SOPAPIPA: Why we need to consider Compulsory Licensing Once Again

Paul Tassi over at Forbes has a great article titled You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You. He talks about now Hollywood is trying to drive Netflix out of business by increasing the fees they receive, when in fact Netflix is the lifeboat Hollywood needs.

But Tassi isn't going far enough, I believe, in looking at Netflix as an example of a Silicon Valley lifeboat for Hollywood. Netflix is a microcosm of what could happen, across the internet and all users, if we looked at compulsory licensing for all media and users, and not just Netflix customers. Netflix is a great model for what could exist across the internet.

Denise Howell invited me to This Week in Law (TWiL 146: Mary Hodder and the Lifeboat of Fire) and of course, the SOPA PIPA thing came up.. and I referred to Terry Fisher's Compulsory Licensing ideas (though several others had other versions of compulsory licensing too...). He was at the Berkman center at the time, and still is, and lots of folks commented (like Ed Felton, Ernie Miller and Derek Slater back in the day ...this link goes to a page listing a year's worth of CL discussion in 2003).

At the time, in 2003, I advocated against compulsory licensing, in favor of a P2P system that would pay artists and end the copyright wars from Hollywood. Well, that was wishful thinking and never happened, and in the meantime, we have loads of Hollywood payola flooding WDC looking for even more draconian laws than what we have now, which will be quite harmful to the internet as an ecosystem.

So as the world has shifted over the past 10 years, I realize we need to revisit compulsory licensing, with built in privacy so we maintain our "right to read anonymously" (per Julie Cohen.. an amazing thinker) and deal with other issues like counting, watermarks and tracking (guess what, 10 years later, we all realize that thousands are tracking everything we *each* do online everyday.. so while I want my clickstream, etc to be private and user-controlled, I'm less concerned about this now as far as compulsory licensing is concerned than I was in 2003).

So my thought is, why not collect a fee at the front end of each month, across internet service points, from users. If no one uses any media, the funds stay put in escrow with the ISP and non-users don't pay. But if media is used in a given month, downloaded, etc, moneys are distributed to copyright holders. And if works are in the public domain? No payments would go out either. Yes, it would require a giant copyright registry, and ISPs to track (let's say, for 90 days, before dumping a user's media list) what anyone on an ISP provided connection used, in order to distribute fees. And it would require a giant fight in Hollywood about who gets paid what, for what, at what time, etc. Hey, maybe that will mean you can watch a first release movie on opening day, on your ipad, where a larger share goes to that copyright holder because of the timing of your consumption?

In my view, figuring out how to solve the Hollywood problem with compulsory licensing is worth doing, by getting all the smart people who understand networks, and licensing, and all the other hairy stuff that will come up in a room and working it out. It would get artists paid, and it would get the users whatever they want in terms of media, and it would get Hollywood into the lifeboat that Silicon Valley offers, finally.

Finally.

Discussion: Building for a Personal Data Ecosystem - A Case Study

Just left the Quantified Self conference where I led a session in the last breakout on "building for a personal data ecosystem." Since we weren't on the official program, i was very happy to be holding something in an Infinity session. Fifteen or so people came, and I talked about Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and our mission for a user centric data model where user's control their data through agents, or Personal Data Stores. I also mentioned what I was seeing at the event, which was lots of folks building apps, making new silos of data, and repeating the model where users' data is in question as to who owns it, and users don't really have access to their data except through the a service's website and possibly an API that might send a little data somewhere else (like twitter or facebook).

I suggested that in a Personal Data Ecosystem, apps makers could take data from their users and send it straight through to the users' Personal Data Stores (PDS). That way if the app or hardware changed or ceased to support their old systems, the user would have their old data to play with in their PDS. And I talked about open formats for the data (think.. what about an open format for Heart Monitor data, where you pulse is described and you can take that data anywhere). Services could think about just providing a great service, instead of trying to manage all the user data storage and security. Users would control their data in their Personal Data Stores/Lockers/Banks, and I said that a bunch of companies were building these PDSs, including Sing.ly which is building the Locker Project.

Sing.ly happened to have someone there, Jared Hansen, who is a developer in the open source project. And there was a guy from Basis, Bashir, who is building hardware (like a wristwatch) that you monitor things like your heartrate with.. though it does monitor many other things as well on your body. We also had a couple of health researchers there, plus other health and wellness companies looking at data, as well as Ian Li, of Carnegie Mellon who is researching data collection and normalization, and a woman from the EFF. And we had a couple of users who talked about what users need.

After a few minutes, Bashir from Basis explained their dilemma around the hardware which isn't all that profitable for them. So initially they were questioning what to do with the data and how to monitize the company. Should they sell the data, or give it to users, or charge uses for it, or give it away to developers who could create a great ecosystem by building lots of apps, thus driving more sales? And who's data is it?

WOW. WOW!!!!

So we were off an running, with the impromptu Basis use case of how to get the value of the data, include the user and let the user have choice and autonomy, and how to leverage what is being done out in the marketplace and with developers creativity with data. Oh.. and don't forget about participating in microformats and Activity Streams creation to make bottom up grass-roots standards for the data formats and exchanges.

We talked through what it would mean to give away the data, support users and ask them if they wanted their data included in studies, get additional revenue for Basis while maintaining the inclusion of the user in the process and what developers could and should do. We brainstormed a lot of things, and covered the good and bad points of how it would all work and how to support Basis' market model while still being good and fair to the users.

I have no idea what Basis will do, but I would love it if they would join the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium in the Startup Circle, to help build out ways to make a user centric data system for user's wellness data collected with Basis hardware.

What an amazing opportunity Basis has for doing the right thing for users, and leading the wellness and personal data ecosystem by creating a win-win for themselves and users. They could create a new market for wellness data, that is user driven.

Frankly, we need more discussions like this. It's not about Do Not Track models where we kill all the data plus the value of it, and it's not about "business as usual" where the user isn't included and businesses do whatever they want with user data.

It's about creating markets that do right by users and have companies making money ethically and conversing with us in the market.

Thanks to everyone who came! We had many representatives of the relevant stakeholders and the discussion was enlightening and rare.. but one I hope to make more common in the near future!

McKinsey's Research Arm Claims Big Data Mining Will Save Us All

Steve Lohr has a write up in today's NYTimes: Mining of Raw Data May Bring a Surge of Innovation about McKinsey & Company's report on Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition and Productivity.

I think we need to challenge assumptions about the inputs... compare the inputs from "hoovered" personal data to that of what people assemble in personal data stores operating in a Personal Data Ecosystem.

Execs from Rapleaf and Intellius have admitted publicly, recently, that they know half their data is bad, they don't know which half. I also sat recently with the woman from Experian who is in charge of segregating and keeping separate data from the internet (verses financial data which is regulated) for their offerings about users. When I posited that a lot of her data was likely wrong, she agreed.

User's obscure their data intentionally because they are scared.

For myself, I can tell you that in the last few years, I have obscured data online (birthdate, zip code, name, address, phone number, preferences, email addresses) as well as health info (not to my doctors, but to data collectors whom I do not trust yet claim they never share the data. For example, you can't get a mammogram in SF / Children's Hosp without sharing a huge amount of very personal data.. so i made it all fake because I don't trust the lab and who they sell the data to...). And I fake it to the pharmacy when they ask for more than my basic info to fill a prescription. In fact my current insurance company has my name and birthdate a little wrong and i'm not correcting them.. because it makes it harder to aggregate my data across systems. Oh.. and my bank spells my name: Hoddler .. and has a slightly incorrect address (don't you love how they key in the wrong data!) and i'm not correcting that either.

I fake all sorts of stuff on and offline... I fail to correct bad data... I know many others do too.. I have since 1994 been faking my data online. Somehow even then, without understanding the privacy issues or how the internet worked then, I just didn't trust the system because I knew then we had no privacy protection in this country (US). As I began working with online technology in 1997, and started really understanding it, I've felt more than ever the need to obscure my data and make it difficult to combine in a pivot about me.

I get that this security by obscurity and mistakes doesn't cut it, but it's the best I can do right now.

So my question for the McKinsey research people is: have they factored this in?

And have they factored in that users have obscured enough information that me at one site cannot be aggregated with me at another site?

Or have they factored in that the people at institutions who key in the data from our driver's licenses get it wrong (my bank with my name and address) or the insurance co (my application correctly filled out.. with my name and DOB) or whatever?

The answer is to give us proper protections for our data. 4th amendment protections and rights over sharing of our data, so that we make sure the data is right. We can aggregate our own data in Personal Data Stores. Then we can trade fairly for that data if we agree to being included in the big data systems McKinsey is saying will help us so much.

I agree big data analytics can help us as a society, but not without good data, and not without including users into the system, as equitable players who deserve to have rights over our data, including choice and autonomy to participate in big data systems.

But until then.. big data is working with databases that are half right.. because we don't have choice, autonomy, rights or protections as users, and that's the first problem with McKinsey's assumptions.

Tracking Do Not Track at Morris + King

A bit of Context
Obviously, this diagram is a little cynical (courtesy of Chinagrrrl), but not too far off from how we manage personal data online today. But there are a lot of proposals on the table to fix this dilemma. One is Do Not Track which industry sees as something they can self-impose on an *opt-in* basis (for themselves) and opt-out (for the users) and self-regulate by having advertising trade org.s monitor compliance, with the FTC stepping in as necessary. There are also a number of DNT bills introduced in Congress and various hearings on tracking where the FTC would regulate implementation. And Johns Kerry and McCain have introduce a Rights and Responsibilities proposal in the Senate, that instead of Do Not Track (Kerry's LA, Danny Sepulveda told me DNT is a waste of time) suggest ways that data collectors would have to be responsible with our data. However, that bill lets 3rd party marketing, data tracking and Facebook's privacy bending ways totally off the hook. Both of these plans / legislative initiatives completely ignore the more than 40 startups and companies building for the Personal Data Ecosystem where users would collect their own data, and make use of the value, which the World Economic Forum recently said was "a new asset class".

That said, the rest of this post describes the Tracking DNT panel at Morris + King the other night.

Tracking Do Not Track
Tuesday night I was on a panel at Morris + King, an PR firm in NYC, called Tracking Do Not Track. Our hosts: Andy Morris and Dawn Barber (who co-founded NY Tech Meetup with Scott Heifferman) were very good about putting together a diverse group of people to talk about Do Not Track and the various issues with personal data and the advertising industry that have so many talking these days. My guesstimate was that about 100 people attended, mostly from industry (tech & advertising).

Our group included:
Brian Morrisey (Editor in Chief of Digiday, an ad industry trade publication) as Moderator
David Norris (CEO of Blue Cava)
Dan Jaffe (Exec VP, Govt Relations for the Assoc of National Advertisers - ANA)
Helen Nissenbaum, Professor, Media, Culture & Communication at New York University
and me: Chair of the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium

We started off with Brian's question: who are you, what do you do in a nutshell, and what do you think of the state of online privacy these days?

I was first.. and gave a quick explanation of PDEC which is to say that we offer a middle way between Do Not Track (DNT) and what is going on now online (Business as Usual). Our middle way offers a market solution to users' wanting control of their data, and the tracking and digital dossier building by shadowy companies to stop..we don't believe DNT will work and don't support it, though we do see that some kind of "Rights and Responsibilities" legislation would help create a level playing field for any company that collects personal data. Those rights and responsibilities for personal data collectors needs to include giving user's a copy of their data, so they can then put them into personal data stores (or banks, lockers, etc) and then use the data as the person sees fit.

Oh, and I said the state of online privacy was pretty dismal, though I was optimistic because it feels like this year, it's actually possible to get personal data some basic protections similar to HIPPA or FCRA where user's can get their data, and we can make the Personal Data Ecosystem emerge as a market solution that finally works for people. Granted, it's a 5-7 year proposition to really create a new market, but we can actually start this year because of the 40 or so startups that are funded and building pieces of the PDE and the push in the US Government to do something about the dismalness of online privacy.

Helen Nissenbaum, whom I've admired for years for her thoughtful approach to privacy and usability, agreed that privacy online was pretty bad, and explained her work around Adnostic, a "privacy preserving targeted advertising" system made with some Stanford folks.

By far, the best comment Helen made all night was that tracking and aggregating data that pivots on people is not ethical, that it's bad for people and for the incremental 1% improvement we might see in targeted advertising, it's not worth the incredible intrusiveness of tracking. In particular she said, "Anonymization does not change intrusiveness."

Dan Jaffe spoke next, and surprise, agreed that online privacy is not good, but talked about how publishers need to support their businesses and that behavioral advertising is helping them do it, and that Do Not Track should be self-regulated by the industry because they know their business best. And government has a tendency to screw up regulations and therefore, we should let advertisers figure out what works.

Next up was David Norris, who agreed with my use of the word, "dismal" to describe online privacy and said that Blue Cava was supporting a self-regulatory model because they didn't feel that Do Not Track as proposed for legislation was a good idea.

We chatted about the viability of Do Not Track, and with Norris, Jaffe and me all agreeing it wasn't a good idea. However Jaffe said he didn't like the idea of any regulation, that the industry could do it themselves, and that my "data rights and responsibilities" support for legislation would be just as bad for data collectors.

Folks in the audience, like Esther Dyson, pushed back on Jaffe, saying that she wanted the ability to choose where and when her data was out at some vendors site, and that's why, she said, "I'm supporting Mary and her organization" because it's a market model that gave her choice.

I was very pleased to hear her endorse us (thank you Esther!)

In the end, I think we got our message out which is that tracking individuals is a bad thing, that users should be the only ones tracking themselves across sites, but that sites can track within the site to optimize business. And that users should have a marketplace to trade data, like they do in mileage accounts, and choose when they trade, as partners, and not have it done for them in secret as is the case now. And that we want to see users data protected with a basic set of rights, like Health, Education and Financial data currently is now.

Curiously, Dan Jaffe made a comment about HIPPA, the health data protection law, suggesting that users get their health data so maybe they could get their personal data too. Given that that is a law, and he was opposed to regulation of any sort otherwise, I wasn't sure what to make of this.

However, I was really pleased with the opportunity to talk about PDEC, the startups and tech efforts to create a personal data ecosystem, and to provide a different view than the usual support for Do Not Track as we try to figure out what is best for our society.

Thanks Andy and Dawn for inviting me!

Information Technology meets Medical: Why We Should All Be a Little Worried

Today I had what I would say was an anecdotal experience regarding data privacy.. calling my OBGYN to make my annual appointment. I ended up using their new website and giving various personal data, only to figure out that they have no privacy policy for data, that the data was going to a third party, and that in trying to make an online appointment, all I really got after sharing data was an email form to request an appointment.

So, here's the scoop.

In calling into the doctor's office, I got their voice system which has always required lots of number punching to finally get through to someone to make an appointment. It's better than 10 years ago where you could literally never talk to anyone in their offices and would just punch numbers endlessly until leaving them a message. That would be followed by a return call that you would invariably miss, having to start the process over, to get another call back.. all to just make an appointment.

Anyway, calling in today only requires two selections, before being told my call was in line to be picked up after approximately 6 minutes of estimated wait, OR I could use their online system. Whooppee! I could make an appointment using what I imagined was a calendar with available timeslots to book appointments? So here is Golden Gate Obstetrics (GGObgyn) big chance to show how they are using information technology to help people organize this process of getting an appointment better and faster!

Super cool!

Er... NOT. So. Fast.

Following the voice system at GGObgyn, I go to http://goldengateobgyn.medem.com/ which redirects me to http://www.ggobgyn.mymedfusion.com/:

The branding all over the site is "Golden Gate Obstetrics" so I'm thinking: okay, this is their site, even though it's got some other root domain name (mymedfusion.com).. in other words, Golden Gate Obstetrics is responsible for my health info, and I just need to get in to see their calendar and choose a time or something. So I go to "create an account" (Note below I've made screen shots of the *second* account I made, called 'testacct' to see what was going on a second time.. since the first time when I made an account for myself, it went by quickly and I wasn't suspicious until the end of the very end of the process):

I put in my name, SS # and DOB and email. After submitting, I was brought to this form (screenshots are in two parts as it was a longer page):

As you can see, there's enough data request there for someone to do some damage if they wanted to. At this point I was getting a little concerned about where this data was going, but keeping in mind GGObgyn's history where getting staff on the phone to make appointments is so difficult, I went ahead and submitted my data.

The screen instantly took me to a logged in state, saying "we are now your Health Record provider" which I found totally freaky. I don't want them to be my Health Record provider. I just want to schedule an appointment. All this, without requesting any sort of email verification or other checking... just gave me an account. At that point, I could go make an appointment:

To say the least, I was shocked. So I just put in all this personal information, dinked around with forms etc, to be given a glorified email form to request an appointment? With structured data about which day of the week I want the appointment? How about a calendar with available time slots? So I could just pick based upon my availability? No... it appears they are going to email me back or call me with times so we could go back and forth over schedules again, in email? Really? This is the promise of information technology for scheduling? I mean aside from the privacy issues, I really felt like I'd been had in terms of my time sink for their silly email form.

I notice there is no help or privacy statement on any of the pages in their system (and I clicked on all of them), and the "ask a question" page is all about medical stuff, not using the website. But I figure GGObgyn is responsible for this site. So I call them, and after a lengthy wait, get the appointment receptionist. And I ask, where did my data go? And she says she doesn't know, but they own the site, so therefore my data is safe.

This seemed reasonable given the interface on the GGObgyn website was so incomplete with so many important things missing (like a privacy statement as I entered in my SS # and DOB and address, etc. or even a privacy policy in the footer somewhere, or a help page, or real contact info), it had to have been done by people who don't normally develop websites.

