I listened to an interesting interview with Kurt Huang of BitPass.com over at IT Conversations, part of the Web Talk series with Rob Greenlee. BitPass is a micropayment service, allowing small payments to be deducted from an account in order to pay for online content. Rob discussed the new proposed “BitPass Unplugged” service with Kurt,…
Author: Kevin A. Thompson
Another reason to keep updating your security software
From CNet News: The attackers typically lure people to the malicious sites by sending enticing e-mails and instant messages. When a victim clicks on a link, the computer becomes infected. In one case, a greeting card was displayed and a tune played in the background while spyware was being installed on the compromised PC,Websense said….
Compelling Audio: an Extreme Blogger
Be sure to give the recently re-featured talk by Ben Saunders over at IT Conversations a listen. Ben is the ultimate in extreme bloggers – he updated his site from the North Pole, and kept his last expedition up to date with some makeshift electronic gear that he was flat-out advised by the manufacturers would…
U.S. Government announces it won’t release DNS to ICANN
A small but important development in the relationship between the US Department of Commerce, which used to directly regulate the Internet’s top level domains (.COM, .NET and .ORG) and ICANN, the group currently charged with the task. ICANN is the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers, the closest the Internet comes to having a…
Much thanks, some of it belated
Most recently, thanks to Jonathan B. Wilson for his kind words on his blog. I’ve added his blog to the Blogroll, check his blog out soon. Thanks, one step back: Thanks to Kevin J. Heller for including my post on the legality of fan fiction as part of Blawg Review #12. Thanks, two steps back:…
MGM v Grokster
Rather than try to outwrite the law professors and pundits, I chose not to blog about the Supreme Court’s decision in Grokster right away. I agree that the Court has punted the hard decision of deciding how to apply Sony – the majority opinion avoids the issue, and the two concurring opinions take different stances….
The Legality of Fan Fiction on the Net
Fan fiction is prevalent on the Internet, but is it legal? It turns out that’s a really interesting question. For the great majority of what is available, the answer is no. ISP’s that distribute these files and the authors of unauthorized works can both be liable for copyright infringement. What is fan fiction? Well, fan…
Musings on DMCA Takedown Provisions
Ernie the Attorney started the recent brouhaha over the notice and takedown provisions in the DMCA. You can read Ernie’s take here, with Denise Howell’s original take here. There are some really interesting comments in the discussion to Ernie’s post. So what do these provisions do? If you know that someone is using your copyrighted…
Musings on backwards compatability for Windows
An interesting conversation with Joel Spolsky has been featured this week at IT Conversations. It’s from September 2004, but still relevant. The idea that remained with me is the fact that in order for Microsoft to have backwards compatability for users whenever it came out with a new version of Windows, Microsoft had to include…
I’m back!
I’ve been offline lately, with lots of work and home activities intruding into my blogging time. Well, I’ve come back! In the interim, I’ve had some good ideas for posts that I hope to get up in the next few days.