Clay Shirky: RIAA Succeeds Where Cypherpunks Fail

Grok Headline matches for Clay Shirky: RIAA Succeeds Where Cypherpunks Fail

The RIAA Succeeds Where the Cypherpunks
Failed

The RIAA Succeeds Where the Cypherpunks
Failed 01/07/2004 02:51 PM
For years, the US Government has been terrified of losing surveillance powers over digital communications generally, and one of their biggest fears has been broad public adoption of encryption. If the average user were to routinely encrypt their email, files, and instant messages, whole swaths of public communication currently available to law enforcement with a simple subpoena (at most) would become either unreadable, or readable only at huge expense. [...] The Government's failure to get the Clipper implemented came at a heady time for advocates of digital privacy -- the NSA was losing control of cryptographic products, Phil Zimmerman had launched his Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) email program, and the Cypherpunks, a merry band of crypto-loving civil libertarians, were on the cover of [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/crypto.rebels.html] the second issue of Wired. The floodgates were opening, leading to... ...pretty much nothing. Even after the death of Clipper and the launch of PGP, the Government discovered that for the most part, users didn't _want_ to encrypt their communications. The single biggest barrier to the spread of encryption has turned out to be not control but apathy. Though business users encrypt sensitive data to hide it from one another, the use of encryption to hide private communications from the Government has been limited mainly to techno-libertarians and a small criminal class. - More at http://www.shirky.com/writings/riaa_encryption.html

"The RIAA Succeeds Where the Cypherpunks
Failed"

"The RIAA Succeeds Where the Cypherpunks
Failed" 12/18/2003 06:57 AM
encourage everyone to use encryption .. essay

shirky.com/writings/riaa_encryption.html
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Clay Shirky talks about the RIAA forcing
people to adopt Encryption

Clay Shirky talks about the RIAA forcing
people to adopt Encryption 12/18/2003 02:28 PM
I have always been intrigued with encryption and use PGP on select e-mail from time to time and understand the...

why i like clay shirky

why i like clay shirky 04/11/2004 07:43 PM
his gothamist interview is my love of new york with logic substituting for romance

[etech] Clay Shirky: Ontologies and Tags

[etech] Clay Shirky: Ontologies and Tags 03/17/2005 03:00 AM
Clay talks about how taxonomies always have values built in. Even the periodic table's "noble gases" division reflects an assumption about the "essential" state of elements. He points to the Dewey Decimal System's skewed religion category. [Yikes! I've been doing that, too! I probably heard it from Clay first. I will attribute it from now on. Ack!] Even the Library of Congress puts the Balkan Peninsula and African on equal footing because it's measuring the number of books on the shelves. The categorization reflects not the ideas but the physical storage. He points out, that even though Yahoo has cross...

"Clay Shirky?s terrific presentation on
Ontologies"

"Clay Shirky?s terrific presentation on
Ontologies" 04/04/2005 02:12 AM

Clay Shirky tried to use some crippled
software to rip a DVD, and it didn't
work.

Clay Shirky tried to use some crippled
software to rip a DVD, and it didn't
work. 03/31/2005 10:58 PM
Clay Shirky tried to use some crippled software to rip a DVD, and it didn't work. The software was apparently written by legally paranoid people who are trying to diguise their paranoia by blaming The Man. The law does not forbid software from copying unencrypted DVDs (all burned DVDs are unencrypted) -- hence the existence of Nero, Popcorn, etc. It is a shame that so much voluntarily crippled software and hardware is out there, but let's not lay all the blame on the law.

[etech] Day 2 Clay Shirky - Phone as
platform

[etech] Day 2 Clay Shirky - Phone as
platform 03/17/2005 03:00 AM
Clay begins a segment on tech and education. He says he thinks of his group at NYU as "The Department of the Recently Possible." A few years ago they noticed that students were increasingly integrating phones into their apps. So they started looking into it. One experiment: PacManhattan that mates the urban grid and the game grid. The runners are controlled by people in a control room via mobile phones. DodgeBall was an experiment in mobile social networking. "Mobile phones are the first things since keys that everyone carries," Clay says, citing Marko Ahtisaari. DodgeBall alerted him that there was...

