Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Record Industry Files 532 Suits Against Music Downloaders. The lawsuits are the first since a federal appeals court blocked the use of special copyright subpoenas to identify those being targeted. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: Technology] 4:36:15 PM    comment []

AOL to offer movie downloads. America Online will launch a promotion Wednesday that lets its members download full-feature films through Movielink for 99 cents a title. [CNET News.com - Front Door] 6:24:12 AM    comment []

No Foolproof Way Is Seen to Contain Altered Genes. A new report suggests that it will be difficult to completely prevent genetically engineered plants and animals from having unintended environmental and public health effects. By Andrew Pollack. [New York Times: Technology] Nominated for the "Duh" award, I should think. 6:21:29 AM    comment []

Tuesday's must-reads [Salon.com] 6:20:32 AM    comment []

Going to bat for NAT. Back on the 14th I pointed to John Walker's thoughtful criticisms of NAT (Network Address Translation). The original document seems to be gone, but John's points are also made at his essay The Digital Imprimatur. This morning Jeroen Meijer pointed me to his own equally thoughtful disagreements with John. So, are the lights going out on the internet? Most certainly not, at least not because of NAT. Does it affect the addressability of end-users? Most certainly yes and with that it added greatly improved security; personally, I'm very nervous to use the phone to connect instead of the NATted connection I use at home because I know what's being blocked and I'm never certain about which programs on XP respond to certain incoming colored envelopes. Is it circumventable? Oh yes, if one use centralized or dynamically assigned servers. John Walker shouldn't whine but take a look at Skype or other P2P systems. [The Doc Searls Weblog] 6:18:57 AM    comment []

Findory: Collaborative news aggregator. Findory.com, a fascinating personalized news aggregator. There are no profiles to fill in and no groups to join. Every time you click on a story to read, the site takes it as an indication of your interests. When you return to the home page, it will have adjusted the spread of stories it thinks you care about. If you click on a link to an article that it turns out wasn't interesting, you can delete it from the list of articles you've read. by way of Joho [Smart Mobs] 6:17:14 AM    comment []