We’ve covered teaching machines and programmed learning textbooks a few times on the blog, and I’ll admit to a general fascination with analogue computing and similar ideas, ever since reading John Crank‘s Mathematics and Industry as a teenager, after finding it in a skip (dumpster) […]
All posts filed under “Digital rights”
Pretty Cuil Privacy
New search engine Cuil has an interesting privacy policy (those links might not work right now due to the load). They’re apparently not going to track individual users’ searches at all, which, in comparison to Google’s behaviour, is quite a difference. As TechCrunch puts it: […]
Biting Apple
Interesting to see the BBC’s summary of the current iPhone update story: “Apple issues an update which damages iPhones that have been hacked by users”. I’m not sure that’s quite how Apple’s PR people would have put it, but it’s interesting to see that whoever […]
The right to click
English Heritage, officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England, and funded by the taxpayer and by visitors to some of its properties, does a great deal of very good work in widening public appreciation of, and engagement with, history and the country’s heritage. […]
Another charging opportunity?
Last month, an Apple patent application was published describing a method of “Protecting electronic devices from extended unauthorized use” – effectively a ‘charging rights management’ system. New Scientist and OhGizmo have stories explaining the system; while the stated intention is to make stolen devices less […]
Digital control round-up
Mac as a giant dongle At Coding Horror, Jeff Atwood makes an interesting point about Apple’s lock-in business model: It’s almost first party only– about as close as you can get to a console platform and still call yourself a computer… when you buy a […]
Code as control
In the earlier days of this blog, many of the posts were about code, in the Lawrence Lessig sense: the idea that the structure of software and the internet and the rules designed into these systems don’t just parallel the law (in a legal sense) […]
The Hacker’s Amendment
Congress shall pass no law limiting the rights of persons to manipulate, operate, or otherwise utilize as they see fit any of their possessions or effects, nor the sale or trade of tools to be used for such purposes. From Artraze commenting on this Slashdot […]
Freudian slip in BBC iTunes story
From this BBC story, as of 6.43 pm. P.S. I love the way it’s claimed “everyone will benefit” from the royalty rise. As a consumer, I can’t wait to be paying more! Perhaps a price increase will help limit the consumption of this precious rivalrous […]
BBC: Bram Cohen on network neutrality
This BBC Newsnight story, by Adam Livingstone, about the possibilities of a two-tier internet – ‘BitTorrent: Shedding no tiers’ – has an interesting fictional ‘architectures of control’ example to illustrate the possibilities of price discrimination in networks (see also Control & Networks): “So there’s me […]
ZDNet: DRM train wrecks
ZDNet’s David Berlind has started to compile a Del.icio.us list of examples of ‘DRM train wrecks’, i.e. situations where the use of DRM has a distasteful corollary for consumers unaware of what they’re getting themselves into. “Most people don’t realize how much they’re giving up […]
‘Labels on digital content should spell out how easy it is to move from gadget to gadget’
A warning label mockup* The BBC is reporting that the All Party Internet Group (APIG), a cross-party group of MPs, has made some intelligent – and interesting – recommendations about explaining DRM more fully to consumers: “The MPs’ report made several recommendations and called on […]