Unthinkingly

You Are The Enemy: “Information Rights” vs Open Source

Ever since the introduction of Microsoft Office 2003 it has been possible to distribute documents that can only be used in the way that you want them to be used — such as limiting who can copy, print or forward the information. This type of control, however has been easy enough to defeat with a third party reader that ignores the “Information Rights Management,” which is really just a bunch of plain text XML, as Cory Doctorow explains at Information Week. So IRM is really not about security in the first place.

“The current version of remote attestation facilitates the enforcement of policies against the wishes of computer owners. If the software you use is written with that goal in mind, the trusted computing architecture will not only protect data against intruders and viruses, but also against you. In effect, you, the computer owner, are treated as an adversary.”
-The E.F.F.’s analysis on the new techniques

Microsoft, naturally, would like to end the ability to use third-party readers like OpenOffice all together, and is working to develop an industry standard that will allow your motherboard to take digital signatures in order to prove that your software is not tampered with. Security is touted as being the reason for all the work, but it seems clear enough that a uber-vendor-lock-in is attractive to the Men of Microsoft.

The Electronic Freedom Foundation has a typically well-researched document on the background of the situation, with some proposals for mitigating the vendor lock in issue.

The Law and Blogging

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has just released a great “Legal Guide For Bloggers,” which goes into some of the concepts that you might not be familiar with.

If your organization is getting into blogging as a way to advocate your cause (and give honest PR, retain donors, keep employees up-to-date, keep volunteers enthused etc. …), this is something to keep around the office, preferably near the water cooler, coffee pot or toilet, where it might actually get read.

Those of us who did the journalism school thing can tell you: media law ain’t that much fun. But it is good to know, for example, that if you quote someone saying something slanderous, you can be legally tried for libel, which is, in fact, worse. (Libel is printed, slander spoken.)

As they are quick to point out: “None of this should stop you from blogging. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy …” (I would also point out that it is a good thing to have in a poorly functioning democracy.)

“Whether you’re a newly minted blogger or a relative old-timer, you’ve been seeing more and more stories pop up every day about bloggers getting in trouble for what they post. … The difference between you and the reporter at your local newspaper is that in many cases, you may not have the benefit of training or resources to help you determine whether what you’re doing is legal. And on top of that, sometimes knowing the law doesn’t help - in many cases it was written for traditional journalists, and the courts haven’t yet decided how it applies to bloggers.”

Get it: EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers