Archives for December 2006
HD-DVD Copy Protection Cracked
Someone has figured out how to bypass the AACS copy protection scheme on the new HD-DVD format. HD-DVD players have been on the market since March, so this encryption scheme survived for approximately 8 months. The only thing that’s surprising about this is that it took so long.
I believe that in theory, the HD-DVD format allows the cartel that controls the format to blacklist compromised devices so that they won’t be able to play future releases. The story I linked to above doesn’t mention if this is likely to occur in this case.
AT&T Agrees to Neutrality Regulations (Temporarily)
It seems that AT&T has made a 2-year network neutrality promise in order to get its merger with Bell South approved. The Los Angeles Times approves:
In order to win approval from the Federal Communications Commission for its $84.5-billion buyout of BellSouth, the reconstituted Ma Bell agreed Thursday to not offer for two years “any service that privileges, degrades or prioritizes” any data transmitted over its broadband network. In other words, AT&T guaranteed what has come to be known as “Net neutrality”–giving websites and services equal access to Internet users. The only exceptions are for AT&T’s new TV service and the managed networks it sells to businesses.
Net neutrality became an issue last year after AT&T and BellSouth executives talked about making online companies cover more of the cost of broadband networks. In particular, they raised the prospect of charging high-traffic companies such as Google an extra fee to improve the picture quality of online movies and TV shows. Such charges could help established companies fend off upstarts by erecting a cost barrier to entry, suffocating the next YouTubes and Flickrs in their cribs.
I’m not thrilled about this, but it could have the silver lining. Frankly, AT&T is already so much a creature of the state that I’m not sure I care very much if they’re under the thumb of the FCC for a couple more years. I’m far more worried about regulations being applied to smaller firms and new entrants that might not have as much clout with the FCC. If this deal helps to take the wind out of the sails of the activists who want to regulate the entire Internet, that could be a blessing.
Trade Secrets Trump Election Transparency
I don’t know about the legal merits, but as a policy matter, this seems like a terrible decision:
A judge ruled Friday that congressional aspirant Christine Jennings has no right to examine the programming source code that runs the electronic voting machines at the center of a disputed Southwest Florida congressional race.
Circuit Judge William Gary ruled that Jennings’ arguments about the possibility of lost votes were “conjecture,” and didn’t warrant overriding the trade secrets of the voting machine company.
Democrats in Congress meanwhile, said they’d allow Republican Vern Buchanan to take the seat next Thursday, but with a warning that the inquiry wasn’t over and that his hold on it could be temporary.
The state has certified Buchanan the winner of the District 13 race by a scant 369 votes.
The ruling Friday from Judge Gary prevents for now the Jennings camp from being able to use the programming code to try to show voting machines used in Sarasota County malfunctioned. Jennings claims that an unusually large number of undervotes _ ballots that didn’t show a vote _ recorded in the race implies the machines lost the votes.
The source code to a voting machine in a DRE election is analogous to the voting procedures manual in a traditional paper election. It would clearly be absurd to run an election in which votes were counted in secret and no one was allowed to know what rules were used to determine the winner. Transparency demands that anyone be permitted to inspect the voting procedures to make sure they are fair and accurate.
Precisely the same principle applies here. The source code is the vote-counting procedure. It’s absurd to ask Jennings to prove there was a problem with the voting process before she can be given access to the details of how the election was conducted. Obviously her allegations of miscounting are only “conjecture” at this point, because she hasn’t been given the opportunity to examine the process by which the votes were counted.
Shallow Commercialism in Action
Related to the previous post on online communities’ supposed narcissism, a reader emailed me the following:
What’s particularly delicious is that just before I read this post I was browsing Penny Arcade, which seems like exactly the kind of shallow commercial endeavor Siva is decrying–it’s a webcomic about video games, after all. And what do I see on PA’s front page but this, by the comic’s writer:
“As of today, Friday, December the 29th, your efforts with Child’s Play have amassed $963,160(!!!). This is by no means the final figure, nor is it the final post on the subject - there is still a tremendous amount of tabulation to occur, new checks, community initiatives, last minute rushes, and perhaps even New Year’s Epiphanies. I have faith that we will reach a million straight up in donations, and if we do not, I am steeling myself to make a financially debilitating charitable contribution.”
