Thursday, May 06, 2004

"Inverted Totalitarianism". Read about it here, courtesy of political theorist Sheldon Wolin. The essay is a year old, but is still, suffice it to say, of relevance to assessing the current situation. [The Leiter Reports: Editorials, News, Updates] 7:19:47 AM    comment []

humdog! The Alphaville Herald scores big with this addition to the team. Introducing Humdog: Pandora's Vox Redux. There have been a couple of editions to the editorial board of the AVH lately. Our good friend The Phantom now has posting powers, and... [The Alphaville Herald]   7:19:26 AM    comment []

Whydentity. Eric Norlin: The Net's Gettin' Messy, on CNet. It was on ZDnet earlier, but this time it has his picture. The gist: The Net's sense of anonymity (or rather, its sense of physical location as a proxy for identity) has been "good enough," to this point. But as the Net becomes more integrated with business systems and with the components of our everyday lives, it is essential that the Net retain its greatest strengths and evolve to meet the challenges of identity. [The Doc Searls Weblog] 7:17:34 AM    comment []

Naked News goes wireless. Naked News, "the program with nothing to hide", will soon be available on a cell phone near you, reports Rafat Ali for Moco News. The Naked news team has been covering the news in the buff since 1999 on both the Internet and television. "This is just the next step in a logical progression," said David Warga, Executive Producer of Naked News. [Smart Mobs] 7:17:20 AM    comment []

Let Down by Academia, Game Pioneer Changed Paths. Mary Ann Buckles, a message therapist, heard from a friend that her 20-year-old dissertation on a video game was now considered a classic. By Michael Erard. [New York Times: Technology] 7:10:55 AM    comment []

Playing Old Records (No Needle Required). Two physicists in California have developed a way to hear and preserve sounds without cranking up that old Victrola. By Anne Eisenberg. [New York Times: Technology] 7:10:25 AM    comment []

Disney Takes Heat on Blocking Bush Film. Michael Moore took to television on Wednesday to denounce the Walt Disney Company's refusal to allow its Miramax division to distribute his new documentary criticizing President Bush. By Jim Rutenberg and Laura M. Holson. [New York Times: Business] Disney's Craven Behavior. It is hard to say which of Disney's possible reasons for blocking distribution of Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" is more depressing. [New York Times: Opinion]   7:10:04 AM    comment []

When One Man's Video Art Is Another's Copyright Crime. Jon Routson's exhibition of videos at the Team Gallery is a small eddy in the increasingly roiled waters where art meets the United States' rapidly expanding copyright laws. By Roberta Smith. [New York Times: Business] 7:09:33 AM    comment []

Two from Cory: EFF's cognitive radio comments to the FCC I've just turned in EFF's comments to the FCC's "Cognitive Radio" docket, which asked (among other things) whether the Commission should regulate Americans' access to digital-to-analog converters and whether Trusted Computing should be mandated for software defined radios (we didn't much like these ideas). EFF asks the Commission to consider the question of enforcement separately from the question of functionality. The Commission should allow this proceeding, and others like it, to consider the question of the characteristics of the best possible design and operation of flexible radios without regard to enforcement questions. It should allow American technologists to build the devices that make most efficient use of spectrum and allow the greatest amount of speech over the public's airwaves. As each new type of device and operational norm is approved, the Commission shoul dask, separately, how best to police the airwaves in light of the fact that the newly approved devices will soon proliferate. It must assume that Americans should and will acquire the best and most-capable radios possible and determine how to address the problems that may arise from this reality. Further, the Commission should seek to backstop enforcement by hardening existing radio applications against harmful interference, spoofing and other attacks: for example,if air-traffic control signals carried cryptographically secured signatures, the risk of spoofed signals would be greatly reduced. Our government has already required that airlines install reinforced cockpit doors: reinforcing the cockpit radios is a logical next step. 104K PDF Link Digitising LPs by scanning the grooves Digitising analogue LPs with high-resolution scanners isn't a new idea -- we blogged an early effort years ago here -- but it seems to have come along nicely, per this NYT story. The team shoots thousands of precise sequential images of the groove and then stitches the images together, measuring the shape of each undulation and calculating the route a stylus would take along the path. "We grab the image and let the computer model what the stylus would have done if it had run through the surface," said Carl Haber, a senior scientist at the lab who led the research team in collaboration with Vitaliy Fadeyev, a postdoctoral researcher there. Link 7:04:44 AM    comment []

FAQ on The Anarchist in the Library. Q: Could tell me today how the forces of anarchy and control play out today in the world of information? SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: Our information systems are being driven to extremes of anarchy and oligarchy. The forces of anarchy -- hackers, and cyber-libertarians, and, increasingly, plain old liberals are -- doing their best to pry open information systems. They want to let data and culture flow freely around the globe. They're doing this in the shadow of some rather extreme actions by the information oligarchs. The information oligarchs include big media companies, powerful governments, and police forces. These forces have an interest in making information scarce so they can charge more for it, and labeling it as contraband so they can limit conversation and deliberation. We’re seeing this first and most clearly in the entertainment world. We're seeing extreme interventions in our information infrastructure, notably from Hollywood studios and music companies. For instance, increasingly the formats and delivery systems for cultural products are highly controlled. The DVD is the best example. Now, the DVD is a wonderful product, it does a lot of things. But it is highly controlled. We are extremely limited in what we can do with the data on that disk. There are fairly strong locks on every DVD. This is one of the reasons that we can't play a French DVD in the United States or any DVD on a LINUX-based computer. The movie companies have decided that to differentiate their markets among certain regions — they must build these controls into the disk itself. This sounds like a small price to pay, but the problem is these sorts of moves spark an arms race. There are a lot of people who are offended by this level of control. And they are using whatever means necessary to free the data. So we've created a situation through this combination of excessive copyright laws and strong technology. Hackers move to pry such systems open and apart. Then oligarchs respond with harder technology and more radical laws. So the hackers pry the stuff open once again. It continues ad absurdum. Those of us who don’t support either anarchy or oligarchy are stuck, baffled and frustrated. We pay the price for the excesses of both sides. We have generated a situation in which it's harder than ever to make legitimate use of information technology and copyrighted products and easier than ever to make illegitimate use of cultural products. Q: Are there historical precedents for this dynamic? And more. Good intro to all this at [Lessig Blog]. 7:03:32 AM    comment []

A Top Scientist's Research Is Under Attack. A Canadian researcher is facing claims that data in his study of a nutritional supplement's effects on the mind in the elderly are so flawed as to have no real value. By Jane E. Brody. [New York Times: Science] 7:01:13 AM    comment []

DMCRA (Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act), 321 Studios, and coverage. Fair-use advocacy hearing on May 12, and the advantage of press releases. [Infothought] 7:01:12 AM    comment []