Category: Technology

FCC wants free broadband service, plus content filtering

National broadband sounds like a great idea, but a recent FCC proposal looks a little less appealing.

The Federal Communications Commission is looking for a bidder to provide free broadband service in the 1.9 GHz-2.1 GHz bands, agency Chair Kevin Martin told reporters on Friday. …

There will be one more requirement for the service. A spokesperson for the Commission has told Ars that the FCC wants it to include “content filters.” For what? We asked. “To protect children,” came the reply.

As outrageous as this sounds, I can understand the FCC’s logic. If we’re to provide “the Internet” over the airwaves, then it suddenly becomes like radio and television–pervasive. That’s the argument that’s typically been used to keep smut and the 7 deadly words off of the airwaves.

Here’s the difference: television and radio are centralized distribution media. The impact of the speech regulations is rather small, since they only affect an increasingly dwindling number of speakers (that being, the broadcasters).

The Internet, on the other hand, is a largely decentralized medium of distribution. The number of speakers on the internet comes close to the number of users; thus the impact of filtering would be massive. Decentralized mediums of expression typically get more First Amendment protection, although I can’t think of a case that would be as pervasive (or more likely to over-censor) as what is proposed.

It’s amazing that, when the FCC gets serious about our infrastructure–giving a large number of Americans some substantial bandwidth–it comes with strings like this attached.

Rsync backup with Growl

Edit: Somehow the sync isn’t starting, so I’ll need to figure out what the trouble is and update this post. Any ideas?
Edit 2: It would seem using rsync to back up is no longer covered under the terms of service for BlueHost users.  I actually haven’t been doing my backups this way for some time, and would highly recommend using a service like Dropbox instead (especially since it has a nice web interface and syncs between multiple computers). I’ll leave this post up for users of other hosting providers.

I’d call myself more of a tinker-er than a programmer, but I thought I’d open a new chapter in my blogging repertoire: sharing tech solutions I’ve come up with. I’m a dissertator, which means I need frequent off-site backups, and a BlueHost user, which means I have a convenient place to upload to.

This post taught me everything I needed to know to get rsync working with Bluehost (the instructions are for Dreamhost, but you get the idea). Be sure to check out the part for running a backup without logging in. Up until recently, I’ve used the terminal to periodically run a backup–yet there’s always room for improvement.

I dig Growl, and thought it would be great to schedule backups for every-other hour, and to have notification of when (or if) it completed successfully. I never quite worked out the completing successfully part, but the attached AppleScript is a start. It checks for a network connection (be sure to enter the IP address of your host), and sends a growl when the backup starts (just be sure to wait a bit for the backup to complete). Here is some advice on scheduling via iCal.

I realize this (admittedly unedited) post didn’t quite live up to my reputation as a decent technical writer. I’d be happy to answer questions or take suggestions in comments.

rsync
 (AppleScript download)

Connecting some dots on owning media

Three stories caught my eye today.  At first glance, they seem completely unrelated–but there are underlying (undefined?) characteristics about the way we interact with our media that tie them together. Here are the short versions

Laptop searches at the border: No reason? No problem: The 9th Circuit rules that laptops can be searched at the border without cause.

Court Ruling Denies EMI Access to Millions of Personal MP3 Files: An online storage service (ok, one that promotes its ability to store-but-not-share music) wins against EMI, who wanted access users’ music files.

Defunct MSN Music has a DRM controversy on its hands: Microsoft switches off computers which let MSN Music customers move music files they paid for to another machine.

It seems to me that, when we buy a piece of media (be it a book, CD, or digital file) it:

  1. Makes a statement about who we are: Back to the CDs or DVDs on a shelf idea of being able to tell how much you share with another.  I am mostly thinking of this as a public act, but it could be a more private identity assertion.
  2. Is closely tied to our individual intellectual or artistic development and freedom: The things we read, watch, and hear have an effect on us yet we have a right to travel our own path in choosing media. S. R. Ranganathan’s five laws of library science fit well here, as well as librarian’s ideals on the privacy of patron information.

These two characteristics, I believe, drive certain expectations that we have about the media we buy:

  1. First, that there is an element of permanence or ownership to media we own. Asserting one’s identity and claiming a work as a piece of their intellectual history can’t be taken away, and many might say the same should go for owned media that sparked it.
  2. Second, control over privacy is expected because, just as we wouldn’t want anyone to see what goes on inside our heads, we might also not want others to know about the media that impacts what goes on in there.
  3. Finally but on a related note, control over where a work resides, or its format can also be thought of as personal. The order of books on a shelf, or the privacy of files locked in a network drive might be another aspect of a right to control one’s intellectual or artistic domain.

It just seems like there is “something” here we haven’t put our finger on in law or theory. Perhaps that explains what, looking back, all of this again feels random to me. Any ideas?

From the education department

A number of recent stories about higher ed regarding copying and technology to share:

From the copyright department: Librarians React to Lawsuit Against Georgia State U

Also from the copyright department: Universities’ Intellectual Property Stance Criticized

From the plagiarism-not-copyright department: Journals May Soon Use Antiplagiarism Software on Their Authors

Finally, from the wireless in the classroom department: Hey, You! Pay Attention!