CITP Blog - Formerly Freedom to Tinker

Tag: Competition

  • Microsoft to Pay Per-Processor License on Zune

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    Last week Universal Music Group (UMG), one of the major record companies, announced a deal with Microsoft, under which UMG would receive a royalty for every Zune music player Microsoft sells. (Zune is Microsoft’s new iPod competitor.) This may be a first. Apple doesn’t pay a per-iPod fee to record companies; instead it pays a…

  • Don't Be Evil, Yet

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    Mike at TechDirt writes: As everyone is talking about Google’s (not particularly surprising or interesting) move into offering hosted business apps (basically taking their existing mail and calendar apps, and allowing you to run them for your business), it seems that the story of AOL’s new download software being criticized for secretly installing plenty of…

  • Next-Gen DVD Support Yanked from 32-Bit Vista

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    Microsoft has announced that the 32-bit version of its forthcoming Windows Vista operating system product won’t support playing commercially-produced next-generation DVDs (i.e., HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs), according to Dan Warne’s story at APC. 32-bit Vista will be able to access the discs, reading and writing ordinary content, but they won’t be allowed to access DRM-encoded…

  • PRM Wars

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    Today I want to wrap up the recap of my invited talk at Usenix Security. Previously (1; 2) I explained how advocates of DRM-bolstering laws are starting to switch to arguments based on price discrimination and platform lock-in, and how technology is starting to enable the use of DRM-like technologies, which I dubbed Property Rights…

  • DRM Wars: Property Rights Management

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    In the first part of my invited talk at Usenix Security, I argued that as the inability of DRM technology to stop peer-to-peer infringement becomes increasingly obvious to everybody, the rationale for DRM is shifting. The new argument for DRM-bolstering laws is that DRM enables price discrimination and platform lock-in, which are almost always good…

  • DRM Wars: The Next Generation

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    Last week at the Usenix Security Symposium, I gave an invited talk, with the same title as this post. The gist of the talk was that the debate about DRM (copy protection) technologies, which has been stalemated for years now, will soon enter a new phase. I’ll spend this post, and one or two more,…

  • Rethinking DRM Dystopia

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    Thanks to Ed for the flattering introduction – now if only I can live up to it! It’s an honor (and a little intimidating) to be guest blogging on FTT after several years as an avid reader. I’ve never blogged before, but I am looking forward to the thoughtful, user-driven exchanges and high transparency that…

  • Net Neutrality: Strike While the Iron Is Hot?

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    Bill Herman at the Public Knowledge blog has an interesting response to my net neutrality paper. As he notes, my paper was mostly about the technical details surrounding neutrality, with a short policy recommendation at the end. Here’s the last paragraph of my paper: There is a good policy argument in favor of doing nothing…

  • Why Do Innovation Clusters Form?

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    Recently I attended a very interesting conference about high-tech innovation and public policy, with experts in various fields. (Such a conference will be either boring or fascinating, depending on who exactly is invited. This one was great.) One topic of discussion was how innovation clusters form. “Innovation cluster” is the rather awkward term for a…

  • Long-Tail Innovation

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    Recently I saw a great little talk by Cory Ondrejka on the long tail of innovation. (He followed up with a blog entry.) For those not in the know, “long tail” is one of the current buzzphrases of tech punditry. The term was coined by Chris Anderson in a famous Wired article. The idea is…