Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

How Do I Evaluate This Warning?

Posted on October 10, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

The Register has the Director of the Program on Terrorism and Trans-National Crime at the University of Pittsburgh (connected to this?) warning 'Expect terrorist attacks on Global Financial System'. Is this more likely than other terrorist activities? As likely? Or just sufficiently bad if it happens ('A successful terrorist attack on America's financial infrastructure could bring the US and global economies to a standstill, and the real surprise is that it hasn't been attempted yet.') that we should prepare for it even on a low probability threat analysis?

I wasn't able to find a copy of the paper on the web, so I can't go to the source and form my own conclusions. The article tells me very little. As a general matter, I tend to some skepticism about warnings from anti-terrorism experts Their incentive structure is to be scary, as this maximizes the demand for experts. I imagine that in this business you don't in that business get in nearly as much trouble for false alarms as you do for being asleep at the switch.

So, how to evaluate this warning (especially as the ad that happened to be served when I was reading had this graphic)?

Posted in Politics: US | Comments Off on How Do I Evaluate This Warning?

In Solidarity With Alex Halderman

Posted on October 9, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

Did you notice the item about the guy who showed you could bypass a copy protection scheme with trivial effort? Well, the makers of the system are out for blood:

In addition, SunnComm believes that Halderman has violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by disclosing unpublished MediaMax management files placed on a user's computer after user approval is granted. Once the file is found and deleted according to the instructions given in the Princeton grad student's report, the MediaMax copy management system can be bypassed resulting in the copyright protected music being converted or misappropriated for potentially unauthorized and/or illegal use. SunnComm intends to refer this possible felony to authorities having jurisdiction over these matters because: 1. The author admits that he disabled the driver in order to make an unprotected copy of the disc's contents, and 2. SunnComm believes that the author's report was “disseminated in a manner which facilitates infringement” in violation of the DMCA or other applicable law. [emphasis added]

The headline on the press release is SunnComm CEO Says Princeton Report Critical of its MediaMax CD Copy Management Technology Contains Erroneous Assumptions and Conclusions but what they are really concerned about is that he is right, not that he is wrong.

I find the idea that academics might be prosecuted under the DMCA for telling the truth to be hateful and scary.

No socially benefical outcome is prodcued by attempts to suppress the truth. And if Halderman's report wiped some value off SunnComm's stock, well odds are that's an efficient market in action as it didn't deserve to be there.

Posted in Law: Copyright and DMCA | 2 Comments

Today’s Dilbert Is Too Timely

Posted on October 9, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

Today's Dilbert is making the rounds of the law school, because we start the retreat tomorrow.

Posted in Completely Different | Comments Off on Today’s Dilbert Is Too Timely

Undergraduates Are Promiscuous File-Sharers

Posted on October 9, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

Last night I was part of a panel that spoke to undergraduates in Hecht Residential College on “Online File Sharing”. The audience was largely divided between the defiant and the possessors of guilty consciences. My suggestion that the RIAA attempts to stamp out file sharing by suing everyone in sight was likely to be as pleasant and as successful as the War on Drugs produced surprisingly little reaction.

I enjoyed meeting fellow panelist Sam Terilli, who told me he had accepted a full-time teaching job at the School of Communications, a school which just gets better and better ever year. It will be fun to have him just across the street.

But perhaps the most interesting thing I learned was this statistic, offered by a speaker from the University's IT department. Two years ago, network traffic was 80% incoming, 20% outgoing. Last year it was 20% incoming and 80% outgoing—and the difference was due to people making files available for P2P file sharing. As a result the university closed down the ports most commonly used by Kazaa and other popular file-sharing tools, and the balance is almost back to normal.

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Posted in Internet | Comments Off on Undergraduates Are Promiscuous File-Sharers

Brad DeLong Channels Plato, Marx, Pirandello, Stoppard, D-Squared and Leo Strauss All At Once

Posted on October 9, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

It probably helps to have a little background in microeconomics, literary theory and political philosophy to appreciate the full playfulserious subversive brilliance of Brad DeLong’s A Non-Socratic Dialogue on Social Welfare Functions, but even if you don’t have that background you will enjoy it. If you do have such a background, don’t read it while drinking coffee or there’s a serious risk to your keyboard.

What makes this entry particularly brilliant is not just the self-deprecating manner in which it clubs you over the head with its intelligence, but the hidden subversive message aimed at great philosophers of past, present, and future ages.

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Posted in Econ & Money | 1 Comment

What is ‘American Food’?

Posted on October 8, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

One of the things I'm doing at the moment is supervising a State-department-sponsored three-month visit by a Ukranian graduate student working on a Ph.D in law. She's interested in the effect of various institutions, especially NGOs, on cyberlaw. OK, that part I can handle. But as it's her first visit to the US, and this a sort of cultural as well as academic experience, I feel compelled to do more than give her things to read and talk about her writing. I want to answer her questions about America. This is not always easy.

Take this stumper: she has a small budget for our lunches. We'd like to use that to introduce her to representative “American food”. But what's that? No, besides hot dogs and hamburgers, McDonalds and Burger King. She can, after all, get those at home these days. And they are hardly the best advertisements for the place anyway (why I feel the need I feel to suggest good food is beyond the scope of this entry).

What foods are both suitably “American” and good (and not too expensive)? Most of the food I like best when I go out is 'ethnic', 'national' or 'regional'—Chinese, Italian, Indian, Nicaraguan, Mexican, Cuban, Peruvian, or Thai, for example. Now, these are, in my mind, as 'American' as, well, apple pie*, and indeed in the case of Chinese food I'm reliably informed that what we get here isn't that much like what they eat there anyway. So that's 'American food' to me. But it turns out to be a tough concept to sell.

Apparently, to the Eastern European mind Chinese food just isn't authentically American enough. So, for my first attempt I suggested bagels, as she'd never heard of them. But it turned out, unsurprisingly, that they do have something a whole lot like bagels in Kiev. So that wasn't so wonderful an idea after all.

My next choice will be BBQ ribs. But then what?

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Posted in Personal | 9 Comments