When Creative Commons launched in 2002, we were often asked “is Creative Commons a form of DRM?” Our answer: no, we help publishers express their rights, but we don’t dabble in enforcement, because enforcement technologies are unable to respect important, complex, and often subjective concepts like fair use. Thus, ccREL is about expression and notification of rights, not about enforcement.

The cast votes have been recorded, and here are their fingerprints in PDF form. If you have a problem with the way the election was run, for example if you were a voter and the correct tracking number does not appear next to your voter ID in that PDF, you have 24 hours to complain and update your vote. Speak now… or forever hold your peace. Because that document, even though it does not contain the full votes or the tally, locks down the result of the election: there’s no way for the election organizers, or me the author of the system, to change the result once that document has been published and agreed-upon.

Once again, the result is there, hidden within this document, but until the complaint period wraps up, the encrypted tally is computed, the trustees arrive, and the tally is jointly decrypted, we won’t know who won.

I’d go further than Luis. For most computer science conferences, there is no feedback loop. Want to trash a paper? Write a really bad review and argue strongly, and if someone else on the program committee doesn’t want to fight you, then the paper goes into the trash bin and that’s the end of that. If authors had the right to respond and to point out shoddy review work, it might make reviewers think twice about doing a poor job. As Luis points out, if we had a ranking of the reviewers and not just of the submitters, the quality of reviewing might improve over time.

I was looking for a way to back up my gmail account to a local drive. I’ve accumulated a mass of important information that I would rather not lose. During my search I came across G-Archiver, I figured what the heck I’ll give it a try.

[...]

then I noticed that every time a user adds their account to the program to back up their data, it sends and email with their username and password to his personal email box!

Ouch. Big Ouch.

Meanwhile, there’s good news: Google now provides a more open, and thus more secure, API to your contacts. In the near future, Facebook will be able to request authorization to your Google contacts, rather than ask for your gmail password. You’ll only have to enter your gmail password at the Gmail web site.

I suspect Yahoo will follow shortly. But Facebook? Probably not yet. They thrive on locking down your social network at Facebook. But I suspect in the long run, they’ll feel significant pressure to become more open.

Well, we’ve worked with content owners to make sure that the content that you purchase a ringtone for has the proper rights associated with turning it into a ringtone. And, so–

Interviewer: So there are different rights if you want to make it a ringtone?

Sure.

Interiewer: If you want to make it a ringtone you have to go through a different set of rights?

Sure, the labels and publishers get the rights for songs to be remade into a ringtone. So part of what we do is to work with those content owners to make sure that there are rights in place for every piece of content to be made into a ringtone.

Really? A different set of rights? For playing a song I’ve already purchased on hardware I own for personal use? How so? Do I have to pay extra to play my CD as an alarm clock in the morning?

According to the content folks, DRM is about preventing piracy. But this is a shift. This is now about creating a tightly controlled platform so the content companies can monetize more segments of your life. Sure you bought the song for your ipod, but you didn’t buy it for the purpose of using it as a ringtone, that’ll be another 99 cents. Oh you want to play it on your car stereo? Another 99 cents. Wait, you’re playing the song after 11pm? That’s gonna cost extra.

Sure, lots of other companies have done this before. Cell phone carriers charge you $2 to get a ringtone, and they don’t let you create your own from the CDs you’ve already purchased. But up until today, Apple has been one of the semi-good guys fighting this controlling aspect of DRM. They allow you to play a song on any number of devices, burn to CD a reasonable number of times, and even share with up to 5 computers. The limits they’ve placed are typically not encountered by the average user… unless the user is trying to violate copyright law.

But this is a change. It may not be noticeable because it’s a small announcement, but there’s a qualitative shift where Apple is letting DRM become a platform for controlling users. I don’t like it, and I sincerely hope they reconsider this direction.

Australian research published last year found left-handed people can think quicker when carrying out tasks such as playing computer games or playing sport.

interesting!

And French researchers concluded that being left-handed could be an advantage in hand-to-hand combat.

First of all, that sounds like a cool study. But wait a minute, the implication here is that being left-handed somehow means your brain is different, and this modified brain makes you better at hand-to-hand combat. Okay, maybe that’s the case, given that left-handers are faster at sports and such. But what about the possibility that, simply because you’re more adept at using your left hand, you can beat your opponent who’s more accustomed to fighting righties? Maybe it’s a whole lot simpler than brain chemistry?

However, being left-handed has also been linked to a greater risk of [...] having an accident.

Okay, now I know they’re screwing with us I suspect the only thing going on here is that left-handers are forced to live in a world made mostly for right-handers, including all the machinery we handle on a day-to-day basis. I mean, if left-handers are quicker at sports and better at hand-to-hand combat, why would they also be more prone to accidents?

I’m not claiming I have the answer here, just saying it’s interesting to think about the causality path. Sometimes, the cause might just be that you actually use your left hand more than your right, not that your brain is wired to use your left hand. It would be good to have a control with left-handed people who were forced to use their right hand as children and effectively became righties, although I guess that practice has become outdated enough that the pool of such individuals is likely small.

But in all scientific studies, it’s crucial (and fascinating) to think not just about whether there is causality, but also about the path this causality takes.