The latest in anti-piracy efforts: keystroke recognition Music & MP36/13/2000; 10:40:02 AM ''Start-up Musicrypt.com and Net Nanny Software, best known for its Web filtering programs, said they are joining forces to create software that can identify individual music listeners by the way they tap out letters on computer keyboards. This information would be used to protect songs against unauthorized distribution and use.''The article points out that people don't like this sort of restraining technology (why should they?) and recall the DivX incident.I've got another point. From the technology page on Musicrypt's site: "Net Nanny Software's BioPassword® Client makes it possible to identify a particular user, with an average accuracy of 98%. Coupled with a basic password (or just the name of the user), this provides a level of transparent security that effectively frustrates both casual and determined piracy."98% accuracy is 2% failure. That means that 1 out of 50 times, this software claims you aren't you, and locks you out. Considering that this is marketing literature and not a scientific paper (where we could look at the methodology), I feel confident in predicting that actual performance could well be even worse. Isn't it frustrating to not remember your password? Wouldn't it be worse if there suddently was no right password?I'm not buying it, what about you?

RIAA asks judge to pull all major-label songs off Napster Music & MP36/13/2000; 9:45:51 AM "The Recording Industry Association of America fired its latest legal salvo against music swapping firm Napster late today, asking a judge to block all major-label content from being traded through the service." "For the first time, the industry is providing hard statistics on how much material on Napster it believes is breaking copyright law."Napster replies "The company, however, has long said that it doesn't have the power--legal or technological--to block individual songs from being traded. It says the individual members are storing the copyrighted material on their own computers, and none of the copyrighted material flows through its servers, the company notes."I can confirm Napster-the-companies' position as correct on a technical level.

FTC, Online Ad Firms Haggle Over Privacy
Privacy from Companies
6/13/2000; 7:09:22 AM "In the wake of last month's Federal Trade Commission recommendation that Congress pass basic online privacy laws, a group of Internet ad-server companies is continuing to hold secret talks with the FTC and the Commerce Department about a set of self-imposed privacy standards for the online-advertising industry in lieu of new privacy legislation."

Unfortunately, the ad-server companies cannot be trusted. (*ick*) Lets have some laws (how I hate to say that!).

The consensus machine
Technology & Sociology
6/12/2000; 1:02:39 PM "In fact, cyberspace is highly organised and even regulated, and not just for technical standards. What is unique about the Internet is not that it is ungoverned; it is that its regulation has emerged from the bottom up and not the top down."

Napster use survey takes heat off college students
Music & MP3
6/12/2000; 10:09:57 AM "In spite of the recording-industry hype decrying the legions of spoilt college students rapaciously downloading MP3 content and thereby contriving to take food from the mouths of starving artists like Metallica and Dr. Dre, a recent survey funded by the Pew Charitable Trust finds that the majority of those illegally downloading music are actually males between the ages of thirty and forty-nine." ...

"Interestingly, a sizeable portion of these 'freeloaders' were found to go out later and buy the music they had sampled on line, putting the lie to MPAA claims that piracy is about to bring civilisation to its knees. The RIAA is obsessed to the point of comedy with the frustration of having its rules broken, without considering whether such rules might be standing in the way of increased revenues."

Do 'Dissed' Teachers Have Case? Free Speech6/12/2000; 10:06:47 AM Teacher Review gathers feedback from college students about professors and allows other students to read it, providing a forum for student communication.Looking at reviews like this, one can well imagine that the teachers are trying to sue the people writing these reviews.Mostly I 'blog this because this shouldn't be an issue in Wired. This is just a forum for students to talk. Some of them are probably being libelous. We have laws for that. Underground 'zines have been doing this for decades. The professors are going to have to adjust to the fact that their students can and will communicate with each other.Such organized criticism from the students may be long overdue and just may solve the long-standing problem of professors who coast after aquiring that all-importent tenure. Barring libel, which is already illegal anyhow, professors have only their own performance to truly be afraid of.

Dan Gillmor: Technology creates threat to economy General IP Issues6/12/2000; 8:08:20 AM "`If we can't figure out how musicians and movie creators can make money in an era of widespread, unlimited copying, how will we prevent our entire economic system from collapsing when there's molecular manufacturing and even physical objects can be copied cheaply and widely?' says John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation."It pays to remember the endgame."The potential exists, then, for a world where the blueprints for everything -- maybe including your descendants -- are owned by other people. In that world, it will be illegal to own a molecular assembler, because it might be used to make physical goods based on a patented design for which you haven't paid. That's an extreme notion, but it's not as far-fetched as it sounds if current legal trends continue."

iCraveTV to re-launch in Fall Boundary Breakers6/12/2000; 7:39:27 AM (see previous stories on ICraveTV)"Internet broadcaster William Craig says some channels will still be offered free of charge, but the main focus of the service will be specialty channels like YTV, MuchMusic and ESPN... Viewers would pay $8 or $9 a month for packages of specialty channels."They'll also make more certain you're coming from Canada, where it is legal to re-broadcast public television signals.While I'd still like to see them challenged on the grounds that they are modifying the public television channels by adding advertisements to them, the subscription channels know what they are getting into when they provide this service and thus one must assume they are OK with it. So, while I'd still say their actions are a little shady, it's a significant improvement over their previous way of doing business.

Richard Stallman -- The Anatomy of a Trivial Patent Patents6/12/2000; 7:33:43 AM I missed this story while I was gone, but I think this article is vital for a non-technical person to understand why the techies get all upset about how obvious ideas are being patented. Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation and highly respected spokesperson for the Free Software movement (a subset of the Open Source movement that concentrates on freedom and not just free-in-price).Just to clarify, when you see something in the article like this:

using a computer, a computer display and a telecommunications link between the remote user's computer and the network web site,
This says they are using a server on a network.Please take my word for it when I say that what Richard Stallman says is no more and no less then what the patent says. He's not summarizing the claims, he's re-phrasing them.