We have had an enormous and concerted act of social disobedience play out over the past half-decade, where millions have decided that the present regime of intellectual property law and corporate control over the way we communicate is no longer tenable. So, every day, with the click of a button, people from all walks of life are ignoring the law and protesting in public, simply by uploading content to YouTube or Facebook or anywhere else.
Eric Harvey responds to Dash’s piece with some skepticism of his own, saying that maybe these things shouldn’t be described as a “revolution,” but rather “something that middle-class people with lots of spare time on their hands and a healthy disregard for corporations do.”
Lots of smart stuff coming out, and I expect to see more. Regardless of the ability of social media to produce social change, it sure is a good way to disseminate writing about itself.
Crosby, the singer and movie, radio and TV star, had more foresight than the television networks and stations, which erased or discarded nearly all of the Major League Baseball games they carried until the 1970s.
Today Major League Baseball is notoriously strict about the rights to their games. It makes you wonder how much of this history we could lose as companies attempt to close the analog hole and average people lose the ability to record their media.
The story of the “crypto wars” and the Clipper chip in the 80s and 90s is a really interesting one, and worth looking over. Steven Levy’s Crypto is a great book that addresses it, and it’s a fun and informative read. If you’re more into primary sources, articles about the Clipper’s introduction, problematic development, and ultimate defeat are all worth reading, and should be required for anybody thinking about the current proposal.
[Hey Twitter: Give us our Tweets](http://zachholman.com/2010/09/hey-twitter-give-us-our-tweets/)
A call for tweet data older than what is available on the site. It's nice to make the call, and it's great if Twitter listens, but unless you own your own data or have some control over the services you use, you're beholden to a corporation to make decisions in your best interest and often against theirs. The Twitter history issue is a good reminder of why open APIs and the like are not sufficient for free network services.
[OUPblog » Blog Archive » The Sinister Influence of the Left Hand](http://blog.oup.com/2010/09/left-hand/)
An interesting look at the etymology of "left" and "right" in a bunch of languages. One thing I'm left curious about, though: given the common relationship between "left" and "north," where does English's "southpaw" come from?
[U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet – NYTimes.com](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html)
Clipper 2.0: The US government is preparing to seek new regulation that will undermine encryption technology so that it can be wiretapped. I don't love drug dealers or terrorists, but it's hard to imagine clear-thinking people who see this as a good idea.
[The Cost Of Free: How Freemium’s Cheerleaders Make A Pretty Penny | paidContent](http://paidcontent.org/article/419-the-cost-of-free-how-freemiums-cheerleaders-make-a-pretty-penny/)
WOW does this article ever miss the point. A criticism of the people who advocate giving non-rivalrous goods away in order to generate demand for rivalrous goods, calling them hypocritical for doing exactly what they suggest. (I think that makes them hypercrites!)
[The Most Powerful People in New York – How Diaspora Is a Very Different Kind of Social Network — New York Magazine](http://nymag.com/news/features/establishments/68512/)
Congratulations to the Diaspora guys on a great New York magazine profile. This piece seems to miss the point less, although it's hard to find a source that isn't posing D* as a Facebook killer.
[Twitter, Facebook, and social activism : The New Yorker](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all)
Well, some of this skepticism of social networks is well-placed, and I do think social media fanboys get a little breathless when describing the power of Twitter et al. But of course, Gladwell gets a little muddy when talking about the strengths and weaknesses of these loose-tie networks, and this piece certainly doesn't spell the downfall of the Twitterati, but it's worthwhile reading.
Stuxnet is the craziest malware since Conficker, and if you believe the hype, it's way crazier. Four hitherto unseen Windows zero-days and it targets PLCs! Some researchers are suggesting it was built by a nation-state level entity to target Iran's nuclear power plants, but Schneier in unconvinced.
[Promoting statistical literacy: a modest proposal | Technology | guardian.co.uk](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/sep/21/password-security-cory-doctorow)
A discussion from Cory Doctorow about how a lack of statistical literacy and password fundamentals leads to inconvenient and insecure practices. (Also: maybe I'm dense, but this didn't seem like satire. Isn't it weird to call your piece "A modest proposal" and then not be over-the-top satirical?)
A somewhat conspicuous but still rather small wearable camcorder/bluetooth headset that can buffer up to five hours of running footage and store four. Next step towards Snowcrash "Gargoyles."
This scary technology takes advantage of the eight or so different places cookies might be stored, and leaves a copy in each spot. If any, but not all, of the cookies get erased, the remaining ones will replace the deleted ones.
[Summer Guide 2010 – How Music Producer Dr. Luke Is Assembling No. 1 Hits — New York Magazine](http://nymag.com/guides/summer/2010/66784/)
A profile of Dr. Luke, one of the masterminds behind a surprising number of smash hits in the past few years: "Tik Tok," "California Gurls," "I Kissed A Girl," "Right Round," etc etc. The description of his "curatorial" role is particularly interesting.