Set-Top Cop

In closing, listen to Czeslaw Milosz (not silly social scientists)

2006-12-05T04:48:00.000-08:00

I argued throughout this class - and couldn't feel stronger - that, at a certain, "real" level, the social sciences are infected by a fundamental arrogance of reason. This prevents people, but esp. academics and intellectuals, from viewing experiences and thinking about social justice, civil society and ecological progress in a convincing, "real" way. (we'll see if the corrective - humility - and the corresponding re-orientation of the social sciences that prioritizes how our emotion dictates morality and reason, and thus all of our self-rationalizations and how we envision our own analytical frameworks, ever happens.)

Since the struggle for freedom and resistance to oppressive forms of technology ultimately will take place on the level of ideas and spirit, I'm closing this semester with my favorite writer, someone who lived through the absolute collapse of 20th Century, Western civilization. Czeslaw Milosz wrote, battled and resisted the Nazis in Warsaw throughout WWII, witnessed the Germans, the Westerns Powers and his society's moral bankruptcy and somehow made the most beautiful poetry out of these experiences:

AGAIN

Again I was flying in my dream. As if my old body contained, prior to live beings, the possibility of all movements, flying, swimming, crawling, running.

A WARNING

Little animals from cartoons, talking rabbits, doggies, squirrels, as well as ladybugs, bees, grasshoppers. They have as much in common with real animals as our notions of the world have with the real world. Think of this, and tremble.

(I would end end with the above for the obvious reason, but couldn't resist.)

HOLLYWOOD

Let us imagine a poet gets in his hands the Hollywood crowd, those financiers, directors, actors and actresses. And that he is fully aware of the crime perpetrated every day on millions of human beings by money, which acts not in the name of any ideology but exclusively for the purpose of multiplying itself. What penalty would be adequate? He hesitates between slitting their bellies and disemboweling them; locking them together behind barbed wire in the hope that they would start to eat each other, beginning with the fattest potentates; grilling them on a small fire; throwing them, bound, onto an anthill. However, as he interrogates them and sees them humble, trembling, obsequious, fawning, not at all remembering their own arrogance, he is discouraged. Their guilt is as elusive as that of the party bureaucrats in an authoritarian state. The closest thing to justice might be to kill the whole lot. He shrugs, and sets them free.

TiVoToGo DRM cracked

2006-12-04T07:42:00.000-08:00

The TiVoToGo DRM has been cracked. This is the DRM that locks the files you move from your TiVo to your PC (something that is lawful, even without DRM). The DRM restricts how you use your TV shows, and prevents you from using it at all outside of a Windows system.

On this fascinating Wiki, a group of hackers are meticulously reverse-engineering the TiVoToGo DRM and finding ways of subverting it. They've put together a command-line app that breaks the DRM, which means that an easy-to-use graphic tool can't be far behind.

TiVo owners, rejoice! These folks are about to make your TiVo way more useful than it was yesterday.

TiVoToGo is the feature TiVo added in software release 7.1. It enables transferring video off the TiVo unit to a PC over a HTTP connection. You can access a rudimentary web interface at https://tivo:MediaAccessKey@your_tivo/. TiVo's official TiVoToGo website is here http://www.tivo.com/togo.
It looks like MPEG I frames are the only thing that isn't encrypted in the tivo file. It looks like a combination of Blowfish and ElGammal encryption (what's the evidence for this?). Is it a block cipher, or a stream cipher? Clearly everything we need to decrypt it exists. I would guess the "fingerprint", "salt", and MediaAccessKey are needed? Is the MediaAccessKey the public key, the fingerprint the private key, and the salt is used to maybe XOR the stream first? Or is there a nonce that gets used to initialize the cipher?

Link(via Engadget)

Hypocritical Media Hogs and Their Digital Hang-ups

2006-12-03T23:04:00.000-08:00

The other day I blogged about Edgar Bronfman's disclosure that he spanked his kids (or something) for all the music they illegally downloaded.

Now Reuters' MediaFile blog details the iPod obsessions of the media moguls who attended last week's Reuters Media Summit.

The follow-up questions aren't printed, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that these big-timers took advantage of much of this digital media free-of-charge, and most likely with comped iPods as well. Plus, they're all hooked on TiVo and/or satellite radio, wisely avoiding the endless spew of lame adverts for, uh, TiVo and iPod (and Chevy). Check these excerpts and ask yourself if these cats have ever dropped a dime on a rhyme:

Richard Parsons, CEO / Chairman, Time Warner: "I like music. I have iPods everywhere. I had the whole bunch of (the Warner music collection) files put on before we sold it...."

Dick Cook, Chairman, Walt Disney Studios: "...For fun, I have a little iTunes and that kind of stuff. The only time I get to read books is when I listen to it so I have a lot of books on iTunes."

JEAN-MARIE DRU, CEO, TBWA/CHIAT/DAY WORLDWIDE: "...I have five kids, so we are 7 at home and we have more than 15 or 16 iPods in the family."

Ah, behold the ~~aristocrats~~ pirates of megalomediahackland.

Blogger / MySpace Publishing and Terms

2006-12-03T15:06:00.000-08:00

Good points brought up by Lewis, and to these I thought I'd weigh in with a post I made a couple days ago at The Small Print

From the Business2.0 Softgadgets blog:

When your blog/community forum/project-management-site is sitting on Blogger or Typepad or MySpace or Friendster or Basecamp, it’s conceivable that some kind of terrible behavior will require them to take it down. The more public and free the forum, the better case these Web 2.0 titans have for maintaining the ability to do so: they have some minimal responsibility not to enable criminal behavior. But that line is incredibly unclear. Moreover, it’s not really a first amendment issue so much as its a prior agreement issue–when you check the acknowledgment box for the catch-all privacy policy upon signing up for this or that nifty Web 2.0 service, do you really think about your rights under this free and and difficult-to-read contract?

Of course you don’t. I’d love to hear if Blogger (nee Pyra and now a part of Google) has ever acted upon this clause of their ToS:

MODIFICATIONS TO SERVICE Pyra reserves the right to modify or discontinue the Service with or without notice to Member.

I’m partial to Wordpress blogging software and note that there is no such statement in the terms on their blog-hosting service, wordpress.com.

Of course, while sites like Facebook and Myspace claim they will delete inappropriate content, I really wish MySpace would write in some rule that differentiates the typical sales pitch friend request from the legitimate, real person request…. but that’s another story…

I still haven't heard from anyone who's content has been pulled from MySpace, but I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to build a dummy account and post ripped Fox content and see how long it takes.

Also, great article in Forbes, Cory... and this "Open -Source Spying" feature in the Sunday NYT is more than a little wack.

Fox: Sue MySpace Sue Yourspace?

2006-12-03T10:48:00.000-08:00

Cory's been BB'ing about Fox's assertion of a new copyright claim:

The below links are specific examples of quicksilverscreen.com web pages linking to video files that infringe upon Fox’s intellectual property rights. Fox hereby demands that quicksilverscreen.com promptly remove and disable the links to all unauthorized copies of Fox Properties on the quicksilverscreen.com website of which it is aware, including the infringing links identified below:

I'm wondering: won't Fox have to sue itself? I mean, Myspace users' clearly link to content that breaks copyright and while there may be one or two degrees more removed from the users, Fox owns - "is responsible" for Myspace - and all those bad boys and girls breakinig copyright in TheirSpace. Someone needs to have their wrist, or you know what, slapped.

US Trade Representative bends Russia over on copyright

2006-11-28T14:27:00.000-08:00

The US Trade Representative has declared victory over Russia. Russia will be required to license CD/DVD pressing plants and inspect them day and night -- the US, spreading democracy by requiring licensing of the presses! Russia will also have to shut down AllofMP3.com and stop its collecting societies from representing artists without permission (of course, this doesn't mean that US quasi-governmental collecting societies like SoundScan will stop doing the same thing).

You might ask why collecting societies are in there at all. That's because AllOfMP3.com claimed that they were paying licenses to a collecting society that made their business legal. Putting this last clause in the agreement sounds like the US Trade Rep is admitting that AllOfMP3.com is a legitimate, licensed business that pays for what it sells.

Russia has to take on board the WIPO Copyright Treaty, which is the treaty that created the US DMCA, a law that has resulted in the jailing of a Russian researcher who visited the USA for talking about math.

* The United States and Russia agreed on the objective of shutting down websites that permit
illegal distribution of music and other copyright works. The agreement names the Russia-based
website allofmp3.com as an example of such a website.

* Russia will:

- take enforcement actions against the operation of Russia-based websites; and

- investigate and prosecute companies that illegally distribute copyright works on the Internet.

* Russia will work to enact legislation by June 1, 2007, to stop collecting societies from acting
without right holder consent,

* Russia will also work to enact legislation implementing the 1996 World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO) Internet treaties.

PDF Link

(via Digg)

CBC prez: High-def TV has no business model

2006-11-27T19:06:00.000-08:00

CBC president Robert Rabinovich has decried high-def TV as having no business model. This wouldn't be newsworthy except that the promise of HDTV is the excuse given for the Broadcast Flag, which says that paranoid studio executives should be in charge of what features TVs are allowed to have.

The idea is that if you don't give them their design-veto, they won't put movies on high-def, and then the money won't come in. But when the head of Canada's national broadcaster announces that there's just no way any broadcaster is going to make its money back on high-def, it makes you wonder if the Brits don't have the right idea.

In the UK, a digital TV system called "Freeview" gives the public 30 free standard-definition TV channels, for life, over the air, for one setup payment. Instead of trying to lure people into throwing away their old sets and buying all new, Hollywood-crippled ones, the Brits just created free cable for life. Amazingly, lots of people voluntarily switched -- and soon they'll be able to shut off the old analog towers and use that spectrum for better, more internetty things.

“There's no evidence either in Canada or the United States that we have found for advertisers willing to pay a premium for a program that's in HD,” Mr. Rabinovich said. “So basically they're saying if you want to shoot in HD, that's your business, we're not going to pay you more.”

Link(via /.)

Kirby Dick and This Film is Not Yet Rated, Thu in LA

2006-11-27T06:36:00.000-08:00

This Thursday, I'll introduce director Kirby Dick and his movie "This Film is Not Yet Rated" at a free screening at USC. The screening is sponsored by the USC Free Culture club, a campus organization dedicated to promoting liberty, openness, and access to information.

Kirby Dick has graciously agreed to present the screening of his movie, which I reviewed in September. This Film is Not Yet Rated is the best documentary I've seen all year, the kind of thing that inspired outrage and sympathy. It tells the hidden story of the MPAA's rating board, and its systematic discrimination against sympathetic portrayals of gay sexuality and sex in general, and its tacit support for ultra-violence.

The ratings board is shrouded in secrecy, and exists, supposedly, to forestall Congressional censorship of the film industry (an eventuality as unlikely as it is unconstitutional). The board's membership is secret, as are the names of the appeals committee that is meant to watchdog the organizing. The whole, secretive mess was established by Jack Valenti in his capacity as head of the MPAA, and so it bends over backwards to help filmmakers from the major studios (while shafting indies).

Dick's documentary revolves around his efforts to unmask the identity of the secret censor board. He hires a private eye and sets her to work (the CSI elements of the film are really juicy -- it's fun to see how private eyes really work). Threaded around this are interviews with filmmakers who've had run-ins with the board, and, as a climax, Dick's own Orwellian adventures in submitting his documentary to the censor board whose identities he has uncovered.

I can't wait to meet him -- one viewing of This Film is Not Yet Rated turned me into an instant, lifelong fan. I hope to see you there!

Where: University of Southern California, Los Angeles: University Park Campus, George Lucas Instructional Building, 108

When: Thursday, November 30, 2006 : 7:00pm to 9:00pm

Link

Chicago Sun-Times: Zune is a failure

2006-11-25T17:29:00.003-08:00

Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, Andy Ihnatko unloads on the Zune with both barrels, calling it a "complete, humiliating failure" and a "colossal blunder," because Microsoft has taken the user out of its design considerations and put the music industry (in the person of Universal's Doug Morris, "a big, clueless idiot") in their place.

Yes, Microsoft's new Zune digital music player is just plain dreadful. I've spent a week setting this thing up and using it, and the overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face.
"Avoid," is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity...
The Zune is a complete, humiliating failure. Toshiba's Gigabeat player, for example, is far more versatile, it has none of the Zune's limitations, and Amazon sells the 30-gig model for 40 bucks less.
Throw in the Zune's tail-wagging relationship with music publishers, and it almost becomes important that you encourage people not to buy one.

Link(via Joho the Blog)

HOWTO break Zune's WiFi DRM

2006-11-25T08:13:00.000-08:00

Gizmodo has a quick and easy hack for breaking the DRM on the Zune's WiFi. The Zune locks the music you wirelessly share with other Zunekers so that it only plays three times before evaporating. This is applied totally indiscriminately, even to Creative Commons music with a machine-readable license granting permission to distribute it. It would also apply this restriction to students who shared MP3s of their class-lectures.

First, you need to enable hard drive mode using the instructions we posted before. Then, rename whatever files—MP3s, movies, programs—to have the extension ".jpg" in order to fool the Zune into thinking its an image. This hack works because Zune doesn't apply DRM to images!
Then what?
Now, take your Zune and send the folder containing these files to your buddy along with a real photo. If you only send a fake photo, an error is thrown. The last step is to have your friend sync the Zune with their computer, open the "containing folder" where the files were downloaded, and rename the files back to their correct extension.

Link(via Wonderland)

PSP homebrewers develop DRM

2006-11-24T06:09:00.001-08:00

Xart, a hobbyist PSP game-maker, has created a DRM system for his games. Creators of unauthorized homebrew games for the PSP worry that others will strip their names off of their creations and appropriate credit for their work, so Xart has proposed that the splash-screens that appear before the game starts should be encrypted so that they can't be altered.

Of course, the homebrew PSP scene exists because this sort of thing just doesn't work. It's impossible to deliver a game to a user with an encrypted section and the keys to decrypt it and expect that the user won't be able to decrypt it.

On the one hand, it's pretty unlikely that a homebrew hobbyist will use the DMCA to attack people who break their crypto, and it's reasonable to want to keep the credit intact on your works. On the other hand, this stuff really doesn't work, and no one should know that better than a PSP hobbyist.

With some people trying to rip off the homebrew scene, pretending to be Dark_Alex or some of our other respected devs, Xart from our forums has come up with a great new idea to prevent people ripping off others work. Xart has developed a powerful, fast Data Array Scrambling (DAS) system to protect your homebrew games and applications from hex editing and others stealing credit from your hard work.
This is an example of an encryption technique and it not a yet full release. For this Xart has used his xLoader application. It's a proof of concept to show just how quick encryption can be done to protect your work.

Link(Thanks, Hamish!)

Record industry association declares DRM dead

2006-11-23T10:39:00.000-08:00

An executive at IFPI -- the international recording industry association -- has declared DRM to be "dead" -- though he warns of "Son of DRM," whatever that means. He promises that the major labels will always be at the center of the music industry, too (he runs an indie label). New Music Strategies speculates that the labels will shift to even more online surveillance, more lawsuits against fans, and worse End User License Agreements (I don't see how you accomplish this last one without DRM, though).

DRM as we know it is over. There may be Son of DRM but that’s another matter. Right now its dead, the majors are moving towards the new model. The one thing you can be sure of is they will still be at the centre of the world music industry whatever happens. The independents are another matter. As our sector’s share has fallen by almost half in just over twelve months, the new model for us is partnership. It always was, I’m just not sure we got it.

Link(Thanks, Andrew!)

Internet Libel OK'd by Courts

2006-11-21T10:15:00.000-08:00

Thank God! The L.A. Times reports:

Internet users and providers cannot be held liable for posting defamatory material written by someone else, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday.

"The prospect of blanket immunity for those who intentionally redistribute defamatory statements on the Internet has disturbing implications," Justice Carol Corrigan wrote for the court. But, she added, immunity "serves to protect online freedom of expression and to encourage self-regulation."

[...]

The court explained that Internet defamation law differs from that of other media.

"Book, newspaper or magazine publishers are liable for defamation on the same basis as authors," Corrigan wrote. "Book sellers, news vendors or other 'distributors' … may only be held liable if they knew or had reason to know of a publication's defamatory content."

Congress "chose to protect even the most active Internet publishers, those who take an aggressive role in republishing third-party content," she wrote.

[...]

She said the threat of liability also would reduce the flow of ideas on the Internet. "The volume and range of Internet communications make the 'heckler's veto' a real threat," Corrigan said.

The defendant, Ilene Rosenthal of the Humantics Foundation, blogs here. The case was brought by the erstwhile thugs known as the Quackbusters.

Here is EFF's FAQ on Online Defamation.

Wikipedia entry on the 1996 Communications Decency Act.

* Discussion @ /.

UPDATE: Comprehensive coverage of blogger reaction to the Barrett v. Rosenthal decision at CJR.

Newsweek on the anti-DRM movement

2006-11-21T06:58:00.000-08:00

Newsweek takes notice of the burgeoning global anti-DRM movement:

Now, an increasingly vocal grassroots resistance to DRM is cropping up. An anti-DRM campaign called “Defective by Design,” which is organized by the Free Software Foundation, has 15,000 registered members; the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that DRM places limits on “your ability to make lawful use of the music you purchase.” Web sites like stopdrmnow.org and digitalfreedom.org have been launched “to protect individuals’ right to use new digital technologies” and urge boycotts on DRM-tagged content. David Berlind, executive editor of tech trade journal ZDNet, coined his own term for DRM: “Content Restriction, Annulment and Protection.” (Figure out the acronym).

Link

Universal Goes After BofA for U2 'One' Parody

2006-11-20T07:42:00.000-08:00

How broke-ass will UMG and their copyright hounds get? Maria Aspan @ The New York Times tackles this hilarity:

A video of two Bank of America employees singing a version of U2’s “One” to commemorate their company’s acquisition of MBNA recently made the rounds of the blogs, prompting amusement and some ridicule from online viewers.

But the intended comic effect of their performance and the retooled lyrics (“One spirit, we get to share it/Leading us all to higher standards”) seemed lost on lawyers on the lookout for copyright violations.

On Tuesday, a lawyer for the Universal Music Publishing Group, a catalog owner and administrator, posted the text of a cease-and-desist letter in the comments section of Stereogum.com, a Web site carrying the video. It contended that Bank of America had violated Universal’s copyright of the U2 song.

The two employees featured in the video were the guitarist, Jim Debois, a consumer market executive for Manhattan, and the singer, Ethan Chandler, a Manhattan banking center manager, who provoked much of the ridicule with his earnest interpretation and also for straying a bit far from U2’s lyrics with lines like “Integration has never had us feeling so good/and we’ll make lots of money.”

Mr. Chandler, who has independently released an album and is working on another, said he was asked to write and perform the song for an August meeting of credit card division executives at MBNA headquarters in Wilmington, Del.

He said he was surprised to learn about the cease-and-desist letter, stressing that his performance was meant for an internal audience. “There was an approved list of songs to use,” he said, “and as far I knew, that was an approved song.”

Universal said on Stereogum that it had sent the letter by fax and registered mail to Bank of America last Monday. On Friday, a bank spokeswoman, Betsy Weinberger, said the legal department had not yet received it.

The letter was signed by Raul R. Gonzalez, a lawyer for Universal Music. Reached at his office, Mr. Gonzalez said, “No comment” and hung up.

Online commentators accustomed to viral marketing said they suspected that the video was the latest corporate attempt to co-opt Internet video for promotional purposes. But Ms. Weinberger said it was “absolutely not” leaked by Bank of America as a marketing ploy.