"Gothamist Interviews: Clay Shirky,
Internet Technologist"

"Gothamist Interviews: Clay Shirky,
Internet Technologist" 04/12/2004 10:00 PM

Gothamist Interviews: Clay Shirky,
Internet Technologist

Gothamist Interviews: Clay Shirky,
Internet Technologist 04/10/2004 08:47 AM
Gothamist has an excellent interview with Clay Shirky today .. intervju

gothamist.com/interview/archives/2004/04/09/clay_shirky_int ernet_technologist.php
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cypherpunks and CC

cypherpunks and CC 02/16/2004 09:29 PM
I hate to point and run, but there's not more than that that I can do Mondays-Wednesdays and I promise to come back to this BUT: there is a great debate about the value of Creative Commons summarized at Ping' s page.

Welcome to Cypherpunks Tonga!

Welcome to Cypherpunks Tonga! 07/03/2004 03:13 PM
“cypherpunks.to is a center for research and development of cypherpunk projects such as remailers, anonymous peer-to-peer services, secure network tunnels, mobile voice encryption, untraceable electronic cash, secure operating environments, etc. The slides from Lucky Green’s DEFCON X talk, Trusted Computing Platform Alliance: The mother(board) of all Big Brothers, are now available in the following formats: PowerPoint (309k) PDF (511k).”

Few changes for clients if Rogers' bid
succeeds

Few changes for clients if Rogers' bid
succeeds 09/21/2004 10:32 AM
globetechnology.com Sep 21 2004 1:55PM GMT

Clay on NYC

Clay on NYC 04/09/2004 04:12 PM
This is a fantastic interview with Clay about NYC. Funny, brilliant, twisty in its insights....

The latest Shirky

The latest Shirky 02/18/2004 12:13 PM
A couple of pictures. Insert your "Awwwwwwww" here: _____________________. Awwwwwwwwwww!...

It's a Shirky girl!

It's a Shirky girl! 02/11/2004 09:36 PM
The rumor going around etech is that Clay and his wife are the parents of a girl! Woohoo! Mazel tov to the entire family. A world with more Shirkies is a better world for all of us....

'All or nothing' gamble succeeds

'All or nothing' gamble succeeds 04/12/2004 03:45 AM
A professional gambler emerges victorious after betting everything on a single spin of a roulette wheel.

Second-Time Around, CRM Succeeds for
Global Manufacturer

Second-Time Around, CRM Succeeds for
Global Manufacturer 03/14/2003 01:28 AM
FWMurphy is set to go live with J.D. Edwards' CRM application, and company officials acknowledge the implementation is no small feat. To get from there to here, FWMurphy had to deploy -- then cast aside -- another CRM system.

Jonas on Clay on all of Us

Jonas on Clay on all of Us 05/05/2004 04:12 AM

Here's Jonas' reaction to Clay's latest piece - on 'Situated Software'.  I had a completely different reaction.  I see situated software - as teh same as what I call "activity based computing."

Inspired by Don Norman's work - I really think activity based computing happens when digital lifestyle aggregation is a norm.

Here's Jonas' post.....

Communicate.

Clay Shirky just published an essay on “Situated Software”, software tailored towards a specific situation.

Part of the future I believe I’m seeing is a change in the software ecosystem which, for the moment, I’m calling situated software. This is software designed in and for a particular social situation or context. This way of making software is in contrast with what I’ll call the Web School (the paradigm I learned to program in), where scalability, generality, and completeness were the key virtues.

Shirky touches on the very foundation the whole “Social Software” craze is all about – communication. He acknowledges, correctly, the basic foundation of it – communication.

Communication is cool. Everyone communicates, and sends verbal and non-verbal factoids at almost every waking second. The amazing part about mankind, and one of those things that not only set us apart from “lower” mammals and other life-forms, is our need and will to communicate, no matter what. Deprived of our primary means of communication, that is the verbal way, we invent and use secondary and tertiary means. Hearing and speech impaired use sign language, we use body language and simple pictorials to communicate, and if that all is taken away from us, we still seek and find a way.

