Two separate stories, one troublesome trend.
First — YouTube / Google announces plans to test a filtering system — "digital fingerprinting" — with the intent to block copyrighted content (WSJ, AP, Time).
Today, news that AT&T plans to do effectively the same to their phone and data subscribers (Wired, LA Times). Snip:
"The risk AT&T faces is fighting the last war by spending money and energy plugging an old hole in the wall when new ones are breaking out," said Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Freedom Foundation. The San Francisco digital-rights organization has sued AT&T, alleging it illegally released customers' phone data to the federal government.
Technology is putting unlimited copying power in the hands of consumers, Von Lohmann said, so the answer to piracy can't be trying to stop them from making copies.
"The answer should be to figure out how to turn them into paying customers," he said.