I asked if the receptionist could give me the privacy policy, or tell me where my data had gone, and she said she would pass me to the "online manager" named Olivia. Olivia started off my telling me she sits on the system "all day long... as account requests from users to join their online system appear on my screen.. I look the patient up and put through the approval if the new user is in fact a patient."

ME: "Really? because my account approval seemed instantaneously to happen on my screen."
Olivia: "Oh yes.. I did that."
ME: "Wow.. you're fast."

Then Olivia reiterated to me that she's there literally every minute at work approving patient account requests.. because she manually approves all new accounts and also is there to pass along requests of appointments.. etc. And she was sure there was a privacy policy somewhere on the system. Her description of the account approval process sort of contradicts the fact that I could make an account called "testacct" and get right into their system without any approval but I didn't bother mentioning that. I just wanted to know where my data had gone from my first real account made with them.

After that, she could only talk about how to use the system from her perspective, not mine. In other words, Olivia had no idea what regular users face (ie, There is no privacy information, as I typed in my personal data, and no real idea other than from reading the URL in the address bar that maybe a third party was collecting my data, etc. Reading address bar URLs is something most users don't do.)

I told Olivia she literally wasn't getting the problem, because she just kept repeating to me how she uses the system (as an administrator over user accounts and for appointments where, I'm guessing, she has to be seeing an administrator version of the Medfusion system or some kind of much more powerful interface than the one regular users see when they log into the system). So she said she wanted to pass me to their office manager, Laura, who said, as she picked up the call:

"Mary, i've been listening to your call with Olivia" ... er.. okay.. no one disclosed to me that my call with Olivia was going to be monitored by others listening in. Unsettling. And possibly illegal. But whatever, that's really the least of my concerns here.

I told Laura there was no disclosure to me in advance of having a third party get my personal data.. and after Medfusion had it, I had no way of finding out what they are going to do with it.

I asked Laura about GGObgyn's ownership of Medfusion, but she replied that Golden Gate Obstetrics *did not* own Medfusion as the receptionist had told me. Instead, GGObgyn used them because they could not email "using Gmail or AOL" about appointments because that "wasn't safe." I was thinking really? Because having a website where my data just goes to third parties with no written privacy policy seems pretty unsafe.

So she explained that every page on their site (see all the screenshots and look hard for it!) have some sort of key symbol in yellow (it's not on any of the screen shots I took of the site, and I took shots of every page on their site), which if i click on the key, "will take me to their privacy policy." Okay.. so ignoring the obvious question of why they have a yellow key to signal a privacy policy (totally not intuitive from a user perspective), I look all over all the webpages that I can get to from the left side navigation, read them to Laura, and confirm that I cannot find the key.

Laura replied, "Well I can't help you anymore, because this is a waste of our time.. if you didn't want to put your information into MedFusion then you shouldn't have."

ME: "But your voice system told me to. And your name is on the website, and you aren't really disclosing that you are giving my data to a third party, MedFusion or telling me what they or you are going to do with it."

Laura: "Well, I can print the privacy policy and fax it to you."

ME: "But I don't have a fax machine. Can't you email it?"

Laura: "No.. maybe i could scan it and send it in email, but I'm not sure... and there isn't anything else I can do anyway." (It was clear she was trying to end the call.)

ME: "Er... Okay." (And then I hung up.)

A few hours later while writing this post, looking at the GGObgyn site, I noted that they added a privacy policy to the left side navigation, though that policy doesn't govern anything about what I entered into the GGObgyn site because it wasn't there when I gave my data. Medfusion and GGObgyn are under no obligation to keep my data safe or private, based on that policy.

No help or contact pages appeared afterward.

The privacy policy, which I read through, has a few issues. First, it starts off just saying "we" .. and my question is, We Who? I mean.. is it Medfusion? or GGObgyn? Me and GGObgyn together? Or someone else?

At the end of the privacy policy, it says under a section called OUR NOTICE OF PRIVACY PRACTICES:

By law, we must abide by the terms of this Notice of Privacy Practices. We reserve the right to change this notice at any time as allowed by law. If we change this Notice, the new privacy practices will apply to your health information that we already have as well as to such information that we may generate in the future. If we change our Notice of Privacy Practices, we will post the new notice in our Center, have copies available in our office and post it on our website.

So basically, they have to follow the policy, but can change their privacy policy at any time and it's retroactively applied to my old data and old terms? Well, I can see why GGObgyn wouldn't even bother having a privacy policy before because essentially, I have no rights over my data anyway.. because they can just change my rights whenever they want to suit themselves? I feel really good about my personal and medical information held by Golden Gate Obstetrics now.

And then, under COMPLAINTS:

If you think that we have not properly respected the privacy of your health information, you are free to complain to us or to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights. We will not retaliate against you if you make a complaint. If you want to complain to us, send a written complaint to the contact person at the address shown at the beginning of this Notice. If you prefer, you can discuss your complaint in person or by phone.

So.. GGObgyn seriously expects me to complain to the USDoHHS? Why do we have to escalate this to a federal agency? Why can't they discuss it directly with their patients? I would rather just start by telling GGObgyn (which as you can see from the above dialog was incredibly successful, but they really ought to be open to hearing from their users about issues). In looking at the complaints section of the GGObgyn privacy policy, I note that I can contact the person listed "at the top of the privacy policy." Except, surprise! There is no one listed at the top of it. In fact, I don't even really know who "we" is in the policy language. So.. I guess I won't be contacting the "we" in this policy.

If I did want to complain about a privacy policy and questionable data usage problem, frankly I would use the Federal Trade Commission form because the FTC governs these things (see their most recent list of cases here where they go after companies that fail to protect user data and medical information, including the recent CVS case where they violated financial and medical data privacy rules). I have zero confidence that the Office of Civil Rights at the USDoHHS would even have a clue about privacy and my data on a website.

One thing.. after the GGObgyn privacy policy appeared, no one from GGObgn emailed me, or called me, to say that it was now up on their website. Of course, they have all this contact info and my name in their patient files and in their online system that Olivia who runs their website presumably could pull up very quickly and easily send me an email telling me to look at the policy.

I would also recommend that businesses like Golden Gate Obstetrics use the FTC page on Protecting their user's data and privacy which is very helpful when trying to figure out how to present privacy info on a website.

Frankly, I have no way to alert anyone at GGObgyn to this blog post, or to my thoughts on the subject, other than to call back, sit on hold, and talk with the three people I already discussed this with, who were ranged from unhelpful to hostile. Since GGObgyn doesn't seem open to discussing their websites problems and the fact that the cat is kind of out of the bag now with my data going God knows where into various company's hands, I'm posting this example of how companies, particularly *medical* entities, with no experience or understanding of information technology systems and websites need to use extreme care, and not assume that office staff trained to run a medical office has any idea what users need or will face with a website collecting personal or medical data.

I hope people at medical or other data collection companies will realize the importance of protecting user data and being straight with us about what's happening to personal and medical information. My experience is just one, but if this becomes representative of people's experience with their medical providers, we ought to be very worried.

Note: I took a look, when writing this post, at ratings for Dr. Wiggins, whom I really like and have enjoyed having as my doctor. You can see from the ratings at Health Grades that Dr. Wiggins is well liked by patients but the appointment system and her office staff.. not so much. I hope GGObrgn does an overhaul on all their office administration and website that interacts with patients before they venture further with information technology as tool for communications.

Trademark Tyranny by Jones Day: We Don't Like Your Stinking Linking Expression

So it turns out that Jones Day, the utterly clueless lawfirm, sued a small real estate reporting company, BlockShopper, for talking about Jones Day the normal way we all do online: with the name of a person or thing, linking to that person or things website underneath the name. The settlement agreement (pdf) says future linking must to changed as so:

... instead of posting "Tiedt is an associate," the site will write "Tiedt (http://www.jonesday.com/jtiedt/) is an associate." (The agreement also calls on BlockShopper to say that the lawyer in question is employed at Jones Day and that more information about the attorney is on the firm's Web site.) Via Wendy David at Slate

The first way is perfectly normal and the way everyone does it online. The altered version required by the suit is just silly. No one does it that way.

Though some do some creative linking expression like so:

Clueless bullies with no thought but for their own pride

and

Federal ninny making decisions who doesn't get trademark, the web, linking expression or his own ass from a tale pipe.

Groups like EFF, Public Knowledge, Public Citizen and Citizen Media Law Project tried to file an amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief but federal district court Judge John Darrah rejected it. And he denied BlockShopper's motion to dismiss before trial.

The only reason Jones Day "won" is because they are big, litigious jerks who found a judge that doesn't get social norms on the web. 15 years of social norms. Across the world wide web. For hundreds of millions of people.

PS. just in case Jones Day is worried (per their ideas in the suit that linking to them means the public could be confused), or anyone else is wondering, this website is not connected in any way with Jones Day.

Obama New Yorker Cover Remix

Based upon the Kevin Drum/ Washington Monthly suggestion, I remixed this week's New Yorker Cover based upon Barry Blitt's Illustration. It is much funnier with the thought bubble and McCain. I think it will be easy for people in the current climate to misunderstand the original. But the remix makes it easier to get that it's supposed to be funny.

Latest on Rogers Cadenhead, MBA and AP

AP seems to have given a statement to Paid Content about the bruhaha the past few days:

In response to questions about the use of Associated Press content on the Drudge Retort web site, the AP was able to provide additional information to the operator of the site, Rogers Cadenhead, on Thursday. That information was aimed at enabling Mr. Cadenhead to bring the contributed content on his site into conformance with the policy he earlier set for his contributors. Both parties consider the matter closed.

In addition, the AP has had a constructive exchange of views this week with a number of interested parties in the blogging community about the relationship between news providers and bloggers and that dialogue will continue. The resolution of this matter illustrates that the interests of bloggers can be served while still respecting the intellectual property rights of news providers.

I find it a total non-statement and completely bizarre.

Also, Robret Cox of Media Bloggers Association is supposed to be on Blog Talk Radio at 3 pm EST today. I probably won't be able to listen until halfway through.. at 12:30 PST/3:30 EST this afternoon as I have a meeting.

Hope they have a podcast later.

And hope that some real information about yesterday's meeting between Cadenhead / Cox and Jim Kennedy at the AP comes out.

My questions include:
1. what is the status of the 7 C&D notices from AP to Cadenhead?
2. what is AP going to do in future?
3. what was the tone of the meeting and who was there?
4. what agreements came out of the meeting and can we see them?
5. what precedent does this set for future blogger quotes and interactions with AP?

Hoping these and other questions will be addressed in the radio interview later today.

Associated Press C&Ds Rogers Cadenhead, Gets Boycotted by Bloggers

What's going on is this: Rogers Cadenhead received 7 C&Ds from the Associated Press, because he quoted from their articles in Drudge Retorted. My view in looking his quotes is that they fall absolutely under fair use (they are all within the range of a paragraph quotes from 39 to 75 words) per Saul Hansell of NYTimes.

Jeff Jarvis, Culture Kitchen and others have been reporting and opining..

AP has said: "when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste" they will go after people, but Saturday, Jim Kennedy of AP backed off some and said the C&Ds had been heavy handed and they would review their blogger policy. And now, their executives have decided to suspend the earlier decision to go after people like Rogers Cadenhead due to links to their articles (um.. those bloggers were doing AP a favor linking..) and quotes. But at least according to other's reports, AP hasn't withdrawn the C&Ds from Rogers.

Jim Kennedy also said they want bloggers to use "summaries" of their articles, not direct quotes (huh? Fisking is impossible and quotes are key to getting at issues!) and therefore will keep the C&Ds in place because they "... feel the use is more reproduction than reference..."

I've been watching this with a lot of consternation the past few days.. I think AP is wrong here, and until they remove the C&Ds and agree that quotes are fair use, I think the blogosphere, and the IP crowd are right to push back and call for things like boycott.

Richard Kastelein of Atlantic Free Press created Unassociated press and has even come up with a badge for the boycott:

Culture Kitchen is reporting on the boycott here with a great summary of events.

Updated: Jeff Jarvis reports on the giant hole.

Webguild Sez Lack of Openness in Web20 Land Hurt Them, and Behaves in Closed Manner Themselves

Webguild sent out a very disturbing email this morning, saying that because they held evening events named "The Future of Web Apps" (also a Carson company conference series event name) and "Web 20 Conference and Expo" (also an OReilly conference series event name) that Google had ceased to sponsor or host the WebGuild events.

WebGuild's post is here: called "Shame on You Tim OReilly." I read it, and found it disconcerting, because if true, it implies that OReilly (not Carson) went to Google, instead of approaching Webguild directly, and used its "old boy's network" to get Google to pull support, because of the naming conflicts.

Then, I left a comment tried to leave a comment on the WebGuild post, which said (which was up temporarily but has now been deleted):

Hi,
From the outside, this does sound disturbing, but I'm reserving judgment until I see answers to a few questions.

First, I agree with Michael Slater above that it's strange to name your evening event after The Future of Web Apps conference (not an OReilly event, but rather a Carson event) and your conference after the Web 20 Conference and Expo which is an OReilly event.

Why not change the names a bit, to avoid confusion in the marketplace (the point of trademarks)?

Second, I don't think OReilly sued IT@Cork but rather sent them a Cease and Desist letter. I think you should correct your post as such. They subsequently worked things out, without a lawsuit.

Did OReilly and Carson contact you directly about the naming conflict? You don't say in your post but that's a very important point.

Lastly, I don't think you help your argument by conflating the "old boy network" as you call it, with your issue, which is that Trademark holders went around you to your sponsors to put pressure on you.

Pls let us know the answers to help us understand more about what's happened.

Thanks,
mary

Note that the Michael Slater comment is now missing(note: Slater did a post on the missing comment and issues here) (as is mine now.. a few minutes after it was briefly posted) from the WebGuild post, which was legitimate but negative, suggesting that it was really strange to name *two* events after two other conferences. Other later comments are there. For a while, they didn't post mine, but now it's up, listed before others that appeared before it in the list.

Anyway, I have to say, based upon seeing the Slater comment disappear, and now mine, they just lost a lot of points.

I've attended their events in the past, but now I'm not so sure I would go, or sympathize with their issues.

I'd really like answers to the questions I wrote, so that I can make up my own mind about what they are doing. But getting lots of people to blog negatively about Tim isn't the answer here.

We need better community solutions than that for solving IP issues and community confusion for naming issues with events.

Updated: Techcrunch wrote about this same topic Jan 1, 2008 which gives more background on Webguild.

Data Sharing Summit Report

Last Friday and Saturday the Data Sharing Summit was held in SF. I attended a bit on Friday, but not Saturday. It looked like a lot got done by the participants, and so they did accomplish a lot!

Kaliya Hamlin has posted notes and goals for the next meeting in one month.

Here is an excerpt of the results:

Do-able Now
* Portable Identities (OpenID, LiveID, FB-ID)
* OAuth (sever to server) delegated auth.
* Contacts Portability (FOAF, XFN, Microformats, like MicroID)
* Sync (feed sync)
* Social Network Portability (Open Social FB platform)
* Social Application Portability

Do-able Soon
* Standard Schema for Profile
* Standard Schema for Address books
* Media portability + metadata + permissions
* Linking ID’s of different ecosystems?

Looking forward to the Data Sharing Summit 2 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View on May 15th.

FCC Hearing at Stanford Today

I can't go, but I hope lots of folks out there who support and open and free internet do. Here's the schedule according to Save The Internet:

It is rare for all five members of the Federal Communications Commission to leave Washington, D.C., and they want to hear from you. There will be a public comment period - come speak up to save the Internet!

WHAT: Public Hearing on the Future of the Internet
WHEN: Thursday, April 17
TIME: 12:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
WHERE: Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University
(471 Lagunita Drive, Palo Alto, CA) Map It!
For directions and travel information, visit: http://www.savetheinternet.com/=stanford_travel

FCC Public Hearing Agenda
12:00 p.m. - Welcome/Opening Remarks
12:45 p.m. - Panel 1: Network Management and Consumer Expectations
3:00 p.m. - Panel 2: Consumer Access to Emerging Internet Technologies and Applications
4:30 p.m. - Public Comment
6:30 p.m. - Closing Remarks
7:00 p.m. - Adjournment

Note also that Comcast is proposing a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" according to ArsTechnica, who is skeptical. Don't see any users in that room, but if they don't invite us, I'd guess after Boston, we'd all get pretty mad and force them to include us. Either way, (FCC or voluntary code) I think it's going to be user centric in the end. We're just going to have to fight like hell.

Kevin Marks also makes a great point about Comcast: They are like The Producers who oversold their Broadway show, assuming it would fail, by getting 100 people to buy 10% of the who. Comcast, by overselling their network for internet access is doing the same, and then having secret levels above which they cut people off out of the blue, is pretty bad.

Revolution is Not An AOL Keyword

Eddan Katz wrote this piece: Revolution is not an AOL Keyword, and I acted as his editor, 5 years ago. We posted it to the bIPlog on the first day of the war in Iraq.

We had a real uphill-behind-the-scenes fight about it at the Journalism School, where the blog was then hosted, because some of the other folks on the blog thought it wasn't really under our mission to publish something about the war and culture and the internet. But we convinced them; we knew we would get it published when John Battelle, one of the profs, lent his support for us. And it got slashdotted. And Revolution was made into a tshirt. Which was all a blast after working on it all night messing with the language and placing links ... some of which are broken but I think it matters to keep them intact and original. I think the linking is a kind of expression in this piece.