Mr. Chandler also denied any involvement in leaking the video, although he admitted that, despite the cutting online criticism, the incident had an upside. “A lot of people thought it was fake, but I really do sing,” he said. “I’ve been doing this a long time.”

Here's the Stereogum post that features the c&d from Gonzalez in comments, complete with typos: "As a courtesy to you and, in order to put Sterorgum.com on notice, I am attaching the text of a cease and desist letter sent to Bank of America’s legal counsel...."

LINK to NYT article.

Gilmore Discusses Gilmore v. Gonzales

2006-11-20T05:58:00.000-08:00

This is a good backgrounder on John Gilmore's Secret Laws suit that will hopefully be heard by the Supreme Court, as explained by the man himself:

A Little Hope w/ Social Network Conversations like These

2006-11-19T15:01:00.000-08:00

I've taken a pretty pessimistic viewpoint re: the future and Set-Top Cop issues. However, over the weekend, I procrastinated extensively and engaged in conversation on Facebook's group page, UCLA's UCPD Brutality. This exchange was one of three over the weekend - the other two were interesting in different ways. The other two involved calling out participants whose conversative comments elicited group reaction - one from New Orleans, another from the Air Force Academy. Both times my comments began in the third person and at the end, switched to direct 1st-person opinions addressed to these "gentlemen." When confronted directly, the individuals backed down.

Here's the exchange that transpired between myself and Faryan Amir-Ghassemi @ U. of Maryland. I started with a general comment to no one in particular:

I agree with folks who think that this involves larger issues, for me, of power (violence & cops) and technlogy (posting on Gootube).

These issues play themselves out all the time. I know LA County Juvenile County Defenders and their stories are heart-breaking. The level of violence in these neighborhoods makes what happened at UCLA look like a slap. People may not want to see a connection, but on a societal level, it's there.

We'll have to decide whether we want a "free culture" or not. This would require sustained energy, one that we can't feel will be resolved so easily like "investigating" isolated UCLA Library cops is.

We all lives restricted by technology and most of us are lucky not to suffer violence because of it (we just have limits on things like our Ipods - I'm sure no one would want to be able to transfer songs from 1 to another).

http://uscpubd510.blogspot
.com/

Faryan responded:

Re Lewis:

There are several issues at work here besides just technology and power. The fact that the student is an Iranian American and he cries out expletives about the government and the Patriot Act. It raises questions about the nature of the act, just as LA race riots raise questions beyond socio-economic issues, into the realm of racial and affinity superstructures.

I think technology plays a vital role in mediating the power structures. We witness brutal acts of violence all the time, as a populous. Many of them are abusive by members of the police. The Youtube link helps galvanize the community's ability to respond via social influence. I think without the video, this story dissipates through word of mouth and an inability to create an empathic understanding/following.

The power of unadulterated mass media is in full effect here. Compare this youtube phenomenon versus the Rodney King beating. The parallels are stark yet the transformation is equally glaring...

to which

Faryan,

I agree with your comments completely. The one addition is we need to look at how technologies like Gootube, like our lives, are multi-faceted and exploit the users while being a force to mobilize the masses. That is, Gootube compared to sites like Revver are what some really intelligent critics like Lawrence Lessig call "fake" user sharing sites since they're restrictions built in and users/creators receive no compensation (like http://one.revver.com/revv
er/browse/Edit
or's+Picks which posts video and let's the creators share the ad revenue. Gootube exists solely to benefit its shareholders, which is fine and give people exposure, which is also fine. But there are alternatives which are definitely "free-er" and more empowering.

I'm trying to track it down, but the UCLA footage was first posted on a LA anti-police abuse site, which has been omitted from the story.

and then,

Re Lewis:

Yes, Gootube is a power structure in itself. We will see more of this as the corporate influence will mediate the content presented and clearly the lack of revenue sharing is beguiling. They are the gatekeepers of this so called "free" content, just as news media was a generation before. The concept of intellectual property has become far more convoluted as a result...

Are they held accountable for this? No, the content will simply dictate their success. But, it is still the best alternative we have at the moment. An anarchist system devoid of revenue whording, advertising and asymetries goes beyond youtube/media. It delves into the nature of capitalism and our society's conception of time/work/i.p.

Nevertheless the negatives (assymetrical power structures) sometimes get outweighed by the positives (exposure)...

to which I responded,

Yes, these are complicated issues, but the only thing I disagree with is setting up a choice between the status quo and an anarchist, "Pirate" party, only off-the-grid alternative.

There are people like Joi Ito, a major venture capitalist, trying to create empowering forms of "true" sharing business models.

The Free Culture Student movement is another example, http://freeculture.org/. We're trying to imagine real alternative and make them a reality. Check it out.

I blogged about Joi Ito and some amazing new models that were discussed at a USC Remix conference. It's a long post, but worth reading as the alternatives are out there and they're inspiring.

http://uscpubd510.blogspot.com/2006/11/sunday-rhttpbetabloggercomimggllinkgife.h
tml

next,

sounds interesting, and I would need to read more about it to comment further, but take facebook for example:

They provide a communal system for members of a populace (what once used to be elite universities, became all universities and now is open to anyone, practically). However, their success is mediated upon the user's interaction within the community. If people don't chat/share with facebook, they don't use it. If they don't use it, it doesn't grow/become profitable. Are users of the system being reimbursed sufficiently through the service?

Same could be said about any IP service/community. Are the users, in effect, the "shareholders?"

and closing, for now,

I'd argue there are what we're called "Set-Top Cop" issues involved that require new paradigms. So we're not talking about binary relationships. It's better to think of it as tri-partite. There's appliances (Ipods, computers), content makers (whether big media or ind. users) and then the networks (Facebook, Youtube). The inter-play is complex, but basically they're also three scenarios: one a system gets closed down like cable (can't share anything), two the status quo with the off-the-grid pirates and some sharing (but the systems of closed off from "true" sharing. Wouldn't it be nice to have one meta-social network instead of being over-networked with Myspace, Face, et al. Or three, new forms.

Either way, violence will come as people confront the system like at UCLA. I'd argue what we saw is the next form of civil disobedience.

The Need for Humility in Techno-Thinking

2006-11-16T02:43:00.000-08:00

Driving to school early yesterday morning, I was shocked to hear Chris Farley's ghost. Actually it was his brother advertising exploiting his brother's memory. This triggered thoughts about how utopian and out-of-touch some technological thinking can be. As the dead came to life over the radio, I wondered about the certain strain of techno-thinking that is so optimistic about the future and the promises of technology.

We don't have to look far to see how "backwards" some contemporary ideas have become. This should make us cautious about over-hyping the promise of technology. Take one recent example in the area of science, technology and medicine,

In Diana Wagman's Sunday LATIMES piece "One diagnosis away from despair A family's journey through teenage depression, recovery and hope." She chronicles how her son was almost lost to the medical establishment and the pharmaceutical industry when her son was diagnosed "bi-polar." I'm not saying that these kids don't have problems, it's just a century ago they would have been considered "normal Victorian boys" being a little "wild" unless they were minorities or women.

In this example, we have regressed to the late 19th Century's assumptions. The sciences defined women as neurasthenic when they acted "hysterical" and minorities as degenerate. Then, they would have been labeled "sick"; now they'd [over]medicated.

What does this have to do with technology and set-top cops? It has everything to do with how we think about technology and society. We should have humility when thinking about the promise of technology, remembering the technology is neutral and a powerful force.

In a recent seminar, Issac Dacio, the owner of a chain of record stores, was asked about the future of collecting vinyl. Dacio felt that something is being lost as DJs switch to Serato Digital/"Virtual" DJing. The physicality of experience, the substance of collecting is being diluted, accepted and replaced by users "absorbing" content.

Humility is required. It is as easy for our thinking to regress as it to progress, and technology increases the speed of such changes. As Melvin Krarnzberg has written, “‘Technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral.’ It is indeed a force, probably more than ever…that penetrates the core of life and mind.”

UCLA Student Taser'd For Not Showing ID in Library

2006-11-15T23:33:00.000-08:00

Updated below

He wouldn't show his ID, and he wouldn't leave on his own. So THEY SHOT HIM WITH A STUN GUN!

23-year-old Mostafa Tabatabainejad is my hero-of-the week. Check it:

"As the officers attempted to escort him out, he went limp and continued to refuse to cooperate with officers or leave the building," [UCLA Police Department Spokeswoman Nancy] Greenstein said.... Tabatabainejad encouraged others at the library to join his resistance. When a crowd began to gather they used the stun gun on him.

The arrest was recorded on another student's camera phone and showed Tabatabainejad screaming while on the floor of the computer lab. The video also showed the student shouting, "Here's your Patriot Act, here's your ... abuse of power..."

Here's the cell-phone vid of the incident posted to YouTube:

Click here for students' reaction in the Daily Bruin.

And more suspended-in-disbelief commentary from Martini Republic, LAObserved, and UCLA LJ forum

I've spent late nights at USC's Leavey Library, and at a certain point, a student worker comes by to ensure that all in the building after 10 pm or so, have a USC ID (the library is 24 hours). But NEVER a COP. And, only because of the PATRIOT act is it deemed necessary, for unexplained reasons, for one to have an actual ID on them -- when normally, in a case like Mostafa's, the fact that he was recognized as a student by peers surrounding him should have been enough.

Is it time to renew my GunControlNow site?

UPDATES:

From the L.A. Times 11/21: Terrence Duren, an 18-year veteran of the UCLA Police Department, tased Tabatabainejad five times. A 2001 UCLA officer of the year, Duren has been the subject of other use-of-force complaints and previously recommended for dismissal. In one previous incident, Duren shot and wounded a homeless man in a University building, a case that went to trial. Duren has stated all of the past allegations against him regarding police misconduct and use of excessive force were investigated by the UCPD and proven false.[8] Prior to joining the UCPD in the late 1980s, Duren was fired from the Long Beach Police Department.

FOUR NEW VIDEOS
The Daily News reports:

four new videos surfaced online Thursday, showing Los Angeles police clubbing two young people as they videotaped the arrest of a third during a [July 8 Minutemen rally] in Hollywood.

Henry posted photos at LAist from Friday's rally like this --->

80+ comments on this post at my blog, netZoo

RIAApe Me... Again

2006-11-15T17:34:00.000-08:00

IS the RIAA working hard behind the scenes to pass Audio Flag legislation to plug the analog hole during Congress' lame duck session?

The *battle* is on and earlier this week, the RIAA's Cary Sherman called BS on the Consumer Electronics Assn's Digital Freedom docket in this op-ed published on CNET.

CEA President Gary Shapiro fired back almost immediately with this response.

I don't trust either of these guys, quite frankly, and wonder what everybody else thinks about these association-types apparent attempt to duke it out, not to mention, Microsoft's consent to sellout to labels for each Zune (despite fair use) sold and whether, in the end any of these efforts will lead us in any direction towards digital freedom for both consumers and creators.

Charles wrote in to Small Print Project:

...Seems like the RIAA is looking to make a push to pass the Audio Flag bill during the lame duck session. This will kill any hopes of having a digital radio recorder, much like Tivo, which companies like XM and Sirius are behind. Tonight the RIAA is sponsoring a tech demo/concert/open bar at the Russell Senate building. Special interests hard at work?

I can't find anything at quick glance on this, but please -- SOMEBODY crash it and report back!

Click to order RIAA toilet paper

More on the Sherman spin:
-- /. thread
-- Mistaken Goal posts of last week's "revision of a white paper released in 2003 entitled 'Background Discussion of Copyright Law and Potential Liability for Students Engaged in P2P File Sharing on University Networks.'"
-- Ars Technica

Google Vid Post Gets Flak in Iran

2006-11-13T07:31:00.000-08:00

From the How-to-Inspire-Nuclear-Apocalypse-from-your-Laptop Dept:

via OgleEarth:

Somebody's posted a video to Google Video that claims the Iranian city of Tabriz is actually in southern Azerbaijan. It's a breezy but calculated insult, much like the doings of the Frenchman on the rampart in the Monty Python movie The Holy Grail.

But horrors, Iran's government seems to have fallen hook, line and sinker for the video, and are now urging Iranians to vent their wrath on Google, reports the Guardian's Tehran correspondent Robert Tait:

The text of a tourist film on the site has drawn accusations that the US-owned search engine is deliberately trying to undermine Iran's territorial integrity by fomenting separatist sentiment in the mainly Turkish-speaking province.

(Why they don't link to the video in the story is beyond me.)

Many seem not to be aware that Google Video hosts user-contributed content, so believe this must be a deliberate ploy by Google (including, incredibly, The Guardian's Tait!). Others apparently think that it is Google's job to censor all content anyone finds objectionable. Either way, this fracas will require that Google explain once again the workings of the internet to witless people in power, but at the same time it presents an opportunity for education on the principle of freedom of speech. The worst possible outcome? Google takes down the video.

(Data point: at 8:22 UTC, the video was downloaded 11,431 times after two days.)

LINK

"Progressive Judaism," Globalization and Our Over-Networked World

2006-11-11T15:39:00.000-08:00

In my seminar with Prof. Manuels Catells this week on globalization, society and technology in Russia and China, he made a fascinating connection between Chinese and Jewish identities. These are the only two identities that have existed for two millennium and endured throughout the spread of a Judeo-Christian ethos/identity; resisted the implosion of "Classical Civilization" during the middle ages; survived the renewal of Western civilization, the rise of modernity, barely (esp. the Jews) and now are challenged in our 21st-Century, over-networked world.

Castells work highlights the dislocating impact of a network society; of how due to the radical changes in information communication technology, our very identities, the way we experience space and flow, that is, how our bodies form identity and meaning, is changing in fundamental ways. In our network globalized world, we are always "here" and "there", on call, checking in, present and preparing for the future. Castells argued in our seminar that the basic pieces we utilize to form our "selves" or identity - the language we use, the concepts and social analytical categories we use to understand the world - have to change. How we understand ourselves and our world needs to change at the most minute level, and then, be projected onto a global level.

At one level, Castells' point is a basic one: since our world has changed in radical ways, so must the categories we use to understand the world. Thus, we can't expect people to "rationally" respond to economic arguments based on their self-interests if at another level, they are feeling - consciously or unconsciously - the anxiety, fears, urges, dislocations, ruptures - as a result of these changes. While this may sound very theoretical, when the global world is viewed this way, things fall into place.

So we shouldn't be surprised that there are riots in Israel because gay Jews marched through the holy city and that the Vatican, Muslim clerics and Orthodox rabbis formed an alliance in opposition. Strange times of space and flow.

Choose your other examples of the dislocating effects and resulting violence in our lifetime: the War in Iraq, Afghanistan, 9/11, Yugoslavia, etc., destruction of the environment, use of copyright to prevent third world countries from pursuing medical patents, etc. Our over-networked world has never become more complex.

Thus, change must come, but we must first accept that change is always difficult. Patience and strategic thinking will be required.

What this means is that religious identity as we traditionally understand it will have to change. People like Josh Kun in their re-discovery of forgotten Jewish vinyl music is one wonderful, strange example.

So spiritual matters will reveal themselves in new ways, in re-discovering the past and re-mixing it. It will be global. So to end on a positive note: there is a world-wide creative class, ironically largest in US, Brazil AND Iran. Perhaps, we should combine humility with a desire to reach out and learn from those truly different. To see spirit in the act of reaching out, which for some is much more risky than others.

Brett Ratner: Old/New Media Player

2006-11-10T20:16:00.000-08:00

Recently Brett Ratner spoke in the NYX re: Hollywood movie directors losing their content to illegal downloading.

The article proceeded to scare me when Ratner alludes to a "new media" deal to produce content online:

Mr. Ratner, the director, was driving down Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood when he noticed a going-out-of-business sign at Tower Records, the music retailer that once thrived on selling the music of superstars like Prince, Elton John and Madonna. Many here, like him, fear that the problems that plagued the music business are heading their way.

“What happens if the film business is not ahead of the curve?” he asked. “What is going to happen to me? To all of us?”

Mr. Ratner said he had been well compensated as a director. Still, he has urged the Directors Guild of America to look at several issues facing directors, including the fact that they are not paid when music videos they direct are sold on the Internet.

But he is not waiting around to see what the guilds will do or studios will offer either. Mr. Ratner said he was close to announcing a deal with an Internet company to create his own “Saturday Night Live”-style program that he would own outright and distribute online. Then he can bypass studio bosses altogether.

“I could make a lucrative deal for myself,” he said. “This is just the beginning.”

Ugggggggggghhhhh.

I just finished watching X-Men III. At least, Ratner's early stuff were watchable. X III (why'd Singer have to leave) was best watched in fast-fast forward while focusing on my Online Comm homework. It's worth catching the ending just in case they let a director show some craftsmanship in the next one.

But there are dynamic, truly new business models being created.

Live entertainment a la Betalevel new fusion models is such a more dynamic offering. Or, a low budget film like mine. But if new media just ends re-cycling old media cliches, opportunity will be lost.

Kahle v. Gonzales

2006-11-10T12:15:00.000-08:00

The case in which Brewster Kahle argues that two statutes -- the Copyright Renewal Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act -- violate the Fist Amendment by allowing for illegal copyright renewal of certain works -- was dismissed in CA district court two years ago (the case was then Kahle v. [then U.S. Attorney General] Ashcroft). Now it's on to the 9th Circuit Court.

Brewster Kahle posts:

Kahle v. Gonzales is going to be argued by Larry Lessig on Nov 13th at, maybe 10 or 11AM.

What is at stake is libraries being able to have out-of-print books on their digital bookshelves as they have out-of-print books on the physical shelves we grew up with.

James R. Browning US Courthouse
United States Court of Appeals - 9th Circuit
95 Seventh Street
San Francisco, California 94103
Courtroom 2, 3rd Floor

http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/cases/kahle_v_ashcroft.shtml

11/13 UPDATE: Lessig posts on the hearing:

We alleged a change in perhaps the most fundamental “traditional contour” of copyright protection — the shift from the opt-in system that copyright was from 1790=1976 to the opt-out system that copyright has become in the period since.

Lessig goes into even more detail in this post

Is Amazon's 'Omakase' Ad-Link System TOO Invasive?

2006-11-09T21:35:00.000-08:00

I've been using Amazon's beta "Omakase" ad banner in the sidebar of my blog for a couple months now. I became an "Amazon Associate" primarily to get an extra 4 or 5 percent off when I enter the store via the banner.

But no doubt these ads freak the SHIT out of some people (especially those who've been searching for KY and butt-plugs).

Amazon's Omakase links (Omakase is Japanese for [roughly] "it's totally up to you.") "show an Associate's visitors what they're most likely to buy based on Amazon's unique understanding of the site, the user, and the page itself."

How well does this work? See for yourself and let me know in the comments below.

Check the sidebar here: http://netzoo.net/...

Most reviews of Omakase (and Dave Taylor has an extensive one here relate the product as Amazon's answer to Google's Adsense. But my understanding is that Adsense content is based on the context on a particular PAGE, where as Omakase links are unique to the USER. Gigantic difference, no?

Plus, only the Associate knows what's going on since you have to BE an associate (anyone can, I believe) to read the FAQ.

----

I did make my first Amazon Associate cent (yes - exactly $.01) recently off some blog visitor who apparently purchased A Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy -- which, it turns out was purchased for only ONE PENNY (hardcover even). I mostly think it's cool to post images of books / CDs of interest (and from my experience in the record industry -- labels and artists often stand to make more money via an Amazon order than a direct-from-label's site order).

