Thinking Out Loud, aka The Broad Gaze
Thoughts on the social impacts of communication policy and educational technology.
Google seeks to turn YouTube rights clash into profit | Business | guardian.co.uk
When it first came out Google’s fingerprinting technology was billed as a means to flag YouTube videos as violating copyright. Now, they’re hoping to turn it into a means for the “pirates” to make ad revenue for the content producers. This is an important step in possibly legitimizing online sharing.
AutoCAD resale ruling a messy win for first-sale doctrine – Ars Technica
An interesting decision in the 9th Circuit cuts right to the heart of a crucial IP issue–whether software can be owned (under a transfer of ownership), or just (merely) licensed.
The outcome of this ruling, I think, makes common sense. I would argue that people typically think, when they buy something from a company, they own that thing they bought. This line of thought would explain the outrage over Amazon’s 1984 shenanigans. The “secondary market” issue is significant, but I think winning consumers the freedom to do whatever they see fit with purchased digital goods is more important–and that requires a transfer of ownership.
Total Telecom – Online ad sales open door to viruses
A good deal of the Internet is, for better or worse, funded by advertising. Stories like this show just how shaky of a foundation this might be.
Viruses can be incorporated directly within an ad, so that simply clicking on the ad or visiting the site can infect a computer, or ads can be used to direct users to a nefarious Web site that aims to steal passwords or identities. In most cases, the problem becomes apparent within a matter of hours and quick fixes are put in place, but that’s not fast enough for Internet surfers whose computers end up infected or compromised.
If Internet users loose faith in their ability to click an advertisement, ad revenue will decline. If ad revenue declines, companies like Google or (insert newspaper name here) will be hard pressed to continue operating at no cost to the bulk of their users. While a business model change might not be a bad idea, problems like this show just how quickly the landscape of the Internet might change.
I wonder if we can categorize this as a browser bug? Could Firefox/Safari/Opera/IE/etc lock themselves up tight enough to prevent malware, or do we need more trusted computing (or Macs)?
Apple: iPhone jailbreaking violates our copyright | Apple – CNET News
CNet gives a quick overview of Apple’s argument that jailbreaking an iPhone is violates their copyright. The EFF rightly points out that jailbreaking is pretty consistent with “tinkering” cultures.
The EFF’s argument is that jailbreaking your iPhone is protected under fair-use doctrines, and that the Copyright Office should grant an exemption because “the culture of tinkering or hacking, if you prefer is an important part of our innovation economy.” But Apple’s response is that few users of jailbroken iPhones actually jailbroke it themselves; instead, they downloaded software created by other parties to make that happen.
The problem with Apple’s argument is that few tinkerers in other areas build their own modifications. Instead, many different pieces come together to make something new and personal (think about the custom car with the oversized exhaust pipe and fins). In this light, jailbreaking is opening the iPhone up to just this kind of tinkering, which is the kind of open access many expect.