Eddan and I thought up what Napsterization could be here at this blog, but in the end only I've posted to it. I still wish Eddan would, and maybe someday he will. He's really great.

Anyway.. here is Revolution. I got all misty-eyed when I reread it and moused the links, because it's passionate and it means something, even if some of it is a little out of date. Cause the war ain't over. I can't believe it. I just didn't think things could get this fkedup. But as Robert Fisk says, The only lesson we ever learn is that we never learn. Right on.

Revolution is Not an Aol Keyword*

You will not be able to stay home, dear Netizen.
You will not be able to plug in, log on and opt out.
You will not be able to lose yourself in Final Fantasy,
Or hold your Kazaa download queues,
Because revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.
Revolution will not be brought to you on Hi-Def TV
Encrypted with a warning from the FBI.
Revolution will not have a jpeg slideshow of Dubya
Calling the cattle and leading the incursion by
Secretary Rumsfeld, General Ashcroft and Dick Cheney
Riding nuclear warheads on their way to Iraq,
Or North Korea, or Iran.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.
Revolution will not be powered by Microsoft on
The Next-Generation Secure Computing Base
And will not star Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee
Or Larry Lessig and Martha Stewart. Revolution will not promise penile enlargement.
Revolution will not get rid of spam.
Revolution will not earn you up to $5000 a month

Working from home, because revolution is not
An AOL Keyword, Brother.

There will be no screen grabs of you and
Jeeves the Butler one-click shopping at My Yahoo,
Or outbidding a shady grandma on eBay for
That refurbished iPod 20-gig.
MSNBC.com will not predict election results in Florida
Or fact-check the Drudge Report.
Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

There will be no webcast of Wil Wheaton boxing
Barney the Dinosaur on the dancefloor at DNA.
There will be no mob- or wiki- blog of Richard Stallman
Strolling through Redmond in a medieval robe and halo
As St. iGNUcious of the Church of Emacs
That he has been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Survivor, The Osbournes, and Joe Millionaire
Will no longer be so damned relevant, and
People will not care if Carrie hooks up again with
Mr. Big on Sex and the City because Information
Wants To Be Free even while Knowledge Is Power.
Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

There will be no final pictures from inside the
World Trade Center in the instant replay.
There will be no final pictures from inside the
World Trade Center in the instant replay.

There will be no RealVideo of 2600-reading,
Linux-booting white hat hacktivists
And Mickey Mouse in the public domain.

The theme song will not be written by Jack Valenti or
Hilary Rosen, nor sung by Metallica, Dr. Dre,
Christina Aguilera, Matchbox 20, or Blink-182.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

Revolution will not be right back after
Pop-up ads about eCommerce, eTailers, or eContent.
You will not have to worry about a
Cookie in your browser, a bug in your email, or a
Worm in your recycling bin.
Revolution will not run faster with Intel inside.
Revolution, dude, is not getting a Dell.
Revolution will increase your Google rank.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword, is not an AOL Keyword,
Is not an AOL Keyword, is not an AOL Keyword.
Revolution will be no stream or download, dear Netizen;
Revolution must still be live.

*See generally Gil Scott-Heron, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

Posted by Eddan Katz at March 20, 2003 05:45 AM

Data Sharing Events Coming Soon!

There are two new events coming up for the Data Sharing group (we met last August in great camp type open space event where many interesting things developed, came to light, got solved, etc.) I'm on the advisory group, and will definitely be there and would love to see anyone who cares about attention data, both the control aspects at a site, as well as ownership issues, get moved forward in a community oriented way there as well.

Also, Mitch Ratcliffe wrote a great post today on these issues which you should totally checkout.

Here is the write up from the Facebook group entry:

* A Data Sharing Workshop at the Downtown San Francisco State University campus on April 18th and 19th.

* Data Sharing Summit 2 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View on May 15th. (This is immediately following the Internet Identity Workshop May 12-14).

Hopefully at the first event some more clarity will emerge about how to actually do and get adoption of data sharing technologies. The second event we can see progress (it being a month later) and may have more 'decision makers' considering data sharing implementations and vendors that have ways to do it.

The goal of these events is to work together to build consensus around and get adoption of emerging data sharing standards. As with the previous summit, the upcoming event will follow the open space (un)conference format. The agenda is created on the first day of the event, allowing everyone to participate in the discussion.

Although Marc Canter was a key organizer of the first Data Sharing Summit, he has stepped back and his involvement is just one of group of advisors:

* David Recordon, Six Apart
* Joseph Smarr, Plaxo
* Chris Saad, Faraday Media
* Mary Hodder, Dabble
* Luke Sontag, Vidoop
* Kevin Marks, Google
* Marc Canter, Broadband Mechanics

The events will be produced by Kaliya Hamlin and Laurie Rae, who are collaborating with the Data Portability community and the SFSU Institute for Next Generation Internet.

We would like to invite you to attend one or both of these events.
Please go to http://datasharingsummit.com or to go ahead and register right away to to our Eventbrite page to register. We will be charging admission to cover the costs required for organizing these events.

The Early Bird rates are as follows:

April 18-19 Workshop
* Regular, $110.00
* Independent/Startup/Non-Profit, $80.00
* Student, $50.00

Workshop One-Day Only:
* Regular, $65.00
* Independent/Startup/Non-Profit, $50.00

April 18-19 & May 15:
* Corporate, $200.00
* Independent/Startup/Non-Profit, $140.00

May 15th Summit Only:
* Corporate, $100.00
* Independent/Startup/Non-Profit, $70.00

The Early Bird cut-off dates are April 7, 2008 for the Workshop and May 7th, 2008 for the Summit. Prices will increase by $50.00 after the cut-off dates.

We can bring you this event at such a low admission fee because 1/2 our costs are paid by sponsors - both small ($200) to the large (several thousand). PLEASE contact Laurie Rae at laurierae@datasharingsummit.com if you would like to sponsor.

Please contact us if you have any questions identitywoman@datasharingsummit.com & laurierae@datasharingsummit.com

We look forward to seeing you in April and May.

Why I Think Facebook Budged

Pip Cockburn wrote an essay about how among other things: .1% of the long tail is directing privacy issues online, and how those who do care about privacy are judgmental about those who don't, etc. Read it.. it's an interesting take.

This is my response to Pip and his arguments and ideas:

One, there are a lot of studies on privacy issues that show that most people don't want to spend the time to understand or defend it, but if one percent of the populace, that the other 99% cede their interest in privacy to and are trusted, express distrust of something, the other 99% will follow. Chris Kelly, privacy czar at Facebook, has conducted some of those studies and therefore probably saw the tipping point coming and urged retreat. Just a guess, but that was my interpretation of what Facebook may have been discussing internally.

Two, digital natives or kids or whatever you want to call younger folks do care about privacy once they discover a breach. They often don't understand what is happening until it's too late. And to ride a stereotype that has a lot of truth to it, when we are young, we often don't think as long term or at our vulnerabilities as well as when we get a little older and have a bit more experience.

So dismissing those kid's now, at this point in time, when the first digital natives haven't hit their thirties, is premature. As they mature, I think they will care more and take on similar trust relationships with the 1% who will monitor privacy issues. When I tell 15 year olds about privacy issues, they get pretty scared and conservative about protecting it. So my anecdotal evidence is that they care more than most older folks think. For now, many just don't understand and see what effect they are having over time.

Three, having noted your .1% as directing the long tail of "consumers" (I hate that word too), I still think the writing was on the wall for Facebook reaching the 1% who really care and having a worse problem than they do now. When I worked for a congressman, we used to "count" correspondence with our constituents in the following ways: those who took easy and inexpensive routes to tell us their opinions might get a 1x or 10x count, but those who took the time to express in detail, or followed more expensive or harder routes were given 50x or 100x counts. Well, if .01% are taking the expensive or time consuming routes (blogging, writing your complaint up in your own words, etc) or less expensive routes (joining the Facebook group made by MoveOn -- which requires clicking on a button or clicking a DIGG button) well.. we still have to count those folks as believing in the premise that Facebook violates privacy and social norms with users with the Beacon system as originally configured. The question is, how much do we count the activists. If you apply the multiple to certain harder actions, you get a lot closer to the 1% factor that Chris Kelly found can define and shape what the other 99% feel is appropriate when it comes to privacy issues.

I don't think that means a tiny percent of people are dictating policy, I think that means that they have achieved trust by the other 99% (more so than the advertisers and Facebook, in this case) and therefore the 99% have spoken by following the 1%. Power relationships are never onesided in favor of the dominant or leaders. Enrollment is a concept sociologists like Bruno LaTour know well and respect. Those who follow in this example do so because they enrolled. Facebook wouldn't have budged otherwise.

Lastly, I don't think this relationship regarding privacy issues where 99% are willing to cede to the 1% they trust on these issues applies to other areas. We've seen over and over how this privacy based relationship falls off on other issues around digital and other rights, like copyright abuses by traditional media, or other complicated issues like the DMCA. So I don't think we have to fear that a small percentage will continue to direct all policy on or offline.

My 2 cents.

James Cicconi of AT&T On Net Netrality

James Cicconi, Senior Executive VP Legislative and External Affairs for AT&T was at Esme Vos' Muniwireless conference yesterday, spewing what I would kindly call the greatest of spin, and unkindly as BS.

Net Neutrality is not about people telling network providers what to charge for tiered service. That's bull. Net Neutrality says that video packets, no matter where they come from, will get through at the same rates. Same with text or photos or VOIP or anything else. The network can't under Net Neutrality distinguish and discriminate because it doesn't like where something came from or the place the packet came from didn't pay the telco's any money to prioritize the packet.

To quote muniwireless (emphasis is mine):

It's Day 2 of the Muniwireless Silicon Valley Conference and they have an executive from AT&T talking about municipal wireless networks.

AT&T has not changed its tune. It is still against cities using public funds to compete with private enterprise and believes that communications should be left up to private firms like AT&T.

James Cicconi, Senior Executive VP Legislative and External Affairs for AT&T claims that there is no duopoly and there is enough competition in the market for telecommunications services, so cities should stay out.

What is AT&T's position on net neutrality?

Net neutrality is a challenge for all companies. You spend billions to deploy your assets and net neutrality means someone telling you what you can do with your assets - what you can charge, tiers of service, etc.

"All bits should be treated equal" is a problem for network engineers because one bit is porn another bit is heart surgery, another is email, yet another is voice, another is spam. That everything should be moved equally end to end is ludicrous. It's a more costly way to do things. It's not efficient, according to AT&T.

AT&T cannot build and maintain assets quickly enough to meet the demand. They are spending $19 billion this year. Some of the demand is driven by video. What happens when people start delivering high definition film? They can't build networks fast enough! What's the answer? Effective traffic management.

The antitrust laws can deal with the problems of net neutrality (side note: unfortunately these are not being enforced today). Why should AT&T want to degrade traffic? They will go to someone else (side note again: in a duopoly, you've got Comcast which has been blocking Bittorent traffic).

I don't know about you but where I live and work, we have two choices: AT&T for dsl or Comcast for cable internet access. They are both Mid-band services, and not great but better than dialup. And we pay exorbitantly for them compared to other countries.

So of course they want to take their AT&T/Comcast duopoly and spin Net Neutrality as being all about people interfering with their pricing models for tiered service when it's really all about prioritizing packets. They want to divert attention from the reality which is that they want to put their videos through first, their media, their VOIP or media/VOIP from people who've paid them off. Instead of letting users have what they want. The telco's want to own the pipes and the content.

It's wrong and we can't let the telcos win on this.

Social Media User's Bill of Rights, Take 2

I've been thinking a lot over the past few days about the Social Media User's Bill of Rights I blogged about the other day.

I said then that I quibbled with the "ownership" model for user's data. That maybe it should read "co-ownership."

Well after thinking it through, in different scenarios, and talking with people at the Data Sharing Summit over the weekend, and a couple of our advisors, I've decided that it makes more sense for users to:

1. own their data, solely
2. give a non-exclusive license to sites they "partner" with when they put data at those sites.
3. be able to remove the data, to the extent the site can take it out (backup tapes are problematic)
4. part of the non-exclusive license to the sites needs to include that the sites can distribute the data (RSS feeds, etc) about their activities OR the sites need to have a way for the user to specify the lack of distribution of data or metadata, if the user chooses.

Web20, etc. (I still hate that term but I'm mellowing a bit) won't work unless we do this as a complete package, because users need, if they are using someone else's site, to be able to share data, make it searchable elsewhere, make it reusable and remixable, depending on the data. But they also need to know they have control over it. And sites like Dabble need to architect with this understanding.

For example, if I upload a video to Youtube or Photobucket, I can choose to make the video public, and from there to limit embeds elsewhere. I can remove my video as I please. In addition, I can ask Youtube or Photobucket to remove my account any time I want.

Anyway, I know this is a slight (maybe semantic) shift, but I think it matters, gives users more control, and makes the partnership between users and the sites that host functionality and activities more clear, more accountable, and more fair.

I think it's the right thing to do. And so I'm taking steps to make a slight change to the Dabble Privacy and Data policy to reflect this. It should be there shortly.

Social Media User's Bill of Rights

Marc Canter, Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington and Joseph Smarr put together a Social Media User's Bill of Rights:

We publicly assert that all users of the social web are entitled to certain fundamental rights, specifically:

* Ownership of their own personal information, including:
o their own profile data
o the list of people they are connected to
o the activity stream of content they create;
* Control of whether and how such personal information is shared with others; and
* Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites.

Sites supporting these rights shall:

* Allow their users to syndicate their own profile data, their friends list, and the data that's shared with them via the service, using a persistent URL or API token and open data formats;
* Allow their users to syndicate their own stream of activity outside the site;
* Allow their users to link from their profile pages to external identifiers in a public way; and
* Allow their users to discover who else they know is also on their site, using the same external identifiers made available for lookup within the service.

My only quibble? I think the users should "co-own" so that there is no confusion that the sites we play on co-own a copy and so do we. And in some cases, depending on the TOU of the sites, when the data flows out, anyone else who reuses/remixes it can either co-own or have an open license.

But I still support it. Dabble's TOU has said these things from the beginning (co-ownership specified) and as we build out the one or two items on this list we don't yet have, we will follow the logic and make information available along these lines as well.

But overall, great work guys!

Harry Potter on The Pirate Bay, Pls C&D Me!!

So, I just realized I probably know Mark S. Seidenfeld, mentioned on Techcrunch today. I believe I worked with him at my first job out of college and would love to catch up with him. I tried looking him up on the Scholastic site but they don't list General Counsel or make it easy to reach people.

So, here's the deal, if I link to Techcrunch on their C&D story, who linked to Torrent Freak, I'll be linking to the linkers who linked to the linkers who pirated something. Harry Potter, in this case.

This reminds me of when I was C&D'd by Diebold for linking to the linkers who linked to the linkers... blah blah which produced a C&D from them. It was all totally bogus and just a form of shutting down speech, but as I said, I'd love to get an email from Mark because I'd like to be in touch.

Whatever works. Mark, my email is mary at hodder dot org. Ttyl.

BOB is so ALIVE

So, secretly. Who is your favorite guilty pleasure read in the blogosphere? Mine is Bob Lefsetz. Actually, I've subscribed to his email list the past few months, which is easier because he only posts once or twice a day and I really want to read it the minute he puts it out. He's HILARIOUS.

I have been blogging about the music industry, IP, security and privacy, the napsterization of anything but in particular digital media, and how stupid legacy media is for about 5 years. So it's not like he's telling me anything I don't already know. But he's just so DAMN'D funny that I can't help it. He's so totally alive and passionate about music, the music business, the integrity of some people and the loss of control by others. And he podcasts about it too, like the Stubhub/Ticketmaster thing.

SoI love reading him, the minute he puts anything out, because he totally believes! It's great stuff.

Don't expect to see anything you haven't read on the music business before, but do expect to be completely and utterly entertained.

Thanks Hank for turning me onto Bob.

FBI Gag Order Abuse: Please Read This. It's Very Important.

Put down your Britney and your Anna Nicole.

When I read the first parts, I thought, why not just personally protest the order and expose it? But by the end, I could see why he didn't and why it really matters that we not ruin the democracy, in order to save it
from the terrorists. Again. We keep doing things to become what we despise. This doesn't end well if we keep going in this direction. Only with notice and sunlight do we stop it.

From Anonymous, My National Security Letter Gag Order Friday, March 23, 2007; Page A17

It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made because the author -- who would have preferred to be named -- is legally prohibited from disclosing his or her identity in connection with receipt of a national security letter. The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author's attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.

The Justice Department's inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue "national security letters." It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision -- demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval -- to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn't abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

The inspector general's report makes clear that NSL gag orders have had even more pernicious effects. Without the gag orders issued on recipients of the letters, it is doubtful that the FBI would have been able to abuse the NSL power the way that it did. Some recipients would have spoken out about perceived abuses, and the FBI's actions would have been subject to some degree of public scrutiny. To be sure, not all recipients would have spoken out; the inspector general's report suggests that large telecom companies have been all too willing to share sensitive data with the agency -- in at least one case, a telecom company gave the FBI even more information than it asked for. But some recipients would have called attention to abuses, and some abuse would have been deterred.

I found it particularly difficult to be silent about my concerns while Congress was debating the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2005 and early 2006. If I hadn't been under a gag order, I would have contacted members of Congress to discuss my experiences and to advocate changes in the law. The inspector general's report confirms that Congress lacked a complete picture of the problem during a critical time: Even though the NSL statute requires the director of the FBI to fully inform members of the House and Senate about all requests issued under the statute, the FBI significantly underrepresented the number of NSL requests in 2003, 2004 and 2005, according to the report.