Labels to Make Cash on Every Zune Sold

2006-11-08T22:51:00.000-08:00

Universal Music Group is assured compensation for the unknown number of pirated or file-shared tracks that are transferred/downloaded to a Microsoft Zune player after striking a revenue-sharing deal on sales of the player.

The record label will get over $1 for each $250 Zune sold and claims it will extend half of what it receives to the artists. The Zune digital media player hits stores next Tuesday and, yes, it's available in doodie brown.

In trying to compete with iPod, Microsoft is turning the digital audio industry on it's head -- and once again Universal is saving itself from the costy litigation route.

Historically -- and as decided in court -- labels have never been compensated for the sales of digital audio players that can potentially play "illegally" acquired songs. In the case of Apple's iPod, labels receive a percentage of every download via the iTunes Music Store. But clearly, this didn't cutting it for the labels and Universal -- the money-hungry bullies they are these days -- threatened to give Microsoft hell (imagine that).

From NYT:

A recent study estimated that Apple has sold an average of 20 songs per iPod — a fraction of its capacity. The rest of consumers’ music files — 95 percent or more — come from ripped CDs, possibly including discs from their own collections, and illegal file-trading networks, the study said.

The article, complete with a lil' nut graf referencing the 1999 Diamond Rio decision, includes "we make the rules now" sentiment from Universal's whiny chairman, Doug Morris and even David Geffen. Microsoft will happily pimp the same buck n' change to the other majors.

(A review in the same NYT Technology section harps on the Zune as an "unabashed copy" of the iPod.

LINK

Hot "Live" Moms meet Bizarre Intellectual Property Policy

2006-11-08T21:56:00.000-08:00

The surreal reality of our LA-lives becomes more obvious, the more I am become aware of Set-Top Issues. The LA Times (the very good Gina Piccalo) reports on how reality "stars" are trademarking ideas like "hot mom." I guess it makes sense that reality TV would be good for IP lawyers.

It's great to hear of such wackiness. But enjoy for yourself:

Nearly two years ago, Denay said, she had applied to trademark the terms "hot mom" and "hot mom's club" but had not applied for the rights to those terms in TV. So, Denay said, in August she applied to expand her trademark to include use of "hot moms" in all media. A week later, Medicis and the "Hottest Mom" producers filed their own application to trademark the term "Hottest Mom in America." Both applications are pending approval. Medicis attorneys wouldn't comment on details of the dispute but in a company statement said Medicis with Buzznation "created and developed the concept for this program entirely independently, and this individual's unfounded allegation to the contrary is false. As substantial momentum builds for this program, it is unfortunate, though hardly surprising, that this sort of opportunism would occur."

Link

VIDEO: 'Hacking Democracy'

2006-11-08T19:47:00.000-08:00

The HBO special comes to Google Video. Isn't that nice of them :-)

Sure, Diebold tried to get HBO to cancel it, actually calling bullshit on them despite never having actually bothered to screen it. i think we know who the real hacks are here.

Leaked WIPO memo shows rich countries plans at WIPO

2006-11-08T09:53:00.000-08:00

Karsten sez, "IP Watch has obtained a confidential report from a WIPO meeting of developed countries. It took place just before WIPO's general assembly in September. In this meeting they decided, among other things, to sink the much-criticized Broadcast Treaty. The report also describes how these countries (US, EU, Japan and others) are honing their strategy to minimise the effect of the proposal for a development agenda."

WIPO is the UN agency that creates copyright treaties -- it has the same relationship to bad copyright law that Mordor has to evil. The Broadcast Treaty is a sleazy attempt to create new rights for broadcasters and webcasters that trump the rights of the public and of actual creators. It's been a flashpoint for activist groups, who have started to show up in force, questioning the treaty's legitimacy.

The Development Agenda is the plan to reform WIPO as a real humanitarian UN agency, something it promised to do when it was chartered. The idea is to force every WIPO treaty to justify itself in terms of international development for poor countries, instead of just creating windfall profits for multinational copyright companies. It's a global scandal that developed nations are planning to sabotage it.

On the proposed broadcasting treaty, the report said that several members, as well as others not in the room, "will be making sure the diplomatic conference does not go ahead smoothly this week." In the end, it was agreed to schedule the diplomatic conference, or high-level treaty negotiation, for late 2007, after more meetings and another General Assembly.

Link

RSS Feeds and Copyright

2006-11-06T16:39:00.000-08:00

I've always been under the impression that the contents of an RSS feeds are open to republishing, with attribution. For a while, I've done just that in the sidebar of my blog, embedding a great auto-updating newsfeed tool with the help of a plugin from CHAITGear.

More and more people are now accustomed to / hooked on RSS Newsreaders, thanks to great advancements in Google Reader, among other apps, and new browsers (Flock) and extensions (Hyperwords) lifting and reappropriating content from Web sites and RSS feeds (with attribution) is easier than ever.

"Does RSS Imply Permission To Reuse Content?," a recent article by Jason Lee Miller of WebProNews ponders the Q:

A content provider distributes his or her content through the use of an RSS feed. This feed is open to any who would subscribe. The first question is: Is there an implied consent to repurpose that material by republishing it (with proper credit) on a blog or Website? The act of syndicating (distributing) content may imply that permission.

The second question is: How are splogs (spam blogs) that are set up as aggregators of content to attract keyword-driven traffic, that publish only the headline and snippet of text, that link out to the original source, and that make money from AdSense different from Google and other search engines? Doesn't Google do, essentially, the same thing?

The short answer is that the legal system hasn't really decided for certain.

As Matthew Ingram details in this post, some bigger-name bloggers are uppity-in-arms and fanning flames over so-called "RSS-stealers."

RSS is also called "syndication." As with any sitcom in syndication, it is open for anyone to pick up, a sort of implied license. At least I'm sticking to that opinion, although while this should be easily inferred by the concept, I think it's also implied that syndicated material can only be used with original attribution.

All that said, there's not much on either side of the debate in the Wikipedia RSS entry and I can't seem to locate any address to this matter by RSS visionary Dave Winer, but considering the guy never thought once about patenting XML, etc -- I'm betting he's a believer in the implied consent to share RSS'd content.

DRM Poll on torrent tracker site

2006-11-06T14:43:00.000-08:00

Interesting results - I would have thought the answers would be more one-sided on what is ostensibly an "illegal download" site...

I was lucky to attend most of Sunday Remixing the Archives Events @ USC Annenberg center. More free events and lectures - Upcoming later in the Year

2006-11-06T07:50:00.000-08:00

The final day of TransFormations I, Remixing the Archive, was a wonderful affair.

I missed the first event, the winner of USC's Free Culture NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD remix competition. I did check the winners out, Sami Kriegstein - Night of the Living Advertisements (YouTube) (Internet Archive)and Michael Rossmassler - Sugar on My Tongue (YouTube) (Internet Archive). Rock on!!!!

Imagine a brand new cinema: one that goes back in time and follow the road not taken when those Hollywood Pirates left the East Coast and committed themselves to a passive theatrical experience. The panel discussion,THE ROOTS AND FUTURE OF REMIX with Barbara Lattanzi, Anne McGuire, Sean Deyoe and Aram Sinnreich took us back in time to the early 20th Century when film - believe it, we saw the examples - was an active medium with Karaoke features embedded in the viewing experience.

Is remixing really new? Hasn't it been around for centuries both as an artistic practice and maybe since the beginning of this century? Aram jump-started things with an interesting opening. He's been focusing on the organization patterns in culture, with a focus on music creation, to develop a workable theory of network culture. Basically, he's looking at the radical changes in music and what that presages about our uncertain cultural moment, one where Gnarls Barkley/Danger Mouse CRAZY, a remix, is the top summer hit. His point is that it's never been easier to de-fragment, re-fragment the piece of content to make something new. There's a litany of other remix examples....

Next Barbara Lattanzi gave an amazing presentation. She traced back to early, early 20th Century film and showed how, at the beginning, there was a fork, the road not taken. This road gave audiences a hilarious degree of agency. We watched shorts from I think 1920's where audiences would sing back and follow songs, almost karaoke-like, before a feature. It's a radical thought: one would have happened in film became an active, agent experience where the audiences was mobilized?

She gave numerous examples in her work where she's breaking down the passivity model using idiomorphic software. My favorite was her work on the Zapruder-Kennedy assassination reworking and examples of her C-SPAN Karaoke, my favorite being the Alberto Gonzalez karaoke. I can't recommend enough that people check out her website and follow her work.

Why start the Titantic leaving the East Coast? I'd prefer to see the film start with Kate as an old woman. Anne McGuire showed how to do this. Anne presented her remixing, deconstructing, remaking of class films, renamed ADVENTUR POSEIDEN, THE [get the joke Warner Brothers] (The Unsinking of my Ship). We watched how she had the perfect content to remix so that the film starts with the helicopter dropping our lucky group INTO the Poseiden and the ship then unsinks itself. All the content, all day, was great and you should check out her films where possible. What a happy ending!!!!!! The ship rights itself!

Finally and perhaps most interestingly to me given my Online Community focus, there was Sean Deyoe from Betalevel. Betalevel creates and offers remix parties/events/salon - literally creates community where it did not exist employing remix tools. I'm most attracted to the "Swap Meet
Piracy - Karaoke - Conviviality." These are events where people come together to share musical files, but more importantly to gather and sing karaoke. What's so fascinating, what Sean himself finds remarkable about the events is simple: People are far less interested in "stealing"/"sharing" each other music, although they do share music. But the focus always is on the singing/enjoying each other's company.

This gets back to BIG MEDIAS' need for Psych 101 re-education. You don't make honest people dishonest and you don't scare dishonest people into being honest by stupid intimidation tricks. Put another way: human nature did not change with the invention of Napster. If you're the music business, you simply alienate and lose a whole generation of users.

Betalevel shows a third day: you build trust, create a connection between fans, allow them to come together (off AND online) and share, and boomm, you'll make a boatload of money and your fans will be happy.

One theme that emerged in the panel discussions was the sense of "something" emergent or ambient. That is, all the panelists spoke of something "special," almost a magical fusion generated between fans/users and artistic forms. New remix technologies strives to share this content and empower this connection. This sharing, this radical digital transformation of content and space is something new. I found the language to be spiritual in the native-american spiritual ecology sense of connecting to something larger when you share yourself within or with a larger entity.

This is a unique, strange time.

The grand finale was a bravura performance by TV Sheriff and the Trailbuddies. The crowd loved it. So did I. During the performance, a little girl, one of the TV Sheriff's guys' daughter, danced by the stage, roaming around the front.

I couldn't resist the feeling walking to my car that "that something" is already being lost amidst all this "connecting". At the very least, it is becoming more and more concealed, harder to imagine, to see amidst the clutter (no mas Web 2.0 hype) of our mediated society. Children don't understand organizational forms of culture, boingboinging, axis of evil and such. They simply like to dance while their dad plays in a band.

Linux Hits the Big-Time: Microsoft in Bed with Novell

2006-11-03T06:00:00.000-08:00

The more Web 2.0 gains steam, the more interesting it is to examine the media's coverage of the major players. It's encouraging that the message is become a stronger and stronger green-light, a push for the investment/financial/advertising community that "OK boys, time to get back in the game."

In counter-point to Forbes' Daniel Lyons' hysteria over Richard Stallman and the tensions in negotiating the new Open Source/GNU license, the New York Times runs an interesting article (headline: "2 Giants in a Deal Over Linux") noting the partnership between Microsoft and Open Source company, Novell, and how this is a logical, development. Linux software, improved by its open source foundation, has a symbiotic relationship with the Free Software movement.

What's most striking is the contrast in tone. Reading the Times, the development actually makes sense. Over at Forbes, folks are getting a wee bit hysterical, Daniel Lyons' (headline: "Microsoft Linux!") seems shocked that the Open Source movement can ACTUALLY GET ALONG with the big, bad Microsoft. But, this is a natural, healthy development.

It's becoming clear that the old poles are dissolving. Those media outlets wedded to the black and white binaries will have a hard time adjusting. Those wedded to the old ways of thinking won't have any choice but change. And they not like it (who does?). But here's for the open-source, free software, and proprietary business models all mixing and matching.

Big Media Collusion? Google Gets Evil

2006-10-31T10:34:00.000-08:00

Google (motto: Do No Evil) is now suspected of colluding with the media giants along with YouTube in an effort to use it's bubblicious valuation to ward off copyright litigation while simultaneously putting the little guys out of competition -- all at the expense of both artist and audience.

Yes, this is the very definition of evil.

Mark Cuban posted a note from a "trusted digital media business veteran" alledging the above in disturbing, though not surprising, detail. read it here.

As Google has grown cozy as the powerhouse of Bubble 2.0 it seems to have cozied up with the early 21st century corporate-political philosophy of: Trust me, I'm [Google] [the president] [your local utility company]. Are they succumbing to the weak-ass corruption at the top of the service industry food chain?

What's even more frightening is that a majority of the old money keeping Google afloat has about as much of a clue as to what it is or will be and the service it provides as they thought they knew when they put all their money into the iOmegas and Pets.coms of yesteryear.

Worse, the biggest consumers of Google and especially YouTube's services, belong to a generation that has grown immune to the hypocrisy of corporate leadership, practically expecting scandals to be exposed as if they are just another element of democracy in action. How many of today's youngest voters can actually name the presidents who preceded their existence (14 years ago, Clinton became president).

Last, will the public and media response to Google's endeavors w/ YouTube and big media -- essentially spending billions to ensure a monopoly on the market before they become stale and "so last year" to today's youth (see Yuki Noguchi's piece in the Sunday WaPo) -- just as the public and media responds to all other corporo-political infringements on democracy (think the ongoing Iraq war)?

BONUS COV'G: MySpace now claims to be using GraceNote to flush it's supposed tens of millions of users of copyright-infringing files.

Big Bad Stallman: One-Sided IP Reporting

2006-10-29T19:53:00.000-08:00

Something's brewing when FORBES does a cover story on big, bad Richard Stallman. This article demonstrates just how powerful the open-source movement and the Linux operating system has become.

The article is a good overview of the dilemma facing the Free Software and Open Source movement in the next round of Linux licenses. What I find interesting is how the absence of a "intellectual goods knowledge ecology" counter-narrative to the Forbe's dominant narrative.

Forbes caricatures the Free Software programmers, led by Richard Stallman, as radical demagogues. While we don't have to agree with Stallman's objectively extreme position, Forbes intentionally omits how the Free Software movement believes human rights and issues of freedom of knowledge are involved.

We shouldn't expect Forbes to offer a Free Software defense. What is interesting is that the Free Software and Free Culture movement have failed in their communication strategy. There simply is no mention of their position that issues of access to knowledge or an "ecology of intellectual goods" is in play. Until that camp improves their PR strategy, we should not expect the Free Software movement to be painted as anything but extreme.

Chicago Voter Info Vulnerable to Hackers

2006-10-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

A "very serious vulnerability" in Chicago's elections Web site made it possible for hackers to swipe Social Security numbers and the personal information of over 1.3 million voters... No confirmation at this point of any information actually being gleaned from the site.

ABC News reports that the problem has existed for more than five years.
Chicago Tribune reports election officials claim to have patched the more than 5-year-old problem.

Can you imagine how much money may have been made by hackers over the past five years who accessed this info? I mean charging just 2 cents per SS# could provide nearly $30k toward an entire year's tuition at USC.

ABC News report
Tribune story
Illinois Ballot Integrity Project

Robin Williams, Ed Felten Crack Diebold's Code AND STILL...

2006-10-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

Last week, former Maryland state legislator Cheryl C. Kagan was anonymously given disks containing source code to Diebold's BallotStation and Global Election Management System (GEMS) tabulation software used in the 2004 elections.

A machine running on the same software version (4.3.15c) defined in the source code sent to Kagan was thoroughly hacked into and documented in September by Princeton's Ariel J. Feldman, J. Alex Halderman, and Edward W. Felten in the 26-page "Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine" (view PDF, "Internet Christian minister" Rev. Bill McGinnis summarizes it here).

Kagan's story was first reported last Friday in Baltimore Sun by reporter Melissa Harris.

An accompanying letter refers to the State Board of Elections and calls Kagan "the proud recipient of an 'abandoned baby Diebold source code' right from SBE accidentally picked up in this envelope, right in plain view at SBE. ... You have the software because you are a credible person who can save the state from itself. You must alert the media and save democracy."

No matter how or even if Kagan's story is true, a crime, or whatever -- it remains both ironic and suspicious that the one company authorized to make electronic voting systems in this country has kept their source code bottled up as if it contained the ingredients for Coca Cola's secret syrup. Opening source code to independent professional reviewers and critics who may find bugs and other flaws should be mandatory for a company that for months has represented itself with broken HTML code on their home page (see http://www.diebold.com/dieboldes/).

(Coincidentally 2 men pleaded guilty this morning in the FBI investigation into stolen Coke "trade secrets.")

Joe Strupp, of the newspaper industry watchdog Editor & Publisher asks, "Is Press Taking Possible Voting Problems Seriously?" (ABC's World News Tonight is devoting a fair amount of programming to the issue.)

Kagan, a Democrat, is the executive director of the Freeman Foundation -- a philanthropic community-focused charity -- and is a noted critic of her state's election chief and the Diebold voting systems. She said she's been in contact with the FBI and intends to cooperate with any investigation.

Maryland's deputy elections administrator claimed the disks contain "nothing that's being used in this election." Which is quite a suspicious thing to say in and of itself.

In other election season news, Google Earth has new layers and placemarks with useful 2006 election info.

(In Barry Levinson's "Man of the Year," Robin Williams stars as a comedian-turned presidential candidate who is elected only thanks to a bug in the electronic voting system that skews results).

LINK

MPAAs Boy Scout Propaganda

2006-10-21T12:04:00.000-07:00

When they're not clearing brush, tying knots and starting fires, the Boy Scouts of Los Angeles are being imbibed with honor-thy-copyright-loyally flim-flam. No joke.

Oddly, no byline on this tight report from the AP's boy scout beat:

"Working with the Boy Scouts of Los Angeles, we have a real opportunity to educate a new generation about how movies are made, why they are valuable, and hopefully change attitudes about intellectual property theft," Dan Glickman, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, said in a statement Friday.

Contact Victor Zuniga, head of Boy Scouts LA to find out the nature of these "merit badges."

LINK

Look Who's Sleeping With You(Tube)

2006-10-18T22:48:00.000-07:00

OMG! UMG is not gonna sue YouTube as threatened last month? Is YouTube pinned or just happy to share the bed? Today's New York Times pulls back the covers:

Three of the four major music companies — Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, Sony and Bertelsmann’s jointly owned Sony BMG Music Entertainment, and the Warner Music Group — each quietly negotiated to take small stakes in YouTube as part of video- and music-licensing deals they struck shortly before the sale, people involved in the talks said yesterday. The music companies collectively stand to receive as much as $50 million from these arrangements, these people said.

This payoff will certainly materialize faster than any potential compensation from a lawsuit would. But the possible catch -- doesn't part-ownership also entail liability for any future content-related lawsuits filed against YouTube?

Earlier this week, Universal sued video-sharing portals Grouper and Bolt, demanding 15 grand per infringement and telling the press:

"Grouper and Bolt... cannot reasonably expect to build their business on the backs of our content and the hard work of our artists and songwriters without permission and without compensating the content creators," a Universal spokesman said.

.

Yeah, I'm sure they're worried about 50 Cent appearing on a mini-YouTube or Mariah Carey being compensated (doesn't she have like a $20M contract)?

Last month it seemed Universal woke up thinking it was still 1999, only big mama RIAA is at bay (or, more likely, abusing the courts and/or high school kids).

