Monthly Archives: February 2006
Diebold is Evil
I saw this link to an LA Times story. Stephen Heller, a word processor who stole copies of internal Diebold documents revealing that they had violated California state law and sold uncertified voting machines, is now facing felony charges for … Continue reading
My Thoughts on Google in China
While I certainly understand where all of the protestors are coming from with the current anti-google movement, I’d like to put forth a conflicting opinion. I, for one, actually buy the excuse that it is worth participating in some censorship … Continue reading
HD DVD Standard Deliberately Downgrades Picture Quality for Older HDTVs
I noticed a link to this SCI FI Tech article; the author points out the under the access control rules just released for the new HD-DVD standard, component output (which is the only HD input featured on quite a number … Continue reading
China Open to Less Restrictive IP Law
Here’s a link you probably won’t see anywhere else, an article from China Daily (the state-run periodical, the voice of the Chinese Communist Party in English essentially) mentioning John Howkins’ talk at a chinese business summit. He talks about how … Continue reading
Maxwell Dworkin Building
I’m currently taking a class on internet law, control, and governance at Harvard Extension. The class used to be taught by Larry Lessig; both the current professors are from Harvard Law’s Berkman Center. The reason I am studying this stuff … Continue reading
Heroic System Administrator Fights Communist Oppression
Businessweek online posted this story about a company called DIT that sells products and services to the Chinese people in order to bypass the Chinese government’s firewalls, filtering, and monitoring. The company was founded by Bill Xia, a member of … Continue reading
Modalities of Control
I have always felt very strongly that technology can serve as a tool of oppression or a tool of liberation. Perhaps when we have made enough progress in our struggle I will change the name of the site to cyberliberation … Continue reading
Cablecards
Arstechnica has an interesting story on cable cards. I particularly liked this quote: In any case, get ready for the brave new world of total end-to-end encryption, which is just about here. You have to give the content providers credit … Continue reading
Home of the Underdogs
While on the topic of abandonwarez, I thought I would also link this site. The Home of the Underdogs is a repository for primarily DOS software that is no longer on the market and is obsolete, but is still under … Continue reading
Virtual Apple 2 abandonwarez
This site has a java/browser-based Apple II emulator and an _incredible_ collection of disk images that you can boot. A little Oregon Trail or Rocky’s Boots or LogoWriter, anyone? It’s interesting because though this site is almost certainly _technically_ in … Continue reading
freesofree.net
I just wanted to mention this site, freesofree.net, which contains an incredible collection of Dinosaur Jr., J. Mascis, and Sebadoh bootleg mp3s, flac files, and show videos going back to the 1980s. It is also a fan community site that … Continue reading
Recording Industry vs. The People
I noticed a link to this site from Slashdot. Ty Rogers and Ray Beckerman, two lawyers in NYC, have created this site to compile information that might help assist people defending themselves against RIAA lawsuits. Slashdot mentioned that they are … Continue reading
Microsoft DRM to “lock out hobbyists”
Cory Doctorow posted this peice to boingboing talking about how Microsoft’s video DRM technology has a licensing scheme that is intended specifically to lock out hobbyists. I think this is a case of Microsoft “whoops, I wasn’t supposed to say … Continue reading
Newspaper publishers attack news aggregators
I saw a link to this reuters story on Arstechnica: The Paris-based World Association of Newspapers, whose members include dozens of national newspaper trade bodies, said it is exploring ways to “challenge the exploitation of content by search engines without … Continue reading
Free Culture activist fired from intellectual property law firm
This story was posted on slashdot about a legal clerk who worked for a New York City intellectual property law firm, who was fired after she was quoted in The Village Voice where she advocated against DRM, and talked about … Continue reading