It’s not a cure for AIDS, but that’s still a cool million to make life better for hospitalized children. Communities linked by shared interests, even ones that seem shallow, are wonderful things.
Civic republicanism can be an attractive vision, but not when it turns into elitist hectoring.
Indeed.
Vaidhyanathan Hates “You”
Siva Vaidhyanathan has a puzzling article up at MSNBC complaining about–well, I’m not actually sure what he’s complaining about:
Google, for instance, only makes money because it harvests, copies, aggregates, and ranks billions of Web contributions by millions of authors who unknowingly grant Google the right to capitalize, or “free ride,” on their work. Who are you to Google? To Amazon? Do “you” really deserve an award for allowing yourself to be rendered so flatly and cravenly? Do you deserve an award because media mogul Rupert Murdoch can make money capturing your creativity via his new toy, MySpace?
The important movement online is not about “you.” It’s about “us.” It’s about our profound need to connect and share. It’s about our remarkable ability to create among circles– each person contributing a little bit to a poem, a song, a quilt, or a conversation.
So it’s not about your reviews on Amazon. It’s about how we as a community of Web users choose to exercise our collective wills and forge collective consciousnesses. So far, we have declined to do so. We have not harnessed this communicative power to force the rich and powerful to stop polluting our air and water or to stop the spread of AIDS or malaria. We have not brought down any tyrants. We have simply let a handful of new corporations aggregate and exercise their own will on us. And we have perfected online dating.
He seems to be drawing a distinction between “good” social production, which apparently has the power to cure aids and bring down dictators, and “bad” social production, which merely gives people better ways to communicate, and allows companies like Google and MySpace to profit in the process. But neither side of this dichotomy makes a lot of sense.
NSFW Tag
PJ Doland, TLF’s webmaster and occasional contributor, has come up with what strikes me as a really clever idea:
Almost two years ago, in an attempt to combat the rising problem of comment spam, Google unveiled a new HTML attribute:
rel=”nofollow”
By including that attribute in hyperlinks, website administrators direct search engines not to give any credit to the linked content. The attribute is generally applied by most blog software to comment and trackback content before it is posted. This obviously minimizes the incentive for comment spamming as a means of improving a site’s PageRank status.
In the same spirit, I am now proposing a new attribute:
rel=”nsfw”
NSFW is an abbreviation often used to indicate that content is “not safe for work.” This new attribute should be applied to tags to indicate that the content is potentially “not safe for work.”
Sounds like a great idea to me. Read the whole thing for details on how it would work and why people would want to use it. There’s also some good discussion of the idea going on over at Digg.
What Was the Biggest Tech Policy Story of 2006?
There are all sorts of year-end / best-of / Top 10 lists being put together right now, but I haven’t seen anyone offer up a “Most Important Tech Policy Developments of 2006″ list. Geez, isn’t everyone else on the planet as interested in this nerdy stuff as we are?!
Anyway, I’d don’t have a top ten list, but I do have a nomination for the story that I think belongs on the top of such a list. I think the biggest tech policy story of 2006 was the heated political battle over Net Neutrality regulation and the fact that Congress did NOT pass legislation mandating it. It was a hell of a battle, pitting titans of industry against each other. And in intellectual circles it had policy wonks foaming at the mouth. (You can find all our rumblings on the topic here).
I don’t think this debate is over, but I’m not sure it will ever be as heated of an affair as it was this year. I also doubt that Net Neutrality mandates have nearly as good of a chance of passing through Congress this coming session since it is less likely there will be a major communications reform bill to attach it to. And there’s no way Net Neutrality regulation will pass as a stand-alone measure. There’s just too much opposition to it. It would have to be passed as part of some grand communications law reform compromise measure.
Anyway, I’d be interested in hearing what others think was the biggest tech policy story of 2006, or at least belongs on the Top 10 list.