Will there be more juicy details on this YouTube + Big 3 of 4 so-called partnership? Or is the new YouTube opaque?

Return of the [Pirate] Jigga

2006-10-18T21:12:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal is all worked up about Jay-Z's p2p-pimpin' for Coke's Stageside site (which directs you to download video files directly or via direct links to BitTorrent, Gnutella and the like).

Is the industry *finally* comin round the bend? The article -- titled "Record Labels Turn Piracy Into a Marketing Opportunity" details what could be considered (to put it nicely) the industry taking a wide turn. An alternate (if not more accurate) title in a more reality-based publication could be "Record Labels Think p2p is Just Another Way to Own You."

According to the WSJ, the old-school "decoy" technique, in which bad-karma'd companies like ARTISTdirect flood the p2p networks with fakes of "as many as 30 of the Billboard Top 100" to frustrate users to endlessly search for a legit copy of a song instead of hearing it once and then buying the record (not to mention, the title of the song spikes up to the top of the search charts as a result of the neverending-search-for nothing corporat practical joke). Since this is a Public Diplomacy course, let's just make a stretch and call it the carrot-stick approach.

Unfortunately, big media still thinks it has the upper hand and somehow must *fight* p2p and other "free" media-sharing, especially in light of the 2005 Grokster decision. From the WSJ article:

Before the ruling, record labels worried that they might undercut their legal arguments if they used peer-to-peer sites for their own purposes. Now, "we're basically free to exploit these billions of fake files we're putting out," says Randy Saaf, chief executive of MediaDefender.

MediaDefender is the p2p-weasling company that was bought out by ARTISTdirect last year. Somehow -- or I'm not reading it right -- the WSJ scribes are buying into MediaDefender's notion of "marketing," but frankly it's no different than me sharing a hundred fake mp3's on the old Napster and listing them as Metallica cuts.
The chart to the left, featured in the WSJ article, is from BigChampagne, the same online media measuring company that confirmed that -- in terms of "moving units" -- Danger Mouse's "Grey Album" was in a stratosphere to itself on Feb. 24, 2004, or Grey Tuesday, when we all went grey and/or hosted the Album. Today, BigChampagne has courted Nielsen and claims to be "the leading provider of information about popular entertainment online."

Jay-Z, needless to say, never had a problem with the mashup concept and lo, his fortunes have only grown. Nearly two years later, might *some* of the majors be finally getting it? Turn up that Young Dro and stay tuned . . .

(More digressive irony: The top Google results for listen to the grey album are ARTISTdirect-hosted pages.
Search via Yahoo! audio search, however, and it's all there!)

Gaming, Hollywood and DRM

2006-10-16T15:47:00.000-07:00

Can Hollywood benefit from using less "restrictive" DRM models?

According to the paper "Consumers, Fans, and Control: What the Games Industry
can teach Hollywood about DRM" by Landau et al from Sun Research, which will be presented in two weeks at the 6th ACM workshop on DRM, the answer is probably yes.

The paper claims that Hollywood's current DRM models might be too "restrictive", in the sense that they only allow viewing a film, rather than actively editing or changing it. The authors then postulate that Hollywood can benefit from applying more "flexible" DRM models to their content, which would enable users to make edits and changes, in a similar way MMORPG gamers can change, edit and contribute to different popular online gaming environments ("Second Life", for example).

This idea sounds reasonable, right? the users will be happy since they will be able to edit and change the content as they wish, and the studios will profit more by selling many editable copies. Well, not quite... with a DRM system in place, Hollywood can still have a saying on what changes it approves and what changes it does not. While this might be OK with some users, others would not like such constrainsts. What about buying an editable version of a film, changing it and then releasing it anonymously? will that be possible with a DRM system in place? I doubt it... And these are just a couple of examples illustrating why there should not be any DRM systen in place to begin with.

Link

The Temperature is Rising: Media Friction Between the Old and the New

2006-10-14T07:51:00.000-07:00

Two dynamic guests, Eric Garland of bigchampagne and Joanna Demers of USC's Thorton School of Music and author of the pro-remix book, STEAL THIS MUSIC, gave fascinating talks in my Distribution of Recordings seminar. It would have been interesting if the two could have heard the others talk.

Garland spoke of just how clueless media companies are and how they're entering a new stage of DRM conflict with the tech giants themselves, ie, Universal Music's rumbling of discontent toward Apple and Myspace and all of Hollywood now aiming their guns at YouTube. Garland used the metaphor of friction, of how Hollywood. The media companies keep putting up more friction, preventing users from exploiting their media on the internet, driving them off the grid into Pirate territory!!!

Temperatures will be rising.

Demers endorses remix culture and advocates new criteria in promoting "original" remixed content. One, the transforming remix should not decrease the marketability of original material. Two, the transforming artwork does not harm the reputation of the creators.

But Demers never answered this question: who exactly will adjudicate and utilize this criteria. Does she count on the courts, the public, the corporations? Unfortunately, we ran out of time to pursue this. Also, it remains unclear why music labels and their conglomerate owners will have a change of heart?

Together, both guests paint a picture of a digital future with conflict, opportunities, implosions, imaginings and uncertainty.

GooTube and We're Screwed

2006-10-12T13:50:00.000-07:00

In the same breath as pocketing a cool $1.65B in Google stock, licensing and copyright-protection agreements were made with the likes of Warner, Sony/BMG, Universal, CBS (it's looking like one singular beast of a media mongrel at this point).

You Tube has been all the rage for it's year-and-a-half existence, but -- isn't YouTube's success primarily a result of its lax oversight and takedown policies? Surely, Chad Hurley and his couple dozen of employees at You Tube don't care anymore -- as long as they sell their Google stock in the near future. But once you can't get anything you want on You Tube, the traffic will most naturally channel itself elsewhere.

Alex Veiga wrote about this today for the AP, and the article's a good read, complete with a variety of quotes. The basic drift is:

[R]ecent agreements with high-profile content creators require YouTube to deploy an audio-signature technology that can spot a low-quality copy of a licensed music video or other content. YouTube would have to substitute an approved version of the clip or take the material down automatically.

Veiga predicts that YouTube's anti-piracy platform will resemble the nightmare watermarking techniques of Audible Magic. Competitor Guba uses content-comparison software called "Johnny" to filter out copyright infgingements on videos uploaded there.

CJR's Gal Beckerman says the deal is "doomed just because it is." YouTubers are "gravely concerned," summarizes another article.

The real winners here are the VC's, like Sequoia Capital, which invested 11 million into YouTube and come out of the deal with a whole lot more, writes Staci of Paid Content.

Sure, Google and YouTube will most likely come out OK. The real losers, however, are the users -- that is to say everyone save for the handful of jackasses makin a mean living by hording and raping other people's property (not the kind of OPP that any content producer or consumer would be down with).

Is Google lining up to be the darling sweetheart of government-sponsored corporate Internet ownership? Google does publish a little one-sheet guide to Net Neutrality, deep in their help section). I'm guessing there aren't many Save the Internet badges floating around Mountain View.

(Apparently you'll never find out what's going on at Google if you're using Yahoo Maps). Which reminds me of a prank Yahoo! pulled when they launched their new Maps beta last year. The address for Google was listed as "The Dude's Fish Store." It's hilarious -- read about it here. Perhaps the grey boxes on Y!Maps are just retribution.)

TiVo's "self-destruct button" destructs

2006-10-11T03:58:00.000-07:00

The Macrovision DRM in the new TiVo Series3 recorders is so broken that just having the wrong piece of equipment attached to your TV can cause it to register some shows as un-recordable. TiVo characterizes this as a glitch, but that's not the whole story.

By including Macrovision with its products, TiVo is designing a product that is intended to control its owner and treat its owner (TiVo's customer) as an attacker. They've added a swatch of functions that act directly against a user's interests (there's no time at which it's in a user's interest to have her device refuse to record a show the user wants to record). In so doing, they've created a bunch of potential failures in which the user is locked out of her own equipment.

It's like those movies where an accident or a bad guy triggers the "self-destruct button" on a spaceship. Often the self-destruct button is locked away behind plexiglas and padlocks for safety, but wouldn't it be safer not to include a single command that blows up the whole space-ship?

TiVo's problem is a "glitch" but the reason they're having this kind of glitch is that there's a single command that can tell the TiVo to stop listening to its owner. Wouldn't it be better if TiVo didn't build in any technology that attacks its customers?

Our initial test was smooth: we got high-def HDMI output to the JVC receiver and the attached HDTV, and a simultaneous standard-def signal from the TiVo's S-Video and composite outputs (which we were watching on separate monitors). But when we moved onto another program--Revenge of the Sith, recorded off of HBO-HD--the screen suddenly went gray, with a TiVo warning emblazoned across the bottom: "Viewing is not permitted using the TiVo Digital Media Recorder. Try another TV input." Several other programs--Empire of the Sun (HDNet Movies), Simone (HBO-HD), and episodes of Battlestar Galactica (Universal HD) all yielded the same result. Further investigation revealed the culprit: hitting the Info button from the program listing page (TiVo's Now Playing screen) on these programs included a section called "restrictions": "Due to the policy set by the copyright holder, this recording: Cannot be transferred to VCR, DVD, or any other media device. To learn more, visit www.tivo.com/copyprotection."
Visiting that link will reveal apparent culprit: TiVo's Macrovision copy protection. Apparently, these programs were flagged as "copy never," so the box was dutifully following orders, and allowing video only via the copy-protected HDMI output (which is, to date, impossible to record). This isn't new: as far back as 2005, there were reports of TiVo boxes imposing restrictions on the viewing of certain TV shows. At the time, TiVo blamed the restrictions on "false positives"--saying the viewing restriction technology, ostensibly designed for pay-per-view and video-on-demand programming, was being turned on (by the cable companies) to cover a wider array of programming.
When we contacted TiVo about the issues we were having, a company engineer was stumped: he reiterated the same claim from last year, that the content flags should be appearing only on PPV and VOD programs. He suggested that the problem was twofold: our local cable company was "overflagging" its content, and/or the JVC receiver was not properly interpreting the copy-protection flag.

Link(Thanks, Thomas!)

"It just shouldn't be that way": Gaps in the Free Culture's Comm. Strategy

2006-10-09T05:47:00.000-07:00

The connections and intersections between readings, guest speakers and current events continues to strike me. Rereading Lessig's FREE CULTURE for my RECORDING seminar, it was striking how myopic Ivory Tower "Free Culture" theorists' thinking can become. In the below quote, we can see why the Free Culture movement has failed in their communication strategy. Simply put, they don't appeal to people's emotions and have let the opposition set the terms of debate.

We would only win, they [referring to three key lawyers who advised him before arguing the Eldred decision at the Supreme Court] repeatedly told me, if we could make the issue seem 'important' to the Supreme Court. It had to seem as if dramatic harm were being done to free speech and free culture; otherwise, they would never vote 'against the most powerful media companies in the world.'

I hate this view of the law. Of course I thought the Sonny Bono Act was a dramatic harm to free speech and free culture. Of course I still this it is. But the idea that the Supreme Court decides the law based on how important they believe the issues is just wrong. It might be 'right' as in 'true,' I thought, but is 'wrong' as in 'it just shouldn't be that way.' [pg. 230]

Hmmmmm. Lessig almost sounds like a character out of CASABLANCA. "Say it ain't so Sam!!!!"

It just shouldn't be that way.

Someone needs to give the free culture folk a news bulletin friends: "individuals, including Supreme Court justices, political opponents and the general public (including myself and yourself) are emotional creatures. And here's another secret, your political oppenents just might be willing to actually - NEWS BULLETIN AGAIN - MANIPULATE people with emotional arguments/messages."

Security vulnerabilities found in Dutch E-Voting machines

2006-10-08T21:43:00.000-07:00

Ed Felten reports in his blog that a Dutch electronic voting system, which was analyzed by a group of Dutch researchers, has been found to have many similar vulnerabilities to the ones Felten and his students had discovered about a month ago, analyzing Diebold voting machines. It seems, though, that the Dutch machines were designed in a slightly more secure way, at least as far as simple vote record tampering techniques are concerned. If it's of any consolation, the Dutch security analysis also reports that the use of such machines in Ireland is currently on hold.

Link

Dutch security analysis

Cat with a EULA

2006-10-07T02:14:00.000-07:00

Allerca, a company that is offering genetically modified cats at $4,000 each, makes you "agree" to a EULA before they sell you your puddy tat:

Purchaser shall not sell or transfer any Cat purchased hereunder to anyone other than an immediate family member, and shall not offer to any person the purchase of a Cat or any genetic material from a Cat, the rights Purchaser may have under this Agreement, or any other right related hereto, without the Company’s express written authorization.

The cats are sold neutered.

Link

Google May Buy YouTube for 1.6 Billion

2006-10-06T20:32:00.000-07:00

Some have said "only a moron would buy YouTube." Well, if Google goes ahead and does it, I wouldn't say it's because they're morons. Others -- music, movie and TV production companies among them -- most likely agree with Mark Cuban that YouTube will one day be "sued into oblivion." In fact, in my mind's eye I see those aforementioned others drooling with delight at the prospect of someone with something in their pockets' buying YouTube so they'll finally have someone to sue for copyright infringement.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin are obviously aware of these warnings, so what could they be thinking? Yes, YouTube has a massive user base, members of which visit frequently and stick around for a while when they do. Gathering more users to whom ads can be served under the Google umbrella is definitely one reason Google might take the plunge. But a $1.6 BILLION price tag plus being sued into oblivion? Sounds like a big headache -- unless Page and Brin don't believe they'll be sued into oblivion.

Is Google the company with pockets deep enough, enough clout and enough chutzpah to challenge in court the current bastardization of copyright law represented by the digital-rights management practices of major industry content providers? Perhaps they believe it's one's constitutionally protected right to upload a clip of yourself acting goofy for the camera while a Madonna song plays in the background, that what users upload to YouTube actually gives more to the culture than it takes away from the mainstream content industry, and that this potential Pareto superiority should be acknowledged and encouraged in an effort to support cultural creativity.

If Page and Brin go through with this, it would have to be because they believe they'll win and put this issue to bed for now. Otherwise, they could possibly be morons.

allofmp3.com stands between Russia and the WTO

2006-10-05T17:34:00.000-07:00

News reports are surfacing that the popular, too-good-to-be-true Russian DRM-free website, allofmp3.com, is being targeted by top US trade officials as a major point of contention in Russia's bid to join the WTO. "I have a hard time imagining Russia becoming a member of the WTO and having a Web site like that up and running that is so clearly a violation of everyone's intellectual property rights," U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab told reporters after a speech to a services industry organization.

Apparently some Russian officials are unconvinced of the site's illegality, and until Russia is officially a member of the WTO, it is not bound by its rules, so this situation's outcome remains an interesting mystery.

Links to news stories here and here.

Compare and Contrast: the Free Culture movement and the Pirate Party

2006-10-03T18:47:00.000-07:00

A comparison of the Pirate Party in Sweden and the U.S. Free Culture movement reveals interesting covergances and points of departures. Quinn Norton's WIRED coverage demonstrates some of the differences,

Sweden has faster broadband with deeper penetration than just about anywhere in the world. That, combined with the techno-friendly attitude that pervades Scandinavia and a government slow to take any kind of action, allowed file sharing to root deeply in practice and popular culture.

In her articles, Quinn highlights a fact she uncovered in interview after interview: ideology being secondary to history. The growth of the Pirate Bay grew from the fundamental technological fact of Swedish society: the deep, powerful broadband connectivity saturating the culture and its people. It's fascinating that Quinn's subjects repeatedly emphasize their society's connectivity and discount ideology as the motivation for the founding of such a movement.

Quinn quotes Rasmus Fleischer, one of the founders of Pirate Bay (Piratbyran),

But Piratbyran is not dedicated to copyright or patent abolition -- it has no legislative agenda. It holds a nuanced view of the created work itself: Each work must find its own social and economic niche. "I don't think of this (as) the big battle," says Fleischer, "but thousands of microbattles [someone needs to make sure Ramus and Chris Anderson, Mr. Longest Tail have drinks]."

Later, one of Pirate Bay's leaders strategizes that, "the talk turns to strategy: how to create media events, awareness campaigns, educational programs to let people know that piracy isn't about free movies -- it's about clearing the way for culture to progress [my emphasis]."

Quinn closes,

It's not the problem of the pirates, he tells me later, to figure out how to compensate artists or encourage invention away from the current intellectual property system -- someone else will figure that out. Their job is just to tear down the flawed system that exists, to force the hand of society to make something better.

If the next thing isn't good enough, they will tear that down, too.

The Free Culture movement also came out of a specfic context: the unique, protected space of under-graduate, small liberal art colleges. While at Swarthmore, the two founders of Free Culture, Nelson Pavlosky and Luke Smith, who, according to Mother Jones, had already founded the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons, began the Free Culture movement. The catalyst was Pavlosky's and Smith's outrage at electronic voting-machine manufacturer, Diebold's, use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to intimidate ISPs from hosting stories about deficienies in their voting machines. Following leaders such as Lawrence Lessig, the organization promotes the establishment of college chapters comitted to the creative commons, the promotion of freedoms to remix, create, build and imagine new possibilities.

The organizations differ in their treatment of the risks that come in tearing down old frameworks and imagining new ones. The Pirate Bay is honest in their disinterest in promoting an alternative to copyright, focused soley on its destruction. They leave the promotion of new freedoms and models to others. In contrast, Free Culture promotes a specific vision: a remix culture and new democratic forms of expression.

Quinn reports on their electoral results: a failure to generate 1 percent of the vote, less than the 4% needed for one representative. This was down from a party who had registered more members online than the Green Party who had 17 seats in Congress.

What both movements promote, not just what they oppose and want to tear down, will be fundamental factors of their growth and success.

DVD Jon selling Apple DRM to Apple's competitors

2006-10-03T10:17:00.001-07:00

Om sez, "DRM-buster DVD Jon has a new target in his sights, and it's a big piece of fruit. He has reverse-engineered Apple's Fairplay and is starting to license it to companies who want their media to play on Apple's devices."

Johansen doesn't think what he's doing is illegal; he's adding DRM rather than breaking it. He and Farantzos were giddy about the prospect of Apple's iTV, hoping companies will pay up to get movies on the set-top box when it comes out, after seeing the ill effects of being shut off the iPod. Spurned by Apple? Step right up.

This is a different twist on the constant battle between DRM crackers and builders (see, just last week, Microsoft's lawsuit5 against a hacker for releasing an app that strips off its PlaysForSure DRM). If successful, DoubleTwist will eliminate Apple as a middleman to its own hardware. But in doing so, it just might help Apple sell more of that hardware. Apple enjoys fat margins on its devices, and perhaps should turn a blind eye, for now.

Link

(Thanks, Om!)

Siva Vaidhyanathan on Journalists, Google, and the Future of Copyright

2006-09-29T20:27:00.000-07:00

"As the most pervasive regulation of speech and culture, the copyright system will help determine the richness and strength of democracy in the twenty-first century," Siva Vaidhyanathan wrote in today's Columbia Journalism Review. In "Copyright Jungle," Vaidhyanathan examines the borderline legal/illegal copyright issues in the present day and how copyright law is currently being reshaped before our eyes -- and most reporters are missing the point and risking the access and freedom that they (and most everybody) have grown so dependent on in the digital age.

In recent years, large multinational media companies have captured the global copyright system and twisted it toward their own short-term interests. The people who are supposed to benefit most from a system that makes ideas available — readers, students, and citizens — have been excluded. No one in Congress wants to hear from college students or librarians.

