopoly and free licensing, in particular the counter intuitions that around from it.

I’ll save that thought for next year although hopefully there will be an opportunity sooner than that to bounce these ideas of someone.

Share

Previously:

• March 7, 2010 -- TCLP 2010-03-07 News

This is a good idea but I’d be more confident of its effect if we saw similar efforts mirrored in the other countries involved in the negotiations. The various leaks have seen some pretty heated contention between various players, especially the EU, the US and Canada. There may be time yet to capitalize on remaining disagreements to stall for more time.

I’ll give the kiwis credit, their government is also directly seeking public submissions, according to Michael Geist. The deadline is March 31st. The focus is limited to just the Internet enforcement chapter. This is the most problematic section of the draft, by far, so if you are in New Zealand, you have two good chances to help shape the outcome.

Share

Previously:

• March 7, 2010 -- TCLP 2010-03-07 News
• March 7, 2010 -- Following Up for the Week Ending 3/7/2010
• February 28, 2010 -- TCLP 2010-02-28 News
• February 28, 2010 -- Following Up for the Week Ending 2/28/2010
• February 21, 2010 -- TCLP 2010-02-21 News

The part that caught me be surprise is when the interpreter finds such code, it drops through to code that is two or three years old. This new effort, JaegerMonkey, looks to fix that, shoring up this performance drag on more complex scripts. It will marry the approach, compiling entire functions to assembly, proven out by the other modern browsers with TraceMonkey on the promise that a hybrid approach will yield the benefits of both.

There is plenty of more detail at the article, including some possible concerns arising from too much parasitizing of approaches between the competitive browsers. While there is no projected date for when JaegerMonkey could be included in a generally available build, the developers look to be doing the key integration work necessary for that this week.

Share

Previously:

• March 9, 2010 -- Mozilla Delivers Plugin Crash Proofing
• March 4, 2010 -- Firefox Personas May Add Dynamic Update Capability
• February 21, 2010 -- Quick Security Alerts for the Week Ending 2/21/2010
• February 8, 2010 -- Quick Security Alerts for Week Ending 2/7/2010
• January 31, 2010 -- Quick Security Alerts for the Week Ending 1/31/2010

The real comedy of errors, as Masnick explains, is just how badly Network Solutions does at explaining its understanding of the DMCA. I suspect it is their understanding that is flawed rather than their ability to communicate it.

It highlights one of the increasingly nagging problems with copyright in recent years. It takes some serious brain power and legal expertise to correctly parse this mess. To be fair, the notice-takedown procedures under the DMCA are fairly well understood and Network Solutions wouldn’t have had to spend a king’s ransom hiring someone to grok it for them. A prince’s ransom, maybe.

Share

Previously:

• November 15, 2009 -- Microsoft Did Violate GPL (and Comes into Compliance), Potential Impact of Copyright Termination, and More
• March 7, 2010 -- Quick Security Alerts for the Week Ending 3/7/2010
• March 3, 2010 -- Microsoft Releases Open Source Identity Framework
• March 3, 2010 -- MS Security Chief Suggests Computer Security Tax
• February 28, 2010 -- Security Alerts for the Week Ending 2/28/2010

There has been a great deal of discussion about how open systems might fair better in addressing the various technical problems that have plagued digital voting software and hardware. Taking a close look at the actual legal requirements is going to be necessary and that someone is doing so is promising.

I think the selection of MPL makes sense as a starting point. If memory serves, it was intentionally designed to make it suitable for some amount of tailoring. It is also a commercial software friendly license which may provide some traction in addressing some of the issues Trust the Vote raises around copyright assignment where a given project is state funded.

Share

Previously:

• November 1, 2009 -- TCLP 2009-11-01 News
• October 23, 2009 -- First Release of Open Source Voting System, Mozilla’s Social Messaging Aggregator, and More
• March 7, 2010 -- Quick Security Alerts for the Week Ending 3/7/2010
• March 6, 2010 -- OMB Has Evolved into OStatus
• February 25, 2010 -- Wikipedia’s Notability Requirement Fails for FLOSS

I of course like that Johns’ book digs into the cyclical nature of the copyfight as played out since the very first statute passed to grant a monopoly to the earliest printers.  While the medium, digital files, may be radically different from movable type, the rhetoric, sides and issues haven’t really changed.