Graham on the Gap Between Rich and Poor
I’ve linked to several Paul Graham essays in the past. His new article on inequality isn’t especially technology related, but it’s extremely good, so I’m going to quote it anyway:
Because of the circumstances in which they encounter it, children tend to misunderstand wealth. They confuse it with money. They think that there is a fixed amount of it. And they think of it as something that’s distributed by authorities (and so should be distributed equally), rather than something that has to be created (and might be created unequally).
In fact, wealth is not money. Money is just a convenient way of trading one form of wealth for another. Wealth is the underlying stuff–the goods and services we buy. When you travel to a rich or poor country, you don’t have to look at people’s bank accounts to tell which kind you’re in. You can see wealth–in buildings and streets, in the clothes and the health of the people.
Where does wealth come from? People make it. This was easier to grasp when most people lived on farms, and made many of the things they wanted with their own hands. Then you could see in the house, the herds, and the granary the wealth that each family created. It was obvious then too that the wealth of the world was not a fixed quantity that had to be shared out, like slices of a pie. If you wanted more wealth, you could make it.
I think this intuition that wealth comes from a fixed pool is at the root of most concerns with inequality. When people see a rich guy and a poor guy, they assume that somehow, the rich guy must have somehow (perhaps indirectly) taken the money from the poor guy. But if wealth is really created by individual initiative, it becomes hard to see why inequality, per se, should be a source of concern.
Graham makes many more good points, so I encourage you to read the whole thing.
More on Virtual Reality & Property Rights
In a few of my previous essays, I’ve been wondering about the future of virtual reality worlds and specifically how property rights might get defined within those worlds. Alan Sipress of the Washington Post penned an excellent story yesterday on this subject which I thought I’d bring to your attention. In his lengthy front-page story, “Where Real Money Meets Virtual Reality, The Jury Is Still Out,” Sipress notes that:
“As virtual worlds proliferate across the Web, software designers and lawyers are straining to define property rights in this emerging digital realm. The debate over these rights extends far beyond the early computer games that pioneered virtual reality into the new frontiers of commerce. … U.S. courts have heard several cases involving virtual-world property rights but have yet to set a clear precedent clarifying whether people own the electronic goods they make, buy or accumulate in Second Life and other online landscapes. …
The debate is assuming greater urgency as commerce gains pace in virtual reality. In Second Life, where nearly 2 million people have signed up to create their own characters and socialize with other digital beings, the virtual economy is booming, with total transactions in November reaching the equivalent of $20 million. Second Life’s creator, Linden Lab, allows members to exchange the electronic currency they accumulate online with real U.S. dollars. Last month, people converted about $3 million at the Lindex currency market.”
Flattery Will Get You Anything (Or at Least a Link)
Neat! Dennis Kennedy has named TLF a runner-up for the title of “Best Overall Law-Related Blog.” We’re in good company, with Rob Hyndman’s excellent blog as co-runner-up. We lost out to The Trademark Blog, a blog I haven’t read before, but it looks excellent.
A Stunt without a Point?
Via Lippard, Bruce Schneier points out this video of people having fun with the Virginia DMV:
Blog
Sage advice from Brooke.
I’m not going to name names, but I find it particularly disturbing when people who work in tech policy refer to individual blog posts as “blogs.” The blog is the medium, not the message; calling a post a “blog” is the equivalent of calling an article in the Washington Post a newspaper, as in, “Hey, did you read that newspaper in the Washington Post this morning about new FDA regulations on over-the-counter pain relievers? Boy, that Matthew Perrone sure can write a newspaper!”
I’m glad she wrote that blog to make sure no one was confused.
Samba, Patents, and Interoperability
Related to my previous post, I think it’s no coincidence that the Samba team has taken the lead in criticizing the Microsoft-Novell deal. Some commentators have argued that the free software movement objects to the deal because they want to prevent interoperability between free and proprietary software, thereby forcing vendors to choose sides. But that clearly can’t be right, because Samba’s raison d’être is (as their slogan says) “opening Windows to a wider world.” If the free software movement were trying to prevent compatibility with proprietary software, you would expect the Samba team to be on the other side, urging restraint and cooperation with Microsoft. That clearly hasn’t happened.