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I've now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

Berkeley Center for Law and Technology Conference:
Conference on Copyright, Digital Rights Management Technologies, and Consumer Protection

Is happening March 9 and 10, 2007. Go register. The last one was great! It was organized by Pam Samuelson and Eddan Katz, who both did an outstanding job. Lots of interesting folks spoke, and some pretty monumental things were said about technology, the internet, TV and users. Also, the resource page for that event was incredible.

These conferences are high quality and thoughtful. If you have any interest in DRM and media, you will *actually* learn something at this event.

Info is here:

Predictions that digital rights management (DRM) technologies will be the predominant mode of distribution of digital content have been prevalent for at least the last decade. Yet, roll-out of DRM technologies has been somewhat slower than many expected, in part owing to consumer resistance to some DRM content and in part owing to the technical challenges that must be overcome to create the infrastructure for DRM content. Many digital content providers believe that DRM content will be good for consumers because it enables new opportunities for content to be delivered in a variety of packages.

However, technically protected content can raise significant consumer protection concerns. One example is Sony BMG’s sale of copy-protected CDs that installed “rootkit� software on the computers of purchasers, making their computers vulnerable to attack. Another example is legislation recently proposed in France to require firms, such as Apple, to disclose information to enable other digital music platforms besides the iPod to be interoperable with iTunes music.

The BCLT/BTLJ/IViR symposium will draw attention to a range of issues from technological, business, academic, artistic, and public interest sectors in the United States and abroad. We expect a broad audience of high tech lawyers, information technology and content industry representatives, technologists, and some policymakers. By bringing together these various perspectives, we hope to educate the audience about the consumer protection ramifications of DRM technologies and raise the level of discourse about DRM law and policy issues. This conference will facilitate cross-disciplinary and cross-industry discussion on this important topic. Seven invited papers will be published in a symposium volume of BTLJ following the conference. These articles, as well as discourse among panelists, will contribute to the policy debate and to the literature on DRM and consumer protection law and policy issues.

Stupid Patent Tricks

EEKid writes to the Farber list:

McDonald's puts patent on sandwiches.

McDonald's wants to own the rights to how a sandwich is made.

The fast-food chain has applied for a patent relating to the 'method and apparatus' used to prepare the snack.

The burger company says owning the 'intellectual property rights' would help its hot deli sandwiches look and taste the same at all of its restaurants.

It also wants to cut down on the time needed to put together a sandwich, thought to have been dreamt up by the Earl of Sandwich in 1762.

The 55-page patent, which has been filed in the US and Europe, covers the 'simultaneous toasting of a bread component'.

Garnishes of lettuce, onions and tomatoes, as well as salt, pepper and ketchup, are inserted into a cavity in a 'sandwich delivery tool'.

The 'bread component' is placed over the cavity and the assembly tool is inverted to tip out the contents. Finally, the filling is placed in the 'bread component'.

It explains: 'Often the sandwich filling is the source of the name of the sandwich; for example, ham sandwich.'

Lawrence Smith-Higgins, of the UK Patent Office, said: 'McDonald's or anyone else cannot get retrospective exclusive rights to making a sandwich.

'They might have a novel device, but it could be quite easy for someone to make a sandwich in a similar way without infringing their claims.'

McDonald's said: 'These applications are not intended to prevent anyone from using previous methods for making sandwiches.'

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=26183&in_page_id=34

Is there any question that patents and intellectual property issues generally have gotten totally stupid? I mean, I know it's not software, where patents there have gotten totally stupid, but sandwiches? Prior art!
Two sided toasting of bread.. that's called a toaster. OMG.

The Future of Video

I'm moderating a session today at 10am on the Future of Video at the Web 2.0 Conference:

Future of Video: We Just Wanna Watch, Or Do We?
Mary Hodder, CEO, Dabble
Josh Felser, CEO, Grouper Networks
Mike Folgner, Jumpcut/Yahoo
Tod M. Sacerdoti, Founder and CEO, BrightRoll

YouTube has done a terrific job of leading the way for video 1.0 online, where watching is everything. But as people get more comfortable with watching video online, the old broadcast relationship they had to content changes, and they start to want more. What do users need for video 2.0 where watching is just a part of the story, where remixing and online editing, arranging, playlisting, searching, and most importantly, discovery through other sources are expected by users? What are the barriers and what is being done now to make regular users into power users, and give everyone more control and access than just watching in an on-demand style?

Come join us if you are at the conference. Should be a great discussion!

Update: Here is a Wired blog post on the session.

Patent Lawsuits. Oy.

Eric Chabrow of InformationWeek emailed and asked my opinion about the IBM patent lawsuit against Amazon.

The patents IBM is suing over are:

1. US 5,796,967 -- Presenting Applications in an Interactive Service.

2. US 5,442,771 -- Storing Data in an Interactive Network.

3. US 7,072,849 -- Presenting Advertising in an Interactive Service.

4. US 5,446,891 -- Adjusting Hypertext Links with Weighted User Goals and Activities.

5. US 5,319,542 -- Ordering Items Using an Electronic Catalogue.

Here's what I said:

I think the larger issue with this case is that software patents are bad for everyone in the industry.

For little and big guys, patents are a distraction from innovation, yet funders and legal departments force them to engage in patents because they can. And because lots of people get them, everyone else feels they have to also. The system is very, very broken.

When patents are leveraged, especially in this way, they hurt our ability to be more innovative and interoperable, which is very important for users. These particular patents in the IBM suit are no different. It hurts our whole software industry when these things happen, and the suit is indicative of the kinds of mistakes the PTO makes overall because they don't understand that they are often allowing a patent for the software equivalent of sending someone entering through a side door instead of a front door. Most of the patents they grant are really for simple and basic concepts and ideas, not complex and innovative processes which is what the PTO is supposed to be allowing.

We would all be better off if companies concentrated on making better software for users instead of engaging in this kind of thing.

Thanks,

UPDATE 10/30/06: The article is posted here.

Thought Fashion: Are You In or Out?

It's true. I peeked.

Yes, I downloaded the AOL files. And I peeked. Why? Because I wanted to write this blog post and I wanted to see for myself what sort of gestures people were making as they searched for porn or socks or how to bury their pet birds or wives they'd just killed. I also needed to see the form the data was in. And I'm a voyeur just like everyone else in and around this story, and I wanted to rubberneck my way into other's private intellectual spaces.

But it's not right. The part where I and every news outlet, blogger, reader and looky-loo has been engaging in, judging people by their searches, making assumptions and behaving as if we ourselves have never made any searches or expressed any thoughts that would not look funny to someone else.

It's also not right because the data is personally identifying. Reporters have been tracking down people based upon their searches. It's not that hard, if you yourself are a good searcher.

What was it Bob Blakely said? About how "dragging all human behavior into the public is literally totalitarian." He is the chief security and privacy scientist for IBM's Tivoli Systems. "If you erode privacy, you erode liberty, because people don't tolerate things going on in front of them that they don't approve of." I was struck by how succinctly he answered the question that is always asked of people who object to the government or some other large and powerful entity as compared with you: What do you have to hide? If you're not doing anything wrong?

Every article on AOL's mess up that says something like AOL's Disturbing Glimpse Into Users' Lives is buying into this whether they know it or not. Thank you CNet for reaffirming our intolerance.

Let's get clear on the definition of "aggregated" data. For us geeks, we use this term often, as we reassure those whose data we work with that aggregation means we are removing anything personally identifying, and placing it with other user's data, so that it's just a pile of anonymized data that could never be distinguished by the person. An example might be the aggregation of all the searches on "dog," where who did them is removed but we know that 38 people searched on that term during a particular hour and day.

But users don't think that way. They hear the word, aggregated, and they think the data handlers are aggregating everything the system may know about just them, specifically and personally, and lumping it all together. Talk about miscommunication. And it terrifies the non-geeks.

What we really should be saying is that the data is "anonymized" and therefore you are safe. AOL's data was not safe because it was not anonymized, and for users, it was their definition of aggregated.

The AOL data which lumped each user's searches together with a user ID over three months, making profiling and finding them easy, meant that AOL provided enough data in some cases to indicate a lot about who the data related to very specifically. Leading to judgments by the rest of us. About the people who do or think things on the edges of society.

And why is this wrong? Because it hurts people. It makes them feel defensive about their own thoughts and ideas.

So, well, if you aren't doing anything wrong, what *do* you have to hide? Well, everyone has something they do or think about that would be an edge thought or that in one context would be in the middle, but in another, must be defended as it resides on the edge. And that would be disapproved by someone. Something the rest of society might not tolerate.

Intolerance leads to the totalitarian. We, the human race, have been intolerant since the beginning of time. What we are intolerant of is a moving target depending on the fashion of the day. In the 30's in some places it was fashionable to be intolerant of Jews and gays. In the 40's it was Germans and the Japanese, and in the 50's communists and socialists. In the 60's it was civil rights proponents and hippies and in the 70's liberals. In the 80's we were back to communists, and in the 90's it was Hispanics (remember all the state propositions outlawing them from medical care?). And what is it today? Islam? Are thoughts you think today and the cultural references associated with them that are in the middle going to fall to the edges in the next decade?

We have used the fear of all these intolerable people and their thoughts as excuses to hunt for more proof of their intolerableness by surveilling everyone in society and searching through all the detritus of our lives. With digital data more available, we think we can find the proof we need in these edge thoughts. And then we will persecute the people having them. And what better way to do it now that the internet, ISPs and heavily used search systems can provide one or another level of very personal, thought data. Search terms, or a database of intentions as John Battelle has talked about so much, are one slice of your data that tell a lot about you. And if we can get it in a neat little file, machine readable and searchable and quantifiable, then well, why not?

If you believe that sacrificing freedom to keep freedom is the way to go, then you probably don't see any problem with demonizing people who have thoughts you don't like. Especially if those thoughts are in the form of passing gestures such as search terms plugged into a browser.

But until we decide (or default) into a Minority Report society (and change our constitution), we are not yet convicting people for thinking things. Everyone has had the thought that they'd like to kill someone once or twice in their lives. But people, the vast vast majority, don't do it. The idea that we demonize someone for searching on this, which is a gesture I would put into the fleeting thought category for almost everyone, is taking an edge thought, which we all have from time to time, and putting it firmly under the scrutiny of the middle. I believe we really only want to find people who make serious plans to hurt others, or actually carry it out. That is what our law it based on, and the premise of our society. But to track everyone, their searches, their every digital gesture, and expose it in one or another ways is going to be troublesome. And it begs a question I've asked before: is your digital identity your personal intellectual property? Is your Google identity yours or someone else's? And by extension, is your clickstream a personal expression (carefully chosen and shaped by you)? In other words, can you copyright your clickstream and exert ownership?

There are at least two choices. One of them is to do what we are doing now: have ISPs and search services collect this data, and when asked by the government, have it turned over. But that means the data is still in many ways secret. Of course the companies don't want the data getting out because it is proprietary. And neither does the government, because they don't want anyone to know quite how much is out there about you, in case you are trying to cover your tracks or you want to defend yourself. But having all the data, the government has the upper hand. And secrets are powerful. How do you show, if you are being accused of something based upon your searches, that everyone else searches on those same things too? That it's actually a social norm? If you can only ask for your own searches to defend a case against you, and not everyone else's, in order to compare yourself to it, you won't be able to argue social norms which judges rely heavily on when making decisions.

But there is another choice. And that brings up the Attention Trust premise (I'm a Board Member) which is that people own a copy of their own data, no matter where they do things: Amazon.com purchases, Google searches, or AOL clickstreams, or anywhere else you might land in a browser on your computer. As a co-owner of your data, you can take it anywhere and do what you wish. There could be many business models built upon this data controlled and shared by users. Google takes all the data they collect and plugs it into AdSense. If lots of users took their own data and made it available voluntarily, a new and more 'open source' style AdSense could be created.

But much more importantly, something like Steve Gillmor's Gesture Bank, where users opt-in their clickstream information, in an anonymous form, exists to open up this kind of data. The Bank will make the aggregation of anonymized data available to anyone for any purpose. While this may lead to businesses working from this pool of searches and clicks, it also means that a growing pool of data is there to show the edge thoughts and potentially unpopular ideas people may exhibit. The pool can be used to defend against totalitarian efforts to single out in secret those who are out of fashion politically. Which may turn out to be you. Or someone who uses your computer.

That I think is far more important than an open source AdSense, though a business built upon this data would likely justify and make a better case for us to have a Gesture Bank of ideas and thoughts that support political freedom.

Seth Goldstein and Steve Gillmor already offer Root. net users the opportunity to put their data into the Gesture Bank if they wish, though any person can contribute to this anonymous pool of user data. And for that matter, attention streams can be sent to multiple services.

And, at the October 4 Attention Conference, Steve and Seth will announce Attention Soft. Stay tuned.

Core Values at Bloggercon

Mike Arrington is doing the next Core Values session at Bloggercon IV. I want to wish him well, and note the information from the Core Values session at Bloggercon III that I led, because I think that session was extraordinarily productive.

In fact afterward, many people kindly said that they felt it was most useful and interesting, because they left with something tangible (the list) and they really liked that rather than me telling them what the values are I see online, or that I feel are important myself, I just asked questions, and let them come to the conclusions about the values they share and the controls they felt should exist to support those values. They appreciated the light touch guiding them to find and develop their own conclusions.

Here the list the group of 80 made during the session, of what they feel are core values for the blogosphere:

Things we value:
Democracy
Non-exclusivity
Attribution
Transparency – disclosure
Innovation
Personalization
Accessibility
Honesty
Creativity
Knowing who people are
Editorial Independence
Connectedness
Anonymity

Things we devalue:
Power law economics
Lack of Attribution
Anonymity
Wuffie-hoarding
Links for money

Good luck Mike! I'm sure you'll take us to the next level. I hope the last sessions list is useful as a starting point.

Where are we? Rise of the Videonet

At my session today at Supernova, with JD Lasica (Ourmedia) as our moderator, and Jeremy Allaire (BrightCove), Jonathan Taplin (USC Annenberg Center), and Robert Levitan (Pando), I mentioned some stats and ideas, and I said I would blog those items. The are below.

The first two sets of stats focus on video hosting sites (places where users can upload video) and their use, as far as uploads and user visits or traffic. The third set of data reflects trends in the types of video we see users making and posting online, with an example or two of that kind of video.

1. Users per day/Uploads per day on a few sites we have seen info about:

ClipShack : 2200 users per day. (source: AdBright).

Google Video: 12.5 million users in month of April. (source: Washington Post).

Grouper: 8 million users per month (source:
PR News but on Alexa, that traffic appears to be a one time spike, where their traffic seems to hover around 3 million users per month) and 500,000 registered users (source: Alexa).

Ourmedia: 28,000 users per day (source: AdBright).

Vidiac: Streaming 2 million videos per day and 3 million users per month (source:
Silicon Beat Comment by Adam Beat)

Vimeo: 20 thousand users per day (source: USA Today, 11/21/05) and 50,000 registered users (source: Vimeo's about pages)

YouTube: 50,000 uploads per day, serving 50 million videos per day, with 6 million users per day (source: You Tube Fact Sheet).

2. There is a list ranking the top ten video sites by market share or traffic, published by Hitwise), May 24, 2006. (Several of the traffic stats found in articles, press releases, advertising, etc., also credited Hitwise for the numbers):

1. YouTube 42.94%
2. MySpace Videos 24.22%
3. Yahoo! Video Search 9.58%
4. MSN Video Search 9.21%
5. Google Video Search 6.48%
6. AOL Video 4.28%
7. iFilm 2.28%
8. Grouper 0.69%
9. Daily Motion 0.22%
10. vSocial 0.09%

3. At Dabble, we are seeing different video genres coming up over and over. Users, as opposed to top down TV video producers, seem to work in areas that are accessible and interesting to them. They are not just copying mainstream production styles. The list below is in no particular order as far as prevalence or audience viewing. We just see them a lot:

1. Mini tv show-style -- It's Jerry Time or Ask a Ninja
2. Videobloggers: telling their own life stories like Ryanne Hodson
3. Genre guys: snowboarding or car videos
4. Commentary: Rocketboom or the Bush Blair video.
5. Indie film shorts like Four Eyed Monsters
6. Random.. silly.. funny.. ridiculous... ephemeral Tag: momwalksin tag: lipsync
7. How-to's that actually show you how to do something in detail or teach: French Pod Class
8. Remixs and mashups: The Presidency Then and Now or Matrix Reloaded or Brokeback to the Future.
9. Interviews like those at GETV.
10. Parodies like the 8up commercial.
11. AMV or anime music videos: Loveless
12. music videos - lipsync sitting at the computer, dancing around with music playing, that in effect, remakes the artists own music video into ones the users like, that stars themselves. Here is Hips Don't Lie.

Anti-Copyright and Anti-Fair Use: The Broadcast and Audio Flags

Broadcast and Audio Flags are provisions in Senate Bill 2686, up on Thursday. They are bad for users, bad for balanced copyright, bad for fair use, bad for innovation, and bad for new companies (including Dabble).

This is about incumbent media companies fearing the internet, much like the RIAA in 2001, and trying to get the government to protect them against digital media, instead of working with it to create new business models.

Call your Senator (there are some numbers below provided below in an except from an EFF email.

I just called Senator Boxer's office (212 number is below, or SF: 415-403-0100) to register my opposition, and I noted that Boxer's office takes phone comment anonymously. Interesting.