Which by the way, also explains the withdrawal symptoms and “addictions” to email, Everquest, or IRC. We communicate. If taken away, we lose a form of communication, which is – as everyone who lost hearing or speech or vision will attest to – is something rather uncomfortable and painful. Losing this channel of communication equates to a loss of senses, sensory deprivation, and comes with all the psychological side-effects, such an event has to the affected.

In a way, communication is like lightning. It will always find the easiest way, no matter how. Deprived of simple ways to strike, the next easier path is taken, and so on. Successful “social software” is a lightning rod for such communication. It provides an easier way to convey factoids to other individuals. Take the whole “social network” misnomer, for an example. Friendships were expressed on online communities long before Friendster or Orkut. The WELL, heading into its 21st year of existence, is full of verbal and non-verbal displays or friendship and acquaintanceship. Or animosities, outright hate, curiosity. Name it, and it was there.

The problem is, telling it that way won’t get one quoted in eWeek. It’s one thing to call oneself an “expert” in Social Networking or a Visionary, or a Pioneer. Passersby stand in awe, the industry rejoices and jumps at the possibility of raking in VC money, and because it sounds academic, few questions are asked. Simply sounds better than “someone who knows, that people talk”, doesn’t it?

Take the “backchannel” discussion for a second. There are proponents and opponents of … communication. The basic understanding is simple – someone, somewhere, uses computerized means, such as IRC or AIM, or a WiKi, to comment in realtime on something. That something are mostly talks and presentations in conferences. Before IRC or IM was discovered, whispers were used, body language, such as yawning, applauding, rolling of eyes, or demonstrative snoring. With wireless networks starting to fill conference venues, the lightning strike of communication sought and found an easier, less prone to misscommunication, way in IRC and IM.

Skinned of the multiple layers of new words and stripped of the means, backchannel opponents and proponents are back to the basics – communication is good or bad, depending what’s it all about and who it is all about. Proponents point out the less disruptive and more constructive nature of IRC communications, opponents focus mostly on its exclusionary nature, both neglecting to acknowledge that before IRC and IM, other means were employed, which were equally exclusionary and similarly constructive – those things commonly called the “hallway track”.

Yes, speaking in new words, or calling ordinary things by academic sounding names has its advantages. Most importantly, it introduces a new lawyer of discussion. “I don’t really like it, when people talk about me behind my back” simply sounds less mature than “I think backchannels are useless”.

Communication is old. Providing better means to communicate and convey accurate factoids makes for a potential way to channel conversations into a system. It’s that simple, and I have no idea why we need to make it more complicated than that.

[a preponderance of evidence - What Willis Wuz' Talkin' 'Bout]

Clay-riffic

Clay-riffic 07/08/2004 01:58 PM
"Untitled Inspirational Memoir" by American [White] Idol '03 Clay Aiken hits #9 on the Amazon bestseller chart. It will be published (presumably with a title) in November. Order yours today. Or, run home and mail off your Great American Novel -- or at least your own dashed-off U.I.M. -- to Random House, publisher to the stars.

Shirky on why light shouldn't be owned

Shirky on why light shouldn't be owned 08/14/2004 08:22 AM
Clay has posted the clearest, sober-est explanation of why it's time to regulate spectrum as a public good and not as property. It's a brilliant piece of writing in which every sentence tells....

Shirky: Spectrum as resource

Shirky: Spectrum as resource 08/16/2004 04:25 PM
A nice article on some of the engineering and economics aspects of WiFi, and the history of frequency regulation in the USA.

Shirky on Spectrum Ownership

Shirky on Spectrum Ownership 08/14/2004 04:55 PM

OpenMFG succeeds with open source
software for a fee

OpenMFG succeeds with open source
software for a fee 06/28/2004 08:31 AM
Should a company that sells software with licenses that restrict what can be done with the code use "open" in its name? Ned Lilly doesn't see why not. The founder and president of OpenMFG says his company's approach of combining open source development with licensed selling is the right way to handle the complex and changing world of business applications.