I suspect that what is happening is that the Samba guys are terrified that Microsoft will use patent law to put them out of business. They’re particularly vulnerable to patent claims because their software is designed to interoperate with Windows, which of necessity means that they have to mimic many features of Microsoft’s own software in order to achieve compatibility.
Naturally, Microsoft has never liked the fact that people could interoperate with Windows without paying Microsoft for the privilege. The Samba guys know this. So they expect they’d be among the first targets should Microsoft make a concerted effort to use the patent system against the free software movement.
Update: My software patent series will be taking the week off in observance of the holidays.
Allison Shrugs
Another bit of fallout from Novell’s patent agreement with Microsoft, as Samba developer Jeremy Allison quits Novell. He was quickly snapped up by Google. I’ve never heard of the guy, but Ars calls him “prominent,” and Groklaw calls him “legendary.” His letter said, in part:
As many of you will guess, this is due to the Microsoft/Novell patent agreement, which I believe is a mistake and will be damaging to Novell’s success in the future. But my main issue with this deal is I believe that even if it does not violate the letter of the licence it violates the intent of the GPL licence the Samba code is released under, which is to treat all recipients of the code equally…
The Microsoft patent agreement has put us outside the community, and there is no positive aspect to that fact, and no way to make it so. Until the patent provision is revoked, we are pariahs.
Given that the ability to recruit and retain talent is crucial to the success of software firms, this sort of defection is likely to prove an effective way to enforce the GPL without the need to resort to the courts. Indeed, it’s a more powerful mechanism than the courts, because efforts like Novell’s to squeak by on a technicality aren’t going to fly. Being perceived as violating the spirit of the GPL is just as damaging as violating the letter of it.
YouTube - A Viable End Run of FCC Indecency Rules?
I’d like to call out an interesting development from the past week that is a great example of how the Internet can do an end run around traditional regulation–in this case, federal broadcast indecency rules.
As described very well in this NY Times article in yesterday’s Arts section, Saturday Night Live had a decently funny skit (my friends have thought it to be either hilarious or plain stupid) involving a parody of two boy band singers, one played by Justin Timberlake. The skit was called “Special Treat in a Box” and involved a song about giving a holiday present to their girlfriends–their male anatomy, wrapped up in a box.
Over the air, NBC had to bleep out the 16 references to the anatomy (think other name for Richard)–but, SNL simultaneously released an uncensored version that made its way to YouTube. Over 2 million people had viewed it on YouTube alone, according to the article.
Lorne Michaels, SNL’s producer, predicted that other shows might more actively offer material online that isn’t suitable for prime-time broadcast. But in a telling state of the regulatory climate, and its chilling effect on the distribution of content (the easily offended think this is a good thing), according to the article:
[Michaels] cautioned in an interview that the strategy of treating Internet users to the equivalent of an authorized “director’s cut” of his late-night show “will be the exception” going forward.
Don’t want to piss off anyone with power in Washington, DC, or else Internet content could one day receive a not-so-special regulatory treat from the FCC.
-
Welcome.
Search
Categories
- Biotech
- Broadband and Neutrality Regulation
- Competition Policy
- Copyright
- DMCA, DRM, and Piracy
- E-commerce taxation & regulation
- E-Government & Transparency
- First Amendment / free speech
- Inside the Beltway (Politics)
- Internet Governance
- Media Regulation
- Miscellaneous
- Open Source, Open Standards, and Peer Production
- Patents
- Podcast
- Privacy and Government Surveillance
- Sin on the 'Net
- Space
- Tech Pork
- Technology, Business, and Cool Toys
- Telecom and Cable Regulation
- Things that go 'Bump' in the 'Net
- Uncategorized
- What We're Reading
- Wireless and Spectrum Policy
Contributors
Tech Policy
Tech News
Bloggers We Like
Our Sites
Where We Work
-
Sponsors
