The Times: Tech column - Craig Newmark/Emotive ATMs/Death and passwords
By David Rowan
Craig Newmark is a San Francisco-based web programmer who, by his own admission, "grew up wearing a plastic pocket protector and thick black glasses taped together - the full nerd cliche". He runs a popular community bulletin board called craigslist, raising money for local causes. But since last week Newmark has another focus for his energies: concerned by the entertainment industry's attempts to control how we enjoy its digital content in our homes, he is suing Hollywood. The outcome of the case will help to determine how you use the next generation of digital video recorders.
One of the great selling points of personal video recorders (PVRs) such as TiVo is their ability to let you skip over adverts. Broadcasters, facing pressure from advertisers, are clearly unhappy with this. It is the same battle that the record industry is fighting to keep control of digital music (even as technology lets us play and record music that we have legally acquired in a variety of new machines).
The music studios' answer has been to encrypt CDs to control exactly how they are used. Broadcasters and film-makers are taking a more desperate step: they are seeking to label honest citizens as thieves. Last month Jamie Kellner, the head of Turner Broadcasting - a major part of AOL Time Warner - declared that fast-forwarding through ads constituted theft. "Any time you skip a commercial, you're actually stealing the programming," he claimed. Meanwhile, lawyers representing dozens of Hollywood studios are suing SonicBlue, which makes the ReplayTV PVR, claiming that its use constitutes copyright infringement. The studios have even tried to force SonicBlue to install software on its machines to spy on customers' viewing habits.
As with their earlier battles to ban Betamax, they are making the mistake of targeting the technology rather than the minority of genuine copyright thieves. Hence the decision of Newmark and four others, backed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to sue to safeguard his right to watch programmes when and how he likes. "I'm just trying to exercise my normal rights in terms of video recording, just like I can with my video-cassette recorder," he says. "A lot of folks in entertainment seem to be panicking, taking bad advice and trying to get anti-consumer laws passed to restrict personal freedoms." The Motion Picture Association is dismissing the case as a publicity stunt, but it raises important issues about how far copyright owners should seek to control the use of their works. As these devices become more widely available, it should be for the honest user to decide how best to use their personal technology.
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Next time you're at the cash machine, try not to look so guilty about your overdraft - the ATM might be watching. The latest innovation in banking technology is the machine that reads your emotions and reacts accordingly. NCR, a leading manufacturer of cash machines, is using cameras and new software to discern facial expressions, which are then matched with a database to formulate your likely emotional state. A frown suggests that you're not happy, while wide-open eyes and upturned lips mean you are upbeat. "We're teaching the computers to be more like human beings," says Dave Schrader, an engineer working on the project. "We can train the computer to pick up on non-verbal clues, identifying people's reactions when they're asked questions." It's designed to save money, reducing numbers of bank employees. But will it say sorry when it swallows your card?
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It's all very well keeping your password secure but what if you're the only one with access to a valuable database - and then you die? This problem has been bothering the Ivar Aasen Museum in Norway, which inherited a vast collection of books and periodicals from a collector and then began cataloguing it. Unfortunately, 11,000 entries into the database, its compiler died, taking the password with him. "Without the database it will probably take us four years to register the collection," says an anxious librarian. So there was only one option: the museum's director, Ottar Grepstad, has made a public appeal for hackers to download the database and break in. Join the hunt at: www.aasentunet.no.
(The Times, June 12 2002)
Craig Newmark is a San Francisco-based web programmer who, by his own admission, "grew up wearing a plastic pocket protector and thick black glasses taped together - the full nerd cliche". He runs a popular community bulletin board called craigslist, raising money for local causes. But since last week Newmark has another focus for his energies: concerned by the entertainment industry's attempts to control how we enjoy its digital content in our homes, he is suing Hollywood. The outcome of the case will help to determine how you use the next generation of digital video recorders.
One of the great selling points of personal video recorders (PVRs) such as TiVo is their ability to let you skip over adverts. Broadcasters, facing pressure from advertisers, are clearly unhappy with this. It is the same battle that the record industry is fighting to keep control of digital music (even as technology lets us play and record music that we have legally acquired in a variety of new machines).
The music studios' answer has been to encrypt CDs to control exactly how they are used. Broadcasters and film-makers are taking a more desperate step: they are seeking to label honest citizens as thieves. Last month Jamie Kellner, the head of Turner Broadcasting - a major part of AOL Time Warner - declared that fast-forwarding through ads constituted theft. "Any time you skip a commercial, you're actually stealing the programming," he claimed. Meanwhile, lawyers representing dozens of Hollywood studios are suing SonicBlue, which makes the ReplayTV PVR, claiming that its use constitutes copyright infringement. The studios have even tried to force SonicBlue to install software on its machines to spy on customers' viewing habits.
As with their earlier battles to ban Betamax, they are making the mistake of targeting the technology rather than the minority of genuine copyright thieves. Hence the decision of Newmark and four others, backed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to sue to safeguard his right to watch programmes when and how he likes. "I'm just trying to exercise my normal rights in terms of video recording, just like I can with my video-cassette recorder," he says. "A lot of folks in entertainment seem to be panicking, taking bad advice and trying to get anti-consumer laws passed to restrict personal freedoms." The Motion Picture Association is dismissing the case as a publicity stunt, but it raises important issues about how far copyright owners should seek to control the use of their works. As these devices become more widely available, it should be for the honest user to decide how best to use their personal technology.
++++
Next time you're at the cash machine, try not to look so guilty about your overdraft - the ATM might be watching. The latest innovation in banking technology is the machine that reads your emotions and reacts accordingly. NCR, a leading manufacturer of cash machines, is using cameras and new software to discern facial expressions, which are then matched with a database to formulate your likely emotional state. A frown suggests that you're not happy, while wide-open eyes and upturned lips mean you are upbeat. "We're teaching the computers to be more like human beings," says Dave Schrader, an engineer working on the project. "We can train the computer to pick up on non-verbal clues, identifying people's reactions when they're asked questions." It's designed to save money, reducing numbers of bank employees. But will it say sorry when it swallows your card?
++++
It's all very well keeping your password secure but what if you're the only one with access to a valuable database - and then you die? This problem has been bothering the Ivar Aasen Museum in Norway, which inherited a vast collection of books and periodicals from a collector and then began cataloguing it. Unfortunately, 11,000 entries into the database, its compiler died, taking the password with him. "Without the database it will probably take us four years to register the collection," says an anxious librarian. So there was only one option: the museum's director, Ottar Grepstad, has made a public appeal for hackers to download the database and break in. Join the hunt at: www.aasentunet.no.
(The Times, June 12 2002)
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