The Far Side of Tech

Welcome to another leisurely stroll through my recently collected del.icio.us links. As always, feel free to add me (”Tenken” on del.icio.us) to your network if you’d like to share your own links with me. You can also subscribe to this RSS feed of my del.icio.us findings.

• How Google Gears Could Foreshadow Death for Microsoft: I’ve recently rediscovered Slate after spending most of my time over at Salon these past few months, and it’s articles like this that make me kick myself for ignoring Slate for so long. Here, Slate’s Harry McCracken argues that Google Gears introduces functionality that will be key to dominating the web application market. Chiefly, with the integration of online content with offline functionality. It’s a really interesting thought that I had never considered until now. Expect this theme to pop up in a future post.
• Google Explains Net Neutrality in Simple Terms: Google’s Public Policy Blog is quickly becoming one of the best sources for easy-to-read public policy discussion online. Here they offer a clear definition of what net neutrality proponents are fighting for, and makes the case about what exactly they feel ISP’s have a right to do with their networks. Perhaps if some politicians understood the issue as clearly as this there would be much less support for telco’s and net neutrality opponents in Washington.
• Judge Says Students Can Respond to RIAA “John Doe” Lawsuits: A federal judge in New Mexico has declared that RIAA must allow alleged copyright infringers in that state to be notified before receiving settlement letters in the mail. These letters are of the recent breed that the RIAA has been sending out wherein they basically tell the recipient to cough up a settlement fee or face a full-on lawsuit.

  They are, in actuality, a way for the RIAA to overstep the legal system altogether since most of the recipients decide to settle. This has been saving the RIAA a tremendous amount in legal fees, but with this new ruling they are going to have a much harder time pulling the same stunt in New Mexico–hopefully others will follow suit.

Just recently Stanford announced that they will be charging their students fees to reconnect to their network after being removed due to a Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice. This new policy is set to take effect in September with the fees starting at $100 for the first DMCA violation a student receives, which then gradually rises up to $1000 upon repeat offenses. A PDF of the full announcement can be found here. I recommend reading the Ars Technica overview for an excellent distillation of the new policy.

For those unfamiliar with DMCA takedown notices, you can see an example from Youtube here. Written in typical copyright legalese, notices of this sort are the proper method of reporting DMCA violations by content owners. For standard peer-to-peer (P2P) software violations, i.e., downloading a film over Bittorrent, users receive these notices from their ISP. For schools that manage their own networks, like Stanford, they are usually considered the ISP and are the ones to hand out these notices.

As a recent college graduate, I’m well versed in the many methods that the various media outfits have used to criminalize and extort students. And since I’ve worked in IT support with my school since 2001, I’m also quite familiar with the ways that schools have dealt with the piracy phenomenon. Stanford’s new policy, while certainly groundbreaking, is something I’m sure many in higher education have been mulling over these past few years. After all, it’s a widely held (if somewhat flawed) belief that taxation is a useful deterrent for unwanted behavior. It was simply inevitable that someone in higher education would eventually go down this path. Read the rest of this entry »