DennisTT.Net

Jailbreaking smartphones is considered “fair use” (at least in the US).

Jailbreaking as fair use:
Electronic Frontier Foundation (civil liberties union for electronic rights)

Jailbreaking contravened which law:
Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Class Notes

• Globalization
  • Canada’s strength – multicultural
  • But media/groups pick and choose photos that support their views
  • Visa
    • Kantian?
    • Moral hazard – person’s skills don’t matter -> random chance
• Multinational Teams
  • Communication breakdowns/difficulties
  • Timezone issues
  • Cost of living Canada/Vancouver > USA for example (harder to pay relocation)
  • Even cost of living in India is increasing
• Back to Globalization
  • Made possible with recent technology – Skype, Google Docs
  • + competition increases, redistributes wealth, increase stability
  • – WTO superior to countries, forces workers to compete with foreigners
  • E.g., manager at MS hires person in India – bring them over on H1-B, hire local American or Canadian?
  • Infosys – IT in India
    • Outsourcing here is good for India
    • IT in India quite developed into respectable industry
    • Silicon Valley salaries high because people control means of production
    • Employees bring production by themselves compared to automotive assembly line where company controls production infrastructure
    • Companies try to up their business – in India, e.g., Infosys, the business is in IT services, not development or leadership of technologies.  No push to be creative, just $$$
      • Probably will get there, but no resources to push now

Class Notes

• Carnivore
• TALON
  • False positives
• US Legislation Authorizing Wiretaps
• USA PATRIOT Act
• Cloud computing – portions of files in different areas
  • What to do?  Acts and laws are a little out of date
• Corporate Privacy Guidelines
• Data Mining
• Identity theft
• Skimmers
  • Getting credit card numbers (scanner/photo)
• SIN number in Canada has error validation schemes

Class notes

• Privacy
  • RFID – Wal-Mart
    • Efficient supply chain
    • Container-wide RFID scanner
    • IT success – better logistics, lower cost and labour
  • Passports (US)
    • Privacy – reading at a distance
    • Increased security and efficiency
  • Phones (Japan)
    • Remote disable when lost
    • Thus, secure when lost (unlike wallet)
• Fair Credit Reporting Act -> Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act
  • Promote accuracy, but requires active request for credit report
• Gramm-Leach-Bliley
  • Privacy policy
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
  • Doctors

Class notes

• Privacy
  • Already touched on trade secrets – must be kept private
  • Information – who, how it’s obtained, how it’s used
  • Access to information
    • Physical proximity
    • Edmund Byrne – “zone of inaccessibility”
    • Edward Bloustein – violations are an affront to human dignity
  • What happened to community? – larger families, neighbours, friends, etc
    • After 1950, 2^nd world war -> smaller families – nuclear families
      • Too much privacy – e.g., suburbs
  • Harm – cover for illegal/immoral activities
  • Benefits – individual growth, psychological feeling that we aren’t being constantly watched
  • Natural right?
    • Celebrities – paparazzi – legal or illegal – e.g., public space ok.
      • Trade offs when being celebrity – can’t be celebrity here but not in other circumstances
  • 3 key aspects
    • freedom from intrusion
    • control of info
    • freedom from surveillance
  • Computers – easier, cheaper, faster to access data
  • Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms
    • Right? Not really
    • Should have security against unreasonable search/seizure
    • Life, liberty, and security of a person
  • Invisible information gathering
    • E.g., waiver for a marathon -0 need to enter in phone, address, etc.
  • 10 Principles of Model Code (from Privacytown)
    • developed by Canadian government/Industry Canada to make things smoother for business
  • PIPEDA – promote consumer trust in online/databases
  • Use of data
    • Data mining – finding patterns , matching databases and profiling
    • Detecting fraud
    • Finding terrorists
  • Generation Y
    • Care less about privacy
  • Kyllo vs. U.S.
    • Thermal imaging devices to search inside home
    • Need special technology, not normal usage, similar to physical intrusion
    • As technology becomes more mainstream, laws may change
  • R. vs. Tessling

Class notes

• Patents
  • iPhone (Apple) – e.g. ,“movement-based interface”
  • e.g., sealed crust-less sandwich
  • e.g., online shopping cart – “One Click” – Apple licenses from Amazon
  • leaning shoes
  • Bilski – business model patent (fixed-price energy contract)
    • No machines/systems, just method
    • Weakened patenting process
  • Really need a lawyer to understand claims

