Archive for the ‘Technological Protection Measures’ Category

George Hotz Shouldn’t, Probably Won’t Patent iPhone Hack

Saturday, August 25th, 2007

On George Hotz's blog, many commenters are urging him to patent his iPhone hack. This just misses the point. Hotz is sad that, when he starts at RIT this fall, folks with more spare time will capitalize on his discovery. But he's not sad that all this hacking will go on ...

FCC Commissioners Admit Broadcast Flag Mistake

Friday, August 10th, 2007

There are often times when I wish I had my trusty digital voice recorder—the one that sent Senator Ted Stevens’ “series of tubes” anti-net neutrality speech into the Internet Meme Hall of Fame. Yesterday afternoon at the annual convention for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the ...

Congress threatens colleges in hear-o-mercial for filtering tech

Thursday, June 7th, 2007

Tina and I are now back from our honeymoon trip to Italy and Greece. And so are the copyright absolutists, who were again rattling their swords at colleges' IT departments this week. On Tuesday, there was yet another congressional hearing filled with cries of rampant infringement via campus networks. These have ...

“Desperate company” makes bizarre DMCA threats

Monday, May 14th, 2007

Using a very creative interpretation of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Media Rights Technologies (MRT) has issued a cease-and-decist notice to Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and RealNetworks. Their alleged violation of the law? Failing to use MRT's digital rights management technology as a means of retarding copyright infringement. (Note that each ...

Congress flunks P2P test

Friday, March 30th, 2007

As commentator Roy Mark argues, Congress is totally clueless in its attempts to deal with internet-based infringement. Mark notes the quixotically conceived attempts to bribe and/or threaten colleges into magically preventing all on-campus infringement. Representatives such as Howard Berman (D-CA) are foolishly listening to copyright industry lobbyists as they blame colleges ...

DMCA author admits law’s failure

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

At a conference over the weekend, former Clinton Administration IP chief Bruce Lehman admitted that his brainchild of a law banning the circumvention of digital rights management technologies hasn't worked out as well as he had hoped. The conference, Musical Myopia, Digital Dystopia: New Media and Copyright Reform (pdf), was at ...

Viacom v. YouTube

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

I'm in the middle of a 2-week vacation in Colorado, but I guess I have to say something about Viacom's suit against YouTube--or, at least, I have to link to some people who say something. At News.com, Declan McCullagh says the case depends on how you view 17 USC § 512, ...

Debating the DMCA reform bill

Thursday, March 1st, 2007

Representatives Rick Boucher (D-VA) and John Doolittle (R-CA) have introduced a bill that would scale back the effect of the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA and limit the liability of technological innovators, sparking debate among all stakeholders. The Freedom And Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship Act of 2007, or FAIR USE Act ...

BitTorrent now selling content

Monday, February 26th, 2007

BitTorrent, long decried by studios as the source of all evil, has become the next great hope for turning online freeloaders into paying internet customers. Customers can rent Analyze That and other, um, hit movies for just $2.99 to $3.99 for one day. They can also buy single episodes of TV ...

HD-DVD “backup” software released

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

Recently, a hacker discovered and publicized a key that unlocks both HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs. Just a few days later, SlySoft has released a beta version of its AnyDVD software that can rip HD-DVDs. Since 2000, you've been legally forbidden from hacking the encryption on your DVDs. For about as ...