Monday, May 23, 2005

Rare comic strip by Charles Schulz shows adults (including Linus' teacher?) [bOing bOing] 10:03:32 PM    comment []

Evolving Computer Viruses. Steven Hofmeyr writes about evolving computer viruses, "...As virus writers develop ways of mutating functionality, so the evolutionary process is likely to become increasingly automated. It will no longer suffice for an Antivirus vendor to develop a signature for a particular instance of a virus, because from one copy to the next, that signature will change - there will be no constant decryptor section to latch onto. This will require more automated response mechanisms that don't rely on detailed human analysis of the virus, because there will be too many variants to cope with. The consequence is that the automated response systems will provide an implicit fitness function for powering the evolutionary process..." Via Illigal [Smart Mobs] Exactly: the union of what's been learned from fifteen years to two decades of virus and worm propogation, and a little less worth of spam (accelerated greatly in just the last few), turned back on viral techniques . . . hello world! 9:59:53 PM    comment []

Senators Avert Showdown Over Filibusters. In a dramatic reach across party lines, Senate centrists agreed Monday night on a compromise that clears the way for confirmation of many of President Bush's stalled judicial nominees, leaves others in limbo and preserves venerable filibuster rules. Interactive: Filibuster Fight [WNYC New York Public Radio] 9:57:36 PM    comment []

Ayatollah Orders Review of Ban on 2 Iran Reformers. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered a watchdog group to review its decision blocking two reformist candidates from running in presidential elections. By NEIL MacFARQUHAR. [NYT > International] 9:57:31 PM    comment []

Paris Hilton Cellphone Hack. The inside story behind the hacking of Paris Hilton's T-Mobile cell phone. Good paragraph: "This was all done not by skilled 'hackers' but by kids who managed to 'social' their way into a company's system and gain access to it within one or two phone calls," said Hallissey, who asked that her current place of residence not be disclosed. "Major corporations have made social engineering way too easy for these kids. In their call centers they hire low-pay employees to man the phones, give them a minimum of training, most of which usually dwells on call times, canned scripts and sales. This isn't unique to T-Mobile or AOL. This has become common practice for almost every company. How right she is. [Schneier on Security] 3:20:20 PM    comment []

Hazards of the existing copyright regime, part I-don't-know-what: Copyright holder demands that the blacks know their place. The Rogers and Hammerstein Foundation withdrew the license to perform some of the music in Big RIver from a high school production because it used reverse racial casting (or, more accurately, colorblind casting that resulted in reverse-race casting*) for the roles of Huck Finn and Jim. Way to keep that black actor in chains, R&H! Maybe instead of a slave, he can play a drug dealer or pimp in the next production. Obviously the foundation doesn't see it that way; it argues that the role of race in Twain's story requires that proper respect be given to the race of... [Stay Free! Daily] 7:42:00 AM    comment []

Student journalists sue school district. On CNN [NewsIsFree: Popular Items] 7:41:53 AM    comment []

failing to connect. I've just arrived in South Africa after speaking in Norway. I had been invited by Kopinor to participate in their 25th Anniversary. My speech was a classic reminder that audience is everything. I count it as a total failure. (Read more in the Extended Entry) [Lessig Blog] Excerpts: The audience hated it. They hated me. My view was "naive" one speaker said. An American representing one of the rights societies was just about as rude as one could be. (The event was taped. I'll post the tape when I find the link.)  . . . The thread began with a comment in the first speech. The speech was by a professor. He was celebrating the system where he was compensated every time someone copied one of his articles. I had criticized this. That criticism led to my being called "naive." I said that while I had no problem at all with people paying to listen to music, or novels, we had to be extremely sensitive to the way price might block the spread of knowledge. And that for academic and scientific work, the best model for producing and spreading knowledge might not be one that meters each use. Professors should be paid. But let that be their compensation, and let the knowledge they produce spread widely. Yet there was a general view at the conference that this was wrong. That we hurt developing nations, for example, if we give them knowledge for free. They should have to pay for the truths we create. It weakens them, the argument went, if they can just take what we have discovered. Better to encourage their industry of science than to destroy it by simply spreading the truths that science here has created. This is really an astonishing argument, as it is as clearly wrong from the perspective of economics as an argument could be. Assuming the discoverer is compensated for the discovery, there is no reason to block the spread of knowledge just for the purpose of inducing industry in a developing nation. If you doubt that, then what do you think about this idea: Let's burn all science in the public domain. If developing nations are worse off getting our science for free, then we must be worse off getting the science of our forefathers for free. If the "subsidy" to developing nations hurts their economy, then so too should it hurt ours. So why don't we see a big push by economists generally to ban the public domain, or tax it, so that the burdens of its free resources aren't felt generally. And the comments say there's a recording online now. 7:41:49 AM    comment []

