Category: Things that matter

“Intellectual property”‘s worst excesses

(via BoingBoing)

Mother Jones, a left-wing magazine, has published a Harpers-Index-style guide to copyright’s worst excesses; it’s notable that this week both they and their ideological opponents at the libertarian Cato Institute have both published material supporting the copyfight. It’s truly a nonpartisan fight:

  • A DAY AFTER Senator Orrin Hatch said “destroying their machines” might be the only way to stop illegal downloaders, unlicensed software was discovered on his website.
  • BILL GATES had the 11-million-image Bettmann Archive buried 220 feet underground. Archivists can access only the 2% that was first digitized.
  • AMONG THE 16,000 people thus far sued for sharing music files was a 65-year-old woman who, though she didn’t own downloading software, was accused of sharing 2,000 songs, including Trick Daddy’s “I’m a Thug.” She was sued for up to $150,000 per song.
  • MICROSOFT UK held a contest for the best film on “intellectual property theft”; finalists had to sign away “all intellectual property rights” on “terms acceptable to Microsoft.”

By the way, I ripped this entirely from BoingBoing. None of that is my writing. I don’t want anyone to think I’m pretending this is my work. But I couldn’t do a better job writing it up. I’ll get back up to serious posting in the next couple of days. I’ve been too busy to keep up to date the past couple of days.

[tags]IP, Intellectual Property[/tags]

Can facts be patented?

(via The Consumerist)
I did not know this.  Apparently Metabolite has a patent on the fact “The level of an amino acid called homocysteine is measured in a patient’s blood or urine and, if elevated, it can be correlated with a deficiency of folic acid, or B12.”  And there is a lawsuit against the company Laboratory Testing Company for violating this patent.  Also, supposedly I’ve broken the law by quoting that fact.
The Supreme Court has to decide the following question:

if a doctor looks at a patient’s test results and even thinks that sentence, has he broken the law?

I don’t have much faith in our courts to make a good decision here, but we’ll see.

[tags]Patents, Metabolite[/tags]

Judge makes nonsense decision, supreme court won’t reconsider

(via BoingBoing)

The obscenity section of the Communications Decency Act (hereafter CDA) bans publishing “obscene” material on the net. Unfortunately, according to this wonderfully moronic act, “obscene” is determined by “local standards” in the courts. That means someone hosting porn in California can be sued by someone living in Puritinicaville, FL (actual name – Ave Maria, FL) for hosting obscene material. For those that haven’t heard of this Internet thing, it turns out it is world wide. But any potentially obscene material hosted online and originating in the US now gets judged by the most conservative , puritanical communities rather than by the site of origin or at a nationally set guidance level. Any material online is obscene if any community declares it obscene.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court has declined to overturn this decision by lower courts. The site where I first saw this story, BoingBoing, has links to a social network style site named SuicideGirls (not safe for work). Under the CDA, a lot of what shows up on SuicideGirls would be considered obscene to some people. Now, thanks to the CDA and the Supreme Court’s unwillingness to overturn the lower courts’ decisions, a site like SuicideGirls could go off the air so to speak. Or at least outside the country.

I’m not suggesting that anyone, anywhere on the Internet should be able to post anything they want. But restricting all content to the most prudish members of our society might be worse than letting the most depraved determine what is acceptable. If we as a nation are going to put limits on Internet content, it needs to be restricted according to some defined national levels. As bad as our government is about determining things like this, I still think those at the federal level could do a better job setting a baseline standard than we will do letting any community decide.

Of course, better yet is getting rid of the CDA, but that’s not likely to happen in the heavily conservative court we now have.

[tags]CDA, Communications Decency Act[/tags]

Further proof that next-gen optical formats are horrid

(via CDFreaks)

In case you had any thoughts about buying a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player as soon as the first such devices hit the street, please reconsider.  The first generation of these new hi-definition formats will not be fully functional:

As HD-DVD and Blu-ray are getting ready for their launch under the interim license agreement for AACS copy protection, all the first round of players launched under this agreement will not offer any managed copy support, regardless of what interfaces the player may have and no firmware updates will be made available to offer such support either.  Basically, all players released under the interim license will function as basic players.

“But Randy,” you may say, “I don’t plan on copying next-gen optical media.  Why would I care if managed copy support is not available?”

Well, for one, leaving out this feature means the devices are not specification-level complete.  I personally have no use for hardware that is released before a spec is complete and functionally buildable.  Furthermore, once the spec is finalized, these first-gen devices won’t be upgradeable.  If anything changes in the spec that requires certain managed copy support features to be present, you’ll have a high-end paperweight which will be unable to play the media it was purchased to play.

