New Censorship Icon
Censorship
6/20/2000; 8:04:56 AM I want to explain the new censorship icon. It is intended as a reminder that things can always change, and that even the things that we think least likely to be censored, sometimes are. Hamlet, the Shakespeare play from which that line is taken, has been censored in the past. Who knows where things will go from here?

For more information on what censoring has already occurred in relatively recent history, see the Banned Books On-Line page, where you can also download the works they mention.

Smut Filter Blocks All But Smut Censorship6/20/2000; 7:30:18 AM "When Exotrope Inc. introduced its BAIR smut-blocking software last year, everyone seemed wowed by the company's claims of intelligent filtering." ..."In tests of hundreds of images, BAIR incorrectly blocked dozens of photographs including portraits, landscapes, animals, and street scenes. It banned readers from viewing news photos at time.com and newsweek.com, but rated images of oral sex, group sex, and masturbation as acceptable for youngsters." ...'"I think all manufacturers of blocking software have suckered journalists and politicians to some extent by claiming it is more accurate than it really is," said Bennett Haselton, founder of Peacefire.org. "This is an unusual case because we're talking about a product with a zero percent accuracy rate."' (emphasis mine)BAIR tries to analyse an image and determine if it is inappropriate for children. The thing is, I live at Michigan State University, and while that may not be a famous place for computer vision research, I've still seen what constitutes state-of-the-art in visual identification. On this, the hardest of all problems (because it must evaluate all pictures, not some restricted set about which it can make assumptions), we are not even close to having this sort of problem solved well enough to make a program like BAIR feasible, because such a program requires accuracy in excess of 95% for a parent to be even remotely comforted. ("Our product guarentees that out of 20 attempts to download smut, only one will succeed." is not very comforting to the sort of people who would use these programs.)If this product was actually working as promised, it would be a total breakthrough, not something that would be consigned to a filtering product.Moreover, any company who's site is constantly erroring out, because their database only allows one person in at a time is not worthy of your money. Try visiting their download demo page, you'll probably get this:

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005' [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Database 'Activity' is already open and can only have one user at a time. /download.asp, line 24
Pathetic! That's absolutely inexcusable!

Cybercrime scares Americans Misc.6/20/2000; 7:16:40 AM "Two thirds of Americans - that must be, oh, around 180 million people - feel threatened, or are concerned, by cybercrime."And more than 60 per cent reckon that Internet consumers are not protected enough from cybercrime, and around the same number say they are less likely to do business on the Internet as a result of cybercrime."Boy, that means there must be more American cybercrime scaredy cats than there are Americans actually connected to the Internet."Somebody get Al Gore on this right away!

British Telecommunications claims ownership of hyperlinks Patents6/19/2000; 12:26:01 PM "British Telecommunications (BT) claims it owns the patent to hyperlinks and wants ISPs in the US to cough up hard cash for the privilege of using them. "The monster telco believes a patent filed in 1976 - and granted in 1989 - proves it owns the intellectual property rights to those natty little devices that link Web content together."Read the Patent, filed April 1980.The system described in the patent is a 1970's vintage remote-access terminal, tied to a phone-line (that it uses a phone line is mentioned repeatedly in the patent), and consists of components nobody has today (like some wierd specialized keyboard contraption with 9 or 12 keys, if I'm reading this right). This does not describe the data the system uses (like HTML pages), it does not describe anything a modern ISP user would have, and it certainly isn't a patent on linking, which is a function of data and browsers, not the internet itself. Only a technological ignoramus would think the computer I'm using to type this could fall under the patent.Next question... all the news articles I've seen are claiming that BT thinks it owns hyperlinks. Could these news articles be mistaken in what BT is claiming? The Register did say BT was going after the ISPs, which could imply they are indeed going after those who are providing modem-based services that vaguely resemble the stuff outlined in the patent.Here's the summary of the patent: "This invention relates to an information handling system in which information is derived from a computer at a remote point and transmitted via the public telephone network to terminal apparatus. The invention also includes the terminal apparatus itself."The information handling system as described in the patent does not exist. The terminal apparatus, described in excruciating detail, utterly obsolete, does not exist. That leaves "transmitted via public telephone"... and standing by itself, I'm afraid thats a thoroughly obvious application of the previously-invented device we call a "modem". Could they seriously be going after ISPs for 'using modems to transmit data'?I can't imagine BT will get anything but derision for this announcement... one wonders how much money they're going to burn trying to enforce... whatever the heck it is they think they own.(another take by a Slashdot user... has some points I left out of here for space)

Digital signature bill move to White House Misc.6/16/2000; 11:23:40 AM "The Senate on Friday unanimously approved a bill that gives digital signatures the same legal recognition as written signatures. The House approved the bill Wednesday. The measures moves to the White House, where President Clinton has said he will sign the bill into law."History: Digital signatures a threat to privacy?I don't know if they've fixed the liability issues I mentioned then or not. If they haven't, then I am not going to obtain one or use a digital signature, and would recommend against anybody else getting one either.

Is Linking Illegal? Free Speech6/16/2000; 9:36:41 AM "But suppose one of those [newspaper sites] contains material alleged to be illegal--a pirated copy of an author’s book, perhaps, or an unlawful software program. Is the publisher who did the linking in hot water?" ...

"The court’s decision, which is expected in the next week or two, will set an important precedent in the fast-moving area of linking law, according to legal experts."

Read more…

Design Vision
Technology & Sociology
6/15/2000; 3:18:41 PM "As software becomes a bigger and bigger element of even the most "hard" products ( aircraft, bridges, buildings ), human beings have a capacity to "melt" those products -- that is, to customize and connect them in ways that meet our needs more directly. But delivering on that capacity means inviting people to help shape products that they need. Don't create products for customers -- cocreate with them."

Excellent essay on the future. Are we sheep to be manipulated, or people to be respected?

Courtney Love does the math Music & MP36/15/2000; 10:48:14 AM "Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying for it. I'm not talking about Napster-type software."I'm talking about major label recording contracts."This is a brilliant declaration of war on the RIAA... from one of the artists the RIAA milks for money. Or at least used to milk for money.

Napster In La-La Land Music & MP36/15/2000; 10:27:51 AM Apparently Napster is now speaking out about the lawsuit with the following: 'But Tuesday, Mr. Barry, himself an attorney, went much further, saying that music listeners are "confused about their rights" owing to various lawsuits against Napster. He added that people have a right to use various digital and computer technologies, some of which he said companies in the music industry helped fund. He also said people were trading, and not selling, music files over Napster.'The reaction: 'Mr. Barry’s comments mark a new public-relations effort on the part of the embattled Napster, but are not likely to gain much acceptance among legal experts, most of whom say that sharing unauthorized copies of music files, as happens routinely on Napster, is a cut-and-dried violation of copyright laws.'Something must be wrong. Mr. Barry couldn't possibly have meant what the reaction implies he meant, that it's perfectly legal to share music files with Napster as long as you don't sell them. It's undeniable that what most users do with Napster is flagrantly illegal. What's debatable is whether or not Napster is liable for the illegal behavior. This could be a result of confusion. If Mr. Barry was claiming that users have a right to use Napster, to counter the mistaken understanding of those who would say all Napster use is illegal, which was then interpreted by those with that mistaken understanding as a claim that all Napster use is legal, then I could understand how this happened.Anybody who sees an article from another source on the same topic that sheds light on the issue, either by quoting more of Mr. Barry's claims or clarifying the position of the reacting people, please forward me a link (preferably in reply to this message).