Podcast and blog exploring digital citizenry as a creator and a consumer.
Rashmi at Public Knowledge has some good news. The USTR is seeking comment from copyright, trademark and patent holders. This is a golden opportunity to make a persuasive argument, en masse, for balanced copyright. She has very detailed instructions in the post, including where to make your comments and the specific docket you must reference. The deadline is February 16th. See the ACTA tag on my site or the EFF action alert of ACTA for information to consider when compiling your remarks.
Posted in Hacktivism, News.
– February 8, 2010
Michael Geist shared the link to this story. The works in question are out of print and out of copyright. The e-books are the result of a three year project where the library has been working with Microsoft. As near as I can tell, the books will be specifically formatted for the Kindle. No mention of any other formats. Still, it is a pretty big wind fall for the public domain. I cannot imagine the works would have DRM even if the format is just for the Kindle. We’ll find out for sure this Spring.
Posted in News.
– February 8, 2010
Nate Anderson at Ars shares reporting from the Online Safety and Technology Working Group in DC last week. The agency’s push for greater retention is not new. The current head, Robert Mueller, served in the position previously when he also pushed for longer retention.
This is at odds with ISPs and other service providers trying to shorten their terms to strike a better balance with privacy concerns raised by users and advocacy groups. Nate also explains how the EU is already in the midst of trying to reconcile data retention stipulated by law enforcement acts and the trend to greater privacy otherwise.
– February 8, 2010
Here are the stories I was going to read up on and cover for the news cast that the mid-Atlantic blizzard this past weekend swallowed.
Slashdot had a piece on de-anonymizing social network data. I imagine this is of a piece with research by Ohm and others. Bruce Schneier also had a piece on anonymity that I actually did get a chance to skim. He is responding to the suggestion of mandatory identification in the form of a sort of operator’s license for the internet. This was one of the wrinkle’s of Clinton’s speech in the wake of the China-Google incident a few weeks back and also Mundie at Microsoft calling for an Internet Driver’s License in so many words. Not surprisingly, Schneie does an excellent job of explaining not only why such a scheme would not work but why it is a bad idea at its very core.
The big story last week was the ruling in favor of the Australian ISP, iiNet. Everyone picked this story up and then some. This is of course a critical protection of safe harbors for ISPs. It stands as a key precedent for some and hopefully a strong example for others to continue to alleviate ISPs third party liabilities as long as they adhere to the established bounds of existing safe harbor provisions. It also re-inforces the need to stall or stop ACTA as one of the things it threatens to change are those very safe harbors.
The last story is a physics of computing piece, Ars describes the potential of news research in graphene transistors. 100Ghz? Even if that is still some years away and with any kind of caveat it would be one heck of a speed bump over where silicon has practically maxed out.
That along with the belated link dumps of security alerts and follow ups catches me up on what I missed getting out while power was out. I have a few more stories in my queue to catch me up on today’s blogging. If I go dark again around mid-week, it will be a result of us losing power again. The forecast keeps getting worse but there is a chance the above ground lines around here will gold. We had nasty winds over the weekend that are not going to be a part of the next bit of weather. I may be deluding myself but I also like to think that whatever was going to come down has already hit a line and in the course of restoring power, they hacked away anything merely leaning on the lines.
Wish us luck, we are as prepared as we can be with the roads still a mess. We have food, cooking fuel and heating fuel. I should be back on my regular schedule next week at the latest.
Posted in News.
– February 8, 2010
– February 8, 2010
Posted in Links, News, Security.
– February 8, 2010
In case you weren’t aware, the mid-Atlantic region of the US got hit over the weekend by a terrible blizzard. Here in the DC metro area we received well over two feet of snow. Worse, now the forecast is calling for another ten to twenty inches over the course of tomorrow night and Wednesday morning.
We lost power at the house 3AM Saturday morning and it only just came back, around 4PM Monday afternoon. We did not plan for losing power so it has been a tense few days, to see the least. Understandably, I was unable to do the research and writing for the planned Sunday show, let alone record and release it. With another nasty snow fall pending, I doubt I will get it out even late as the priority around here is getting devices charged and the house re-heated. (We managed to snag a portable heater Sunday after the county dig out our neighborhood but weren’t able to get kerosene for it until today.)