In the finalised AACS specification, a minimum level of managed copy support will be mandatory.  Despite early concerns about Blu-ray’s additional copy protection layers – BD Plus and ROM Mark, these should not directly affect the format’s ability to handle managed copy.  Users who are interested in equipment supporting managed copy are advised to wait until the time comes when the AACS spec is finalised and players start supporting this.

Sure, I’m probably over-reacting.  But media companies don’t care about consumers.  If there was concern for consumers, the Sony rootkit fiasco never would have happened.  Don’t let these companies sell you something that isn’t complete.  Don’t give your money up for equipment based on unfinished specifications unless the hardware you buy is guaranteed upgradeable to final specifications.  Don’t let the companies get away with screwing early adopters just to get hardware out by an announced deadline.  Demand finished products, especially when the device is supposedly better than what you have now.  Wait for final specifications before you put down your money.

[tags]HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, consumer abuse[/tags]

Newly announced Internet Explorer vulnerability

(via Computer World)

This appears to be very new, and hasn’t spread very far yet on the web.  There is a just announced security vulnerability in IE 6.0 that allows an attacker to run an HTML application without requesting user permission.  The Dutch Web developer who discovered the problem contacted Microsoft first, at least, so hopefully there aren’t many attacks out there yet.  On the other hand, who knows how long the attackers have known about this?  It wouldn’t be the first time an attack is discovered and announced only for us to find out that the underground was already passing around info and code about/for the vulnerability.

Last week I found a (to my knowledge) new vulnerability in the Internet Explorer 6.0 browser.

With this vulnerability it is possible to run an hta-file without the users permission.

[tags]Microsoft, Internet Explorer, web security[/tags]

Another fact to make you dislike DRM

(via The Consumerist)

DRM is bad for consumers.  Don’t believe the companies cramming this garbage down our throats.  DRM restricts your rights, and prevents you from doing things you are legally allowed to do, like rip your CDs to MP3 format to put on your ipod/Zen/whatever player.

Now, unsurprisingly, we find through testing that DRM reduces your portable music device’s battery life as well.

Those who belong to subscription services such as Napster or Rhapsody have it worse. Music rented from these services arrive in the WMA DRM 10 format, and it takes extra processing power to ensure that the licenses making the tracks work are still valid and match up to the device itself. Heavy DRM not only slows down an MP3 player but also sucks the very life out of them. Take, for instance, the critically acclaimed Creative Zen Vision:M, with a rated battery life of up to 14 hours for audio and 4 hours for video. CNET tested it at nearly 16 hours, with MP3s–impressive indeed. Upon playing back only WMA subscription tracks, the Vision:M scored at just more than 12 hours. That’s a loss of almost 4 hours, and you haven’t even turned the backlight on yet.

We found similar discrepancies with other PlaysForSure players. The Archos Gmini 402 Camcorder maxed out at 11 hours, but with DRM tracks, it played for less than 9 hours. The iRiver U10, with an astounding life of about 32 hours, came in at about 27 hours playing subscription tracks. Even the iPod, playing back only FairPlay AAC tracks, underperformed MP3s by about 8 percent. What I’m saying is that while battery life may not be a critical issue today, as it was when one of the original hard drive players–the Creative Nomad Jukebox–lasted a pathetic 4 hours running on four AA nickel-metal-hydride rechargeables (and much worse on alkalines), the industry needs to include battery specs for DRM audio tracks or the tracks we’re buying or subscribing. Yet, here’s another reason why we should still be ripping our music in MP3: better battery life, the most obvious reason being universal device compatibility.

The article continues by pointing out that Sony, of all companies, actually points out the conditions under which their player gets the advertised battery life and how playing under non-ideal conditions can impact that.

[tags]DRM, mp3, battery life[/tags]

How to make your own boarding pass

(via Schneier on Security)

Make your own boarding pass, and fly when you want.  It even works if you are on the no-fly list. The author doubts this can be used to actually get on a flight, but Bruce Schneier has written about this before, and it seems at the very least, you can trade tickets with someone.  So you can probably work your way on to a flight without even being actually booked for the flight.  Just something to think about next time you have any delusions about the effectiveness of so-called airport security systems.

[tags]Fake boarding pass, airport security[/tags]

Thoughtful write-up concerning airport security failure

Here’s a good article by Bruce Schneier concerning how bad airport security is.  In particular, good security systems fail gracefully.  Airport security fails catastrophically.  What does this mean?  Well, when airport security fails, entire terminals have to be evacuated and re-screened.  I’m not saying I have a better solution, but it’s clear that this isn’t a good failure method.

Security systems can fail in two ways. They can fail to defend against an attack. And they can fail when there is no attack to defend. The latter failure is often more important, because false alarms are more common than real attacks.