What begins as a critique of Kevin Kelly's "Scan This Book!" feature in a May '06 NYTimes Magazine (which mentions Google's Library project at least 50 times), continues as a timely updated supplement for those of us thumbing through The Anarchist in the Library for the first time.

Google’s project, if it survives court challenges, would probably have modest effects on writing, reading, and publishing. For one thing, Kelly’s predictions depend on a part of the system he slights in his article: the copyright system.

Tim O'Reilly, who once argued that fewer than 4% of all books ever published continue to be commercially exploited, supported Google's Book Search initiative posting research after Kelly's article indicating the "long tail" effect of online indexing of as many books as possible (or in Google's proposal, all of the titles in five major U.S. libraries). [link is to UC Berkeley research paper PDF, Google's documentation on the library project is here].

But with corporations and media conglomerates hankering to lock up digital rights and ignore/shun the concept andn value of CC-style copyrights, the mainstream is missing the point by focusing on Google's ambition to slightly alter or circumvent U.S. copyright law in an effort to add only a little to society -- and "snippets" at that, writes Vaidhyanathan:

Google is exploiting the instability of the copyright system in a digital age. The company’s struggle with publishers over its legal ability to pursue its project is the most interesting and perhaps most transformative conflict in the copyright wars. But there are many other battles — and many other significant stories — out in the copyright jungle. Yet reporters seem lost.

The essay as a whole serves as a great heads-up to journalists and Free Culture-ite copyright activists alike, alluding to distortions in the media and confusion regarding ethics and legality (Da Vinci Code case), technology and it's effect on consumer culture (p2p scare pieces) and one-dimensional dichotomies (hackers v. movie studios). (In fact the piece concludes with a "primer" for journalists).

It's only natural for journalists to report stories with characters andn consequences regular people can relate to, but:

Reporters often fail to see the big picture in copyright stories: that what is at stake is the long-term health of our culture. If the copyright system fails, huge industries could crumble. If it gets too strong, it could strangle future creativity and research.

The modern journalist depends on Google's system of copying (or caching) practically every pixel of information on the Web -- be it for research, fact-checking or even publishing. Understanding media/copyright law in the digital age is crucial, but to report on the controversies of the day as if the sky were falling could only precipitate further restrictions on fair use and information sharing.

LINK

HP's Troubling Tracking Technologies Raise Alarm

2006-09-29T17:20:00.000-07:00

The fallout of Hewlett-Packard's latest scandal -- in which hi-level execs used illegal pretexting to eavesdrop and track the flow of information leaks (both fabricated and legitimate) among employees, middlemen, and reporters -- is creating a wave of trepidation among corporate execs, employees and right-to-know/rights-to-access libertarians alike.

In Tuesday's San Jose Mercury Tribune, Dean Takahashi examines this in the article "A high-tech bug could spy on you"

HP Chief Executive Mark Hurd confirmed Friday that HP's investigators used pretexting: They obtained personal cell phone records by pretending to be the cell phone owners. But technology can be used to track individuals, get their passwords, eavesdrop on their wireless networks, or track leaked documents back to certain printers or Word documents.

Ironically, HP is a consponsor of the Privacy Innovation Award. (I can't help but add that this twist is eerily reminiscent of corruptorate American society and, say, the resignation today of Florida Congressman Mark Foley, for sending flirtatious e-mails to teenaged boys asking for their photos. Foley happened to CHAIR the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, which recently introduced legislation to protect children from exploitation by adults over the Internet)!!!

Seth Schoen and Kurt Opsahl, both of EFF, are quoted in the Mercury article as saying HP used a "Web bug," which contains tracing technology that is unleashed via a phishing e-mail attack.

The HP investigation is ongoing and ridiculous, but rich with evidence of the Dark Side of technology as an ID-falsifying/manipulating and surveillance tool.

Before Congress on Thursday, ex-Chairman Patricia Dunn refused to take the blame, while the other dozen or so board members, including CEO Mark "The Buck Stops With Me" Hurd, pleaded the 5th. In the latest developments, both Cingular and Verizon filed suit against HP alleging that HP's spies used pretexting to illegally obtain information from the wireless providers' (unnamed) customers' accounts.

As Patrick Thibodeau asks aloud, while referencing EPIC's Marc Rotenberg, will this lead to stricter privacy laws?

A House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations is now trying to figure out exactly "Who Has Access to Your Private Records," right now.

British Library, Council take on Creative Commons and DRM

2006-09-29T07:38:00.000-07:00

Adam sez, "Counterpoint is a think tank, sponsored by the partially government-funded British Council. Today (29th Sept) they're publishing a Creative Commons-licensed ebook by Rosemary Bechler (Contributing Editor to openDemocracy) bringing together thoughts on new approaches to copyright and cultural commons. It's aimed at policy-makers without a background in copyright issues, so starts from the basics, introducing RMS, CC etc. but quickly brings lots of threads together in a fascinating way. A great read for smart politicians or journalists."

The first generation of Creative Commons is not the Utopian world of Romantic authentic exchange that Carlyle thought money had destroyed. But it draws on the same insight. It turns out that what makes for success is not whether money is exchanged or whether laws are challenged. What makes cultural commons thinking the basis of a gathering social movement worldwide, is the perception that it is the mutually enabling relationship that matters most. These licences make it easier to share. Those whose innovating energy have begun to transform the centre from the edge – who we might think of as the new authors – are people who have understood this. And they are also its beneficiaries.
Whether you look at a mature movement such as the open source software movement, or emergent groups, such as the free culture movement or the scientists’ movement for open publication, these people are intent on creating a domain of open cultural sharing, somewhere where all can be creative together. An Open Business40 project, too, has a quality that is hard to pin down, from the perspective either of law or of economics. It recognises that the same transaction could at one and the same time be a commodity, a gift and a public service – as long as the common culture, the enabling relationship, is intact.

At the same time, the British Library has published "Intellectual Property, a Balance: The British Library Manifesto" that is also very good, constituting a comprehensive set of reforms to British copyright law that would keep the BL in a position to go on being the guardian of UK culture.

I like this one quite a lot, but am skeptical of the clause on Digital Rights Management, which says that DRM should be allowed, provided that it doesn't undermine "fair dealing" (the UK equivalent of fair use). The problem is that DRM inevitably undermines fair dealing, since fair dealing includes exemptions for scholarship, criticism, parody, etc. There's no DRM software invented yet that can tell the difference between a pirate and a parodist -- indeed, sometimes it takes the Supreme Court or the Law Lords to state defintiively whether a work is a parody or just a ripoff. Can a DRM simulate the Supreme Court and figure out, a priori, whether they'd rule that this use was fair?

Libraries should be allowed to make copies of sound and film recordings to ensure they can be preserved for posterity in the future.
Currently the law does not permit copying of sound and film items for preservation. Without the right to make copies, the UK is losing a large part of its recorded culture.
■ The British Library Sound Archive is one of the largest archives of music in the world with over a million discs, 185,000 tapes and holdings of every other medium upon which sound can be recorded. ■ As the Library is not able to make copies of items, many original audio and film formats we hold are becoming increasingly more fragile and require the urgent creation of a preservation surrogates or face irretrievable decay.
We recommend that copying for preservation purposes is extended to all copyrightable works as is the case in many other countries.

Link to Counterpoint report,Link to British Library report

(Thanks, Adam and others!)

European consumer ombudsmen face-off with iTunes

2006-09-28T17:46:00.000-07:00

In Europe, consumer ombudsmen watch out for consumer rights and actually take action on their behalfs against abusive corporate practices. In June, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish ombudsmen wrote to Apple regarding several of its iTunes policies, namely the fact that iTunes songs are exclusively compatible with the iPod and that the EULA allows "iTunes the right to change terms of purchase without notice, even after a sale." Turns out that the Norwegian ombudsman has now resolved that second issue with Apple so that, in Norway at least, the "terms of purchase cannot be changed for purchases that have already been made, only for future ones."

This is HUGE -- and hugely different from the EULAs regularly crammed down our necks in this country. If a person physically signs a contract with a corporation (or anybody) in the USA, the corporation can't cross out or add bits later without the person's express, written permission. Why is it that we allow technology companies to slip such clauses into their click-wrap EULAs and then go ahead and do it to us? Well, EULAs are long and boring, and few people actually read them. (I'm guilty of this, too. Not pointing any fingers here.) Plus, the majority of us blithely assume that a corporation's lawyers must vet their contracts and wouldn't allow questionably legal clauses in them because they don't want to get sued. This assumption is false and very harmful to us as consumers and citizens. Corporations will gladly allow questionably legal clauses in their contracts if they perceive little chance of anyone's suing them or if the amount for which they'd likely be sued pales in comparison to the amount of money they could make in the meantime. Apple is raking it in, so their usurous practices have been good for their bottom line and their shareholders, up till now.

The entire European market is smaller than the U.S. market, so maybe this change in their Norwegian contracts has such a small effect on Apple's revenues that they just don't care. But if we in the U.S. took up the torch and stood up for ourselves, we might actually stumble upon a victory worth celebrating. Class-action lawsuit, anyone? Should the DOJ step in? Or are we as a people saying that we just don't care if the things we purchase never actually belong to us? Are we comfortable with the fact that powerful companies can change the contracts they make with individuals at will without notifying them, but if individuals try the same shenanigans they could end up in jail? I'm not, but I don't use iTunes and I don't own an iPod, so I haven't been harmed by this directly. But Apple's not the only company that does this, and as such clauses become more prevalent, everyone in this country will be affected by them at some point.

Microsoft blocking development of security products compatible with Vista

2006-09-28T16:28:00.000-07:00

Symantec, the market leader in antivirus software (the company garnered 53+% of the market in 2005), is bent at Microsoft. Apparently, Microsoft won't provide development kits on its upcoming Vista operating system to security-software vendors. If Microsoft continues not playing with others, users will get the short end of the stick on Vista ship day because the only compatible security software available for those new machines will be Microsoft's own OneCare -- a shortcut for the installation of which will appear on the desktop when the computer boots up. (Microsoft and the EU are still wrangling over Microsoft's attempts to drive competitors from the market with monopolistic practices such as these.) Microsoft has promised that Vista will be the most secure operating system to date, but secure according to whom? If they won't share their info and allow users security options, why should anyone trust this statement? Without companies like Symantec, McAfee and many others competing to provide better products, it's the customers who ultimately lose -- in the short run (who knows what crap will end up on our machines from Microsoft's bedfellows and unforeseen threats alike?) and the long run (if other companies currently working on the security issue are put out of business, who will we turn to when Microsoft decides it doesn't care about what's important to us little guys?).

Symantec's current complaints haven't seen a day in court. Instead the company hopes that the broadcasting of these concerns will move the public to act in their own -- and Symantec's -- best interest to coerce Microsoft into sharing. Email Microsoft and tell them what you think of this kind of corporate misbehavior.

Pew Survey: Transparency / Privacy in the Future of the Internet

2006-09-26T17:30:00.000-07:00

Among the more interesting studies released Sunday in the second installment of the Pew Internet & American Life Project's Future of the Internet (PDF) survey, are respondents reactions to the following hypothetical:

Prediction: As sensing, storage and communication technologies get cheaper and better, individuals' public and private lives will become increasingly 'transparent' globally. Everything will be more visible to everyone, with good and bad results. Looking at the big picture – at all of the lives affected on the planet in every way possible – this will make the world a better place by the year 2020. The benefits will outweigh the costs.

The mean response of 742 individuals is of uncertainty (46% agreed vs. 49% disagree). But it's the substance of the varied & impassioned responses that set the course for what many believe is one of the most important issues of modern time and the near future.

Here is a link to credited answers. And here's a collection of anonymous one-liners.

Prof. Doctorow, fwiw, commented: "Transparency and privacy aren't antithetical. We're perfectly capable of formulating widely honored social contracts that prohibit pointing telescopes through your neighbours' windows. We can likewise have social contracts about sniffing your neighbours' network traffic."

The answers range from amusing to asinine, but overall the essence is that transparency -- while essential to and inevitable in an open society -- is a double-edged sword.

In a rather oddly phrased question, a majority of respondents agree (to my dismay) with Thomas Friedman's mostly-BS "The World is Flat" argument, aggreeing with utopian naivete, that, by 2020, "the free flow of information will completely blur current national boundaries as they are replaced by city-states, corporation-based cultural groupings, and/or other organizations tied together by global networks."

Perhaps it's only appropriate -- in a very Sci-Fi-esque study, that there would be no more New York and China and Japan.

Other notable conclusions from the abstract:

* A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a "flattening" world.
* Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and "smart agents" proliferate. However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans’ ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey.
* Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.
* Tech "refuseniks" will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.
* People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.

The IEEE prefers their recently released "Bursting Tech Bubbles Before They Balloon" survey, authored by Marina Gorbis and the Institute for the Future's David Pescovitz.

For historical reference, see PBS' 1998 survey: Nerds 2.0.1 -- a who's-who of nerdtrepreneurs and their late 20th century musings on the future of the Internet.

A Trademark a Day Makes Apple's Competition Go Away

2006-09-24T22:43:00.000-07:00

Russell Shaw takes his obsession with Apple's "iPod" trademark addiction to ZDNet in this expose of Apple's latest USPTO encounters and recent C&D letters to the likes of Podcast Ready for daring to use the "P" word in his article: "EXCLUSIVE: Apple Trademark Office docs point to REAL reasons for" Podcast" controversy"

we have Apple, maker of the iPod, trying to get right with the Trademark office about achieving formal Trademark and related mark protections for iPod AND its sought-after IPODCAST applications.

Not only would this restrict ANY individual or company from using the term "podcast" or "podcasting," it would also put a lock on, for example "iPod socks," not to mention T-shirts declaring "iPods suck."

Dave Winer proposes a start-up idea for a "real podcast player" that would put Apple's DRM to shame.

AOL/Netscape's Jason Calcanis is rightfully dismayed: "Anyway, Apple didn't come up with the concept of Podcasting but they have benefited from it immensely."

Former MSFT evangelizer Robert Scoble wonders if team Apfel will up and sue his new employer, Podtech.net

Todd Baur at the Apple Blog asks if Apple is going to sue the framers of the Constitution for proposing the First Amendment: "When the iPod was introduced, no one would have associated pod with an MP3 player. Now that the little guy has become the king, there is no argument that the term is almost synonymous with music players."

Politics and Silences in Chris Anderson’s World View

2006-09-24T15:34:00.000-07:00

Thanks to BoingBoing, I came across Nick Gillsepie’s - editor-in-chief of Reason - fascinating interview with Chris Anderson. Anderson is the author of THE LONG TAIL (#16 on NYX Bestseller list) and editor of Wired. In it, we see limits of the libertarian, technocratic strain of thinking.

reason: Who’d you vote for in 2004?

Anderson: Oh, God, do we really need to talk about that? I hate politics.

reason: It’s always interesting.

Anderson: I didn’t vote.

reason: OK. What about 2000? Wired has been conducting something of a love affair with Al Gore of late; he was your May 2006 cover boy. You must have voted for Gore, a bete noire of most libertarians, in 2000, right?

Anderson: But I’m not proud of this. I wish the system would put forward politicians that I could vote for.

reason: Why are you uninterested in politics?

Anderson: I’m not. I’m interested. I’m de-focused [my emphasis].

reason: In what sense? You don’t see anybody up there who would represent your worldview?

Anderson: I think the process by which people are nominated by the two parties is so compromising that they end up taking positions that I can’t support. I think in fact they don’t believe it.

reason: So what is it that you like about Al Gore?

Anderson: I have a personal admiration for the man [my emphasis].

When I was in Washington, covering science in those early days [the late ’80s], I was an intern. Al Gore was the chairman of, I think, the Senate Science and Technology Subcommittee, and I was at those early hearings when he was talking about what was then called high-performance com-puting. He was having the people from the NCSA [National Center for Supercomputing Applications] at the University of Illinois come in to talk about this thing, and he’d have these guys showing these incredible technologies. They were generating unbelievable graphics and setting up work stations, and they were connected—and none of the other committee members bothered to show up. No one was there in the crowd. He’d come down and just sit there at the witness table and geek out over these things.

He had Larry Smarr, [the NCSA’s director and “the godfather of the Internet,”] talk. Remember, this was a time when a kid named Marc Andreessen was back in Larry’s labs dreaming up something that would later become Net-scape. So Al really was instrumental in recognizing the potential of the Internet and helping it along. He didn’t invent it, but he had a really important role in advancing it.

Most importantly, actually, those models, those computational models that they were doing, were climate models that were trying to quantify the extent of global warming and climate change at the time. So I guess I’ve seen Al Gore as smart and technical and passionate, funny, and I’ve seen him at his best.

reason: Sen. Gore also brought K. Eric Drexler, the nanotechnology visionary, to D.C. to talk to the Senate.

Anderson: Absolutely.

reason: Is there a contradiction between Gore’s interests in something like, say, the Internet, which is decentralized and founded upon distributed intelligence, and his support for things like the Communications Decency Act, a Clinton administration law that would have extended federal regulation over much speech on the Internet? Or the Kyoto Protocol? Kyoto is very much an old-style, command-and-control regulatory policy.

Anderson: One thing about Kyoto, although I’m not in favor of all its aspects, is that it would have at least set up a market-based system for trading carbon emissions. That’s something I can get behind [my emphasis].

You know, Gore’s a complicated character. His interest in superhighways is very much inspired by his father’s interest in the national highway system, which was both a distributive network and a command-and-control infrastructure. I think he understands that there’s a place for government-created infrastructure if it enables individuals to do their own thing, which is very much what the highway system does.

Do I agree with him 100 percent on everything? No. I think his recognition of climate change as a problem turned out to be prescient and right.

reason: What about other political figures? Republicans, Democrats, it doesn’t really matter to you?

Anderson: I guess I like individuals[my emphasis]. I like Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York. I like California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in many ways…..

Towards the end of the interview, the tone and subject matter becomes more personal as Anderson is asked about being a father:

reason: You're the parent of four children, aged four to nine. How has that affected your politics, your journalism, your worldview?

Anderson: I'll tell you what being a parent has done for me, and this may not be the answer you were expecting or even want. I think it’s made me a better boss—and I had a lot of room for improvement. I think what I now understand is as a parent, you understand very clearly what your kids need. Your kids need clarity. They need consistency. They need sup-port. They need encouragement. [my emphasis]. I’m the classic geek and I don’t have a strong empathy gene. I've actually been able to people through my children in a sense. Of course, all people need clarity, support, firm rules, consistency, etc. So I think that in many ways because the kids are such a kind of a raw version of people and because you have such a clear duty and obligation to get it right and you think about it all the time, that just thinking about how to be a better parent has helped me think about being a better guide to everybody.

Wow. Forget love. Forget cultivating your kid’s creativity, their sense of wonder, their empathy with others.

Cancel those things. KIDS NEED CLARITY. And consistency and support and oh yeah, some encouragement.

Anderson and Gillsepie’s exchange prioritizes the consumer view of society above all else. So don’t forget parents, KIDS NEED CLARITY. Above all else. What could be a more impoverished view of politics and the public space. Politics descends into consumer preferences.

How will children be raised in such a mediated, consumerist global world? Are we committed to raising the next generation of children to become such uncritical consumers? Or, do we hope to cultivate other human strengths such as curiosity about the world, empathy for others, humility in the face of such vast technological power?

Rental rotary phone costs $14,000 over 40 years

2006-09-22T06:40:00.000-07:00

An 82-year-old woman with a rental phone ended up paying over $14,000 for the rotary set over 40 years. She began renting the phone at a time when AT&T would not sell you a phone -- and they wouldn't let you buy a phone from someone else and plug it in to your wall.