From EFF:

* Action Alert - Tell Your Senator To Take Out the Flags

The Communications, Consumers Choice, and Broadband
Deployment Act of 2006 is a monster name for a monster bill
-- in its latest form, it contains 159 pages of densely
plotted telecommunications reform. But while politicians
struggle with its major clauses, the RIAA and MPAA have
piggybacked their own agenda: the broadcast and audio flags,
which restrict innovation and legitimate use of recorded
digital radio and TV content. Your call today could force
the flags to find a home of their own.

The Committee markup of this bill is on Thursday, and your
Senator is on the Commerce Committee. One last push from
you could get Congress to remove the entertainment industry
mandates from the bill.

IF YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES

Please call your Senator (numbers below). Here's a sample
script:

STAFFER:
Hello, Senator Lastname's office.

YOU:
Hi, I'm a constituent, and I'd like to let the Senator know
that I don't think the broadcast and audio flag provisions
belong in S. 2686, the Communications, Consumers Choice and
Broadband Deployment Act. These are anti-consumer
provisions, which would give the FCC far-reaching powers,
and give the entertainment industry a dangerous veto over
new technologies. I hope the Senator will insist on
excluding these provisions on Thursday.

STAFFER:
Okay, I'll let the Senator know. Thanks.

Chairman Ted Stevens (AK), (202) 224-3004
John McCain (AZ), (202) 224-2235
Conrad Burns (MT), Main: 202-224-2644
Trent Lott (MS), (202) 224-6253
Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX), (202) 224-5922
Gordon H. Smith (OR), (202) 224 3753
John Ensign (NV), (202) 224-6244
George Allen (VA), (202) 224-4024
John E. Sununu (NH), (202) 224-2841
Jim DeMint (SC), (202) 224-6121
David Vitter (LA),(202) 224-4623
Co-Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (HI), (202) 224-3934
John D. Rockefeller (WV), (202) 224-6472
John F. Kerry (MA), (202) 224-2742
Barbara Boxer (CA), (202) 224-3553
Bill Nelson (FL), (202) 224-5274
Maria Cantwell (WA), (202) 224-3441
Frank R. Lautenberg (NJ), (202) 224-3224
E. Benjamin Nelson (NE), (202) 224-6551
Mark Pryor (AR), (202) 224-2353

Net Neutrality for the Little Guys

USA Today interviewed me and some other folks the other day. The article is here:

Internet Fast Lane Plan Worries Small Companies by Michelle Kessler.

Basically, it's that part of AT&T's and the other telco's new internet pricing plan, where they would charge the provider of the material to send their material through to subscribers, that is the problem.

As I've said before, we didn't make the internet to turn it back into cable tv.

We Didn't Build the Internet to Turn It Back Into Cable Tv

You know, the kind of cable TV where big entertainment companies pay off cable companies to get their channels on your set top box?

Congress didn't accept it, so net neutrality lost.

So we are keeping the system that started a year ago. It's the one that will make the internet like Cable TV.

It's critical to innovation, our companies (mine is Dabble.com) and to freedom of speech that we have a neutral net, where anything can move across it, where there is no fee to get some piece of information through to someone who wants to see it.

This isn't about tiered pricing. This is about who's packets paid the telco's fees.

This is about Hollywood keeping us from speaking, because if I'm watching my friend's video, I'm not watching Disney. Hollywood stands to benefit the most, after the telco's who charge the fees.

And Disney can afford to pay off the telcos to pass through their info, but my friends can't.

I'm going to Vloggercon today!

Hope to see you there, though you should know they are sold out!

It should be a great event. I'm speaking tomorrow on the Mashups and Remixing for Vloggers Dave Toole, Josh Leo. JD Lasica, David Dudas and Jan McLaughlin.

But we talked yesterday about making it an audience discussion, which I think is much better than a panel.

Josh Leo's We Are The Media, three times in one week!

I also suggested we play Josh Leo's video from the first Vloggercon because I think it's a great representation of user generated content, mashups, and for many other reasons, it's representative of the interesting and entertaining things going on online. In fact, I played it at the Culture, Commerce and Public Media conference during my session last Monday on User Generated Content with Kenyatta Cheese, Sam Klein, Dave Marvet. I also played the first two minutes of Kent Bye's Overview of his Echo Chamber Project, as an example of news and commentary video made by users, The Guinea Pig Dreaming video, and the Bush Blair Endless Love remix. I wanted to show the audience there (typically from archives of TV, PBS or other libraries of video projects) that users were doing an interesting variety of things.

That last one got a really big laugh.

I also played Josh's We Are the Media Video again yesterday at The Hyperlinked Society conference at UPenn and the Annenberg School of Communication. The point is, digital videos are a series of edits, and each edit, with an in and out point as hypertext, is like a video map, of links. Since it was a conference on links, I wanted to show a couple examples of linking that working in ways other than what everyone there was talking about.

I also showed some Attention Trust data, with a visualization of links a user might use to see where he goes day to day.

Anyway, if we play Josh's WATM video again tomorrow, that will be three times in a week. It's that great. You should check it out.

Net Neutrality

First, watch the video. And then the other video. And this other video. Yah. It's worth it.

Then, check out David Isenberg's most terrific eTel talk about your freedom to connect.

And check out Save the Internet. They have tons of great information.

Then read below. Here's how I see this:

Another way of looking at this issue of net neutrality is... remember the old Highway system. Where El Camino Real on the peninsula in the Bay Area used to be a toll road, where you would not get mugged and the road was nice and fast, but it was expensive. And the Alameda (parallel to ECR) was the slow road, which wasn't taken care of, where you would likely be ambushed and was free?

Well, that's what the telcos would like us to see when they talk about two tiers. And think about what that kind of road system does to the economy of information? It's not very democratic is it? This isn't just a small or large bag of potato chips. Or dial up and broadband. It's about whether we support basic services for all people to get information. Cause if you are on dialup, you are missing much that is useful and interesting about the internet.

Secondly, the part that's different about the types of information that would be available in the slow cheap road verses the fast expensive road (dialup verses high-speed bandwidth) is that the packets would be treated differently.

The perverse part of the telco's proposal is that packets of certain types (VOIP and video, for example) that paid an additional toll, would get to you faster than those that didn't pay.

So it's not just the user who has to pay for the speed of their service, it's that the other side, the content maker, would also have to pay for you to get fast packets on a fast road. Disney and Viacom will pay their side of the tolls, but can PBS? Can little joe video blogger pay? Or will he get the same deal as the

What that means is is that the Hollywood and bit content producers would have the edge over the average person who wants to get a message out. So if you have a fast connection but joe blogger didn't pay, well, sorry, those packets won't get to you quickly. Instead, even though the user paid for faster service, they would not get all packets at the same speed. The content maker who didn't pay would have their packets come through slowly. And of course, the slow speed service buyer, who asked for a video from the content maker who didn't pay the toll would never see that video, it would be so slow.

Tonight: "Email -- Should the Sender Pay?": EFF Fundraiser, Debate Between Esther Dyson and Danny O'Brien

Details below about this event at EFF.

At eTech, Esther and Annalee Newitz were talking about Goodmail, innovation in spam control for email and the controversy with EFF and others around this topic. I asked them both about stats. What I wanted to know was how much (number and percentages) email is spam, how much is non-profit email, how much is educational, and how much is political speech?

My feeling was that with those kinds of stats, and an agreement that we would let the IRS decide who should get free email if we instituted a pay for send system, we could give this a try. The issue with the IRS is this: they give tax exempt status to entities who are non-profits, some political organizations and others, and if an organization has that piece of paper from the IRS, we should exempt them from fees. The additional step for political organizations might be that we also use state and federal Fair Political Practice Commissions that also have organizations categorized. But with these kinds of certifications and exemptions from fees, we could try, innovate, experiment with different email systems that might help us solve some of the spam issues we currently have online.

One thing, when I was having this discussion with Esther and Annalee, I realized that I don't really get spam. This, even though my email address is on the front of my blog. I'm sure the spam is coming in like crazy, but because the ISP that hosts my hoster is clearing away some, and then my hoster clears more at the server level, after which the remaining batch has to go through the specific email system I have set up with my settings and training about what is spam on his servers and then I have more clearing going on at the email client level on my computer, I see about one spam email every week or so. It's rare, especially considering I get 1000 email a day. So I hadn't thought for a while about what a problem this is at the email level. In fact, I see far more spam blog, or splog, spam, via comments, trackbacks and in posts and through live web search, than I do in email. So my sense of the problem was really underwhelming for email and overwhelming for live web stuff.

Anyway, come to the debate tonight, to hear the arguments for and against!

Roxie Cinema
3117 16th St (Yahoo! Maps, Google Maps)
San Francisco, California

* "Email -- Should the Sender Pay?": EFF Fundraiser, Debate
Between Esther Dyson and Danny O'Brien

In light of AOL's adopting a "certified" email system, EFF
is hosting a debate on the future of email. With
distinguished entrepreneur Mitch Kapor moderating, EFF
Activist Coordinator Danny O'Brien and renowned tech expert
Esther Dyson will discuss the potential consequences if
people have to pay to send email. Would the Internet
deteriorate as a platform for free speech? Would spam or
phishing decline?

WHEN:
Thursday, April 20th, 2006
7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

WHAT:

"Email - Should the Sender Pay?"

WHO:

Danny O'Brien

Danny O'Brien is the Activist Coordinator for the EFF. His job is to help our membership in making their voice heard: in government and regulatory circles, in the marketplace, and with the wider public. Danny has documented and fought for digital rights in the UK for over a decade, where he also assisted in building tools of open democracy like Fax Your MP. He co-edits the award-winning NTK newsletter, has written and presented science and travel shows for the BBC, and has performed a solo show about the Net in the London's West End.

Esther Dyson

Esther Dyson is editor at large at CNET Networks, where she is responsible for its monthly newsletter, Release 1.0, and its PC Forum, the high-tech market's leading annual executive conference. As editor at large, she also contributes insight and content to CNET Networks' other properties. She sold her business, EDventure Holdings, to CNET Networks in early 2004. Previously, she had co-owned
EDventure and written/edited Release 1.0 since 1983. Recently, Esther authored a New York Times editorial called "You've Got Goodmail," defending a sender-pays model for the future of email.

Mitch Kapor

Mitchell Kapor is the President and Chair of the Open Source Applications Foundation, a non-profit organization he founded in 2001 to promote the development and acceptance of high-quality application software developed and distributed using open source methods and licenses. He is widely known
as the founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3, the "killer application" which made the personal computer ubiquitous in the business world in the 1980's. In 1990, Kapor co-founded EFF.

WHERE:
Roxie Film Center
3117 16th Street, San Francisco
(between Valencia and Guerrero)
Tel: (415) 863-1087

See the link below for a map:
http://www.roxie.com/directions.cfm

Local Muni are the 22 and 53 (both at 16th & Valencia), 33
(18th & Valencia), 14 (16th & Mission), 49 (16th & Mission).
BART stops one block east at 16th & Mission.

Public Parking is available on Hoff Street, off of 16th
between Valencia and Mission at very reasonable rates.

This fundraiser is open to the general public. The suggested
donation is $20.
No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Please RSVP to events@eff.org

Adaptive Path is the generous sponsor of this fundraising event. Founded in 2001, Adaptive Path is a leading user experience consulting, research, and training firm that has provided services to a range of clients, including Fortune 100 corporations, pure-Web startups, and established nonprofit organizations. The company is headquartered in San Francisco. To learn more about Adaptive Path, visit the company website at:

To learn more about the DearAOL campaign against AOL's planned system:

For Esther Dyson's editorial, "You've Got Goodmail".

Creative Commons Upheld!

A judge in Amsterdam ruled CC licenses have teeth. Nice job!

So Adam Curry apparently published a photo of his daughter on Flickr. A magazine called Weekend said they thought it was okay to use it because the photo said "public" next to it, and they didn't read the licensing which was linked right in the same area of the interface.

The Weekend people apparently didn't understand that "public" did not mean the copyright was "no rights reserved" but it seems ambiguous at best. I understand the Weekend people misinterpreted the interface and information, but it's not that hard to make out, and is their responsibility to get the copyright right. Several times American newspapers have emailed me asking to reuse my photos.. which I've given them permission to do. So some publications are doing it right.

Great marks for Creative Commons though!

Attention or Eyeballs.. Attention or Intention.. Attention or Identity

"The eyes are the window to the soul." - Unknown
"If the eye is a window to the soul, then, the heart is the doorway to love." - Unknown.
"The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

What's the difference between the static web and the live web?
Participation.

What's the difference between consumers and users/amateurs?
Participation.

What's the difference between attention and eyeballs?
Participation.

What is attention? Lot's of people have discussed it, including Nick Bradbury, Steve Gillmor and Seth Goldstein, all of the Attention Trust. I'm on the board too, but my interest in joining it was a little different, though I believe in the core idea just as they do. To quote Seth's blog: "Attention is the substance of focus." The idea for the Attention Trust is that "users own a copy of their data" or attention stream or intention stream or whatever you want to call it. I'm going to leave the intention debate to others because while I agree with John Battelle, that these kinds of recordings can form a sort of 'database of intention' it's not my interest in this post to pick that apart.

Caterina Fake also blogged about this idea of users owning their data.

Etech's theme this past week was attention, though I don't think anyone there except maybe Michael Goldhaber really got anywhere near the idea that the difference between the eyeballs of old (10 years ago) and the attention question is really about participation, at least as far as users collecting it on themselves and reusing it, or sharing it as they desire. Not to mention the digital social gestures that people can now make, and collect, through participatory media online that go much further than the simple mouse over or clicks that were all that could be collected before. Now the aggregate of both, clicks and gestures that are much more participatory in nature are richer and much more meaningful, and quite a bit different than "eyeballs".

And what is participation? As far as the AT, it's about user control and choice, and an absolute right to participate. Or not.

Surprisingly enough, since last August, when the AT was formed and announced, it's been just so easily accepted by anyone asked, from the top to the bottom of those "database of intention" makers, that you should own a copy of your data. They own one copy of course, but we really thought it would be much harder to gain acceptance of this ideal. And yet, here we are. Pretty much everyone has said, "...er, yes, users own a copy of their data." The hard part is, how, how much, when, in what way, will all these companies share a user's data with the users.

So the reason I joined the AT board was because I feel strongly that users should own a copy of their data. But I also feel strongly that users should be able to keep that data private, have complete control over their copy, and shared control over other copies depending on circumstances, and those users have the absolute, unequivocal right not to participate in the attention economy, at least as far as sharing their own data goes, if they are asked to by some vendor or company or other entity. No question.

If Visa wakes up one day and decides to tell me I must give them my attention stream or kiss my credit card good bye, well.. the AT would need to step into the middle of that one pronto. I cannot abide by that sort of coercion, and so, my real interest in the AT is making sure that it's as much an advocacy organization for user's privacy and security from coercion, as it is for making a place for people to come to learn about how to own and user their own data and possibly interact with entities that might trade them for it, or share the rewards of turning over leads for marketing.

Omidyar, the foundation established by Pierre Omidyar to fund both for profit and non-profit ideas, has given the Attention Trust its support to explore this idea of having a non-profit, independent group supporting user's rights.

I'm also going to work with EFF (and hopefully EPIC and Markel) to make sure the AT work and the recorder tools are the most user-friendly and affirmative of user-control, privacy and security as possible. I would also appreciate any help from people in covering this as well, so if you have thoughts, please send them to me in email to mary at hodder dot org .... or comment below.

Tonight there is a talk on attention, at SD Forum if you want to come check out some attention ideas. I encourage you to attend if you are interested and in the area.

Larry Lessig at Mashup Camp

This afternoon, Larry Lessig came over to Mashup Camp, after his classes at Stanford Law School. He showed up, looking like a bit like a hacker himself. He fit well with all the other hackers in the room, though most of them weren't nearly so knowledgeable about intellectual property as it relates to digital media.

One note, this is a conference that is mostly bottom up, with a light organizational structure placed over it. So, everyone stood up the first morning, announced a session or hacking group they wanted to organize, and placed them on the wall, which had a grid for times and places. I posted Larry's session because we'd invited him to lead a discussion on Creative Commons and Mashups, but wasn't going to be here til the afternoon.

Camps are in high contrast to top down conferences, where star speakers have their names and pictures splashed around the conference pages for months before the event, followed by music and theater lights to queue the audience to note the star about to speak, letting us know we should be in awe of them, and feeling distance from them. At camps, everyone has an equal chance to speak; there is no advance schedule, and no advance speaker list. The distance is much smaller and people are accessible no matter their status.

The shift in feel is nice. Instead of awe for people like Lessig, there is tremendous respect. The room was quiet because people wanted to listen with care, not because we were forced to... the camp format really supports respect for speakers, experienced or less so.

Most other speakers here are not at his level in terms of career accomplishments. These hackers of mashups, discussion leaders or demo-ers are smart thoughtful accomplished people nonetheless. They need to spend their time well, and the camp conference format means they are able to suggest sessions for discussion and hacking that meet their needs well, but they can also participate in discussion with folks like Larry who are distunguished for the thoughtful consideration of, in his case, IP and digital media.

Larry entered the room, and in a most casual way, nailed an introduction to Creative Commons and mashups, as developers need to consider intellectual property issues and data sharing across sites, databases and ownership.

I took notes on the white board behind, so that people could see what we'd covered. About 50 people came, with others trickling in over the hour and fifteen minutes. Then he asked and answered questions about the kinds of things developers worry about when they create mashups, whether it's for individual pieces of data, or whole databases. These issues are complicated, but by pointing out some important things, and addressing their concerns, people in the room seemed satisfied with the discussion and pleased with the help and attention that Larry was giving.

