TechnoLlama

3D printed gun poses awkward regulatory questions

The Liberator gun

The world is finally waking up to the promises and threats of 3D printing, when a group of people calling themselves Defense Distributed published the plans online to make a 3D printed gun make almost entirely out of plastic, and posted a video of the gun being fired.

3D printing is [...]

Has the UK abolished copyright? Analysis of new orphan work legislation

Please, sir, I want some more copyright protection

Has the UK abolished copyright law with the passing of orphan works legislation? I’ll answer quickly with Betteridge’s Law of Headlines: NO.

However, if you listen to some copyright maximalist outlets, and particularly to the photograph lobby, you would believe that all copyright has been abolished [...]

Building privacy filters against constant surveillance

Do you remember the time when important events were described by journalists, re-enacted by actors, or retold by witnesses? Lucky snapshots were rare, and viral videos and citizen journalism were alien concepts. Now we are increasingly presented with pictures that give us every angle of an explosion, CCTV cameras catching a meteorite, the incredible [...]

Why CISPA is a global problem

On April 18, 2013, the US House of Representatives passed the Bill H.R. 624, also known as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). An earlier version of the bill had been passed already by the US HR, but did not pass the Senate (for earlier analysis of the Bill, see here).

When reading [...]

The sweetest hat ever! Some thoughts on the legality of the Firefly Hat dispute

“A man walks down the street in that hat? People know he’s not afraid of anything”

In 2002, Joss Whedon created a science fiction series called Firefly. You will be forgiven for never having heard anything about it, the show was cancelled during its first season by Fox, leaving us with only 14 episodes. [...]

SCRIPTed is 10 volumes old

With the publication today of the first issue of the 10th volume of SCRIPTed – A Journal of Law, Technology & Society, we mark 10 9 years of this open access experiment. Every four months I clear 3 entire days in my schedule to format and upload the excellent content that the hard-working editors send [...]

We need decentralized cryptocurrencies, we just don’t need Bitcoin

Just another day at Bitcoin

As I am finishing writing this post, Bitcoin (BTC) is in the middle of a crash, or what some people call in technical terms, going completely bonkers. I have been unhealthily interested in bitcoins for more than a year, and I have been following it closely. This includes reading [...]

Analysis of UK/EU law on data mining in higher education institutions

Download the report here.

For those interested in the subject of data mining, here is an article written by Diane Cabell and Yours Truly dealing with the issue of data mining in UK higher education. Here is the introduction to see if you are interested in reading it further. Feel free to disseminate.

Data or [...]

Ban the Glass?

Imagine a device that records your location at all times, that can be used to take videos and pictures of any event and upload it to social media with little concern for privacy of the subjects.

Were you thinking of Google Glass? I was actually thinking of the worse threat to human privacy ever invented:

[...]

Is the Internet under attack?

Jen breaks the Internet

The Internet is currently slowed down because of a massive DDoS attack against one anti-spam organization. At least this is the story being reported everywhere, from the New York Times to The Guardian. Or is it?

Spamhaus is a non-profit organisation dedicated to fighting unsolicited communications by maintaining [...]