[Colloq] REMINDER: Tarleton Gillespie, Cornell Univ - TODAY, Feb. 23, 3pm

[Rachel Kalweit]

College of Computer and Information Science Colloquium

Presents:
Tarleton Gillespie
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY


Who will speak on:
Designed to Effectively Frustrate: Technical Copyright Protection and
the Agency of Users


Thursday, February 23, 2006
3:00pm
110 West Village H
Northeastern University

Abstract:
Recently, the major U.S. music and movie companies have pursued a
dramatic renovation in their strategies for copyright enforcement. This
shift, from the "code" of law to the "code" of software, looks to
technologies to regulate or make unavailable those uses of content
traditionally governed by the law. Many are worried about the compliance
rules built into such systems: design mandates telling manufacturers
what their users can and cannot be allowed to do under particular
conditions. But these rules include a second set of limitations:
robustness rules. These obligate manufacturers to build their devices
such that they prevent users from tinkering with them. Not only must the
technology regulate its users, it must be inscrutable to them. I will
examine this aspect of technical copyright enforcement, looking
particularly at the CSS encryption used in DVDs and the recent
"broadcast flag" proposed for digital television. In the name of
preventing piracy, these arrangements threaten to undermine users sense
of agency with their technologies.


Prof. Tarleton Gillespie researches recent controversies concerning
copyright and the Internet to investigate the historical contestation
over the nature of authorship and ownership, the character and
characterization of new technologies, and the regulation of
communication through the arrangement of material technologies, legal
constraints, and political and economic institutions. His book on the
subject, Technology Rules: Copyright and the Re-Alignment of Digital
Culture, will be published in Fall 2006 by MIT Press. His broader
interests include the peer-to-peer file-sharing debates, mobility of
technological metaphors, theories of authorship, the critical discourse
around technology, animation and children's media, and the cultural
implications of the First Amendment. He is affiliated with the
Information Science program and the Department of Science and Technology
Studies.

Host: Carole Hafner

-- 


_______________________________________________
Colloq mailing list
Colloq at lists.ccs.neu.edu
https://lists.ccs.neu.edu/bin/listinfo/colloq