Lest you worry, everyone here is fine though slightly worse for wear. One of the advantages to raising geek kids is they do to read and play table top games when all the electronic devices have spent their charges. We are both excessively proud of how well the kids held up (and how well we were able to keep our own worry under control.) A silver lining of getting caught unprepared for the power loss is we now have sufficient kerosene to last well into the weekend as well as non-perishables and a routine to get through the day.
I had already planned to skip this week’s feature cast to prepare for Farpoint as well as the Sunday news program. I will stick to skipping those though as much as out of concern for the weather as the optimistic hope I’ll still make it to Farpoint this weekend.
Posted in General.
– February 8, 2010
James Boyle tweeted a link to this research.
Data generated from this simulation suggest that the current system combining patent and open source protection for inventions generates significantly lower rates of innovation (p<0.05), productivity (p<0.001), and societal utility (p<0.002) than does a commons system. Further, the empirical data generated using PatentSim suggests that commons systems can generate significantly greater amounts of innovation, productivity, and social utility than currently predominating patent systems that combine both patent and open source protection for inventions.
The research was published in The Columbia Science and Technology Law Review. The study was conducted by Dr. Andrew W. Torrance, Associate Professor at the University of Kansas School of Law and a Research Associate at the Biodiversity Institute at the University of Kansas, and Dr. Bill Tomlinson, Assistant Professor in the Informatics Department of the Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California-Irvine
Essentially, they built side by side simulations of systems utilizing only patents, patents plus open source, and pure commons. They then measured success on a few different dimensions, reaching the conclusions quoted above.
I am kind of curious what a hybrid between patens and commons might yield, assuming that such an incremental stage is even possible. I am just thinking of the huge inertia behind patents and massive amount of lobbying cash invested in maintaining the status quo. I suspect a simulation alone is just a feather blow in trying to change the course of patent reliant industries.
Posted in News.
– February 5, 2010
Ryan Paul has the details at Ars. Nuanti is making a high speed decoder for Ogg Theora video and Ogg Vorbis video. The catch is this is a component for Silverlight, Microsoft’s competitive technology aimed at Flash.
I suppose Ryan is right in his conclusion, this is actually a pretty good thing for Internet Explorer users who are already using Microsoft technologies. My initial revulsion is also abated when I remember that both Firefox and Chrome already sport native support for both codecs.
I guess that also makes sense of his observation that users won’t have to install any additional software or plugins. If you assume Internet Explorer already bundled with Silverlight, then this could indeed be a seamless way to spread the formats. Nuanti is even looking to open the sources for the component.
Posted in News.
– February 5, 2010
Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Law Center expressed surprise at a recently granted patent.
So, when I look closely at these claims, I am appalled to discover this patent claims, as a novel invention, things that I’ve done regularly, with a mix of my brain and a computer, since at least 1999. I quickly came to the conclusion that this is yet another stupid patent granted by the USPTO that it would be better to just ignore.
Bradley works on issues of compliance around the GPL and the software firm, Black Duck, has been developing tools to try to automate aspects of this work, most notably analyzing software to suss out chain of provenance. The utility of these tools is suspect, read Bradley’s remarks on why.
As he explains about the patent itself, out of a stream of ridiculous and mind numbingly stupid patent stories flowing out of the usual tech news outlets, this one really stood out. He expresses some reluctance to contribute to even highlighting this intellectual monopoly idiocy but I think it is worth highlighting.
As Bradley says, compliance with the GPL or other free software or open source licenses, isn’t that hard. Most of what the SFLC does is outreach and education, not litigation. I also get the impression that the software archeology aspects are rarely all that challenging.
My only question is whether Bradley will initiate or support contesting this patent. Sounds to me like he is living prior art.
Posted in General.
– February 5, 2010
Ogg Vorbis is a totally open format.
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