1. Should digital monopolies be broken up?, The Economist. 2. The Snowden effect, quantified, Alex Wilhelm, TechCrunch. 3. Facebook can gain direct access to your mobile and take pictures or make videos at any time, MPs warn, Cristopher Hope, Telegraph. 4. Steve Jobs Lives on at the Patent Office, Antonia Regaldo, MIT Technology Review. 5. EU…
Month: November 2014
'Skirting' the Law, Part I
(Image Source: https://flic.kr/p/6LUL9s) This is the first in a two-part series by Deepthi Bavirisetty on the law on upskirt photography in USA, Japan and India. Deepthi is a 4th Year Law student at the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Calcutta. She is extremely interested in the intersection between gender and technology. She has previously…
'Skirting' the Law, Part II
(Image Source: https://flic.kr/p/6LUL9s) This is the second in a two-part series by Deepthi Bavirisetty on the law of upskirt photography in USA, Japan and India – this part deals with Japan and India. The first part is available here. Japan 1. Anti-Nuisance Ordinance Japan has enacted an Anti Nuisance Ordinance to curtail upskirt photography or “panchira”…
Editors' Picks (23/11/14)
1. Cyberwar is bullshit, by Russell Brandon, the Verge. 2. Microsoft now has robot security guards, by Imad Khan, the Daily Dot. 3. China Takes The Great Firewall Up A Notch By Blocking An Entire Content Delivery Network, by Glyn Moody, Techdirt. 4. When Fitbit Is the Expert Witness, by Kate Crawford, the Atlantic. 5. Google has free speech…
Google’s Commercial Dominance – the Problem of a ‘Free’ Economy
(Image Source: https://flic.kr/p/oHcd72) Just yesterday, the internet became abuzz with the news that the European Parliament (‘EP’) is pressurising the European Union (‘EU’) to break Google Search away from the rest of its services (such as Android, et al). We’ve covered Google’s antitrust woes with the EU on the TLF earlier. According to this Techdirt article…
Facebook’s Acquisitions: A Before and After Comparison of Privacy
For Facebook, it has never been about the profit, but the users. The social network has spent more than $22 billion on acquisitions, which includes $19 billion on WhatsApp exclusively! That is 2000 times the annual revenue of WhatsApp! Other popular acquisitions include Instagram ($1 billion), Oculus ($ 2 billion) and Atlas ($100 million). With…
Editors' Picks (16/11/14)
1. It Looks Like India’s Going to get a Web Filter, by Nikhil Pahwa, Medianama. 2. Up-vote all you want, but the Internet isn’t a democracy, by Caitlin Dewey, The Washington Post. 3. A Horse of a Different Color: What robotics law can learn from cyberlaw, Ryan Calo, Slate. 4. Embracing HTTPS, By Eitan Konigsburg, Rajiv Pant and Elena Kvochko,…
Machine Learning: An Explanation
Have you ever wondered how the spam in your mailbox is automatically detected? And what about speech recognition or handwriting recognition? These are quite challenging problems. But luckily they have one thing in common – that is data, and a good deal of it. Machine learning aims at creating systems that learn from data using various computer science…
Announcement: New Guest Editor, giving us the perspective of an Engineer!
It is my great pleasure to announce our new Guest Editor, Sahebjot Singh. Sahebjot is currently a computer science major at the Manipal Institute of Technology, and is an avid programmer and web developer, who also enjoys dabbling in physics. He has worked earlier at a few startups, including Fracktal Works, a 3D Printing startup,…
Techlawtopia – on the intersection of Technology, Law, and Society
Amlan Mohanty, an NLSIU-grad currently working at Trilegal and an all round Technology Law scholar (read: stud), has launched a new project – Techlawtopia. Techlawtopia is a non-profit website exploring the intersection of technology, law and society, and has blog posts, legal resources, and primers (which, personally, I found extremely interesting) on technology law-related topics. The website already looks quite interesting,…