US Finds Existing Copyright Law Suited For Software Embedded In Everyday Products; Intellectual Property Watch, 12/16/16

Intellectual Property Watch; US Finds Existing Copyright Law Suited For Software Embedded In Everyday Products:

"The United States Copyright Office has released a study that finds that existing copyright laws are sufficient to cover issues arising over software embedded in everyday consumer products. But it does call for some flexibility for consumers to tinker with their devices.

The report, which followed hearings and research in the field, is available here. The report was requested by Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the chair and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee."

The ‘Internet of Things’ Faces Practical and Ethical Challenges; Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/23/16

Sarah Brown, Chronicle of Higher Education; The ‘Internet of Things’ Faces Practical and Ethical Challenges

The Age of Post-Truth Politics; New York Times, 8/24/16

William Davies, New York Times; The Age of Post-Truth Politics:

"Facts hold a sacred place in Western liberal democracies. Whenever democracy seems to be going awry, when voters are manipulated or politicians are ducking questions, we turn to facts for salvation.

But they seem to be losing their ability to support consensus...

The sense is widespread: We have entered an age of post-truth politics...

We are in the middle of a transition from a society of facts to a society of data. During this interim, confusion abounds surrounding the exact status of knowledge and numbers in public life, exacerbating the sense that truth itself is being abandoned.

The place to start in understanding this transition is with the spread of “smart” technologies into everyday life, sometimes called the “internet of things.”"

Dilbert, 7/2/16

Scott Adams; Dilbert:

Mom Drone

The internet of things: how your TV, car and toys could spy on you; Guardian, 2/10/16

Sam Thielman, Guardian; The internet of things: how your TV, car and toys could spy on you:

"Can your smart TV spy on you? Absolutely, says the US director of national intelligence. The ever-widening array of “smart” web-enabled devices pundits have dubbed the internet of things [IoT] is a welcome gift to intelligence officials and law enforcement, according to director James Clapper.

“In the future, intelligence services might use the [internet of things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials,” Clapper told the Senate in public testimony on Tuesday.

As a category, the internet of things is useful to eavesdroppers both official and unofficial for a variety of reasons, the main one being the leakiness of the data. “[O]ne helpful feature for surveillance is that private sector IoT generally blabs a lot, routinely into some server, somewhere,” said Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “That data blabbing can be insecure in the air, or obtained from storage.”"