The Time Machine Investigates the First-sale Doctrine

The Time Machine Investigates the First-sale Doctrine

Talk about being on the horns of a dilemma. As a publisher, I know there are far too many pirated versions of what I publish freely available to anyone who wants to spend a few seconds searching. Do I want to make it even easier to share? On the other hand, as a consumer I want to own, and lend, what I buy. The music industry seems to have resigned itself to this. If I buy music online, I download it and for all intents and purposes own it. I can burn it to a CD, or it send as an email attachment. Movies, too, are like music. Should I buy a DVD, I can lend it like a book, although I'm more likely to rent a movie online than buy and download it.

EBooks, as we know, aren't nearly as consumer friendly. Amazon keeps everyone imprisoned its inaptly named 'walled garden.' And while there's limited sharing within the Amazon and B&N universes, it's not true sharing. And I really don't understand the limitations on library lending. It seems the controls are similar to those for print books; a library can only lend as many copies as it has rights. Once the ebook limit is reached, I go on a waiting list, just as for print books.

BitTorrent traffic dropping sharply in US, as VOD wins favor

As reported by telecoms.com,  it seems people are starting to pay for content rather than steal it. As much as I hate Apple, they did get consumers to buy music. While the focus of BitTorret traffic is largely audio and video, I can only hope the decrease applies to books, too. I really hope people will start buying professional books.

I've had authors related tales of 1,000s of downloads of their books from pirate sites. I suspect that most of those downloads don't really represents lost sales. Still, I'm seeing a steady decline in book purchases, in any format. That needs to change.

Drug Companies and Doctors Collaborate to Mine Patient Data

The NY Times reported this story on Friday. Sure, this is a great thing for Big Pharma, but sucks for the rest of us. The article mentions how data in so-called anonymous databases can be matched back to patients.

I saw a presentation by Purdue's Prof. Tiancheng Li on how easily this can be done. Here's an example.

The Massachusetts Group Insurance Commission (GIC), which is responsible for purchasing health insurance for state employees, publishes for each employee zip, dob, sex, diagnosis, procedure, ... A researcher then purchased the Massachusetts Voter registration list, which contained name, party, ..., zip, dob, sex. Using three attributes--dob, sex, zip--the researcher was able to identify the medical record of then Governor William Weld.

This was a fairly benign example. But consider, for example, insurance companies using similar techniques to identify pre-existing conditions, or employers using them to dig into backgrounds of present or potential employees.

We know we can't trust industry to self-regulate, or place PII about its own self-interests.

It just so happens that we have two new books that deal with this problem, should you care to solve it.

Guide to the De-Identification of Personal Health Information by Khaled El Emam and

The Complete Book of Data Anonymization: From Planning to Implementation by Balaji Raghunathan.

Click here to read An Overview of Data Anonymization.

Infosecworld 2013

Last week was Infosecworld. Not surprisingly, as in 2012 the main topics were Big Data, BYOD, mobility and cloud security, and risk. Jeff Crume had several sessions on access control and identity management, including Federated identity management and single sign-on. It’s interesting to think that the big social networking sites—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yahoo—use Federated identity. Now, I can log into Yahoo mail using Facebook or Google, not that I want to do it. I’m not sure whether this is good or bad, but it is interesting that while this is being discussed within the enterprise, the social world went ahead and implemented it. Of course, the security and privacy concerns are vastly different between the two worlds.

I heard a lot of talk about cyber espionage, both in sessions and in keynotes. Also, that the defensive focus has changed from cyber crime to cyber espionage and warfare. Of course, APT came into the discussion, although there was some disagreement about what it was. There was even a demo session on hacking SCADA, ICS, programmable controllers, etc.

Jay LaRosa and a colleague from ADP gave an interesting presentation on its next-generation security management platform system. It integrated passive data access network, SIEM, GRC tools, and massively scalable data warehouse; added advanced threat modeling, and provided real-time analysis and reporting. I recall from an earlier presentation about SEIM that between hardware, software, and personnel requirements it was out of reach of most places.  This presentation confirmed that observation, but it is a very impressive system.

BTW, I still need proposal for books on DLP, SEIM, BYOD, APT.  

China’s Hackers Shifting Focus

According to the Taipei Times, Taiwan's National Security Bureau (NSB) estimates that the PLA’s cyberarmy now numbers more than 100,000, has a budget of more than US$2.71 million and targets telecoms and think tanks. It also believes that the Chinese military has shifted the emphasis of cyberattacks on Taiwan from government institutions to civilian think tanks, telecommunications service providers, Internet node facilities and traffic signal control systems.

This doesn't seem to agree with US evaluations. PRC has long engaged in espionage with the other APT: humans. It's only recently, it seems, that attention has been directed to government, critical infrastructur, and military targets.

IoT, IPv6: IT Issues? Security Problems? Anything?

A recent issue of Networkworld teased The Internet of Things: Coming to a Network Near You on its cover.

We’ve been following, and publishing books on, IoT for a long time now. Speakers at last week’s Infosecworld mentioned IoT, along with Smart Grid, in sessions and keynotes. My question is, does anyone really know or care? Based on readership of articles and excerpts we’ve published and book sales, I’d say no.

Yet, like IPv6, another topic that doesn’t seem important to many people, IoT is going to become an IT problem, and an major security issue as well. It’s not just your smart refrigerator telling you to pick up milk on the way home from work. As the Smart Grid rolls out with essentially billions of sensor nodes, and vehicular networks, bandwidth demands will jump sharply and Big Data will inundate everything.

As a test, here are some books, articles, and excerpts covering IoT, IPv6, and Smart Grid. I’m going to monitor to see if there’s any increase in interest.

Articles and Excerpts
Internet of Things: A Context-Awareness Perspective
http://www.ittoday.info/Articles/Internet-of-Things/Internet-of-Things.pdf
The Internet of Things in the Cloud: A Middleware Perspective
http://www.ittoday.info/Articles/Middleware_IoT.htm
Communication Middleware for the Internet of Things
http://www.ittoday.info/Articles/Middleware_IoT.htm
Smart Grids
http://www.ittoday.info/Articles/Smart_Grid.htm
Basic IPv6 Security Considerations
http://www.infosectoday.com/Articles/Basic_IPv6_Security_Considerations.htm

Books

Unit and Ubiquitous Internet of Things
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466561663
The Internet of Things in the Cloud: A Middleware Perspective
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781439892992
The Internet of Things: From RFID to the Next-Generation Pervasive Networked Systems
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781420052817
Security in an IPv6 Environment
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781420092295
IPv6: An Introduction and Overview
http://www.ittoday.info/Articles/Migration-to-Ipv6/Migration-to-Ipv6.htm
Handbook of IPv4 to IPv6 Transition: Methodologies for Institutional and Corporate Networks
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9780849385162

Reading Is So 20th Century

I received this pitch yesterday for 2 - 3 minutes videos.

"Reading is so 20th century. That's why MaaS360 has created quick hit videos to make you a master in mobility management. You'll know so much about mobile device, app and doc management, people will actually think you read a white paper."

Then there was this this from Spectrum. Videos and slideshows are taking the place of print in presenting technical information.

What's more, there has been a lot of news about new 'long-form' websites publishing pieces longer than magazine artiles and shorter than books. Sign of things to come? Does anyone read books anymore?

It took USA Today to dumb-down newspapers. What's next?