Hundreds of Defense Department computers reportedly hijacked to send spam.

Engadget just ran an interview they did with on-his-way-out MPAA president Jack Valenti. In response to the question “What would you say to a mom who wants to make a backup of her kids’ DVD movies?”. Valenti offered the following, nonsensical analogy:

When you go to your department store and you buy 10 Cognac glasses and two weeks later you break two of them, the store doesn’t give you two backup copies. Where did this backup copy thing come from? A digital thing lasts forever.

Complete nonsense, mostly brought on by the common industry practice of comparing digital information to physical property. If the store were to give you 2 additional Cognac glasses, they are now out of 2 physical pieces of merchandise they had intended to sell to another consumer. On the other hand, a mom who makes a copy of a dvd to protect it from the gooey-sticky fingers of toddlers doesn’t remove inventory from any stock. At the most, she is limiting the ability of a retailer from selling her a new copy of a movie she purchased but was damaged. Look at it this way, a more honest representation of Valenti’s analogy would be that, if the Cognac glass was to break in two in a repairable fashion, he’d rather you not be sold the glue to fix it. You should just go buy yourself a new glass.

Oh, and what exactly does “A digital thing lasts forever” mean? CDs and DVDs certainly don’t last forever, anybody with Netflix could tell you that. In fact, the only way I think an individual could make such a “digital thing” last forever (or at least, the duration of their lifespan) is if they were permitted to make non-degrading backup copies.

In answer to his silly question of “where did this backup copy thing come from?” the answer is really simple: because we can. You can’t make a backup copy of a glass, it’s physical. But data, in any format, can be copied by virtue of it’s nature. That’s what makes his comparison so ridiculous.

I decided it was time to make another 100 things list. This one I’m sure will be much tougher, especially as I’ve been in a much more reflective mood lately. Plus, I’m putting a little effort into avoiding collisions with the previous list.

So here goes.

Den ganzen Beitrag lesen…

Sharp claims to have developed a microwave that reduces fat in meats.

This Rueters story regarding the recent Grokster case decision has an interesting title: “Court Deals Blow to Anti-Piracy Efforts”. You know if you stop and think about that, it shows an awful lot of cynicism. How about “Court Protects Innovation”, “Court Upholds Sony Decision”, or “Court Sees Value in Peer-to-Peer Technology”. The negative headline, however, will always win out.

For those unfamiliar with the recent ruling, the summary is that the court found the network providers should be held in similiar esteem to Sony of the betamax case. That is, while their product (or in this case, service) has illegal and infringing uses, it also has substantial non-infringing uses.

There’s a browser extension I just ran across called SpoofStick that sounds pretty interesting. It basically sticks a message up in your browser for any site you go to that says what domain you are currently on. The goal, obviously, is to prevent falling victim to phishing attacks.

Only downside, according to incidents.org the utility doesn’t appropriate handle a more recent spoofing vulnerability in IE.