Open source Mambo CMS succeeds admirably

Open source Mambo CMS succeeds admirably 03/24/2005 05:17 AM
Managing even a medium-sized Web site can be a real headache. If you are tired of manually managing content, updating news, and keeping track of old items, then you need a content management system -- software that makes it easy to handle the mundane administrative duties of a Web site. A good CMS lets you divide the task of posting content among many relatively unskilled people. The Mambo CMS, released under the GPL, is designed to handle the largest of Web sites, and, in my experience, does so admirably.

Apple Succeeds In 1:1 Educational
Computing Solutions

Apple Succeeds In 1:1 Educational
Computing Solutions 10/30/2003 09:15 AM
"We have 1:1 solutions in over 400 schools across the country, and we're excited to see what is happened in learning and teaching." By Dennis Sellers (MacCentral via MyAppleMenu)

Latest Bagle succeeds by sheer numbers

Latest Bagle succeeds by sheer numbers 07/15/2004 11:43 PM
Online vandals aim to profit more from the mass-mailing computer virus by relaying information through a legion of German web sites.

Apple succeeds in 1:1 educational
computing solutions

Apple succeeds in 1:1 educational
computing solutions 10/30/2003 08:11 AM
Apple is seeing "far more success than any other company" in implementing 1:1 computing solutions in U.S. education, Paul Papageorge, the company's senior director of marketing, told MacCentral. A 1:1 computing solution involves an environment where wireless networks are implemented so that every student and teacher has access to laptops. In an ideal situation, students can take the portable home and have access 24/7. This expands learning beyond the walls of the classroom, Papageorge said.

Clay on Situated Software

Clay on Situated Software 04/09/2004 04:12 PM
Clay's being brilliant again (damn him!), this time on the rise of software that works because it isn't intended to scale. This is not only a trend, it's a clarifying meme....

Antigravity has feet of clay

Antigravity has feet of clay 02/05/2005 09:26 PM
Thanks to Gnomie Paul Wright for this item. Space agency report is a downer for gravity-control researchers. “Could astronauts take a leaf out of H. G. Wells’s book The First Men in the Moon, and use spacecraft propelled by antigravity devices? Some see the idea as science fiction, but major space agencies take it seriously. In 2001, the European Space Agency (ESA) commissioned two scientists to evaluate schemes for gravity control. They have concluded that,…

Direct and Related Links for 'Antigravity has feet of clay'

Clay Cements the Semantic

Clay Cements the Semantic 11/10/2003 11:16 PM
Clay takes apart the Semantic Web, starting small and heading towards the big and beautiful. He ends by pointing out that metadata is politics and that there is a virtue to messiness. It's a brilliant piece and I'd be much happier about it if the ending points weren't ones I've been trying to write about for a few months. Damn that Shirky!...

Skip this rant and read Shirky

Skip this rant and read Shirky 12/03/2003 07:33 AM

SAP Sees Bigger Challenge if Oracle Bid
Succeeds (Reuters)

SAP Sees Bigger Challenge if Oracle Bid
Succeeds (Reuters) 06/23/2004 03:51 PM
Reuters - SAP AG (SAPG.DE), the world's biggest business software maker, already competes hard for business in the United States and expects an even tougher market if rival Oracle Corp. (ORCL.O) succeeded in buying PeopleSoft Inc. (PSFT.O), an executive testified on Wednesday.

"McDonald's CEO Cantalupo dies suddenly;
Bell succeeds - Apr. 19, ..."

"McDonald's CEO Cantalupo dies suddenly;
Bell succeeds - Apr. 19, ..." 04/23/2004 02:43 AM

INTERNET ROUNDUP: Clay flowers

INTERNET ROUNDUP: Clay flowers 07/25/2004 08:48 PM
The Nation - Thailand Jul 26 2004 0:06AM GMT

Shirky: The Possibility of Spectrum As A
Public Good

Shirky: The Possibility of Spectrum As A
Public Good 08/14/2004 08:48 PM
long piece in defense of opening up more spectrum .. The Possibility of Spectrum as a Public Good .. Clay

shirky.com/writings/spectrum_public_good.html
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Shirky: Wikipedia is better than
Brittanica on net-centric axes

Shirky: Wikipedia is better than
Brittanica on net-centric axes 01/05/2005 07:09 PM
Cory Doctorow: Clay Shirky's posted more about Wikipedia on Many2Many, responding to danah boyd's post about how Wikipedia won't be an encylopedia. The thing Clay really nails this time in the idea that "new media don't succeed because they're like the old media, only better: they succeed because they're worse than the old media at the stuff the old media is good at, and better at the stuff the old media are bad at."