A couple of important ending points from the end of his talk:

Possible Solutions to our issues with copyright and mashups:
o We might make a catalog of uses and social norms and practices to document and show others real world behavior around mashups so that people can see what is happening who aren't in the community
o Become more active about updating the law to the 21st Century

Mashup makers should engage in these ways in the community:
o Live within the law of fair use and good faith
o Use the Golden rule: if you remix, let others do the same with your work product

Larry's a great speaker and cares deeply about fairness around copyright and communities that create and use creative artifacts, and the passion and care really show. Lots of folks told me they'd never seen him before and really enjoyed the session. We are grateful he came and spent the time with us.

Notes are here on the Mashup wiki.

Notes from James Surowiecki's Talk at Intelligent Television

Intelligent Television conference info here.

1. Openness bridges all of these mechanisms: open source, p2p, shared work.
2. Intelligence is distributed rather than centralized: the knowledge is spread out in many locations
3. Bottom up works better than command and control mechanisms
-- people are better at understanding their own needs than the top
4. We are better off casting wide rather than narrow
-- don't know where the info is much of the time
5. Open access to creativity, knowledge -- benefits are greater the more people are involved
-- when people learn more, we learn more.. it's anti-rivalrous
6. Be very hesitant to filter who belongs to community
-- don't keep people out
7. People act better the more info they have

8. The internet allows us to become technically able to do so much more
-- distributed info and aggregation are so much more powerful
-- possibilities are immense

9. Different ways to tap into open systems
--obviously people using open systems to make money
-- Innocentive.. people go to register as a 'solver' where 10. You then get access to a problem set
----- if you solve a problem, you get a prize, but he company owns your solution

11. Systems that allow people to give ideas and innovation a piece at a time are interesting, because lots of people contribute. Prediction markets and prices work this way.

12. Can profit from an open content system.. leave everything open and free and then make money from talking about this stuff..

13. People find pleasure from the value of competition
-- from contributing to the growth of the pool of knowledge

14. Many of these systems are inefficient, because in a strict sense, they are redundant..
but the point is that even though this is the case, if we expand our ideas of efficiency, it's tremendously efficient.

15. What are the challenges to these systems?

Internal
-- problem with model in that a network or self organized model, it's difficult for individuals to contribute due to echo chamber effects...army ants .. work in ways where they do just what the ant is doing ahead of them.. if they start walking in a circle.. they actually die.. worry that if humans imitate others.. we will degrade because nothing new happens.. group loses collective intelligence.. drawing knowledge from just a few
-- challenge is to keep the ties in the networks loose.. and open and flowing

External
-- profound counter to our most deep seated ideas around authority, knowledge and expertise -- people have a fundamental desire to pick "the expert"
-- traditional need to develop a product, and then show it after it's out.. instead of working with people all along..
-- traditional needs to develop IP are challenged

16. Arthur Miller in the Harvard Law Review just wrote an article saying that what we need now is 'common law' for ideas.

17. Tom Bergeron -- host of dancing with the stars on why people like this.. because it is about
"wholeheartedly uniting our skills is the basis for all human interaction"

18. Collective systems may work better when there is an answer people think they can find, verses when a lead user or expert may be better at finding the right thing.

19.. Our imagining of the 'genius' is the failure to see that works of art are actually based on others ideas ... works of art always borrow from other works of art.

Mash Up Camp Progress

So, Mashup Camp is moving along. To recap...

Dec 15, David Berlind said the idea in a meeting we were in, and later Doc Searls and I agreed to help.

Dec 22 David wrote about it on his blog, announcing it. Lot's of folks blogged about it and very very interested.

Jan 9 The domain was purchased and website set up with lots of help from Ross Mayfield.

Jan 13 After much discussion and coordination with very helpful people like Ross Mayfield and Lauren Gellman, of Stanford's Center for Internet and Society, I managed to get the Computer History Museum (thanks to Peter Hirshberg too!). To date, without a venue or time, we had 245 people out of 250 spots signed up.

On Jan 16, we "sold out" and started a wait list.

I think this is the fastest organized event I've seen, with this breadth of people and concerns. There is a fantastic group of people, including all the mashup developers and folks from big API provider companies like Apple, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Intel, Amazon, etc.

Now David and Doug are working on getting lunches and the evening event paid for, the site details and costs worked out (big thanks to the Museum for donating the site at a non profit rate, since this is a community event and costs $0 to attend -- consider joining the Museum here). Others are helping to get some hotels lined up for out of towners, and people are thinking about sessions they might lead and dinners.

Doc Searls on Corpuscles and Hearts, Among Other Things

Doc, as interviewed by Irina Slutsky at GETV.

"The Granddaddy of us all...." It's funny. Check it out. It was done right after his talk at Syndicate.

The Woes of the Legacy Media Company in the 21st Century

Sony, which is selling CD's with a backdoor in software the CD's install semi-secretly, has also designed that software using code that's under LGPL license, but has not put the code back out to the community as the license requires.

This is according to a Dutch article (english here) and Slashdot.

Violating your privacy and the LGPL agreement. It's so hard navigating the modern world. Especially if you are a legacy company. Oy.

Jerry Reynolds, (former) Spam King (of Fargo, ND) Files Slapp Suits Trying to Squash Free Speech by People Exposing His Spammy Ways

He's apparently filed (complaint here) SLAPP suits against two people, David Ritz and Ed Falk, who found that in the 1990's, he was the largest spammer online (email wasn't so big then, but he had the largest porn spam operation on UUnet, with Sexzilla and Netzilla which were registered to Jerry Reynolds). And now he's using C&D's and these lawsuits to get whatever traces of the information that documents his spam and porn operation off of Google including search results and groups. He denies owning the site, btw, even though he was listed as administrative contact.

Reynolds has even gone so far as to subpoena Ritz' and Falk's computers and put a gag order on one, but the other one is out of jurisdiction (the suit is in North Dakota, though Falk lives and does business in CA).

Tomorrow, Ed Falk has to give a copy of all his computer harddrives to lawyers, who are still fighting over the jurisdiction issue. I think though that if this case went before a judge in CA, it would immediately be dismissed. All the evidence shows Reynolds was the SpamKing in 1999. Unfortunately, though, the case won't be resolved before Reynolds costs these guys thousands of dollars, and not before he has stopped at least Ritz from speaking out about the case.

The most recent lawsuits and C&D's have been filed by John Doe's or by Reynold's company, Sierra Corporate Designs.

The thing that is so despicable about this is not that he was once the biggest spammer and has moved on to other sorts of (legitimate?) business, but rather, that he would use the courts to have a few pieces of information about his old spam work removed, as if he were trying to rewrite history and squash people's rights to free speech. He was tracked as a spammer early in the 90's, but hit a peak in 1997 with porn spam, at least as far as UUNet / Usenet was concerned. He actually helped kill that community by turning it into a garbage heap for spam. And now he wants to evade responsibility for it. And in the process, cost Ritz and Falk a lot of money and time, defending the truth. Disgusting!

Read more about the lawsuit here.

New Canadian Copyright Law Book is Under CC Licensing, Royalties Go to CC

Professor Michael Geist writes about In the Public Interest: The Future of Canadian Copyright Law (all chapters available for download):

Of possible interest - with the Canadian government nearing hearings on proposed copyright reform, 19 Canadian copyright professors today launched a new book examining the bill and copyright law in Canada from a public interest perspective. I served as editor with the contributing professors representing ten universities from across Canada. In a first for major legal title in Canada, the book is being published under a Creative Commons license with all royalties going back to CC.

The book is divided into three parts. Part one includes three essays that provide context for Canadian copyright law. Part two features 11 essays on the current legislative proposal with several pieces on TPMs, education and copyright, and ISP issues. Part three looks ahead with pieces on copyright term, user rights, fair dealing, extended licensing, and crown copyright.

Nice!

Lisa Rein's Songs from the Commons

songs from the commons
on MondoGlobo.net

All songs have one or another Creative Commons licensing, and sez Lisa:

The purpose of this show is two-fold.

On the one hand, I am featuring CC licensed music from the various libraries of it online. Explaining more to artists about how CC-licenses work, and demonstrating that more and more artists of increasingly professional quality are becoming involved in the Commons Revolution.

On the other hand, this show will provide a step by step basic understanding of Copyright Law and how the big cases affect the public, so they can understand better when new cases are decided by the Supreme Court in the years to come.

So basically, if you want to spend five minutes a week learning about Copyright Law, in an attempt to begin to understand what the hell is going on with these landmark cases and how the average person is ultimately affected, while listening to cool music in-between, then you’ll like this show.

This week's focus: The Copyright Bargain {{{MP3}}}

It's hard to move forward in discussing the current copyright situation without first learning a bit of background about the original intentions of the Founding Fathers when they created Copyright and added it to the Constitution. This show will discuss this briefly, and then, in contrast explain the current state of Copyright today.

Great cause and the music is awesome! I especially like Human Nature.

The Digital Media Exposure Scale

I'm at Always On, and there are interesting hallway conversations going on. Dave Sifry and I were talking about exposure, or, how much you expose online the people you come into contact with in person. The other night in the EFF panel discussion, I said that if I know someone is online in a medium, I have no problem putting them online on my blog or using Flickr or whatever the appropriate thing is. In other words, if someone is online in text, I will talk about them by name on my blog in text. If someone puts themselves online in pictures, I will too, by name. Same with rich text. If they aren't online, I might put them up, but not attach their full names or information that would make it possible to find them.

Additionally, I noted that people think of media reuse differently depending on the type of media. Text is least likely to be a problem if cut and pasted, photo reuse is a little more of an issue, but sound and video is most concerning for those putting their media online. And so using some judgment around the ways we reuse each other's media. However, I also think this will shift as we see more examples of remixing, and get comfortable with having our stuff remixed, even in ways we don't like, and realize the remix is a reflection of those remixing, and not those who made the original media, and cease to care so much. In other words, the richer the media, the more we are concerned about our own images or how other's reuse our media.

This came up because Dave walked up and we chatted about some of the AO sessions, and he shot a little video of me describing a point from a session yesterday. And we talked about how we each assume that we can do this with the other, because we are already online and put ourselves out there.

Dave made an interesting point that those of us with companies doing social media need to think about what we will do, what happens when we have our first big scare. Some stalker does something bad with the information we put up online, using some service put up by these companies, to do something uncool that is scary for people. As more people beyond the early adopter crowd take to blogging, social photo sharing, vlogging, podcasting, etc., we are more exposed. The good part is, people in these companies are all are pretty connected to each other, so we can quickly talk about it, and hopefully adjust for the bad actor behavior to solve the problem. But we haven't had our first big scare yet, and that will happen, and cause us to rethink our online behaviors and the services that are out there helping us filter information. It will even out, but we are still early and naive in this business, and we need to be sensative to these issues.

Singing Happy Birthday to EFF

EFF15

(1:22 min, 320x480, iMovie, Quicktime format, Canon SD300)

EFF Announced Blog-A-Thon !!
Tell your stories about the first time you knew your rights online were important, and win a T-Shirt!

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, to celebrate its 15th Anniversary, is having a party tonight at 111 Minna in SF (where I'll be speaking with Kurt Opsahl, Violet Blue, danah boyd, Dan Gillmor and Jackson West, and I think ms. boyd has my most favorite quote on the event:

::gasp::bounce:: They're letting me out in public again! Mooo ha ha ha!).

They are also having a Blog-A-Thon!

EFF says, "we want to hear about your "click moment" -- the very first step you to took to stand up for your digital rights -- whether it was blogging about an issue you care about, participating in a demonstration, writing your representatives, or getting involved with EFF. As a thank you, we've enlisted an independent panel of judges to choose from among your posts for "Most Inspirational," "Most Humorous," and "Best Overall." At the end of the Blog-a-thon, we'll announce the names of the three bloggers with the best posts on our website and in our weekly newsletter, EFFector. We'll also publish the three best posts on our site and send the authors a blogging "kit" as an extra thank you: an EFF bloggers' rights T-shirt, special EFF-branded blogger pajama pants, a pound of coffee, and a pair of fuzzy slippers."

Well.. get to it!

And look here or here for entries using the Blog-a-thon tag: EFF15 keyword or tag.

(Thanks Joe, I corrected the address of the party!

Broadcast Flag: Yippee!

You know this is a major issue for me and I've blogged it a lot. Friday a Federal Appeals Court vacated the BF ruling the FCC made a year or so ago. I was out when I heard it, and yesterday was crazy. But I just wanted to say, this totally rocks! Thank goodness!

And here is Ernie Miller's explanation of what the BF is about:

For those who are unfamiliar with the Broadcast Flag, it was ... it was a regulation promulgated by the FCC at the request of Hollywood that would have required all HDTV receivers to incorporate certain copy controls. Starting this July, all HDTV receivers sold in the US would be required to enforce restrictions on copying HDTV broadcasts that were tagged with the "Broadcast Flag." Although you might be able to record HDTV shows, you wouldn't be able to make additional copies for personal use (such as watching in another room) without a lot of hassle, if it was possible at all, not to mention taking a copy to watch at a friend's house. The ramifications of this authority grab by the FCC were enormous, since it would have, among other things, essentially given them the power to control significant aspects of the design of anything capable of using HDTV signals, i.e., modern PCs.

Wrapping up Freedom 2 Connect

So I'm way behind on blogging.. having had four posts in the hopper the past week and no time at all to get my thoughts together to post. It's so bad, I've invited about 30 friends over for dinner tonight, so that we can geek out on wifi and hopefully I'll get some blogging done while socializing. I wouldn't see them if I didn't do something like this.

Freedom to Connect, the conference I attended three weeks ago (time is flying by.. eek) is one of the the topics I wanted to address. I had earlier asked for some constructive actions we all might take to change the situation we were addressing -- the lack of real broadband (not the standard tiny-band stuff we mostly have here in the US), providers attempts to lock-out municipal wireless, and cellphone carriers attempts to keep their oligopoly hold over our services and phone access.

What I heard at the conference that answered my question really only addressed municipal wireless.. we should band together on a local level to fight for it town-by-town before Verizon and the rest of them get a lock-down going, with petitions, attending municipal meetings and local education about how connectivity is like water.. it's a utilitiy and needs to be treated as such.

I don't recall any constructive thoughts for what to do about cellular providers or the lack of broadband.. we just discussed it,getting a little clear on the issues.

What we could do about cellular services:

I had an idea the other night, at the 106 miles meeting, that we should develop applications for cell phones that creatively route around the carriers. And we most definitely should not use their framing of the customer situation: 'consumers' and 'enterprise', to describe the possible user markets. I think what's key to breaking the cellular provider stranglehold is developing cool apps that can sit on phones, but that only require users to download these apps in simple ways (not through carriers but through web access and SMS messages sending them the link to the web download). That way carriers will lose the monopoly they have on users access to applications. Because the phone IS the platform, not PC's.

Related broadband info: just got this from David Farber's IP list:

In today's ">New York Times, Thomas Friedman's column highlights "Down to the Wire" by Thomas Bleha in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs:

Thomas Bleha, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer in Japan, has a fascinating piece in the May-June issue of Foreign Affairs that begins like this: 'In the first three years of the Bush administration, the United States dropped from 4th to 13th place in global rankings of broadband Internet usage. Today, most U.S. homes can access only 'basic' broadband, among the slowest, most expensive and least reliable in the developed world, and the United States has fallen even further behind in mobile-phone-based Internet access. The lag is arguably the result of the Bush administration's failure to make a priority of developing these networks. In fact, the United States is the only industrialized state without an explicit national policy for promoting broadband.'
Posted by Mary Hodder at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Freedom 2 Connect Conference

Is going well.. moblogging it on flickr. It's at the American Film Institute Theater in Silver Spring, MD. Day 2 is just starting...

Yesterday, someone on the Small Blue Networks panel said that the average American sends 13 text messages per year. In the EU, the average is 53 messages a month for the top 75% of users (according to Forrester research 3/18/05) It's just a barometer reading of where we are at socializing with technology. Obviously Americans use cell phones, but we are not using all the functionality because the phones our telcos accept, and our service plans, don't make it easy.

For the past three years, I've been text messaging people regularly and I often find that they call me back, rather than hit reply.. and the question I usually ask is why. They almost always say it's too hard to reply. Also, a decent number don't get through to them, but I don't know what percentage. But my phone says I send around 40 messages a month, and from memory, it seems that maybe 5 per month don't get through to the recipient.

I can understand why people don't feel confident about text messages or want to use them, and yet, they are so much easier than voice mail messages, and there is a written record for the address you are meeting someone at, or the phone number of someone, or the time of an event. Text messaging is just so much easier and discreet than calling, and there is no timeconsuming VM system to navigate. It's too bad the telco's haven't realized this is an opportunity for people to connect and share information, rather than just barely participate in text messaging, by charging for it as if it's a scarce commodity, is nuts. And holds us back from yet another socializing experience with technology and people.

Whole Lotta Freedom Talk Goin' On

Or at least it converged today.. here in Washington DC and Silver Spring MD. I spent the day helping Greg Elin, Dwayne Hendricks and David Isenberg with the Freedom-2-Connect Conference preparations (it's David's baby). F2C starts tomorrow.. and then afterwards, we swung by Dupont Circle, where the first CopyNight meetup was converging, post Grokster hearing at the Supreme Court (check out a few photos of the morning lines of folks who didn't get tickets to watch the hearing).

