I really like Ed Felten’s blog, FreedomToTinker:
; Happy Endings: Talking about a panel on the DMCA: “To call the case of my colleagues and me a “happy ending” takes some real chutzpah. Let’s catalog the happy consequences of our case. One person lost his job, and another nearly did. Countless hours of pro bono lawyer time were consumed. Anonymous donors gave up large amounts of money to support our defense. I lost at least months of my professional life, and other colleagues did too. And after all this, the ending was that we were able to publish our work — something which, before the DMCA, we would have been able to do with no trouble at all. In the end, yes, we were happy — in the same way one is happy to recover from food poisoning. Which is not really an argument in favor of food poisoning.”
; U.S. Copyright May Get Harsher and Broader: Talking about the new bill Lamar Smith is preparing which I mentioned on 2006-04-25 Copyright USA: “The bill would increase penalties for small-scale, noncommercial copyright infringement beyond even their current excessive levels. For example, noncommercial distribution of copyrighted material worth $2500 or more would carry a maximum sentence of ten years in Federal prison. Even *attempting* to commit that level of infringment would potentially carry a ten-year sentence. That’s [...] more than the average Federal sentence for manslaughter (33 months), sexual abuse (73 months), arson (87 months), fraud (14 months), embezzlement (7 months), bribery (10 months), or racketeering/extortion (72 months).”
U.S. Copyright May Get Harsher and Broader
; HDCP: Why So Weak?: Talking about the weakness of the copy protection in HDCP: “The bottom line is clear. In HDCP, “security” technologies serve not to disable pirates but to enable lawsuits. When you buy an HDCP-enabled TV or player, you are paying for this — your device will cost more and do less.”
#Copyright