In a piece examining GPL v.3 and Linus Torvalds’ recent comments (‘If Linus snubs new GPL, is that it for ‘open source’?’), Andrew Orlowski discusses an idea put to him by a “GPL 3.0 advocate”:
Anti-teenager sound weapon: more comments
This post from last year has been getting a lot of hits over the last few days due to more media coverage of the story – come on & join in the comment debate: Anti-teenager sound weapon in Wales
Richard Stallman’s ‘Right To Read’ dystopia growing closer every day
We seem to be accelerating towards the nightmare vision presented by Richard Stallman in his 1997 article, ‘The Right to Read’, ninety years too early, and investigated so thoroughly by Cambridge’s Ross Anderson. (See also here for more discussion of DRM and ‘trusted’ computing).
Another dystopian vision
I should have posted this very impressive piece last month, but forgot, so here it is: ‘Burnoff: Part 1 – The Bad Guys Win’ by Tarmle.
Boing Boing: House introduces mandatory radio-crippling law
Cory Doctorow (Boing Boing: House introduces mandatory radio-crippling law) brings the news that:
Intel Viiv: control through integrated systems
Via Furdlog: Intel’s new Viiv technology, the basis of a new range of dual-core processor ‘home media centres,’ will, apparently mean that: “PCs would work with televisions and digital recorders and portable devices so people could move their entertainment wherever they wanted.” (LA Times story)
GPS External Speed Control in Canada
Via Slashdot, a CNN story reports that: Canadian auto regulators are testing a system that would enforce speed limits by making it harder to push down the car’s gas pedal once the speed limit is passed… [using] a global positioning satellite device installed in the […]
What things regulate?
Lawrence Lessig, currently of Stanford Law School, has been at the forefront of much recent and current debate on intellectual property and how the internet is constructed and regulated. His books, Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace [29], The Future of Ideas [51] and more […]
Control & networks
To some extent, the desire of companies to control what consumers do with their products has parallels with attempts at price discrimination in industries such as freight transportation, and, especially, telecommunications. Andrew Odlyzko of the University of Minnesota’s Digital Technology Center points out that telecommunications […]
Everyday things & persuasive technology
Two precedents from the interface between design, business and psychology are especially relevant here. First, Donald Norman’s influential The Psychology of Everyday Things, later republished as The Design of Everyday Things [32], formalised and analysed much of the accumulated wisdom surrounding user behaviour and interaction […]
The democracy of innovation
Eric von Hippel of MIT has charted the phenomenon of user-led innovation, and how this has benefited both companies and users, in The Sources of Innovation [57], published in 1988, and, most recently, Democratizing Innovation* [58]. As discussed in the ‘Reactions’ section of this site, […]
Reactions from the technical community
An awareness of architectures of control in products, especially digital technology, has been growing significantly over the past few years. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the strongest reactions have propagated in and been disseminated through internet communities, especially those at the intersection of technology and policy […]