Seth Schoen was there and he did attend, along with about 20 others who had see the arguments in person. He said that a few folks made it in with tickets, but not without spending the night out there to get them. Apparently, Kragen Sitaker and Beatrice Murch were no.s 2 and 3 in line, arriving at 3pm yesterday. And Seth was no. 18, arriving at 8pm. Alex Haldeman, Ed Felton's student and his new fellow blogger on Freedom-to-Tinker, made it in, but some of Ed's other students did not. Seth also said he brought a pile of betamax tapes to give to people to hold up during the hearing. And while waiting in line, he saw Jack Valenti, and someone said, go get Valenti to sign a tape! Apparently, Seth didn't want to but Annelee Newitz said she would, so Valenti looked at it, mentioned he rarely sees betamax tapes, and signed it.

Please take this next paragraph with a grain of salt.. it's what Seth told me about what he saw today.. just a quick retelling of what he mentioned an hour or so ago.. and I'm really hoping he blogs it soon.. but it's third hand. I'm only doing this because his blog is down and I thought it was interesting, but I hope after his travels that he puts it back up and tells this story himself. But for now, I urge you to read first hand accounts.

Seth told us about three things that were concerning about the questions asked by the Justices. 1. They focused on how Grokster had 'willfully blinded' themselves to what users would do, in order to create a system that would allow user's privacy about their own activities. He was concerned for other kinds of software that builds in privacy. 2. 'Bifurcation' -- where there was the old Grokster technology based upon the first Napster technology model (from 4 years ago), and then there is the second model currently in use, so the bifurcation in the case has to do with how both sides of the case agreed to separate the two phases. Apparently the justices were very confused by how the two parties could agree to such a thing. So they spent a lot of time discussing this. 3. The Justices asked a lot about 'commercially significant' uses of the technology.. this is a footnoted item in the Sony Betamax case but was taken up in a more major way in this case. The question is, is this 'sufficient to support your business.'

Seth also stayed for the case following, on cable service, saying that there was a lot of discussion about what a service is... but again, I urge the reading of first hand accounts until the transcripts come out shortly.

Bid on this ticket for Freedom 2 Connect, and the Proceeds go to EFF

So EFF has this ticket to Freedom to Connect, David Isenberg's conference in Washington, DC in 10 days.

I'm going to F2C and really looking forward to the conversation. I've blogged before about how ridiculous the situation with telco's, bandwidth and cell phone access is in the US, how we are 5-7 years behind Asia and Europe in terms of using truly high bandwidth services and cellphone platforms to socialize with the technology and these new forms of communications. We have *tiny*band here in the US, and our cell phones have been highjacked by the providers, both in terms of the hardware functionality and the service and web access, The whole thing is utterly ridiculous, and drives me crazy because it's such short term thinking by the telcos sacrificing the long term gain. And the idea that the FTC and the FCC allow this is even crazier.

So I want to know, the reason I'm attending the conference (because you know this issue is in a way peripheral to my main work, and yet it is the basis of all our connectivity which I'm so dependent upon) is because I want to know more from people who study and research these issues, but much more importantly: What do we do about this? What can we work together on to fix this situation?

Of course, I'd love for people not at the center of this F2C world to bid on the EFF ticket, because more brainstorming power from the outside would be great to have, and it would help out EFF.

I want some practical, constructive action plan, that users can implement online and in person, to move this situation to a better place. The speakers and attendees are a smart, well informed, active group of people. And I would consider it a huge success if we came up with a plan like this at the conference.

SBC Global Does It Again: Lost Their Cluetrain Ticket And Didn't Even Notice

So, I just found out that last week, SBC Global, my DSL provider, started blocking port 25. That's the port for outgoing email. I have not been able to send outgoing email from home since then, or here in San Diego at the Westin over wifi, and I guess this is why. I've only sent email on hardwire connections from my hotel rooms over the past 6 days.

And it gets better.. I learned this from a breakfast meeting mail list.. *not* SBC Global. There is a form, however, that you can fill out to get unblocked. Thanks SBC. And thanks to Ben Gross for finding the ticket and letting me know!

Creative Commons

Last night I wore a t-shirt I'd made from the graphics in yesterday's post, to the Creative Commons 2nd Anniversary party. While I actually now think that Bill Gates wasn't lumping *everyone* to the left of hardcore copyright incumbents as commies, and that we need balance between incentives for creators and the commons, though we are skewed right now in the law toward the incumbants who have the great majority of IP protectionist power, that the graphics were funny, so I decided to wear them. I don't believe in no property rights. We just need balance between these, and I sit in the middle, asking for the hardcore incumbents to join me there, instead of sitting in their protectionist extreme (copy) right position.

However, since Bill wasn't too nuanced in his characterization of the copyleft, I took the opportunity to make fun back in an equally simplistic way, so here are the pix from the party of the shirt:

and the back:

I do think that Creative Commons does a good job of residing in the middle where they balance the left and right, and the party was great.. to celebrate their work, buy a t-shirt with the new Science Commons on it for a friend, and hang with a lot of very smart, very cool people. Thanks CC!

Is IP Binary? Bill Gates Thinks So

Okay, I know everyone has posted on this Bill Gates thing already. But 'geez' (to quote Dan Gillmor). Could you be any more unsophisticated in your take on something complex, and counterintuitive to traditional economics? I mean, it's not 0 or 1 people. Some IP protection is good, for the fostering of more innovation and development, because of the obvious incentives to give creators some ability to monetize their development. And some commonly shared IP is good, for the fostering of more innovation and development, because of the obviously open way that people can take ideas and run with them. How 'bout that? Both ways are necessary, and must be balanced, to foster innovation. Way to be unsubtle, Bill.

Question: what would have happened to the internet had the development of the modem been locked down the way Bill locks down all his stuff? Would it be Betamax all overagain? The issues are not binary.. one or the other. Both ends of IP spectrum need to exist... the commons as owned by all of us is necessary for incentivizing a lot of development and original development needs short term (17 years for patents, etc) compensatory incentives for development. But remember, copyright as recently extended is 95 years for works for hire, or 70 years past the death of a creator, and trademark and tradesecrets are forever (don't tell DeBeers, but trademarks are better than a diamond ring... if you really love your babe, a money-making trademark may be where it's at). In particular, copyright duration and term changes, and the rubber-stamping PTO guys, as pushed by incumbents, have weighted this situation too far to the direction of locked down IP.

c|Net asks and Bill sez in response, that there are "modern-day sort of communists" involved:

Q: "In recent years, there's been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, 'We've got to look at patents, we've got to look at copyrights.' What's driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?

A: "No, I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.

And this debate will always be there. I'd be the first to say that the patent system can always be tuned--including the U.S. patent system. There are some goals to cap some reform elements. But the idea that the United States has led in creating companies, creating jobs, because we've had the best intellectual-property system--there's no doubt about that in my mind, and when people say they want to be the most competitive economy, they've got to have the incentive system. Intellectual property is the incentive system for the products of the future."

Um. That would be short term competitive, until we have so much lock-down in the US, that all innovation happens elsewhere.. which is perfect because we are so behind here anyway, what with our slow 'broad (mid) band' and our locked down, proprietary cell phone systems, among other thing. Things like this disincentivize uses and socialization with technology that the rest of the world is years down the road adopting and integrating into their lives and work. We are losing our leading position in so many ways, here. Heavy handed IP is just the start. And binary thinking is the way to keep ourselves on that path.

Update link: check out this on Thomas Jefferson, the commons and IP.

In the meantime, the copy commies have been hard at work illustrating their thumb-the-nose view toward Bill's words:

Mark Pesce on BitTorrent: Chaos is Your Metaphor

Susan Mernit posts Mark Pesce's email on BitTorrent. Best part is the ending:

It's said that the best sequels are just like the original, only bigger and louder. Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves for one hell of a crash. This baby is now fully out of control.

Subject: Out of Control: The Sequel
From: - "Mark Pesce"
Date: - Mon, December 20, 2004 6:35 am
---------------------------------------------

Out of Control: The Sequel

This morning I woke up to find that the torrent had died. Someone - no
one knows who - had put enough pressure onto the operators of
Suprnova.org and TorrentBits.com to shut them down. SuprNova.org was
amazing, the Wal-Mart of torrents, a great big marketplace of piracy,
all neatly dished up and aiming to please. You want this new Hollywood
release? Here's a recording from someone who smuggled a camcorder into
a screening. - How about the latest episode of that hit HBO series?
There you go, and no subscription fees to pay. Just fire up your
favorite BitTorrent client - BitTornado, Azureus, Tomato, or that good
old-fashioned Bram Cohen code. Click on the torrent, and you're up and
downloading, sharing what you're getting with hundreds of others. Share
and share alike. What could be more friendly?

For those of you who found the last paragraph littered with weird
gobblygook, here's your opportunity to come up to speed: BitTorrent is a
computer protocol (a language computers use when communicating with each
other) which allows computers to freely and efficiently share
information with one another. This free-for-all of sharing is often
called peer-to-peer or P2P, and it has become one of the most popular
activities on the Internet. Many of you have heard how the record
companies are deathly afraid that their markets are about to evaporate
as their customers move from buying CDs to downloading pirated music.
This much is true: for the last several years, peer-to-peer software has
been used to help people find audio files on the internet - files being
offered up by other people for you to download, anonymously. Find a
song, click on it, and down it comes to your computer's hard drive.

All of this song swapping began before most Americans had access to
high-speed "broadband" internet connections. But, as of a month ago,
just about half of the home users in the USA access the Internet through
a broadband connection. These connections are anywhere from 10 and 50
times faster than the earlier "dial-up" connections which tied up phone
lines and kept you waiting for what seemed like weeks as you struggled
to download the latest gossip from your favorite website. While it
takes some time to download music over a dial-up connection, you'd only
wait about ten minutes for an average song. Movies and TV shows, which
are much "richer" (more data), take a lot more time to download. The
new U2 album, for example, might contain 45 million bytes of data. But
an episode of "Six Feet Under" - roughly the same length - would
probably run to 450 million bytes of information, ten times the amount.
Coincidentally, that's how much faster internet connections are,
compared to a few years ago.

This increase in bandwidth has led to an enormous underground trade in
all sorts of audiovisual media. It's not just current movies - classics
and cult films are available. (I downloaded Russ Meyer's Beyond the
Valley of the Dolls the day he died, watching it that evening, my homage
to the great schlock director.) And, more significantly, nearly every
new TV show that airs in the US or the UK is almost instantaneously
available globally, because someone watching that show is recording it
to their hard disk, publishing the recording to the Internet. This
isn't rocket science: computer peripherals which convert TV signals to
digital data cost less than $100, and millions of them are out there
already.

If you're just one person with one recording of one show, and it's a
popular show, your computer's internet connection is going to get
swamped with requests for the show; eventually your computer will crash
or you'll take the show off the Internet, just so you can read your
email. And in the early days of peer-to-peer, that's how it was.
Someone would find a computer with a copy of the song they wanted to
listen to, connect to that computer, and download the data. It worked,
but anything that got very popular was likely to disappear almost
immediately. Popularity was a problem in first-generation peer-to-peer
networks.

In November 2002, an unemployed programmer named Bram Cohen decided
there had to be a better way, so he spent a few weeks writing an
improved version of the protocols used to create peer-to-peer networks,
and came up with BitTorrent. BitTorrent is a radical advance over the
peer-to-peer systems which preceded it. Cohen realized that popularity
is a good thing, and designed BitTorrent to take advantage of it. When
a file (movie, music, computer program, it's all just bits) is published
on BitTorrent, everyone who wants the file is required to share what
they have with everyone else. As you're downloading the file, those
parts you've already downloaded are available to other people looking to
download the file. This means that you're not just "leeching" the file,
taking without giving back; you're also sharing the file with anyone
else who wants it. As more people download the file, they offer up what
they've downloaded, and so on. As this process rolls on, there are
always more and more computers to download the file from. If a file
gets very popular, you might be getting bits of it from hundreds of
different computers, all over the Internet - simultaneously. This is a
very important point, because it means that as BitTorrent files grow in
popularity, they become progressively faster to download. Popularity
isn't a scourge in BitTorrent - it's a blessing.

It's such a blessing that, as of November, 35% of all traffic on the
Internet was BitTorrent-related. Unfortunately, that blessing looks more
like a curse if you're the head of a Hollywood studio, trying to fill
seats in megaplexes or move millions of units of your latest DVDs
releases. And, although BitTorrent is efficient, it isn't designed to
make data piracy easy; BitTorrent relies on a lot of information which
can be used to trace the location of every single user downloading a
file, and, more significantly, it also relies on a centralized "tracker"
- a computer program which registers the requests for the file, and
tells a requester how to hook up to the tens or hundreds of other
computers offering pieces of the file for download.

As any good network engineer knows (and I was a network engineer for
over a decade), a single point of failure (a single computer offering a
single torrent tracker) is a Bad Thing to have in a network. It's the
one shortcoming in Cohen's design for BitTorrent: kill the tracker and
you've killed the torrent. But network engineers know better than to
design systems with single points of failure: that's one of the reasons
the Internet is still around, despite the best efforts of hackers around
the world to kill it. Failure in any one part of the Internet is
expected and dealt with in short order. Various parts of the Internet
fail all the time and you only very rarely notice.

Back to today, when the hammer came down. SuprNova.org and
TorrentBits.com each played host to thousands of BitTorrent trackers.
When these sites went down the torrents went Poof!, as if they'd never
existed. This evening the members of the MPAA must be feeling quite
satisfied with themselves - they see this danger as passed; never again
will BitTorrent threaten the revenues of the Hollywood studios.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

As Hollywood is so fond of sequels, it seems perfectly fitting that
today's suppression of the leading BitTorrent sites bears an uncanny
resemblance to an event which took place in July of 2000. Facing a
rising sea of lawsuits and numerous court orders demanding an immediate
shutdown, the archetypal peer-to-peer service, Napster, pulled the plug
on its own servers, silencing the millions of users who used the service
as a central exchange to locate songs to download. That should have
been the end of that. But it wasn't. Instead, the number of songs
traded on the Internet today dwarfs the number traded in Napster's
heyday. The suppression of Napster led to a profusion of alternatives -
Gnutella, Kazaa, and BitTorrent.

Gnutella is a particularly telling example of how the suppression of a
seductive technology (and peer-to-peer file trading is very seductive -
ask anyone who's done it) only results in an improved technology taking
its place. Instead of relying on a centralized server - a fault that
both Napster and BitTorrent share - Gnutella uses a process of discovery
to let peers share information with each other about what's available
where. The peers in a Gnutella peer-to-peer network self-organize into
an occasionally unreliable but undeniably expansive network of content.
Because of its distributed nature, shutting down any one Gnutella peer
has only a very limited effect on the overall network. One individual's
collection of music might evaporate, but there are still tens of
thousands of others to pick from. This network of Gnutella peers (and
its offspring, such as Kazaa, BearShare, and Acquisition) has been
growing since its introduction in 2001, mostly invisibly, but ever more
pervasively.

If Napster hadn't been run out of business by the RIAA, it's unlikely
that any need for Gnutella would have arisen; if the RIAA hadn't
attacked that single point of failure, there'd have been no need to
develop a solution which, by design, has no single point to failure.
It's as though both sides in the war over piracy and file sharing are
engaged in an evolutionary struggle: every time one side comes up with a
new strategy, the other side evolves a response to it. This isn't just
a cat-and-mouse game; each attack by the RIAA, generates a response of
increasing sophistication. And, today, the MPAA has blundered into this
arms race. This was, as will soon be seen, a Very Bad Idea.

Pointing up the single greatest weakness of BitTorrent take down the
tracker and the torrent dies - has only served to energize, inspire and
mobilize the resources of an entire global ecology of software
developers, network engineers and hackers-at-large who want nothing so
much, at this moment, as to make the MPAA pay for their insolence.
Imagine a parent reaching into a child's room and ripping a TV set out
of the wall while the child is watching it. That child would feel anger
and begin plotting his revenge. And that scene has been multiplied at
least hundred thousand times today, all around the world. It is quite
likely that, as I type these words, somewhere in the world a roomful of
college CS students, fueled by coke and pizza and righteous indignation,
are banging out some code which will fix the inherent weakness of
BitTorrent - removing the need for a single tracker. If they're smart
enough, they'll work out a system of dynamic trackers, which could
quickly pass control back and forth among a cloud of peers, so that no
one peer holds the hot potato long enough to be noticed. They'll take
the best of Gnutella and cross-breed it with the best of BitTorrent.
And that will be the MPAA's worst nightmare.

Hey, Hollywood! Can you feel the future slipping through your fingers?
Do you understand how badly you've screwed up? You took a perfectly
serviceable situation - a nice, centralized system for the distribution of media, and, through your own greed and shortsightedness, are giving birth to a system of digital distribution that you'll never, ever be able to defeat. In your avarice and arrogance you ignored the obvious: you should have cut a deal with SuprNova.org. In partnership you could have found a way to manage the disruptive change that's already well underway. Instead, you have repeated the mistakes made by the recording industry, chapter and verse. And thus you have spelled your own doom.

It's said that the best sequels are just like the original, only bigger and louder. Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves for one hell of a crash. This baby is now fully out of control.

Mark Pesce
Sydney/Hobart
20 December 2004
Released under the Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0
www.creativecommons.org

DIGITAL MIX at Yale, December 10th

Sarah Brown and Eddan Katz organized this event which looks really terrific! Go if you can.

