Here’s part two of my reading of Peter Gutmann’s “A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection,” an amazing paper on DRM that was first published in late 2006.
MP3 Link
I’m giving four talks in San Diego next week (three versions of a copyright talk, one talk about writing) through my Fulbright and the North County Higher Education Alliance. All the talks are free and open to the public:
Thursday – April 19, 2007
2:30-4:30pm – Cal State San MarcosClarke Field House (Copyright talk)
Friday – April 20, 2007
9-11am – Palomar College/Room P-32(Copyright talk)
1-3pm – MiraCosta College/Room 3601(Copyright talk)Writing talk: Friday, April 20, at 7:30 p.m. in Room 204 of the San Elijo Campus, 3333 Manchester Ave., Cardiff.
The Chronicle of Higher Education just published a profile of me and my USC undergrad course, Pwned. It’s a great piece! My pal Siva Vaidhyanathan has liberated it from the Chronicle’s paywall and posted it on his blog.
Update: Here’s a de-paywalled version on the Chronicle’s site — thanks, Henry!
Mr. Doctorow has little taste for what he calls the “maximalist” view of intellectual property — the notion that copyright is something to be enforced strictly rather than something that should strive to be as invisible and as flexible as possible — and the subtitle of his course is meant as a bit of a provocation. “Is everyone on campus a copyright criminal?” the syllabus asks, alluding to the overwhelming majority of college students who have swapped music, movies, and software on peer-to-peer networks. If the answer is yes, he suggests, then something has clearly gone wrong.
With his new course, Mr. Doctorow has joined the growing ranks of scholars preaching that copyright law needs a makeover. Professors like Lawrence Lessig, of Stanford University; Siva Vaidhyanathan, of New York University; and Edward W. Felten, of Princeton University, have taught courses that sought to poke holes in traditional views of copyright. But while those professors made their names in large part through academic books and research projects, Mr. Doctorow has taken a decidedly different route. He doesn’t hold a college degree, and he earned his reputation not through scholarly work but through a blog.
Here’s my reading of Peter Gutmann’s “A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection,” an amazing paper on DRM that was first published in late 2006.
Executive Summary
Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called “premium content”, typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it’s not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista’s content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.
The USC Center for Public Diplomacy blog has a post on the EFF Pioneer Awards last night, including the audio from the talk.
Next Thursday, March 29 at 6:30, I’ll be doing a drop-in signing and meet-and-greet at the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego. They’ve got a stack of copies of Overclocked (my new short story collection) in stock. I hope to see you there!
When: Thursday, March 29: 6:30-7PM
Where: Mysterious Galaxy Books, 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Suite #302, San Diego, CA 92111, 858.268.4747
Next Thursday, March 29 at 6:30, I’ll be doing a drop-in signing and meet-and-greet at the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego. They’ve got a stack of copies of Overclocked (my new short story collection) in stock. I hope to see you there!
When: Thursday, March 29: 6:30-7PM
Where: Mysterious Galaxy Books, 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Suite #302, San Diego, CA 92111, 858.268.4747
I get a namecheck in today’s installment of xkcd, my favorite geeky comic-strip!
(Thanks, Cowboy_K!)
See also:
Sarcastic comic about computational linguistics (and emo kids)
Nerd humor about Katamari Damacy
Ironic Internet malapropism grid
Pi joke
Here’s part 11 — chapters 27-31 — of the reading of my novel Eastern Standard Tribe. This concludes the reading
I recorded an interview with Lance Weiler on the This Conference is Being Recorded podcast — we talk about creativity, authorship and Creative Commons.
