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Geek Law

A collection of 13 posts

Either way you're breaking the law

The comic xkcd makes the point that when you “buy” DRM’d software, music or movies that you’re really at the mercy of the company who controls the DRM and they can effectively revoke your access for any reason just as Walmart threatened to do recently. Of course, once

Maybe McCain wont vote for bad bills next time

I found this really amusing. McCain’s campaign wrote a letter to YouTube requesting that they give special preference to political videos when receiving DMCA takedown notices. Basically some people are claiming the McCain campaign is violating their copyright by including music, video, etc in their YouTube videos and are

Chads, touchscreens and lies

Dan Rather’s excellent investigative report on electronic voting asks questions which haven’t gotten a lot of press lately. Ignoring the continued problems with the software running on these voting machines, Dan Rather looks at the hardware itself. The results are pretty staggering. Dan discovered serious problems in quality

Alberto Gonzales: Disgusting

How many ways do I hate thee? Let me count the ways: 1. Lying to Congress under oath 2. Lying to the American people 3. Failing to uphold your promise and legal duty to uphold the Constitution of the United States 4. Failure to do you job 5. Coming up

Stop with the armchair lawyering already...

So there’s an on-going argument about Stillsecure’s use of Snort. As I look back, a few things become crystal clear to me: 1. Coders should code and lawyers should write licenses. 2. Coders shouldn’t try to write “clarifications” aka how they interpret a license. 3. If you

Confidentiality in email redux

So maybe it’s just me, but it seems that these “confidentiality notices” in emails are on the rise. Anyways, I’ve decided to do a little experiment. Many of these notices contain verbage to “notify the sender” if you receive the email… what will happen when I start replying?

7 Years under the DMCA

The EFF has written a great piece on how the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) has really effected the country. Unsurprisingly to many in the technical community, the DMCA hasn’t been used to stop would-be copyright infringers, but rather to stifle innovation, threaten scientists, restrict free use and threaten

Patently Mad

Michael Crichton wrote a great opt-ed piece for the New York Times called, This Essay Breaks the Law. It’s a great two pager on how the patent system in the US has gone to hell and how it will effect not just large corporations, but you and your family.

RIAA puts profits over lives

I dunno, I should be shocked (shocked I say!), but I’m not… Every so often, the US Copyright Office takes comments regarding the DMCA (the law which makes it a crime to use products you paid for in ways other then the creator intended). Most recently, Sony-BMG (a member

Shame

Shame on Yahoo, Microsoft and Google. But part of me understands. For better or worse, companies are ultimately responsible to their shareholders, not morals or concepts of right and wrong. Even Google’s motto of “Do no evil” is convienently pushed aside when it becomes monetarilay inconvient. Given the choice

Fair Use under attack (again)

Actually, there are a lot of reasons why I support the Electronic Frontier Foundation.Â One such reason, is that they’re one of the few organizations fighting for our Fair Use rights.Â Fair Use provides some basic rights allowing greater creativity and expression of ideas.Â It also

First rule of Congress: you must not talk about VEIL

I’m trying to understand what is so important to secure that the US Congress is not only considering mandating certain security methods, but that those methods be a secret from the general public. Nuclear weapon control systems? New kind of stealth aircraft? Some kind of spy satellite? Maybe some

Don't hit F5

Because apparently this prosecutor in Canton, OH thinks hitting F5 on your keyboard to reload a web page repeatedly is a *felony*. You know, the same sorta thing like rape and murder. Ok, so maybe conspiring with your friends on the internet to “crash the webserver” of your high school