[Colloq] Colloquium: Tarleton Gillespie, Cornell Univ - Thurs. 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

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