From the monthly archives: January 2009

Don’t let this happen to you.

On January 27, 2009 By

I admit that what caught my eye in this story is the unique name of the band involved — Death Cab for Cutie — and the fact that I know this to be one of my twenty-year-old niece’s favorite acts.

All that aside, the story is an object lesson in the problems with transferring  copyright [...]

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Obama, (c) and the CCC

On January 22, 2009 By

As a number of media outlets reported, the White House webpage changed over to an Obama presidency before nearly any other action was taken by the new administration.  In fact, the initial posts on the new blog that fronts the page were dated Jan. 20 at 12:01 pm, only one minute after the Twentieth [...]

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Debating Internet regulation

On January 19, 2009 By

Last week Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell spoke with a small group of Duke administrators about a wide range of topics.  In response to one question (which was, I have reason to know, deliberately provocative), Commissioner McDowell, who is a Duke alum, gave a pretty ringing endorsement of the unregulated Internet.  He referred approvingly [...]

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What is DRM really good for?

On January 10, 2009 By

As the Library of Congress considers new exceptions to the anti-circumvention rules that legally protect the DRM systems that are used by many companies to lock up digital content of all kinds, it is helpful to consider if those protections really accomplish what they were intended to.

Digital Rights Management, or electronic protection measures, [...]

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