These days, DRM hardware and media seems to all come on terms like this: a license, a rental, anything except a plain, old-fashioned sale where you end up owning property.

The DRM people tell us that rentals are great for the poor and disenfranchised, since these rental "offers" can be made for less than a real purchase would cost. But I think this is more representative of the trajectory of rentware models: you pay, and pay, and pay, and pay.

It's not a coincidence that rich people who have a choice almost never choose to rent. They own their homes, their cars, and their TVs. Rich people don't sign "agreements" that let repo men come over and take away their stuff. Even if you know you'll never miss a payment, we all know that owning enriches you, renting enriches someone else.

The number of customers leasing phones dropped from 40 million nationwide to about 750,000 today, said John Skalko, spokesman for Murray Hill, N.J.-based Lucent Technologies, a spinoff of AT&T that manages the residential leasing service.

"We will continue to lease sets as long as there is a demand for them," Skalko said.

Benefits of leasing include free replacements and the option of switching to newer models, he said.

Link

Windows DRM gets worse

2006-09-21T07:59:00.001-07:00

The Inquirer's Charlie Demerjian shreds the new Windows Media Player 11 DRM, which is far more restrictive than previous versions. This is the anti-copying built into Microsoft's smart-phones, media centers and PCs:

One of the problems with WiMP11 is licensing and backing it up. If you buy media with DRM infections, you can't move the files from PC to PC, or at least you can't and have them play on the new box. If you want the grand privilege of moving that content, you need to get the approval of the content mafia, sign your life away, and use the tools they give you. If you want to do it in other ways, you are either a lawbreaker or following the advice of J Allard. Wait, same thing...

Yes, WiMP11 will no longer allow you the privilege of backing up your licenses, they are tied to a single device, and if you lose it, you are really SOL. Remember that feeling I mentioned earlier? This is nothing less than a civil rights coup, and most people are dumb enough to let it happen...

But it gets worse. If you rip your own CDs, WiMP11 will take your rights away too. If the 'Copy protect music' option is turned on, well, I can't top their 1984 wording. "If the file is a song you ripped from a CD with the Copy protect music option turned on, you might be able to restore your usage rights by playing the file. You will be prompted to connect to a Microsoft Web page that explains how to restore your rights a limited number of times." This says to me it will keep track of your ripping externally, and remove your rights whether or not you ask it to. Can you think of a reason you would need to connect to MS for permission to play the songs you ripped from you own CDs? How long do you think it will be before a service pack, masquerading as a 'critical security patch' takes away the optional part of the 'copy protection'? Now do you understand why they have been testing the waters on WiMP phoning home? Think their firewall will stop it even if you ask?

Link

Another Naughty Itunes Update

2006-09-19T00:06:00.000-07:00

It's good to know that not only the low and middle-tier Itune users are feeling some frustration with their latest "updates." The high end is also feeling the same pain. Here's an update from Roku, a high-cost network music player company,

"With the release of iTunes 7.0 today, Apple has changed some of the underlying technology that allows the SoundBridge to communicate directly with iTunes. We hope to have an iTunes 7.0- compatible release of the SoundBridge software soon; however, at this time all SoundBridges are incompatible with the music sharing feature of iTunes 7.0. We recommend that SoundBridge owners wait for a SoundBridge update before upgrade to iTunes 7.0. Users wishing to upgrade to iTunes 7.0 (or who have already upgraded) can install the free Firefly media server to share their libraries with the SoundBridge. Firefly is available at http://www.rokulabs.com/firefly."

At least Apple doesn't discriminate as they tighten the noose.

Reverse Engineering iPod Games

2006-09-18T16:17:00.000-07:00

Apple does not seem to have an iPod SDK available to the public, and from their response to Ben Sinclair's request (link), they are not planning to release such an SDK soon. Some developers have decided to reverse engineer iPod games they have downloaded through iTunes as an alternative, using this wiki to share knowledge. They emphasize that their goal is not to crack Apple's DRM, but at this point it is not clear to me (and probably to them) whether what these people are doing is unlawful according to the DMCA. We can only hope that Apple will not try to take any action against them and/or will release an SDK.

False Paradox of Choice

2006-09-18T15:53:00.000-07:00

A growing awareness of "Set-Top Cop" issues combined with the myriad ways these restrictions multiply in more and more technology/media product releases, the more Barry Schwartz's Paradox of Choice appears in need of revision.

Schwartz has engaged in a running debate with Chris Anderson of THE LONG TAIL fame. Schwartz claims that Anderson's embrace of The Long Tail overlooks the toll on consumer's overwhelmed by the infinite content found on the Long Tail. Schwartz, like Anderson, ignore how digital rights management restrictions make their whole debate secondary to more fundamental issues of how technological restrictions undermines choice by limiting the range of creative expression and innovation.

We've entered into something called "the false paradox of choice". We get an exciting brand new Microsoft music player that restricts us in one way, then we figure out how Apple's new product constrains us another way only to be offered brand-new HD DVD players more expensive, more restrictive and ultimately more irrelevant than anything we don't have now.

The technology/media industries wonder why college students go outside the established networks. Could it be that they aren't bad people, but just a little frustrated at losing more and more control over their own set top boxes.

new iTunes DRM cracked 1 day after release

2006-09-17T15:00:00.000-07:00

It took one day from the point that Apple updated iTunes (and its proprietary DRM) to version 7 for the diligent folks at the Hymn project to find a way to crack it. What does that say for the security of digital files when such a world-class and seemingly important DRM system can be broken that quickly and easily? Not a whole lot of good. link

Researching DRM litigation can be scary

2006-09-17T14:45:00.000-07:00

Looking into the story from a few days back about eDonkey's $30m settlement and subsequent shutdown, I was directed (by the link at the bottom of the page) to eDonkey's website, at which time my IP address was apparently logged, in apparent suspicion of my not-yet-realized breach of international copyright law. I can only assume that other innocent Yahoo! news readers and university scholars are now on the RIAA watchlist of suspected pirates and IP traffickers, as no crime has to be committed in order to receive this stern warning. Give it a try, it's a nice way to feel a little paranoia on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

BSkyB customers are hostages of MS DRM software

2006-09-17T14:13:00.000-07:00

BSkyB, the largest British private digital pay TV operator, had to shut down its movie service to paying customers last Wednesday as Microsoft Media DRM software has been cracked again by a program called FairUse4WM. Once again this proves that DRM software is worse than a harmless nuisance to honest paying customers.

Link: http://www.betanews.com/article//1158155545?do=reply&reply_to=408974

Universal Threatens to Sue YouTube, MySpace

2006-09-15T12:24:00.000-07:00

No surprise here. As if NBC/Vivendi/Universal is not already getting enough free pub and promotion from the UGC-oriented social networking and video sharing Web sites alone, now they're getting double the love after threatening to sue YouTube and MySpace over copyright violations.

Universal Media Group Exec Doug Morris: "We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars."

Making the issue sound even more ridiculous, Morris proceeds to say Universal is just adapting from experience, saying: MTV "built a multibillion-dollar company on our (music) ... for virtually nothing. We learned a hard lesson."

This is a blatant misunderstanding of the law, as the infringers would be arguably those who download the music/video, not the sites that unknowingly host it (and would be quick to remove it, at least in the case of YouTube, if an argument was filed).

Does Morris blame FM radio for coming along and broadcasting cuts from records other than or in addition to the singles he pays them to play? I do wonder.

LINK

Video: How to Hack a Diebold Voting System

2006-09-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

USC Annenberg Associate Dean and Lear Center Director Marty Kaplan writes in Huffington Post:

Princeton computer scientists have figured out how to hack into a Diebold AccuVote [sic] TouchScreen voting machine. The subversion of democracy takes a coupla minutes, a screwdriver or paperclip, plus a floppy with the malware they've written.

video here

paper here

LINK

Amazon Unbox's terrible terms-of-service

2006-09-15T08:11:00.001-07:00

Amazon's new video-on-demand store may sound like a good idea, but once you take a look at the "agreement" you enter into by giving them your money, that changes. The Amazon terms-of-service are among the worst I've ever seen, a document through which you surrender your rights to privacy, integrity of your personal data, and control over your computer, in exchange for a chance to pay near-retail cost to watch Police Academy n-1. As Ben Franklin might have said: They that can give up general purpose computers for the sake of a little eye candy deserve neither computers nor eye candy.

I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon. A lot. I won't ever be buying one of these movies. Amazon has a great and well-deserved reputation for amazing customer service. The rare occasions where I've gotten a lemon or ordered the wrong product from Amazon, I've been treated like royalty, with Amazon making every possible accommodation to help me out. Their Look Inside feature and the used goods marketplaces are a tremendous boon to me.

The difference between Amazon and Amazon Unbox is like night and day. When you sign onto Unbox, you sign away all the amazing customer rights that Amazon itself is so careful to protect. Amazon Unbox takes away your privacy and every conceivable consumer right you have, and then tells you that the goods you buy from them don't belong to you, and they can take them away from you at any time, or change the deal you get from them without any appeal by you.

Amazon Unbox's user agreement isn't just galling for its evilness -- it's also commercially suicidal. No sane person will agree to this. Amazon Unbox user agreement is only a couple femtometers more dignified than being traded to another inmate for a couple packs of cigarettes.

Section 3: "The Software may operate on your Authorized Device continuously for a variety of reasons, including the management of your Digital Content."

What this means is that there's no way to switch off the Amazon Unbox software. Once you install it, it does what other programs that remote-control your PC against you do: stays resident and refuses to budge. It might phone home, it might check and re-check your licenses. Who knows? This is a cop that you're installing on your machine, and you're the perp. Its job is to watch everything you do and keep you in line.

Section 3a: "The Software automatically checks for upgrades, but the Software will not automatically upgrade without your consent, except as provided herein. If you do not consent to an upgrade that we make subject to your consent, the Digital Content may no longer be viewed on your Authorized Device. You must keep the Software on your Authorized Device current in order to continue to use the Service. We may automatically upgrade the Software when we believe such upgrade is appropriate to comply with law, enforce this Agreement, or protect the rights, safety or property of Amazon, our content providers, users, or others."

The software you're agreeing to install today isn't the software you're going to have to run. Tomorrow, the day after, next week, and ten years from now, we plan to be forcing you into ever-tighter nooses. You don't have to install the updates, but if you don't, kiss the movies we sold you goodbye. We're going to update the software any time Hollywood tells us to, in order to protect their "safety." You might be used to disabling the DRM on your DVD player (Amazon even sells region-free players that come pre-hacked!), but forget about doing the same thing for your Amazon Unbox property: if someone figures out how to add a feature to your Unbox player, we will promptly confiscate that feature.

I once attended a DRM negotiation where an MPAA vice-president said, "Watching a show that's being received in one room while you're sitting in another room has value, and if it has value, we should be able to charge money for it." Siva Vaidhyanathan calls this the "if value, then right" theory -- if something has value, someone must have a right to sell it. So while you might be accustomed to extracting unexpected value from your old media -- ripping a CD to play it on your iPod, copying a cartoon and sticking it on your fridge, taking your books with you when you move overseas -- forget about it from now on.

Every conceivable source of value for DRM digital movies is now potentially for sale. I've heard proposals for "discounted" movies that you can't fast-forward ("discounted" in the sense that products you buy with a store loyalty card are "discounted" -- they raise the price unless you use the card). Prepare for the future where every button on your remote has a price-tag on it.

Section 3b: Amazon respects your privacy, and the Software will not access computer files or other information on your computer that are not used by or otherwise related to the Service. Among other things, the Software will provide Amazon with information related to the Digital Content on your Authorized Device and your use of it and information regarding your Authorized Device and its interaction with the Service. This information will enable Amazon to manage rights associated with the Digital Content, allow Amazon to help you use the Service more effectively and otherwise help Amazon to enhance and improve the Service. For example, the Software may provide Amazon with information about the Digital Content from the Service on your Authorized Device, whether it has been deleted and whether it has been viewed. The Software may also provide Amazon with information about your Authorized Device's operating system, software, amount of available disk space and Internet connectivity, such as whether your computer or other device is available online. This information will, among other things, help us deliver Digital Content to you more efficiently and effectively. The Software may also provide Amazon with information about the transfer of Digital Content to portable devices to help us ensure compliance with our rules concerning portable devices.

Amazon says it respects your privacy, but this clause tells the real story. Click "I agree" and you've just signed away permission for Amazon to wiretap all of your viewing habits, and to search your entire hard drive continuously and report back on all the software you've installed. The entertainment industry can produce a blacklist of legal software that it just doesn't care for -- say, software that lets you take screenshots, or screen-movies -- and refuse to allow your movies to run if you've installed it. In other words, this clause lets Hollywood specify how you must configure your PC.

Section 3c. Removal of Software. If you uninstall or otherwise remove the Software, your ability to view all Digital Content you have downloaded to the Authorized Device will immediately and automatically terminate and we reserve the right to delete all Digital Content from that Authorized Device without notice to you.

Surprise! If you delete our software, we delete your movies! Imagine if selling your old DVD player gave Jack Valenti permission to come over to your house and take away all your DVDs, too.

Section 4: The Service allows you to (i) pay a fee to view Digital Content for a limited specified period of time ("Rental Digital Content"), and (ii) pay a fee to view Digital Content a repeated number of times ("Purchased Digital Content"). As used herein, (i) "Residence" shall mean a private, residential dwelling unit or a private individual office unit, but excluding hotel rooms, motel rooms, hospital patient rooms, restaurants, bars, prisons, barracks, drilling rigs and all other structures, institutions or places of transient or work-related residence as well as places, areas, structures, rooms or offices which are common areas or open to the public or to occupiers of separate Residences or for which an admission fee is charged; (ii) "Permitted Non-Residential Use" shall mean the private viewing by one or more persons on a video monitor (desktop, television monitor, laptop, hand-held device or otherwise) in a Non-Residential Venue; provided, however, that any such viewing for which an access fee or other admission charge is imposed (other than any fee related only to access such Non-Residential Venue for other general purposes) or any such viewing that is on a monitor provided by such Non-Residential Venue (or by a third party under any agreement or arrangement with such Non-Residential Venue) for display of programming in a common area shall not constitute a "Permitted Non-Residential Use"; and (iii) "Non-Residential Venue" shall mean any place, area, structure or room other than a Residence.

Remember when you used to watch DVDs in the break-room at work, or in the common room at school? Remember when you used to bring movies for your kid to watch in hospital after she had her tonsils out? Forget about it. These movies can only be watched where and when we say. This might be "Purchased digital content," but don't ever mistake it for your property. Like feudal times: lords get to own property, and everything we serfs have belongs to the lord.

Section 4a. Rental Digital Content. Upon your payment of the rental fee, Amazon grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited right and license to view, use and privately display in your Residence or for Permitted Non-Residential Use, the Rental Digital Content purchased by you, by way of one (1) non-portable Authorized Device (e.g., a laptop or desktop computer) connected to the Service over the Internet as specified on the detail pages of the Rental Digital Content or other help or informational pages of the Service at the time of your payment. Unless otherwise designated on a detail page for Rental Digital Content, the license for Rental Digital Content is limited in its term and duration to thirty (30) days from your payment of the rental fee or twenty-four (24) hours from the time you start viewing the Rental Digital Content, whichever is sooner. The Software may automatically delete Rental Digital Content that is beyond its limited license term from your Authorized Device, and you consent to such automatic deletion. You may not copy or move Rental Digital Content from their originally stored location(s) on your Authorized Device. There can only be 1 (one) account for the Service on an Authorized Device.

So this is just like renting a movie from Blockbuster, except that while you can give your Blockbuster movies to your boyfriend to watch after you're done with them, these movies are only for you. Oh, and they cost more. Oh, and you have to pay for the bandwidth to transfer them to your home. Oh, and you have to wait for them to download. Oh, and you have to let them invade your privacy.

Section 4b. Purchased Digital Content. Upon your payment of the license fee, Amazon grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited right and license to retain a permanent copy of Purchased Digital Content and to view, use, and privately display the Purchased Digital Content in your Residence or for Permitted Non-Residential Use as specified on the detail pages of the Purchased Digital Content or other help or informational pages of the Service at the time of your payment. You may exercise these rights on up to 2 (two) non-portable Authorized Devices (e.g. laptop or desktop computers) and two (2) portable Authorized Devices as specifically designated by Amazon from time to time. There can only be 1 (one) account for the Service on an Authorized Device. You may make a back-up copy of Purchased Digital Content on removable media (e.g. recordable DVD) or on an external hard drive in the same format as the original downloaded file to play on your permitted Authorized Devices. Any back-up copy of the Purchased Digital Content on a DVD will not be playable on a traditional DVD player, but only on a permitted Authorized Device.

You can purchase our "digital content," but that doesn't mean you own it. You can't sell it, give it to your kid's school, or donate it to a homeless shelter. Also, you can only play it on two portable players, and only the models we approve. And if you buy an approved portable player, we can later nullify your investment by canceling that device's permission to play your movies.

Section 4c. Downloading and Risk of Loss. It is your responsibility to download Digital Content promptly after purchase. If you are unable to complete a download after having reviewed our online help resources, please contact Amazon customer service. You bear all risk of loss for completing the download of Digital Content after purchase, once we have made such content available to you (in Your Media Library or otherwise), and for any loss of Digital Content you have downloaded, including any loss due to a file corruption or a computer or hard drive crash. Purchased Digital Content will generally continue to be available in your Media Library for download to a second of your Authorized Devices (or re-download to the first Authorized Device you designate for the content), but may become unavailable due to potential content provider licensing restrictions and for other reasons and Amazon will not be liable to you if content becomes unavailable for further download.

Movies from Amazon don't come with the same rights as DVDs from Amazon -- DVDs can be sold, given away, and watched on any player. You don't have to give up your privacy or control over your property to watch a DVD.

If Amazon sells you a DVD but it never arrives in the mail, Amazon gives you a full refund. But if you buy an Unbox movie and your download fails, Amazon has no obligation to get you that flick. Naturally, replacing your Unbox movies costs nothing, while shipping you a replacement DVD costs quite a lot.

Section 5: From time to time, Amazon will automatically deliver promotional video content (e.g., movie trailers, celebrity interviews, reviews, etc.) to your Authorized Device. Amazon may automatically delete such promotional video content from your Authorized Device without notice to you.

We will put commercials on your computer without your permission. But you can't keep the good ones.

Section 6: Except for the rights explicitly granted to you in this Agreement, all right, title and interest in the Service and Digital Content are reserved and retained by Amazon and its licensors, and Amazon and its licensors do not transfer any right, title or interest in the Digital Content to you. You do not acquire any ownership rights in the Digital Content as a result of downloading Digital Content.

We call it "purchased content," but you don't own it.

Section 7: The Services are available only to customers located in the United States. If you are outside of the United States, you may not use the Services and you may not transfer Digital Content outside the United States. As used herein, "United States" refers to the 48 contiguous United States, the District of Columbia, Alaska and Hawaii.

If you move, or if you travel, we'll take your movies away.

Section 8: 8. All rentals and sales of Digital Content are final when you click the "Buy Now" button.

It's a "Sale" but you haven't bought it -- you've only licensed it.

Section 9a: a. If you violate any of the terms or conditions of this Agreement or otherwise abuse the Service, your license to Rental Digital Content and Purchased Digital Content will immediately terminate and Amazon may, in its discretion, immediately revoke your access to the Service without notice to you and without refund of any fees. In such event, you must delete all copies of Digital Content that you have downloaded, and Amazon shall have the right to automatically delete all Digital Content on your Authorized Device without notice to you.