Mark Cuban's thinking converges with some of what I read in the Benkler and Lessig corpus (corpuses?), in: Some Support for the RIAA - A Music Tax.  . . . I dont like the idea that my tax money goes to subsidize the 10,300 lawsuits the RIAA has filed since Sept of 2003.  How much money does it take from taxpayers to pay for the courts side of the lawsuits ? Im guessing, but with all the administrative people and lawyers involved, judges, their clerks, overhead, and who knows what else is involved. Is  20,000 dollars per lawsuit too high or too low ? Could it be 100k dollars each ? I dont know. At 20k per lawsuit in top to bottom court costs, thats more than 200 MILLION DOLLARS in taxpayer money paying for copyright enforcement. Then there of course is all the cost associated with the international efforts the RIAA has pushed  the government to support and fulfill. Who knows how many millions that adds up to Why are every day taxpayers having to foot this huge bill ? . . . .  . . . If copyright holders, of which I am one, want our copyrights protected to the full extent that our government can offer, we should be taxed for each one of our copyrights.  We should pay for those hundreds of millions of dollars in costs since we directly benefit from those services.  . . . From where I sit there are two types of copyrights. Commercial and Non Commercial. THose copyrights you as a creator think will make money, and those you think wont. For non commercial works, works the creator wants protected, and wants to retain the right to use the courts in case of an infringement, charge them $100 per year .  Because this could be a lot of money for many artists, the tax could be structured so that the song doesnt have to be registered and paid for 18 months. Remember, if you dont pay, the only thing you are giving up is the right to register the work in a nataional database and to sue in civil court. So you can own and exploit the copyright forever without paying anything. For commercial copyrights, charge the copyright OWNER $ 750 per year (RIAA President Sherman says direct copyright infringement carries a minimum penalty of $750 per work infringed) to retain the right to use the courts in case of infringement and to fund the actions of the government in criminal charges and international actions  for the various types of copyright infringement. (A note here, Im sure there are a ton of legal issues here, but Im sure there are lawyers who will offer the solutions via comments) Both could be registered in a database and tracked much like we do patents. At any point in time, a copyright owner could switch from one status to the other. The fee is annual. In the event that the fee is not paid for a period of 1 year, the work can become part of the creative commons license, you can offer it to the public domain, or you can just keep it and do with it as you see fit, but the work is not registered in the national database. As such, you relinquish the rights associated with being in the list, starting with the  right to sue in civil courts for copyright infringement. This works because it is based on a very simple concept. The RIAA thinks that $750 is what their members songs are worth for direct copyright infringement. If as a music copyright owner , you dont think its worth $750 bucks a year, then its probably not really a commercial work.  . . . After all , if a song isnt worth $750 bucks a year, why should it benefit from the hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money being spent to protect it ? With the 500mm dollars or more that could be raised annually, the RIAA, and every single taxpaying copyright owner would have every right to expect and demand that they receive the fullest protection of the law, but it wouldnt be at the expense of more important taxpayer funded services.  . . . [Blog Maverick] 7:37:43 AM    comment []

Are Bloggers Setting the Agenda? It Depends on the Scandal. Bloggers can exert a tremendous amount of influence on setting an agenda for public discussion, but a new study showed that they are not necessarily the kingmakers that pundits sometimes say they are. By TOM ZELLER Jr.. [NYT > Business] 7:33:30 AM    comment []