Johns exposes an aspect I haven’t seen discussed before though.  Specifically that the perpetration of IP Terrorism (a term coined by Jan Wildeboer which I instantly liked) is as as old as any other aspect of the evolution of copyright.  Further the histories he shares give cause for encouragement in the form of past efforts in this vein yielding considerable backlash, usually in the form of legislation but also as considerable damage in public opinion.

Johns doesn’t take this outcome for today’s clash as a foregone conclusion.  He emphasizes core principles of which past copyright expansion has run afoul.  It is unclear if those values are strongly appreciated enough to trigger yet another re-definition of intellectual monopoly.  Past reshaping of intellectual monopoly has typically restored a better balance between rights and public interests.  He poses the question of whether such a change is contours is possible today.  This is a key question we need to consider very seriously to focus our efforts as activists.

I’d add there may be one genuinely new wrinkle to factor into the present equation in the form of laws like the DMCA, DEB and trade agreements like ACTA.  That is the ability for rights holders to effectively grant themselves new rights through essentially private laws built on anti-circumvention measures and now potential obligations placed on ISPs.  I see the potential for a much more severe backlash in the face of these but it still is unclear how to incite such a vital response.

Share

Previously:

• March 6, 2010 -- Massive Copyright Crackdown on the Web
• January 7, 2010 -- France Considers Media Levy for the Internet
• December 15, 2009 -- One Sided Meeting over Piracy Concerns
• November 24, 2009 -- End of Life for the Cell Processor, Debunking the Cat Brain Simulation, and More
• November 16, 2009 -- Vintage Music Piracy Device, The War for the Web, and More

The reasoning given is that many important social services are moving online. I have to quibble, wondering if civil services or public services would have been a better choice of words. However, I really take exception to the very large remit being proposed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Under the auspices of protecting key infrastructure, such as confidence in online credit card transactions, they have laid out five policies areas they want to pursue.

1. Privacy
2. Child protection
3. Cybersecurity
4. Copyright protection
5. Internet governance

OK, to be fair, I picked as an example a case that highlights my real point, that this list is way out of scope with merely addressing infrastructural concerns. I can see how cybersecurity and internet governance are reasonable policy areas into which the NTIA might wade. But all of the rest should not be treated any different online than they are offline.

We have plenty of law enforcement agencies at multiple levels who can and should be addressing all forms of harm to and exploitation of children. Doing so online should merely require appropriate additional investigative resources and perhaps training, not new regulations or legislation. We have a horrible track record with regards to trying to mandate online content filters and rightly so.

Privacy may be long overdue for some legislative action but I am unsure that either policy making or execution should reside with the NTIA. The FTC has already been doing some promising work in this area and incorporating privacy abuses with regards to online commerce would be a more natural fit. Otherwise, proper handling of private data should be everyone’s responsibility–any agency, company or service should have to meet minimal, perhaps legislated, standards and be subject to plain old judicial oversight and action.

I am, of course, most incensed by the inclusion of copyright protection in this list. Cyber exceptionalism in current legislation already has put us in a horrible state where free speech and fair use are routinely trod upon. The tenor of Strickling’s remarks suggests nothing about reform or re-balance, rather trotting out the same tired rhetoric about protecting rights holders that got us here in the first place.

In his submission, Andrew expressed a concern about the lag inherent in legislation when dealing with fast moving technology and innovation. I think such caution is due, that the least amount of regulation should be pursued if at all. If the goal at its heart is really ensuring decent access to public services, a goal with which I can agree, then this laundry list needs to be hacked down considerably and focused solely on the issues surrounding such access. Anything else opens up the legislative process to further capture by moneyed interests, not better serving the public interest which is what is nominally being served by this discussion.

Share

Previously:

• January 25, 2010 -- Congressional Consensus May Literally Avalanche
• January 7, 2010 -- Clueful Op-Ed on the Current Challenges to Municipal Broadband
• December 14, 2009 -- Another Historical Reflection on Current Technology Policy Debate
• December 6, 2009 -- TCLP 2009-12-06 News