And of course, sometimes Wikipedia is better, since, as with the Indian Ocean tsunami example, Britannica simply has no offering. So, at the margin, a casual user who wants free access to a Web site that offers a communally-compiled and non-authoritative overview of a recent event will prefer the Wikipedia to nothing, which is what Britannica offers. In this case, Wikipedia comes out on top, and walking along several of those axes like cost, availability, topicality, and breadth of coverage, Wikipedia has the advantage, and in many cases, that advantage is increasing with time

Now Britannica doesn't want this to be true (god, do they not want this to be true) and so they try to create litmus tests around authoritativeness -- "WARNING: Do not read anything that does not come from an institutional source!" But this is as silly as audiophiles dismissing the MP3 format because it wasn't an improvement in audio quality, missing entirely that the package of "moderate quality+improved cost and distribution" was what made the format great. Considering MP3 as nothing more than a lossy compression scheme missed the bundle of services that it enabled.

Link

Shirky: Cameraphones are today's
Gutenberg press

Shirky: Cameraphones are today's
Gutenberg press 05/11/2004 11:59 AM
Clay Shirky has written an excellent entry on the appearance of unmediated photos from the Iraqi front on a Friendster-like service called YAFRO. He likens this -- and other instances of undmediated communication -- to the Protestant Reformation.

The spread of images from Iraq, both relatively plain ones like most of what's on the YAFRO blogs to the horrifying images of torture and abuse from the Abu Ghraib prison are all part of the removal of bottlenecks that will change the political structure in ways we can't predict.

And it isn't just military affairs, its politics and business and everything else, from attempts to coordinate evidence of Apple's manufacturing errors (previously handled case-by-case, but now becoming a kind of grass-rooots class action protest, to Apple's horror) to the distributed amicus brief on the SCO case conducted by the Linux community to the recent right of Americans to get their medical records on request and within 30 days to the publication of spoilers for popular TV shows. (Read this last link now — its from the Times and goes away in 5 days, and although on the surface its about TV, its really a musing on life in a fully disclosed culture.)

Link

Shirky: Wikipedia's "anti-elitism" is a
feature, not a bug

Shirky: Wikipedia's "anti-elitism" is a
feature, not a bug 01/04/2005 02:40 AM
Cory Doctorow: Kuro5hin published an article by a Wikipedia co-founder, in which he slams Wikipedia for its "anti-elitism" and calls on the organization to mend its ways in order to earn the confidence of academics, librarians and other learned types. I read it when it was first published and it seemed wrong to me, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

Now Clay Shirky -- himself an academic -- has written a wonderful and comprehensive rebuttal of the piece, explaining why complaints of "anti-elitism" are misplaced.

Of course librarians, teachers, and academics don't like the Wikipedia. It works without privelege, which is inimical to the way those professions operate.

This is not some easily fixed cosmetic flaw, it is the Wikipedia's driving force. You can see the reactionary core of the academy playing out in the horror around Google digitizing books held at Harvard and the Library of Congress -- the NY Times published a number of letters by people insisting that real scholarship would still only be possible when done in real libraries. The physical book, the hushed tones, the monastic dedication, and (unspoken) the barriers to use, these are all essential characteristics of the academy today.

It's not that it doesn't matter what academics think of the Wikipedia -- it would obviously be better to have as many smart people using it as possible. The problem is that the only thing that would make the academics happy would be to shoehorn it into the kind of filter, then publish model that is broken, and would make the Wikipedia broken as well.

Link
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Clay Shirky: RIAA Succeeds Where Cypherpunks Fail

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