Cory Doctorow relates an odd and disturbing experience while travelling from London to Dallas on American Airlines. Ryan Singel contacts AA and receives this response…. Singel operates a useful blog – secondary screening.
Category: Electronic Rights
Sony admits their attempt to lock us in a box failed: DRM
Sony’s non mp3 support in it’s portable audio devices was a mistake, they now admit. Yuri Kageyama:
Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, said he and other Sony employees had been frustrated for years with management’s reluctance to introduce products like Apple’s iPod, mainly because the Sony had music and movie units that were worried about content rights.
But Sony’s divisions were finally beginning to work together and share a common agenda, Mr Kutaragi said at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Tokyo.
Well, duh. Most of these DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) schemes will fail. Slashdot discussion.
DRM is not binary
Tristan Louis takes a useful look at DRM (digital rights/restrictions management):
What I am trying to highlight is that while proponents and opponents of DRM solutions both see the world in black and white, they may want to start a dialogue and realize that there’s a lot of gray areas out there.
Via Doc Searls.
Investors supporting spyware
Ben Edelman’s page is a great example of the internet’s enormous “power to the people” potential. Edelman lists the firms producing spyware along with their investors. Check it out. Wikipedia:
Strictly defined, spyware consists of computer software that gathers and reports information about a computer user without the user’s knowledge or consent. More broadly, the term spyware can refer to a wide range of related malware products which fall outside the strict definition of spyware. These products perform many different functions, including the delivery of unrequested advertising (pop-up ads in particular), harvesting private information, re-routing page requests to illegally claim commercial site referral fees, and installing stealth phone dialers.
Clusty fat link: spyware.
Our Rights: Television Liberation
EFF:
Today, you can use any device you like with your television: VCR, TiVo, DVD recorder, home theater receiver, or a PC combining these functions and more. A year from now, when the FCC’s broadcast flag mandate [PDF] takes effect, some of those capabilities will be forbidden.
Responding to pressure from Hollywood, the FCC has adopted a rule requiring future digital television (DTV) tuners to include “content protection” (aka DRM) technologies. Starting next year, all makers of HDTV receivers must build their devices to watch for a broadcast “flag” embedded in programs by copyright holders. When it comes to digital recording, it’ll be Hollywood’s DRM way or the highway. Want to burn that recording digitally to a DVD to save hard drive space? Sorry, the DRM lock-box won’t allow it. How about sending it over your home network to another TV? Not unless you rip out your existing network and replace it with DRMd routers. Kind of defeats the purpose of getting a high definition digital signal, doesn’t it?
Read this review of the EyeTV 500 HD (High Definition) TV Tuner/Recorder.
Wisconsin Open Records: Bill Leuders on AG Peg Lautenschlager’s support
Isthmus news editor Bill Leuders writes about Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager’s strong support for our open records rights:
Last spring, the newspaper I work for had a problem obtaining some public records from Madison schools. Officials demanded that we first send a check for $613.08 to cover the costs they expected to incur reviewing the records and deciding what information to black out.
These costs put the records effectively beyond our reach. Worse, I knew from my involvement with the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council that this was part of a much larger problem. Throughout the state, records custodians were seizing on some loose language in a 2002 Supreme Court case to justify charging exorbitant fees designed to thwart records requests.
I asked state Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager for an opinion on this practice. Her office reviewed the matter and in short order issued an unequivocal opinion stating that Open Records Law does not permit such costs. Custodians may charge only for copies and in some cases for the cost of locating records.
It was a major win for the cause of openness in Wisconsin, one of many on which Lautenschlager has played a role. Indeed, in my opinion, no one in Wisconsin has done more to preserve the public’s right to know.
Bill Gates CES Meltdown
It’s interesting to compare this simple legacy media press release framed as an article with a very different perspective [Lessig | Boing Boing] on Gates Las Vegas comments regarding our fair use rights (he essentially sides with the hollywood cartels). Slashdot discussion. Bottom line – don’t do Windows.
A bit more research (a few seconds on google) and we have Bill Gates in 1991:
“If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today”
Thanks to Jeff Keltner for that pointer.
Top Ten Privacy Resolutions for 2005
EPIC just published their top 10 privacy resolutions for 2005. Very worthwhile reading. In a related development, EFF has released TOR, a software tool that bounces internet communications around “onion routers”, which makes it hard for people to track your online activity.
Telecom Advocacy Site: Consumer’s Union
Consumers Union has released a new telecommunications and media online resource: www.hearusnow.org. Check it out. Consumer tips on what to do before you buy, understanding your bills after and making companies listen when you are unhappy (from phone services to copyright rules on digital content).
USPS Kiosk Takes Your Photo
“According to FOIA documents obtained by EPIC new Postal Service self-service postage machines take portrait-style photographs of customers and retain them for 30 days.” IBM is the contractor behind the kiosks. Note that the kiosk is supposed to not complete the transaction if it determines the photograph has been compromised, so simply covering the camera is unlikely to work. As the cost of cameras and digital storage approaches zero, is it inevitable that every machine you interact with will take your photograph and store it? Via Slashdot.