Aside from the obvious security failure — how did this person manage to disappear into the crowd, anyway — it’s painfully obvious that the overall security system did not fail well. Well-designed security systems fail gracefully, without affecting the entire airport terminal. That the only thing the TSA could do after the failure was evacuate the entire terminal and rescreen everyone is a testament to how badly designed the security system is.

[tags]Schneier, security, airport security[/tags]

Unenforceable “Child Internet Safety” bill proposed – likely to go nowhere

(via BoingBoing)

Here’s what happens when people who don’t understand the Internet write laws pertaining to the Internet.

Senators Mark Pryor (D-AR), and Max Baucus, (D-MT) have proposed a bill that would require all commercial websites with material “harmful to minors” (in other words, sexually explicit content) to move to a .xxx domain within 6 months of this bill becoming law — or face civil penalties. Under the terms of the proposed law, the US Commerce Department secretary would be required to develop a domain name for adult sites (presumably .xxx) with ICANN.

For starters, the bill is very vague on what would fall under the “harmful to minors” category. The site from which I pulled this story, BoingBoing, gets censored by some Internet filtering software. Would the fact that BoingBoing has a link to Suicide Girls (a guaranteed not-safe-for-work site) cause BoingBoing to get moved to this adult sites domain? Who decides what is “harmful to minors” anyway?  BoingBoing is damn useful to me as a techie news site (among the other things posted there).  But sometimes, things intended for adults get posted there, as well.  So that means the site should be moved to a domain that I would almost assuredly be unavailable to me any place that has filtering?  Great.
And if that doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, then consider how many sites on the Internet are not in the US. This law would have no impact on those sites at all. How would whatever agency has to enforce this piece of garbage make http://www.ILikeSmallFurryRodents.com/ move to this new domain, when ILSFR.com is based in Lithuania?

Going beyond those problems, what about the whole idea of free speech in the US, anyway?  This bill isn’t targetting just things like kiddie-porn.  This bill would even hit legal stuff, that currently is protected as free speech.  You may not like it, but that doesn’t make it illegal.

As suggested by others who have read about this bill, why not make a domain that is specifically built for hosting child-friendly sites?  Even make an agency which is responsible for reviewing sites before granting approval.  Then, instead of forcing so many sites to move because someone, somewhere might feel something posted on those sites could potentially be harmful to minors, just give the option to kid-friendly sites to move to this new domain.  When parents want to let their kids on to the Internet, give them a specialized browser that can only access the kid-friendly domain.

Blocking adult content by segregating it to a specific domain is a certain setup for failure.  Every time someone posts a new site, they can put whatever they want.  To keep this bad law functioning, every day new sites would have to be monitored and squirreled off to the adults only domain.  And it still wouldn’t touch sites hosted outside the US.  By giving an option to host kid-friendly content on a different domain, it makes verifying appropriateness easier and makes building the whole kid-friendly ‘net better.  But law-makers don’t seem capable of much logical thought, so something smart like this is unlikely to happen.

House passes bill to annul states’ laws on food warnings

(via The Consumerist)

Well, it seems the federal government doesn’t want the states requiring companies to let you know what’s in the products you buy.

WASHINGTON – Legislation that could void hundreds of food-safety warnings in California and other states passed the House yesterday after heated debate.

The National Uniformity for Food Act, long sought by the food industry, would prohibit states from having food-contamination standards and warning labels that are stricter than federal requirements. Exemptions could be granted if the Food and Drug Administration determines they are needed and they “would not unduly burden interstate commerce.”

California, with its toughest-in-the-nation food-safety requirements, is a primary target of the legislation. Proposition 65, approved 20 years ago, requires warnings about chemicals that cause “cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.” California also has filed lawsuits seeking an array of warnings, including on the mercury content of canned tuna and the presence of lead in Mexican candy.

Read the full article for more details.  It is much longer than what I’ve highlighted.  Another snip that’s interesting:

Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Atherton, noted the bill’s supporters have personal ties to food-industry lobbyists.

“This is not about consumers. This is about special interests,” Eshoo said.

The food industry fought back with letters of its own and ads in publications widely read on Capitol Hill.

Joy Philippi, president of the National Pork Producers Council, said the legislation “will give consumers even more confidence in the safety of the U.S. food supply.”

I don’t think Joy understands what inspires confidence.  The Jungle is a horrid book, but it does highlight the problems with the food industry when not regulated well.  And we’ve seen the federal government indicate a wish to relax food labelling requirements and inspection practices in recent history.  Let’s not allow food manufacturers to provide us less information on what we’re eating.

Notice that this allows the federal government to restrict states that want you, the consumer, to know what you are buying. I thought conservatives were supposed to shrink the government.

[tags]FDA, Food labeling[/tags]