Monthly Archives: March 2007

Cringely Does DNS

I often admire Cringely’s posts, but not so much this one, in which he channels a proposal for replacing DNS:
Domain dispute resolution would be rapid: one week for evidence presentation, 24 hours to decide, and 24 hours for appeals. At which point the Inet DNS system would block the loser. Domain transfers would be fast and low cost. All domain activity would operate through Inet, not be farmed out to resellers, since the system is too important, and has proved to be difficult to police on the Internet. Inet domain holders would be expected to maintain control over the content of their users on sites with Inet domain registrations. Repeated failures to rapidly do so would result in the temporary or permanent loss of their Inet domain.

Just Say No: David Harrison wants to replace your Internet. I, Cringely, February 22, 2007

So, let’s see: wait until the owner of a domain is on a road trip, claim he’s a squatter, run through this kangaroo court’s process, and by the time he’s back, he’s got no domain, because he didn’t respond in 24 hours. Continue reading →

Moral Panic

OK, that last post about "Is Your Child a Computer Hacker" was a joke. Sort of. Unfortunately, it seems to be about the level at which many adults understand the Internet:

Theirer:  ISPs and site would have to collect data on their customers, like IP address, for at least a year and maybe longer.  It’s already in place in EU, DOJ is enthusiastic.  We don’t know what problems this will create.  There are agreements to retain for six to nine months or longer (voluntary agreements).  Most of these sites will preserve on official request if there’s a bad guy.  Do we go from preservation to fullblown retention model?  Good chance of this.

— Adam Theirer, by Susan Crawford, Susan Crawford Blog, 6 March 2006

She’s reporting on a talk and Q&A at the recent Freedom to Connect conference. Why would anyone want universal data retention? To protect the children. They’re scared (or being scared by people who want them scared) that the Internet is swarming with predators out to get their child. Nevermind that IP address doesn’t necessarily map to person. It looks like they’re doing something!

Continue reading →

More Risk Management?

Interesting observation from my apparent twin Chandler Howell:
A lot has changed since I first started bashing random thoughts into WordPress and wondering if anyone but I would care. In March 2005, John Quarterman and myself were pretty much the only bloggers out there talking about Risk in the non-boardgame sense of the word, at least according to Technorati, and we apparently only had 33 posts on the subject between us.

Today, Technorati found a total of 47,001 posts about “risk management,” with more being added at a pace of over 100 per day. A lot of them are spam, but a lot of them aren’t.

Like him, I don’t know that it’s so much that there is actually more risk management going on, but at least more people are talking about it; maybe that will lead to more of it happening.

-jsq

Flickr Flickers

Flickr’s recent outage is aptly described Abel Eble in The Quiet Earth:
Folks, this is one of the best pieces of crisis management I have ever seen! It states the problem; it states the solution; it takes the blame where necessary and it gives a promise to the future. Now, if we could set this as mandatory teaching for all companies worldwide I would feel so much better.
Leveling with the customers; what a concept!

-jsq

RIAA v. Fair Use Act

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA):

"The DMCA has enabled consumers to enjoy creative works through popular new technologies," the RIAA said in a statement. "The DVD, iPod and the iTunes Music Store can all be traced to the DMCA. Online games, on-demand movies, e-books, online libraries, and many other services are coming to market because of a secure environment rooted in the DMCA’s protections."

— RIAA slams FAIR USE Act by Eric Bangeman, Ars Technica, 2/28/2007 4:14:26 PM, by Eric Bangeman

Eric Bangeman points out that the DVD actually precedes the DMCA, but "secure" is more or less accurate. Secure in the sense that a traditional newspaper is secure: those pesky readers can’t alter it; they have to read it as they get it. Kind of like the old AT&T telephone network before the Carterfone decision let other companies attach equipment to it. That decision led to mobile phones, the Internet, and other benefits.

Continue reading →

Participatory Journalism

Here at the Freedom to Connect conference in Silver Spring, Maryland, Dan Gillmor is moderating a panel about peer production news. Here are some examples:

  • Bakersfield pothole map
    Locals report seeing potholes and they get mapped.
  • U.S. Fatalities in Iraq
    Someone has taken the home of record for each U.S. fatality in Iraq and mapped it.
  • Chicago Crime Map
    This one says down at the bottom: "Important disclaimer: This site is not affiliated with the Chicago Police Department. This site uses crime data obtained from the CPD’s Citizen ICAM Web site, which is a publicly available database of reported crime. Please read the Citizen ICAM disclaimer to understand the data fully."
  • Bakersfield homicide map
    "This is a map of Homicides in the Bakersfield area that occured in 2006. Locations are approximated and based on data provided by the Office of the Coroner."

In all these cases the data are mapped by someone who is not an official data producer, and at least in the pothole map case, the actual data are produced by individual citizens.

Continue reading →

Critter Corn as Risk Management

Here’s a small business using the Internet as a marketing, sales, and customer support medium:
“I have had a Web site for 10 years, http://www.crittercorn.com,” Nyffeler said. “It is not a big moneymaker — most of my bread-and-butter business is from supermarket chains — but it gets my name out there.”

He said some of his larger sales have stemmed from businesses seeing his name on the Web site.

In addition to attracting customers from California to Maine, Nyffeler said, he uses the Internet as an effective communication tool with clients.

— Some farmers counting Internet as farm asset, By ADRIAN SANCHEZ, Columbus Telegram, vi AP, 3 March 2007

No more telephone tag. Nyffeler says now everybody uses e-mail, “and the messages are short and sweet.” Continue reading →

Malamud Opens Congress

Carl Malamud is working on opening video of U.S. Congressional committee meetings to the public. You may wonder, doesn’t C-Span do that already? Well, C-Span broadcasts via cable Congressional meetings, but with a C-Span copyright on them. And C-Span has taken to trying to enforce that copyright. This became news when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi started a blog, The Gavel, and posted some video with the C-Span copyright:

…last week, as it happens, C-Span did contact the speaker’s office to have it take down a different clip from her blog–one shot by C-Span’s cameras at a House Science and Technology Committee hearing on global warming where Pelosi testified, Daly said. (The blog has substituted material filmed by the committee’s cameras, he said.)

Which videos are protected? Lawmakers get a lesson After Nancy Pelosi was accused of "pirating" clips from C-Span, members of Congress were introduced to the complexities of copyright law. By Noam Cohen, The New York Times, Published: February 26, 2007, 6:41 AM PST

This isn’t the first time C-Span has asserted such copyright.

Continue reading →