If we think you've done something naughty, we can take away all the movies you've bought, without appeal. Better not do anything we think is naughty. What do we consider naughty? We're not telling.

Section c. If Amazon changes any part of the Service or modifies license terms applicable to Rental Digital Content or Purchased Digital Content, which it may do in its sole discretion, you acknowledge that you may not be able to access, view, or use Digital Content in the same manner as prior to such changes, and you agree that Amazon shall have no liability to you in such case.

We can change the terms of this deal at any time. Today you can play it on two portable players -- maybe it'll be zero tomorrow. Today you can only watch these movies in the US, tomorrow, maybe only west of the Mississippi.

Section d: Amazon reserves the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue the service at any time without notice to you, and Amazon will not be liable to you should it exercise such rights.

Even if you're not doing something naughty, we can take away the movies we "sold" you.Link(Thanks, Xeni!)

Entertainment industry: wiretap the net, crypto is for pedos

2006-09-15T07:05:00.001-07:00

Computer scientist/activist Ian Brown spoke at an event on copyright in London last night, where anti-Internet enforcers from the entertainment industry spoke on DRM. The entertainment industry types proposed that ISPs should be forced by law to monitor all customers' communications for copyright infringement, charging for anything that might be a copyrighted work. When Ian asked about encrypted communications, they dismissed him, saying "only paedophiles use that technology and we would all be better off if it was banned."

The current favourite seems to be that ISPs should be forced to monitor all exchanges of data and charge customers when a copyright work is spotted. When I asked how the spread of encryption could possibly be compatible with this scheme, they airily replied that only paedophiles use that technology and we would all be better off if it was banned. They obviously don't know that the US government already tried extremely hard to do this over about 25 years, and failed.

Link

Anti-RIAA lawyers answer Slashdot's questions

2006-09-14T10:05:00.002-07:00

Two attorneys who represent American citizens who are being sued by the record industry have conducted a public interview with the Slashdot community -- the questions and answers are fascinating and lively, as is the discussion that follows:

9) Evidence?

(Score:5, Insightful)

by eldavojohn

I hear a lot that the RIAA has the weakest evidence ever in these cases. Such as screen shots of dynamic IP addresses - http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13747 - taken from Kazaa. How the hell do judges across this country uphold these cases with such lack of concrete evidence? I mean, give me five minutes in photoshop and I'll make you a "screenshot" of Kazaa with www.whitehouse.gov's IP address listed over and over on it. Can't an expert witness cause this evidence to be thrown out quickly?

Beckerman:

I've tried, eldavojohn, I've tried. Look at our court papers in Motown v. Does 1-149. The judge didn't want to hear a word I was saying. You are absolutely correct that the entire underpinning of each case is a joke. An astute judge would laugh them out of court, as the Netherlands and Canadian courts have done.

Link

US State Dept to Europe: Apple's DRM is off-limits

2006-09-14T10:05:00.001-07:00

A spokesman for the US Department of Justice has counseled European governments to stop investigating the anti-competitive, anti-consumer aspects of Apple's iTunes DRM. Apple imposes their DRM even when musicians ask not to have it applied to their music, and they have used legal threats to stop competitors from making players that can play Apple's music. Apple's DRM has been updated several times to remove the rights that iTunes Music Store customers bought when they bought their music -- all of this seems to make iTunes DRM a valid subject for investigation by competition and fair trading bureaus. Right now, Sweden, Norway, France, Britain and other European nations are investigating the fairness of Apple's technology.

Speaking in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Thomas Barnett, assistant attorney general at the DOJ’s antitrust division, warned that forcing companies to reveal their intellectual property stifles innovation. He used Apple as an example, in a nod to growing discontent in Europe regarding the way that music purchased from iTunes is tied to the iPod.

Link

EU considers peeling -- maybe coring -- Apple's iTunes

2006-09-13T23:24:00.000-07:00

Not only do European governments take the privacy of their citizens and their personal data (Schneier, p. 3) seriously across board (the U.S. does in a few sensitive industries), they're actually the keepers of the gate protecting competition among technology firms. Now, you'd think the free-market-loving, wheeling-and-dealing capitalists in this country would want to do all they could to keep our economy marching along and our markets teeming with new technology entrants and their products, but no. Our Justice Department antitrust chief, Thomas Barnett, warned the EU countries that "impos[ing] restrictions on iTunes...could discourage innovation and hurt consumers." What are these frightening restrictions, you might ask? One example: "requir[ing] Apple to permit iTunes music to play on devices other than its iPod." Apple, Barnett argued "should be applauded for creating a legal, profitable and easy-to-use system for downloading music and other entertainment via the Internet."

Yes, sure, applaud Apple's big business model for helping other big businesses protect their big business models. Yay, them. But since when is a lack of competition the thing that encourages innovation? Our whole economic system depends on the little guys sketching out the better mousetrap on the back of a cocktail napkin, making aftermarket parts for good mousetraps that consumers like to buy and thinking of products that will replace the mousetrap once all the mice are dead. Telling people the rodent problem's been solved so go work on something else while Ben runs up your pantleg is just plain un-American.

As anyone who's ever worked at a company that uses computer technology at all knows, legacy systems can become impossibly expensive to extricate yourself from. I'm not just talking money. The time it takes to move data between two incompatible systems can be nearly impossible if the first system's been in place for any length of time. (You sit there, practically salivating, thinking about how much more hassle-free your life would be if you could just use the new tools, but you can't because you'd have to spend the rest of your life transferring the data it took you years to accumulate, byte by byte.) Telling entrepreneurs, computer engineers, hackers and designers that thinking about making iTunes better -- or making products that can make iTunes talk to better products or using iTunes in a way not sanctioned by Apple -- is verboten is the most stifling of stifling statements. And now our top antitrust watchdog is spreading our protectionist tripe around the world. Where is my generic extra-strength migraine eraser?

The EU levied in excess of $600 million in fines against Microsoft and forced the company to provide different versions of Windows. South Korea followed suit with smaller fines. If the U.S. won't protect the public's interest in newer, better, faster, cooler or just plain different products, I guess we'll have to look to the rest of the world to lead the way.

New Wikipedia Tool: Search by Domain

2006-09-13T16:21:00.000-07:00

This is another great way to search for info/entries and broken links on wikipedia pages that may be of interest. The key is to use the wildcard to get all prefixes from a given domain, i.e. *.eff.org

via this post at MicroPersuasion:

Wikipedia has quietly rolled out a special page that lets you unearth all of the pages that link to a particilar Web site or page. It even covers discussion and other miscellaneous pages that are embedded deep inside the site.

USC Intellectual Property Clinic

2006-09-13T13:19:00.000-07:00

A joint project between the Annenberg School, the USC School of Law and the Information Services Division, apparently this body gives law students the opportunity to enact real-world change in the field of Intellectual Property litigation through projects such as helping "starving artists" register copyrights and open source licenses. It seems new, it doesn't look like they've done too much yet, but establishing contact with this group could be beneficial for the class in terms of both research gathering and contact building, not to mention the opportunity to get the law school's perspective on IP and DRM issues.
link to IP Clinic site.

Religious Right embraces innovation and competition on the Net

2006-09-11T22:58:00.000-07:00

As the Senate argued about the hypocritical "network neutrality" proposals before it recently, some members of the Religious Right spoke out in favor of killing those proposals to preserve -- gasp! -- freedom. And not just their own. Instead of demanding that their folks on Capitol Hill clamp down on the Net and jettison objectionable websites "to save the children," as one might imagine they would, these socially conservative groups -- Abstinence Clearinghouse; Center for Moral Clarity; Faith 2 Action; and Tradition, Family Property among them -- stated that filtering and monitoring tools enhance their use of the Internet as a teaching medium with their children. The Net also serves their needs as a grassroots organizing tool like none other: "Any legislative action that could prevent or impede our use of the Internet would certainly be damaging to our efforts," the groups said. They went on to tout the positive effects of competition. Providers will continue to offer better service with more potent filters and higher speeds if the Internet remains basically unregulated. Look at that! Homeschoolers working to protect personal freedoms in a way that benefits everybody. Amen to that.

Omissions in CDT's DRM report

2006-09-09T12:21:00.001-07:00

The Center for Democracy in Technology has released a report on DRM and consumer rights, intended to serve as a guideline for governments who are looking to balance consumer interests with legal protection for DRM, which is technology used to limit how we can use the media we buy on the devices we own.

This is a good goal, but the paper falls far of the mark, by omitting any mention of DRM 'renewability" (the ability of a DRM vendor to take away rights you got when you bought your media or device), open source (which is antithetical to DRM), and Creative Commons (which can't be used in connection with DRM.

I've written an open letter to the CDT staffers listed as contacts on the paper, going into detail on these subjects:

All new DRMs are being designed to be "renewable." The Sony PSP
was repeatedly patched to force users to stop running their own
software on their devices. BluRay and HD-DVD are both built
around a "renewability" system that can shut down devices. The
Broadcast Flag ruling provided for renewability to disable
consumers' property on the grounds that if someone, somewhere
figured out how to use a DVD burner to circumvent the flag, all
innocent users of that burner should be punished to get at the
guilty. This week, Microsoft issued its fastest-ever OS patch to
remove a DRM crack that users applied in order to make lawful
uses of the content they owned.

What kind of disclosure is sufficient here? What constitutes
transparency? "This device will do the follow five things and
restrict your from the following eight things. However, at any
time in the future, without your consent, a secret commercial
body with closed membership and meetings may shut down any of
this device's features, with no appeal."

Link

Giving Away Info to Sidestep Phone Tree Hassles

2006-09-08T10:45:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! Tech blogger Chris Null introduces a new Web-based service that navigates those ultra-annoying phone tree labyrinths at the other end of customer service lines for you. It's called Bringo! and this dog can fetch, but not without a catch. The stipulation to using the service is that you must provide your phone number.

Apparently Bringo is still a beta -- but it's more than a bit disturbing that it has been launched publicly -- not to mention raved about by the venerable Null -- with a TOS does little more than state: "The lawyers have the privacy policy for their final review."

Supposedly one of the founders is based in Poland and who's to think another founder is in Romania or elsewhere. Either way, it would be nice if the site wasn't so casual about their privacy guarantees -- they not only collect your name and number, but can access a whole lot more once they enter the phone tree of your credit card company or financial advisor.

Amazon vs. Apple

2006-09-07T19:27:00.000-07:00

Amazon launched the AmazonUnbox video download service and player today, a couple of days before iTunes' video player. It's only compatible with Windows XP machines, and the downloads only play in Amazon's proprietary player (available free), so Disney's opted out. Many other providers have opted in, however, and the offerings are pretty broad. Users can either rent or "buy", but usage is severely restricted even if the download is purchased -- it can only be copied to two PCs and one handheld device. Users can copy downloads to a DVD for backup, but they won't play in a regular DVD player. Apple can't be happy at being trumped, but we'll see if Amazon's market penetration is a match for Apple's.

The Facebook Lesson

2006-09-07T16:17:00.000-07:00

22-year-old Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg delivered the lesson of the year to college (and some high school) campuses nationwide on Tuesday when he unveiled a revamped version of his superpopular, 2-year-old social networking Web site Facebook.com. The addition of a time-stamped "mini-feed" on each member's page detailing their Facebook mentions and activities has sparked an uproar (that's the WSJ's word) as Generation C is slapped with a reality check: there are no secrets on the Internet.

The Washingon Post bumped the issue to page A01, declaring:

Such a strong reaction in defense of privacy is rare among the teenage and twenty-something generation, which grew up in the era of public disclosure in the form of blogs, videosharing and reality television.

But no longer can Paris Hilton sneak away from a DUI arrest without TMZ on her tail and never again will a Swift Boat hoax turn the tide on an election. Everything is out on the table, and practically everyone is watching. Future presidents are already leaving their paper trail on sites like Facebook. I must congratulate Zuckerberg for providing the 9 million mostly college students who use Facebook the opportunity to look in the mirror and see firsthand just what happens when post content, photos and personal information is posted haphazardly on the Internet. Who knows his true intentions -- there is clearly no privacy violated in making it easier for users to read and create the content they signed up for. Tech marketing guru Ed Kohler agrees. So does VC Fred Wilson.

In March, Zuckerberg turned down a $750 million buyout offer and told BusinessWeek he thought Facebook was worth at least $2 billion. 85% of all college students use Facebook, according to TechCrunch, which has prompted university officials to state: "we've got alot of catching up to do" as far as keeping tabs on their students. It just got a bit easier -- and to be honest, anyone on Facebook could have already been kept track of using RSS.

I spoke to several undergrads today in an Investigative Reporting class and most were shaken by the turn of events. Very few if any in the 14-person class had used MySpace, flickr, or even del.icio.us. But they all use Facebook. The student editors of the Daily Trojan penned a column this week echoing the Facebook wake-up-call: "[B]eyond this lies a simple issue of privacy: How much of your most personal information do you want accessible to anyone who goes, or went, to USC?"

More than anything else, the Facebook lesson helps to define how important issues of privacy and of checks and balances on information sharing are as we move forward in the digital age.

More:
A Day Without Facebook protest blog
Facebook User Groups: Students for Changing the Post Mini-Feed World, The Coalition to Stop Facebook, Stalker Edition
USAToday blog asks: "Has Facebook turned into Big Brother?"
IvyLeak: "WSJ Sends Embedded Journalists to Cover Impending Facebook Coup"

Pirates at the MPAA

2006-09-07T12:26:00.000-07:00

Ampersand points to a Bitch Magazine interview with Kirby Dick, director of the This Film is Not Yet Rated, now playing at a theatre near you.

The film lambasts the MPAA for its well-known rating system, first implemented in 1968 by Jack Valenti. But, in the Bitch interview, Dick reveals that the MPAA -- anti-piracy champion it purports to be -- can be pretty casual about distributing illegal copies in-house. Kirby Dick:

Before I submitted the film, I called up the administration of the ratings board, and I said, “Can you assure me that there will be no copies made of this?” And they assured me, in writing, in e-mail, and on the phone, that not only would no copies be made, but that only the raters would see it. Well, I subsequently learned that an MPAA attorney had seen it. I learned that [MPAA president] Dan Glickman had seen it…

I got a call from an MPAA attorney who said “Look, Kirby, I have to tell you, we have made a copy of your film. But you don’t have to worry, because it’s safe in my vault.” [Laughs.] I can tell you that wasn’t reassuring. In a way I wasn’t surprised, but on the other hand, there’s such hypocrisy there. The MPAA has launched this huge antipiracy campaign, and on their website they define even one act of unauthorized duplication of material as piracy. And that’s exactly what they did.

I'm looking forward to checking this one out. Class field trip, anyone?

Watch the trailer.

Liz Losh highly recommends it here.
Other blogs commenting on This Film is Not Yet Rated here.

source: "Please Call and Report This Copyright Thief!"

USC's GeoDec Project: At the Crux of 3D Visualization and Privacy Concerns

2006-09-06T21:03:00.000-07:00

The Geospatial Decision Making visualization/simulation project is one of many research focii at the University of Southern California's Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC). GeoDec conflates various data on a 3D desktop application which extends upon Google Earth-like technology to provide advanced temporal data integration.

The inherent value of innovations like GeoDec as journalistic tools are rivaled by the intense privacy issues they present as online, desktop and handheld applications on the cutting-edge of 3D visualization and real-time multimedia data.

GeoDec as a technology and concept is mind-baffling, difficult to describe in English, and worthy of poignant headaches in my aim to comprehend it. I admire the work of the numerous faculty, staff and countless hours/years several Ph.D. students have invested in the project and their willingness to teach me about it. (list of people involved here).

One example of GeoDec in action is real-time tracking of USC's tram system on a 3D virtual map of the campus. Where is the most convenient tram to my location right now? This is infinitely useful data -- not only as applied to transportation, but as applied to, let's say, mashing up video and sensory data of a live wildfire with real-time weather conditions, etc, to predict its path.

But when it comes to real-time -- and video -- privacy alarms abound. No matter how much grant and research money is infused into such innovation, it's impossible to look past the intrusion issues. Surveillance cameras are everywhere. I'm not gonna look it up nor do I really wants to know how many cameras would capture me while strolling the streets of Los Angeles, London, or New York. Granted, much of the video is eventually scrapped and even more is never seen by a human eye.

But with the GeoDec interface, it is possible to call up specific geographic areas or points and view a time lapse video stream for a given time period. A 360 degree shot of Disney Hall, archived and animated -- you can get that from Google Earth. But a 360 shot of the Coliseum after the USC-Nebraska game with live video -- this is where GeoDec gets, lets just say, provocative.

I'm interested in thoughts and feedback, as well as suggestions for deeper research -- both for the GeoDec team, and for my dissection of exactly what the project means to the future of journalism.

Brochure: http://infolab.usc.edu/projects/geodec/GeoDecBrochure.pdf
Web site: http://infolab.usc.edu/projects/geodec/index.jsp

Open Source Blogging in Israel

2006-09-05T19:18:00.000-07:00

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported earlier today on a new initative related to open source blogging in Israel.
Shachar Shemesh, an open source activist and blogger, wrote a plug-in for Wordpress which enables Israeli bloggers to migrate from the popular blog authoring site http://israblog.nana.co.il/ , which is a proprietary blogging site owned by the Israeli company Nana to the open source based authoring tool Wordpress. His piece of software is downloadable from the Hebrew website http://blog.shemesh.biz/?page_id=387) and opens new possibilities for Israeli bloggers, allowing them to migrate their successful blogs to an independent non-proprietary environment. According to what we heard in class today from Jason Schulz, this would have probably been unlawful in the U.S, but since the discussion about an Israeli DMCA is still in its infancy, we will have to see if Nana will sue and on what basis.

Hebrew link: http://www.haaretz.co.il/captain/pages/ShArtCaptain.jhtml?contrassID=11&subContrassID=0&itemNo=759100

Report from Broadcast Treaty meeting at USPTO

2006-09-05T17:53:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in today's class, an inter-industry group opposed to the Broadcast Treaty attended a USPTO round-table on the US participation in the Treaty. Public Knowledge's Gigi Sohn has a great report on the session:

[NAB Senior Associate General Counsel Ben Ivins] then accused those of us who think that the US delegation should not be making US laws overseas of essentially being xenophobes who are pushing the US view of broadcasting and copyright on the rest of the world. Funny, I thought the US delegation usually pushing the US view of the world in trade and WIPO negotiations.

Link

America to US gov't - Kill the Broadcast Treaty!

2006-09-05T07:41:00.000-07:00

An incredibly diverse coalition of high-powered public interest groups, industry associations, and corporations have signed an open letter to the US Patent and Trademark Office rejecting the "Broadcast Treaty," a US-led UN initiative that could do untold harm to artists, tech and telecoms companies, scholars, and people with disabilities.

Under the Broadcast Treaty, fair use, Creative Commons and the public domain would be trumped by the "broadcast right," which would be owned by the broadcaster of works. If you got a copy of a work over the air or over the Web that copyright would let you use (because it was in the public domain, because it was factual, or even because the creator had granted you permission), you'd still need to seek permission from the "caster," who would get a 50-year monopoly over the re-use of copies of the works it transmitted.

The proposal to extend this to the Web could put YouTube, Google Video, and innovative podcaster services out of business, by banning or restricting the way that these companies re-use each others' materials. And if you're a podcaster accustomed to lifting other podcasters' material and pasting it into your podcasts, you'll need permission from the company that hosts the podcasts, not just permission from the creator.