• Creative Commons
• IP in International Context
  • WIPO – World Intellectual Property Organization
  • TRIPS – agreement
  • Berne Convention – 1886 international agreement regarding copyright
• Levy on blank media
  • $0.21 per blank CD, $2-25 for MP3 players
  • Specified personal use only
• Open Source
  • Commercialization vs distribution
• Poor Man’s copyright
  • Mail to self
  • Problems – pre-sending
  • Copyright is $50/$65
  • Patent is $5000-$10000 not including legal fees
  • Violates Kantianism – exploiting individuals as means to end
  • Inhibits innovation
  • Right of first refusal
  • Courier companies may have agreement not to use as a timestamp
• Submarine patent
  • Patent intentionally delayed
  • E.g., GIF/LZW

Today in our group activity we learned about two types of patent systems:  The first was first-to-invent, and the second was first-to-file.  As you can imagine, the former method allows true inventors to contest patents if they can prove they invented it before the patent’s invention date, the latter method is a simpler system which grants patents to the first applicant.  The first-to-file system is used in Canada and the EU, while the first-to-invent system is used in the U.S. and Philippines.  Although the first-to-invent system is fairer, it costs a lot of money and resources to determine the true inventor, sometimes it is even impossible.  On the other hand, the inventor’s rights to patent cannot be guaranteed in the first-to-file system, and often the quality of patents is much lower with this system.  We didn’t come up with a conclusion for the best system because both have their advantages and disadvantages.

• Censorship
  • Situation in Burma improved since book publication – reasonably priced internet, but slow.
    • Burma VJ movie
  • Circumvention
    • Proxy, VPN – but hard to obtain from inside the country
    • Tor, darknet
    • Steganography – concealed writing in images/audio.
    • Chinese vertical text (while filter reads horizontally)
    • Obfuscation
• Fair use
  • 4 factors (purpose/character of use, nature of use, amount, affect on market)
  • courts ultimately decide whether fair use or not
  • space shifting (MP3 players) ok by court
  • utilitarian perspective
• New restrictions on use
  • DMCA
    • Illegal to circumvent encryption schemes even for fair use
    • Takedown notices easier to force people to remove content
  • DRM
    • Encryption/watermarks – SDMI
    • Fight for DRM not worth it by companies like iTunes
• P2P
• Protections for software development
  • Development in “clean room” (two teams, one team research potential product based on existing products, other team makes it with no knowledge of existing products)
• Open source
  • Provides source code to all, with no discrimination
  • TCO – total cost of ownership – MS argues TCO for their server is less than OS server because less cost to setup and maintain
• Software Licenses
  • Difference between gratis vs libre
    • $0 vs free speech

• IP (intellectual property) – any product of human intellect that has commercial value
• IP != its physical manifestation
• Property rights –based on culture – e.g., western more individual, first nations more communal
  • “manifest destiny” – in US – expansion east to west + make use of natural resources
  • old fashioned view = Locke – pioneering – can claim property from nature through own labour as long as left over + not more than one can use
• Open source based on altruism – personal sacrifice for good
  • How higher education research supposed to be based, but more recently focusing on capitalizing on IP
• Congress strikes compromise by IP copyright for limited time before public domain
  • Society benefits from PD
• Trade secrets – not legally protected (most likely use NDA, etc)
• Trade Mark / Service Mark – establish a brand name – does not expire
• Patent – invention ~20 years
  • Takes years to grant – “patent pending”
• Copyright
  • Creep – now copyrighted stuff will not be PD in our lifetimes

In the group activity today our group answered the question of whether the fair use rules are fair in themselves.  We came to the conclusion that the four deciding factors are the best that we have so far (which is why we are still using them).  In addition they to strike a reasonable balance between the copyright holder, the public as users and the potential market value.

Class notes for today:

• Censorship – aka – auditing information, filtering/parsing, protecting people, limiting access, sanitization, giving people freedom to surf the internet without dangerous effects
• - usually has negative connotations -> bias
• 4 boxes – speech necessary to make change in society (American of course)
• - soap box, ballot box, jury box, ammo box
• - pre-internet view – e.g., blog viewd by millions may be more efficient than soap box
• Lawrence Lessig – Canadian – influential on speech on internet
• Freedom of Expression – broadcasting vs internet – you are broadcasted media regardless if you want it or not

In class there was an activity on where to draw the line for censorship.  Six scenarios were presented including personal, organizational, national, corporate, school, and home censorship.  The only scenario which brought up a significant discussion was organizational censorship.