March 26th 2008
The cable company Comcast is experimenting with a new cable set-top box that uses a camera and recognition techniques to see who is in the room, bring up their “viewer profile,” and tailor ads to them. Although Winston Smith would shudder, the Department of Homeland Security is probably giddy with excitement. Gerard Kunkel, Senior VP […]
March 25th 2008
Over the last few months I’ve written about the scale of China’s Golden Shield, also known as the Great Firewall of China. I’ve also posted a link to a site for testing which sites are blocked from several large cities in China. As the web is increasingly used to organize protests, Chinese censorship in advance of […]
March 23rd 2008
At this year’s SXSW Music and Media Conference in Austin, an idea was floated that was supposed to “monetize anarchy” found in the music industry vis-à-vis illegal copying. The idea: a five dollar monthly surcharge on broadband internet service as a royalty for downloading music illegally. This is also known as a “utility model.” But […]
March 22nd 2008
Penn Jillette is the taller, louder half of the magic and comedy act Penn and Teller. He is also a research fellow at the Cato Institute and has lectured at Oxford and MIT. Somewhere along the path of being a magician, writer of best-selling books, and producer of a film about a single dirty joke, he developed […]
March 18th 2008
You rate restaurants with online reviews. Same with contractors, professors, even blogs. Now a new web services allows the public to rate and comment on the work of uniformed law enforcement officers. Some sites already provide aggregate data for neighborhoods, but let’s face it, sometimes you may want to discuss the work of a particular officer. […]
March 17th 2008
Where have all the protests gone? Many of the most interesting and successful are making creative use of new online environments. And they’re winning concessions from the powers that be.
March 16th 2008
Large scale spammer Robert Soloway, age 28, whose criminal trial was scheduled to start in a week, is facing a possible 26-year jail sentence after pleading guilty in Seattle on Friday to charges of fraud and tax evasion. Soloway is set to be sentenced on June 20, 2008. The indictment included an array of charges:
March 13th 2008
Maine Senator Olympia Snowe (R) introduced a bill (S. 2661) on February 25, 2008, known as the “Anti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act of 2008” (APCPA). The proposed legislation seeks to fight trademark infringement and phishing schemes. However, some believe the proposal goes too far. Complaints include: Creating unnecessary bureaucracy Presuming guilt and therefore denying the fundamental […]
March 10th 2008
As public entities, government agencies can not claim copyright on their works. But don’t tell that to Meredith Pikser, an attorney with international law firm Reed Smith LLP. Last week she filed a DMCA Take Down Notice against YouTube, asserting that she represented the Air Force, which owned copyright on its latest recruiting video. Turns out this […]
March 8th 2008
The ill-conceived and draconian PRO-IP Act got some of its feathers clipped by the elimination of a requirement known as Section 104 of the proposed bill to treat compilations of music as a separate violations. Had this been allowed to stand, the fines would have been multiplied many times, because they’d be determined based upon […]
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