The Webcasting provision has been underwritten by Yahoo and Microsoft, whose advocates at the UN work tirelessly to keep the US on-track in pushing the rest of the world to taking it on board. The rest of the world doesn't want Webcasting, but it keeps sneaking back into the treaty, over howls of protests from artists and major governments.

Now some of Yahoo and Microsoft's competitors have woken up to the fact that they're about to get their lunches eaten for them and have signed onto a letter asking the USPTO to quit handing their doom to a couple of companies.

The letter's signatories are wonderful, ranging from AT&T and Verizon to Yale, to Dell and Intel, and library associations from the medical librarians to the law librarians and more. Also on the list are TiVo, EFF, Panasonic, H-P, the US musicians' managers, and many others.

Home and personal networking. Under the current draft of the treaty, the broad scope of the proposed rights, combined with proposed additional rights regarding technological protection measures (TPMs) in connection with these rights, raises questions about whether “casters” would gain the ability to control signals in the home or personal network environment. Such control is without precedent and would interfere with the rollout of broadband and home and personal networking services and limit the development of innovative devices that provide home and personal networking functionality. Accordingly, the treaty should include a provision excluding coverage of fixations, transmissions or retransmissions across a home or personal network. Further, we should note that many of our group believe that TPM provisions are inappropriate in connection with this treaty and should be excluded from the treaty entirely.

Link

Mysterious Flash video DRM

2006-09-05T07:18:00.000-07:00

A company claims to have developed an anti-copying system for Flash video, but doesn't offer any details on how it proposes to accomplish this unlikely task:

The ACP - Anti Caching Protection from Onlinelib allows webcasters to protected their Content with a DRM - Digital Rights Management System. Basic System is the VCS - Video Communication Server from Onlinelib.

Link

(Thanks, Jens!)

New Zealand wants a Minstry of DRM

2006-09-05T07:12:00.000-07:00

The New Zealand government has concluded a consultation on DRM, trusted computing and government and written a set of principles that they hope governments around the world will follow. The principles describe a theoretical DRM that governments could use without threatening their own security, ongoing access to information, archiving and public privacy.

They suggest that DRM vendors should be forced to disclose all the workings of their DRMs, limit the way that their DRMs communicate with the rest of the world, work even when the Internet is down or the vendor's gone out of business, and so on.

They also call for the creation of a Ministry of DRM that keeps keys and master documents for everything the government puts under DRM, and suggests that this ministry should police all DRM use within government.

One thing that's notable by its absence is any discussion of DRM and open source. While New Zealand's official policy is to encourage the use of open source in government, the consultation (which was fed by MIcrosoft, HP and IBM) makes no mention of the disastrous impact of DRM on open source.

DRM relies on its owners not knowing how it works and not being able to change how it works. If I give you a song that can only be played on five computers, it defeats the point if you can change that to 50,000 computers. But the point of open source is that it is better for society, individuals, and competition if anyone who cares to can discover how her tools work, improve those tools, and publish her improvements.

By deciding that it will accept DRM over its threshold -- instead of using traditional proven security and open standards -- the New Zealand government is setting up a situation where New Zealanders and NZ businesses will have to license software from foreign software companies before they can do business with government.

If you're an NZ programmer and want to make software to help your neighbors work with the documents that your government publishes, getting into the DRM will require you to close your source, license secrets from foreign DRM vendors, and submit to a "compliance" system that makes sure your work meets the business-priorities of foreign companies.

Link

(Thanks, Steve!)

Is it legal to look at the Web in Canada?

2006-09-05T07:02:00.001-07:00

Michael Geist examines two warring proposals for ensuring that Canadian schools' use of the Internet is lawful and concludes that both of them cause more harm than they prevent. On the one hand, Access Canada proposes to collect fees from schools for just looking at the web, a license shakedown that would treat all educational use as a copyright infringement unless you'd paid them for permission to turn on your web-browser.

A seemingly better proposal comes from CMEC, which represents Canada's education ministries: they say that Canadian copyright should be rewritten to carve out a new exception for schools' educational use of the Web.

But Geist shows that this latter proposal comes with lots of potential for harm. If schools need an exception to copyright to look at the Web, what does that say about uses of the Web in businesses, homes, libraries, home tutoring outfits, and elsewhere? Surely reading and studying published documents should be lawful for everyone, not just schools.

Another risk is that the US entertainment companies' reps in Canada will use this "generous loosening" of copyright law as the basis for a Canadian version of the DMCA, the US law that has sent researchers to jail and let the entertainment companies invent new private copyright laws that you can't violate without being sued.

Geist has been tracking this Canadian DMCA proposal with his 30 days of DRM series, an exhaustive look at the Canadian DMCA proposal and the harm it will bring down if the Tories pass it as they have promised to do.

Link

(Thanks, Michael!)

Movie studios vs. bloggers

2006-09-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

On KCRW's "The Business" today (the podcast will be up soon), panelists talked about the online tug of war going on between movie studios' marketing departments and bloggers. Movie studios had started noticing that, with all the online chatter about movies for months before they came out, lots of people who might otherwise have gone to see their films were just sick of hearing about them already and stayed home on release weekend. To combat this trend, New Line clamped down on information leaks about "Snakes on a Plane," hoping to create the bulk of the buzz during the month directly preceding the film's release. They also didn't screen it for critics, except for the premiere the night before it hit theaters. (Those who saw it then gave it overwhelmingly positive reviews, according to Tom Tapp of Hollywood Wiretap.) This, of course, didn't prevent bloggers excited by the premise from writing about the film. After a precisely timed, traditional periodicals/billboards/TV ads campaign, the first weekend numbers for "Snakes on a Plane" were disappointing. Turns out the only people who went to see the film were those bloggers and their buddies. (They'll all watch it on cable and buy the DVD, too.) Now movie studios are trying to devise better ways of controlling and utilizing bloggers and their influence on the entertainment journalists who use bloggers' tips to fill their own columns. Not only do studios want/need to control what happens to their products once they're released on an unsuspecting public, but they want to use their muscle and deep pockets to control what we say and when we say it about them, too. They already do this with the press when they embargo information till a certain date (and try to limit that information to outlets that will be favorable to them). Is it possible that, one day in a near and ominous future, bloggers will be blamed for a film's failure? Will studios try to find a way to hold individuals financially accountable? That's one way this could go: a very scary way. But in light of studios' virulent attacks on filesharing, it doesn't seem improbable to me.

Congress desperate for technological expertise

2006-09-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

Recently, the House Committee on Science heard a panel of experts who urged them to create a new in-house, non-partisan support organization to keep them abreast of sci/tech issues and the policy questions they raise. This is great news because, since the Office of Technology Assessment was unfunded in 1995, the committee has relied on a patchwork of industry, universities, scientific societies and the AAAS for expertise on sci/tech issues. (This might explain that "series of tubes" comment by Senator Ted Stevens -- poor guy.) So basically since the Internet first sparked in the public consciousness, Congress hasn't had anyone on the inside dedicated to explaining to them what the Internet actually is and what all these pesky public issues that emanate from it like the green glow of kryptonite really mean. From among those informing Congress, I'm just going to go out on a limb and guess that highly paid tech-industry lobbyists are the ones most consistently knocking down doors when necessary to to get their messages heard.

Unless addressed with wisdom and foresight, these issues (e.g., DRM, P2P, identity theft, estalking and all the rest) are to the Internet as kryptonite is to Superman. This technology has already transformed the way people think about the world, communicate with others, learn, keep abreast of current affairs, entertain themselves, commit crime, find sex (even love) and so much more -- and that's just during its first dozen years in existence. The Internet, coupled with cell and satellite technology, is beginning to look like the collective unconscious of mankind. Tap into it anywhere and explore the dark recesses of your psyche, or your neighbor's. Or embody the Trickster archetype and release a worm, just to see. The Internet will keep evolving, and our lawmakers have the opportunity to guide it toward a productive future by protecting freedom of speech and supporting creativity and innovation, or they can take the blue pill and make it all about the revenue streams flowing to the right coffers. As a strategy, this will ultimately fail, but it'll be painful for everybody. That they understand they need help is the first step toward recovery. Contact the House Committee on Science and/or the Senate Committee to make sure they understand the stakes. I'm sure corporate lobbyists have done all they can to obfuscate the truth.

Used Smartphones and PDAs for Sale on eBay Reveal Massive Volume of Sensitive Data

2006-08-30T13:43:00.000-07:00

Not unlike computers, deleting info from cell phones and PDAs is not as easy as it seems. A study released by Trust Digital, Inc details:

Trust Digital engineers recovered nearly 27,000 pages of personal, corporate, and device data from nine of 10 mobile devices purchased through eBay for the project, including a smartphone sold by an employee of a major corporation. The salvaged data included personal banking and tax information, corporate sales activity notes, corporate client records, product roadmaps, contact address books, phone and Web logs, calendar records, personal and business correspondence, computer passwords, user medication information, and other private, competitive or potentially damaging material.

Tipped to this by an almost lighthearted -- but worth reading -- AP article here.

Sweden's Pirate Party manifesto

2006-08-30T07:17:00.001-07:00

Mick sez, "On August 28, the Pirate Party of Sweden made their election program official. An introduction stating the ideas and ideology behind their program."

The development of technology has made sure Sweden and Europe stand before a fork in the road. The new technology offers fantastic possibilities to spread culture and knowledge all over the world with almost no costs. But it also makes way for the building of a society monitored at a level unheard of up until now.

In no time, the monitoring state has advanced its positions strongly in Sweden. This development threatens equality and safety before the law, and nothing indicates that it even adds to security. The Pirate Party believes this is the wrong way to go.

The right to privacy is a corner stone in an open and democratic society. Each and everyone has the right to respect for one’s own private and family life, one’s home and one’s correspondence. If the constitutional freedom of information is to be more than empty words on a paper, we much defend the right for protected private communication.

Link

(Thanks, Mick!)

Amazing Slashdot discussion about DRM and the future of entertainment products

2006-08-29T21:48:00.000-07:00

Slashdot, a voluminous nerd news-site, just ran one of its regular "Ask Slashdot" columns, this time about DRM and copyright:

"In a few weeks, our school will be hosting a panel on DRM with several respected individuals. In advance of the panel, I have been doing some research on the topic and thinking about it in my free time. In economics, we learn that the price of a product is determined essentially by supply and demand. Without a DRM in place, we are capable of making as many copies of a piece of content as we want and seeding it onto the net. How do you create a market for a product, and make money of a product that has a huge initial creative investment, but then no manufacturing cost, and is in infinite supply?"

The discussion that follows is erudite, exhilerating, frustrating and funny. Highly recommended.

Link

Record label that puts fans and artists first

2006-08-25T08:46:00.001-07:00

Wired has a great article on Nettwerk, a Canadian label that puts out stars like Avril Lavigne, which has taken a fans-and-artists-first approach to the business that has them making tracks available from remix, fighting to defend fans who are being sued by other labels, and delivering unheard-of sweet deals to the artists they publish:

Terry McBride has an idea. Another idea. A good – no, a great idea. McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Music Group, is sitting in his Vancouver, British Columbia, office with his local marketing staff discussing strategy for the release of a new album by Barenaked Ladies. The marketing departments in three other cities are conferenced in. The conversation ping-pongs from Nascar promotions to placement in a Sims videogame. McBride is on a roll.

"This one's a real wingdinger," he says, leaning into the speakerphone so New York, Denver, and Los Angeles won't miss a word. "Let's give away the ProTools files on MySpace. Vocals, guitars, drums, and bass. We'll let the fans make their own mixes." The room falls quiet. Musicians usually record their instruments and vocals on separate tracks; the producer and mixer combine those tracks into a finished product. McBride wants to make the individual files available so that amateur DJs can use them like Lego bricks to create something all their own. The record industry likes control. McBride is proposing unfettered chaos.

A voice from LA breaks the silence: "For the single, you mean, right?" McBride's features screw up in concentration, then quickly expand into a grin. "What I'm proposing," he says, "is that we make all 29 songs available as ProTools files. In two weeks." The Internet marketers in Vancouver look worried. "But," he adds, "we'll get the files from the single up on MySpace by Monday." Libby White, a member of the department, shoots McBride a skeptical look. Can they make it? McBride asks. White sighs. "We'll make it," she says.

Link

More on Microsoft, high-def and anti-trust; Swiss DRM laws

2006-08-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

Princeton's Ed Felten has written some great analysis of yesterday's post on Microsoft opting to leave high-def support out of the 32-bit flavor of Windows, looking at the potential reasons for this inanity:

The stupidity-ball explanation is always a contender in cases like this, but I wouldn’t rule out A or B either. Yes, the studios have tech consultants, but they had equally good consultants when they chose the horribly misdesigned CSS as the encryption scheme for first-gen DVDs, which suggests that they don’t always listen to the consultants.

There’s an interesting connection to antitrust policy here. Microsoft’s business strategy is apparently to tie Media Player to Windows. Antitrust authorities, in Europe at least, didn’t like this, and so Microsoft is claiming that Media Player is an Integral Part of Windows and not just a nice application that is designed to work well with Windows. (Recall that they tried the same argument for Internet Explorer in the U.S. antitrust case, and the U.S. courts didn’t buy it.)

This may affect the DVD cartel’s decisionmaking in at least two ways. First, if they fell for the line that Media Player is not just another pretty app, they may have concluded that it made sense to hold Media Player accountable for the Windows “bug” of allowing unsigned drivers. This makes no sense from a content security standpoint, but remember that these are the same people who thought CSS was a good idea.

Another possibility is that the DVD cartel is implementing its own antitrust policy, encouraging competition in the market for Windows-compatible DVD players by neutralizing Microsoft’s tying strategy. Having acquired quasi-governmental power to regulate the design of DVD players and the structure of DVD-related markets, the cartel would naturally want to prevent any player vendor from accumulating market power.

In that same post, Ed links to fascinating testimony on the Swiss DRM bill, which apparently takes a much more sensible approach:

...I would like to point to some of the characteristics of the bill that I find particularly commendable:

* The bill only prohibits the circumvention of effective technological protection measures aimed at protecting copyrighted materials.

* The bill includes a definition of the effectiveness criterion.

* The ban cannot be enforced against individuals who circumvent TPMs in order to make use of the work in a way that is traditionally permitted by the copyright act (e.g. making a private copy).

* In contrast to the EUCD, all the exceptions and limitations also apply to on-demand services.

* Although the bill creates civil and criminal liability, it adheres to the principle of proportionality with regard to sanctions and penalties. In the context of criminal sanctions in the case of circumvention of TPMs, intent (”Absicht”) is required.

Universities put Hollywood ahead of students

2006-08-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

Draconian, indiscriminate measures against file-share are par for the course at USC, as is the black-hole treatment for people who get snared in the dragnet. Aram Sinnreich, a USC grad student studying file sharing, who was an expert witness at the Grokster court case, was censured for using BitTorrent, and never received a response to his letter, either.

USC's arch-rival UCLA is a somewhat better steward of its students' interests in the copyright wars, as reported by Cindy Mosqueda at Metroblogging LA, who notes that UCLA's approach is mostly one of warning students about the crazies down the raod in Hollywood and their willingness to destroy your life to prop up their business model, but does not extend to actively policing students on their behalf. This is affirmed in last spring's letter to students from the Dean and Archchancellor.

At the University of Michigan, the policy is not far off from USC's, but at least they've got the good sense not to describe the school's mission as "is to promote and foster the creation and lawful use of intellectual property," as USC did.

Australia's Queensland University of Technology, touted as Brisbane's answer to MIT, has sent out a completely bizarre letter to students warning them that even if you buy your music from iTunes, you can't play it on a university computer, thanks to Australia's out-of-date copyright laws (soon to be replaced with an even more out-of-date regime, thanks to the dumb Free Trade Deal the loathsome John Howard signed into law).

One thing that's becoming increasingly clear from these factors is that students often need as much protection from their universities as they do from the entertainment industry's slipshod copyright enforcer thugs. It might be time for activists to start delivering anonymous file-sharing tools that help students evade the campus cops so they can get their research done.

Muni WiFi Censorship in Metro L.A.

2006-08-24T14:59:00.000-07:00

Culver City is one of many municipalities in metro Los Angeles offering some form of free wifi network. Culver City's system has been thought of as the first, city-owned free system and other cities including Burbank, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood followed suit by providing free public wireless access in localized areas, primarily to promote tourism and the business districts.

But it turns out Free wireless access doesn't exactly mean "free access."

Culver City, which, incidentally, is home to no fewer than three motion picture studios (including -- yup -- Sony), has implemented filtering that blocks users on its municipal wifi network from accessing p2p sites, porn, and other "questionable content." The incriminating "nannyware" in this instance is CopySense.

Mack at LAVoice has a bit more on this here.

And Sacha Meinrath at MuniWireless.com warns:

While the telecommunications battle of 2006 has been all about Network Neutrality, a storm is gathering for 2007-8 to be the war over Digital Rights Management.

Kiddie-Leashes: Is This What GPS is For?

2006-08-24T13:16:00.000-07:00

GPS-enabled devices (Global Positioning Systems) are huge these days and the technology can be found packaged with everything from SUVs to PSPs.

Before long it will be possible to simply download your Google Earth placemarks to your TREO or CrackBerry (already been done w/ Samsung's Q1 UMPC) and keep your world in your shirt-pocket.

My infatuation with the cool factor of GPS hit a wall when I stumbled upon a Yahoo! Tech post titled: "GPS is Available on Cell Phones for Older Kids, Too."

I know this is nothing new but its shocking that its to the point where the average person apparently isn't even aware of the numerous practical uses of GPS.

(Take, for example, the GPS-arming of pigeons earlier this month in San Francisco. The birds are conducting pollution tests that are instantly registered on this Google Maps mashup via SMS).

With the unveiling of products such as Whereifone (by Wherify Wireless), the entire concept and functionality of GPS-enabled devices is taken out of context. Perhaps my reaction is extreme, but to me these devices represent another exploitation of emerging technology to encourage consumers to buy out of fear and a fabricated need for security.

The Whereifone, or electronic leash, takes little stock in promoting the utilitarian qualities of a GPS-enabled cellphone, instead touting its "homeland security" uses and the ability of THEIR network to help kids not get lost or kidnapped and even if they do, Wherify can trace all evil with its FACES digital facial featuring imaging composite technology.

Now, while your at home cooking dinner, or watching CNN (and hoping you don't know next young , Caucasian runaway or abductee on Nancy Grace), you can always locate your loved ones.

More: The UK-based World-Tracker which was profiled earlier this year in an article in the Guardian titled "How I Stalked My Girlfriend."

If you've gotta tag and track your sig. other, allow me to recommend a deserted island, a well-stocked iPod and a V-Girl -- she'll never leave your shirt-pocket.

BBC.com - Mobile Tracking Devices on Trial
CNET - Big Boss is Watching
LegalAffairs - Your Cell Phone is a Homing Device

Microsoft throws out high-def video for DRM

2006-08-24T09:12:00.001-07:00

The 32-bit-compatible version of Vista, the next version of Windows, won't play back high-def video because they can't get the DRM right. However, it will play back high-def video if, instead of buying HD DVDs, you just download copies of them off the Internet -- talk about a perverse incentive.

"Any next-generation high definition content will not play in x32 at all," said Riley.

"This is a decision that the Media Player folks made because there are just too many ways right now for unsigned kernel mode code [to compromise content protection]. The media companies asked us to do this and said they don't want any of their high definition content to play in x32 at all, because of all of the unsigned malware that runs in kernel mode can get around content protection, so we had to do this," he said.

Link

(via /.)