Nathan Cochrane meets the Aussie Privacy Commissioner:
We’re talking about a serious privacy vs piracy debate. On the piracy debate we’re talking about management of Intellectual Property (IP). I am a person with Personal Information (PI) and if that is taken away, it is an invasion of my privacy. I would like to hear these people (IP owners) making such a lot of noise about piracy of IP talk about the protections of PI — then they would have some credibilty. There’s a pretty ugly asymmetry in the debate. Both sides need to grow up a bit and be a bit more respective of both sides of the argument.
(Nathan:) For my part, I chipped in that I think it hypocritical that IP owners will kick in my door if they suspect I am stealing their IP, but to steal my PI is just a ‘business case’.
I like the ‘PI’ concept. Perfect timing, given this report on the new ATTBI/Comcast ‘Transition Wizard’. Check out this insanity:
Any Comcast user that actually installed the Transition Wizard has given Comcast permission to do the following;
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1) arbitrarily open and read your email without your knowledge and/or consent
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2) perform a credit check on you and then share that info with whomever they choose
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3) Perform firmware upgrades to your cable modem at their discretion, regardless of who owns it.
You also agreed not to participate in any future class action suits that may be brought against Comcast for whatever reason. You agreed to this and more when you clicked on the ‘I Agree’ button during the initial installation phase.
Mind you, the actual text isn’t posted, so take it with a grain of salt.
Code: Danny’s notes on the FIT testing OSCon talk — that’s running a test suite as a Wiki. Interesting, but I have to think about how practical it is in general. Demo here, more complex demo here.