DIGITAL MIX, a one-of-a-kind musical event, brings the avant-garde of music to the future of law in the digital age

A Paysonn Wolff Lecture

Friday, December 10, 2004 6:30pm - 11:00pm EST
Levinson Auditorium, Yale Law School, 127 Wall St.
Free Admission

with

**DJ Spooky**
presenting "Rhythm Science"--a live multi-media presentation of the history of digital art and media

**Mark Hosler of Negativland**
presenting "Adventures in Illegal Art"--a presentation illustrating the many creative projects, hoaxes, pranks and "culture jamming" of the band Negativland

**Mike Godwin, Legal Director of Public Knowledge**
discussing the legal issues involved in appropriation art

**Nelson Pavlosky, Founder of the Free Culture campus chapter movement**
introducing the Free Culture campus chapter movement

What they say about the event:

Musical creation has historically evolved independent of the law. Copyright law, which protects musical works from unauthorized copying, has traditionally steered clear of intervening with the creation of music. An exploding new musical movement however, the art of the DJ, has grown in tension with the law. Rooted in the digital appropriation of sound samples and image clips, DJ music takes shape in conflict with the legal regime of copyright not yet comfortably adapted to the digital age. The event Digital Mix provides a sample of some of the hottest artists producing DJ music and digital video, as well as a lawyer and an activist working on the front line of artist-friendly copyright law reform. The event hopes to provoke not only artistic reflection, but a re-examination of how law and music can evolve together.

The Information Society Project New Haven Advocate
and
Public Knowledge

"...the uncontrolled desires of people can be a very unpleasant thing" - Ed Castronova

This was said in relation to online community systems and games. I was at this conference at NY Law School a week ago last Friday and Saturday... The State of Play. Heard a great panel called Intellectual Property/Digial Property, with David Johnson (New York Law School) moderating with Yochai Benkler (Yale Law School), Edward Castronova (Indiana University, Bloomington), Cory Ondrejka (Vice President of Product Development, Linden Lab, creators of Second Life) and David Post (Temple University Law School).

Yochai Benker talked about "second generation creativity" where users make one thing and then others modify... also talking about the logic behind why creative commons did not allow people to prohibit attribution...

I listened a lot and didn't take very good notes... because it was the first time I'd been online and been able to really do stuff in about four days, uninterupted.

Cool folks were there either speaking, posting papers or just taking in the ideas: Ernie Miller, James Grimmelman, Eddan Katz, Jack Balkin, Susan Crawford... lots of gamers, lawyers, some engineers. The conference wasn't just about gaming, but also about the future of online expression in other media, and the ways to control behavior with law, social norms, technical controls, or system architectures.

Who Are These People and Where do They Get This Link Policy Stuff?

Came across another clueless linking policy that is just absolutely revealing about how little people understand what is going on online. This time, it's the Pacific Research Institute. It starts out:

Pacific Research Institute Linking Agreement and Link Conditions

Pacific Research Institute (PRI) welcomes links to its Web site. However, before adding a link, you must obtain express written approval from PRI. To seek approval for such a link, please fill out the form below and click the submit button at the bottom of this form. You will be notified by e-mail if you are granted approval to link to pacificresearch.org.

By establishing a link to the PRI Web site, you are deemed to have agreed to the Link Conditions (note: Ed. bold marks)

Right. I'm going to fill out a form to link to them, including a box for the "purpose of my site." WTF. The purpose of my site is to get C&D'd over your freaking linking policy. I'll add it to the pile of other ridiculous C&Ds.

However, I noticed that the language is almost the same as last week's linking policy dust-up. Where do they get this garbage and who is running around recommending to ignorant site owners/keepers that this is acceptible?

The rest of their link policy:

General Link Conditions

Upon approval, links may be established to the PRI home page at www.pacificresearch.org. Links may not be established to any other pages of the PRI Web site without PRI's prior written permission.

After link approval is given to the PRI Web site, PRI grants you a limited, non-exclusive, nontransferable, royalty-free license to use the PRI service mark (logo) and Internet icon(s), if available, (the "Licensed Marks") solely for the purpose of serving as a link from your Web site to the PRI Web site. Except for the limited license to use the Licensed Marks granted in this paragraph, you may not use any of PRI's trademarks or service marks (the "Marks") for any reason without PRI's prior written permission.

You acknowledge that all rights to the Marks, the content appearing on the Web site, and the look and feel of the Web site belong to PRI. You will not at any time directly or indirectly contest or infringe these rights.

If you link to the PRI Web site, your Web site:

-Should not create frames around PRI's Web site or use any technique that alters the visual presentation of PRI's Web site.

-Should not imply that PRI is endorsing you or your products or services.

-In the absence of any affiliation with the PRI, should not imply an affiliation between your company and PRI without the prior written consent of PRI.

-Should not misrepresent your relationship with PRI or present false or misleading impressions about PRI's products or services.

-Should not contain materials that may be interpreted as distasteful or offensive; all materials should be appropriate for all age groups.

PRI has no responsibility or liability for any content appearing on your Web site.

PRI may at any time, in its sole discretion, immediately terminate your license to use the Licensed Marks and your right to link to the PRI Web site, with or without cause. If PRI exercises this right, you will immediately remove all links to PRI's Web pages and cease using PRI’s Licensed Marks.

PRI may amend these Link Conditions at any time. You agree to abide by these Link Conditions and all other legal terms and conditions on the PRI web site, as amended from time to time. All terms and conditions related to the use of the PRI's Web site will be construed according to the laws of the State of California, United States of America, without regard to its conflict-of-law provisions.

No Link Love Yet

But Ernie Miller, who was just on IT Conversations this afternoon for his first show, also just told me that it is going to be a weekly, called: "The Importance of Law and IT." How exciting. Will post the links soon.

But it sounds great!

UPDATE: Ernie sends the link to his show below in the comments.

The Irony of It All

Yes, I work at a blog company and I barely have time to blog. Several things are up: Official news from Donna Wentworth and Fred Von Lohmann at EFF that the JibJab suit has been settled. Congratulations to EFF and the Public Domain.

Also, UC Berkeley has made a deal with Real Networks to give students access to Rhapsody for $2 a month. Less than a latte, and certainly less than the $9.95 regular rate. But there are limitations on bandwidth, etc. Undergrads get it free through Oct 31, and grad students pay from the start. Wonder how they figured that one out. Why not give everyone a chance to check it out and then charge. Are grad students more likely to just pay up front? Or too busy to download music in ways the University might get into trouble for because they have so much work, or if UCB didn't regulate it and make the Real offer?

Copyright Rumor Mill

I just heard that EFF has won its case representing the Jibjab guys. EFF contended that Woodie Gunthrie didn't renew copyright on "This Land is Your Land" back in the day when copyright terms had to be renewed. Documents were filed with courts and letters were written, but now, apparently, according to the copyright rumor mill, EFF and Jibjab have "settled," whatever that means. Apparently they got "everything they wanted" because it turns out nobody ever renewed the copyright on the song.

Hopefully EFF will let us know soon for sure. But congratulations on the win for EFF and the commons!

Updated 8/23/04

Cease and Desist Me Babe, II

By introducing a link to the ATHENS 2004 official Website on your site you are agreeing to comply with the ATHENS 2004 Website General Terms and Conditions.

I'll link to them however I please.

I hope they are following the traffic to their site, via links and their Technorati cosmos. There appear to be tons of posts from other bloggers writing about their linking policy, which of course means those bloggers may all be in violation as well. Oh my! Are we having an international incident? Do you think they've heard of Diebold?

Ooops. I forgot to send the request letter to get permission to link to them. I'm in a pill-ish mood, can you tell?

Registration Systems for News Sites...

Robert Andrews commented on the Online News Association maillist, and on his blog about registration systems and users/readers frustration with online news sites that each require registration. His thoughts about a common registration system are understandable, but his suggestion that we get something similar to Passport (totally creepy) or Typekey (I have mixed feelings about it; see below) are problematic. Also, Adam Pennenberg has written something for Wired this last week on news site registration, where he admits to committing "..identity theft against my multiple selves..." as he tries to remember his many registration personalities across many news sites, while trying to protect his privacy by registering as people with wildly different demographics. I have to admit, I'm an 85 year old man living in Atlanta on the Washington Post's site, and have many other identities, for the Chicago Tribune, the LATimes, the Miami Herald... and for the NYTimes? I registered eight years ago describing my black lab, now deceased, which is still my login ID. So can totally identify with his story. Maybe I'm paranoid. Although I don't mind the targeted ads at all; in fact I prefer them, because if they are good, I actually want the information. But I hate the collection of my reading habits that are potentially available for some individual, company or government to sift through and put together. What do I have to hide? Nothing. But that's really not the point. People who have nothing to hide, start self-censoring when they know they are tracked and watched. And that corrodes the democracy and the commons. And it leads to totalitarianism. That's not the democracy I signed up for.

Identity Commons and Sxip are both working on creating a common user ID that could work across websites, including registrations, blog commenting, for reducing different kinds of spam and email including trackback spam. But there are problems and they are in development, so we have to wait to see what they come up with. But there are lots of security and privacy issues, like who keeps the data (Identity Commons is doing a distributed system) and for each instance where a system like this would be implemented, you have to think about who is using it, and what do trolls or spammers or other baddies have to gain from gaming the system. The controls that keep them in check may also be collecting information on the rest of us that as we learn more about the effects of our own online activites, we feel uncomfortable with and cause us to shift our intellectual consumption.

Adam and Robert both suggest a single registration system for logging into publishers sites. It would be great if publishers used a single system, for the convenience, but what happens when someone subpoenas the records of your activities across all those sites? How do you keep people's reading habits private? Sooner or later, it will happen. It's a matter of when and how the information goes out of the hands of the collectors, and into to other's hands.

Regarding Typekey, have you used it? I've installed a bunch of Moveable Type 3-series blogs recently, and set up Typekey both for the blog's back end and as a commenter, and find the whole thing disconcerting. First, as the blog owner, I have to connect myself via the blog to Moveable Type, by registering and giving my blog info. Then with that code they've given me on their site, I install it into the configuration on my blog's backend, which the system then syncs with MT back on their end. Then users come along, and when they want to comment, the blog redirects them to create a profile with Typekey if they don't already have one, which makes them able to post on any blog that require Typekey for comments. When a comment is made, the Typekey/MT site inserts an image on the comment located at the blogpost, linking back to the Typekey commenter profile located at the Typekey site. Each time *anyone* looks at the blog, MT gets a signal or ping, because that image has been called up from the Typekey site, as part of the opening of the weblog somewhere else, so MT could collect data about not just the blog and the commenter, but about everyone who visits that blog, somewhere out in blogland. And if you visit several blogs that all use Typekey and have these images planted there, even though you haven't signed up for Typekey as a blog owner or commenter, you can in a way be tracked, your reading habits recorded and strung together.

The upshot is that the three steps that Typekey and MT create to control comment spam also allow them to collect and use lots of data, beyond just the blog owner's registration or even commenter verification. I understand that they want to provide this service, and it's free, but it's disconcerting, Their privacy policy, that I can find, on typekey.sixapart.com concerns whether they will sell my email or other personal info not available on the web, as a commenter:

What about my privacy?

We're committed to providing a service that respects user privacy. Therefore, we will not publish information that you have not chosen to make public, nor will we share your information without your explicit permission. We're not in the business of selling email addresses, and we give users the option to choose whether they'd like to send their email address to the sites which they are commenting on.

Who runs TypeKey? Is it safe?

TypeKey is a service of Six Apart. We're a well-established weblog software company, with hundreds of thousands of users and offices in the U.S. and Japan. We're committed to making sure TypeKey is reliable, safe, and secure, and we've made sure our privacy policy is as protective as you'd expect: We don't want to send junk mail to you any more than you want to receive it.

TypeKey never shares your password information with site owners, and comment information is only retained on the site you've commented on, not on the TypeKey service. TypeKey is a service for authentication and, >in the case of comment registration, we leave it up to the weblog owners to decide who can post to their own weblogs.

And their Typekey Comment Registration FAQ says this, though there is no link to the privacy policy and searches on the site turn up no privacy policy but this reference:

Using TypeKey means that all of your private information, like your email address and password, will be maintained in one place, rather than saved in weblog systems around the world. The information you submit to TypeKey is governed by a privacy policy, whereas information that you might submit to individual weblogs would not be.

Why should I trust Six Apart to not sell my data or share it with unauthorized privacy?

Because not only are we, as individuals, committed to protecting our users privacy, but, we as a corporation, will also provide a privacy policy that outlines specifically what we will do with your data. Our privacy policy is simple: We will not sell your email address or other personal information. And, without your explicit approval, we will not share your information publicly or with partners.

Fair enough, they won't share my info if I register, unless they get my permission. But what about my visits to blogs that have their profile image on them?

I did find, by googling "privacy typekey," this privacy policy and the key points for non-registered users and the collecting of info (from different sections) appears to be:

• Six Apart automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser, including your IP address, cookie, and the page you request.

• Six Apart receives IP addresses from all users because this information is automatically reported by your browser each time you view a web page.

So what matters here is that not only is the Typekey system capable of collecting IP address information and the reading habits on registered users, both blog owners and registered commenters, but also anyone who accesses a blog that uses Typekey with a planted profile image. I would love to see Typekey's privacy policy state that it was not collecting my IP address across blogs; that it was deleting the last three digits from of the IP from it's system; that it was not available for subpoena. I understand they might want to crunch it for a week or two after collection, but at that point, deleting it would be great. And yes, IP is personal identification. A few mistakes not withstanding, just ask the RIAA how they are finding users they are suing for providing music uploads.... It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.

Services and publishers that want to create single login registration need to think about the same issues, and make better systems than the current state of Passport or Typekey, so that not just the sharing of a registered user's email is addressed, but also what happens with the collection of reading habit information internally, what they will do when they get subpoenaed for the information they collect, or when the government comes along wanting a copy of the database under the Patriot Act, etc. One of the key tenants of freedom of speech is intellectual freedom, and the freedom to read in private, without fear of surveillance, because if people don't have that, they will self-censor. And it leads to corrosion of the intellectual and democratic health of the system.

Translating Doc Searls and Ernie Miller

There is every chance that I'll totally screw this up, that I'm getting this wrong. But I just spent an hour talking to Ernie Miller, who started out by saying that Doc, who's been talking about the content metaphor, the commodification of knowledge and containers and why this doesn't work for him because it leads to business as shipping as a metaphor, is missing the point. In our conversation this morning, Doc said he'd like to see the shipping as business metaphor unpacked and rethought, to include a kind of humanity that the content metaphor doesn't now allow us.

But by the end of the call with Ernie, I realized that he and Doc are saying things that actually agree, but they are talking about them with words that they each mean differently. Doc is talking about shipping as a container to be shipped, with content inside, and wants the content to be regarded as a reflection of our humanity. It's a noun Doc is referring to there in the container. Though I don't think he is putting forth a replacement for what he sees as a very broken metaphor, that leads to the property metaphor when dealing with content, which props up the broken copyright system we now have.

Ernie is talking about content, regardless of its importance, so that as an indistinguishable item, it cannot be discriminated against, no matter how base a reflection of ourselves it is, and that the real issue is that in its indistinguishable state, distribution is what matters for speech and first amendment protection. And through the conduit of the speech metaphor, we get the humanity to speak whatever we are, and it's all protected, regardless of what it is. Even with commodification, there is a recognition of equality of speech across media types and expressions. Ernie is talking about the verb of shipping, where the act of shipping is distribution and to him that is most important.

To state it simply, it's shipping as a container (noun) which is a bad metaphor verses shipping as distribution (verb) which is a good metaphor. They are both using shipping but thinking of them in two different ways, where Doc is wanting to stop the use of the bad metaphor, but doesn't yet have a replacement, and Ernie is thinking about information existing only in it's transfer, where if you can't transfer it, it's meaningless. And it is in the transferal, via a network, and the act of shipping, that the word shipping gets meaning for him as a first amendment protected speech mechanism.

(Now, back to work!)

Dada and Surealism: Frank Field and the Folding Chair

Frank has a response to Ernie's question: What is DRM for? (that's digital restrictions management). Frank thinks it's like the folding chairs people use in Boston to mark parking spaces they've cleared of snow, and want to save for themselves for later. They are sending a message that if the space is taken by another, there will be trouble, regardless of how easy it is to get around the folding chair. In other words, DRM is a place holder so people know they are doing something wrong when the break it, even if the restrictive quality is easy to get around.

Frank a little later with Cynicism 2:

DRM is part of a process to break us of the nasty habit of thinking culture is a common good. Like a speed bump, it’s not about making us stop; it’s about making us recognize that someone thinks what we're doing is wrong. And then using our own naïvité to get us to stop.

Doc Searls was talking this morning about how using the word "content" buys into the idea that culture, human knowledge, creativity, are commodities and if that is our metaphor, then shipping the content is central. And this debases our humanity, and keeps us from models where we can iterate knowledge in a commons for the good of everyone, as well as focus on ways to create business in the new digital internet-based system. If we rethink this, we have a chance at understanding that distribution is a central feature to be emphasized, as well as protected as a first amendment activity, which is something Ernie Miller thinks about a lot.

China Digital Conference Day II: Larry Lessig Keynote.

Xiao Qiang (our host and organizer of the conference): The conference is about China, but not static country, but a dynamic, changing, interconnected country. With that, introduced Larry Lessig (the following are notes from his talk).

Larry Lessig: China's Digital Future (title). 15 years ago he bought his first ticket to China, and was graduating from Law School and wanted to celebrate. His plane was to land on June 3rd, 1989. But they were diverted to the Phillipines, and eventually he made his way to Beijing. It was an astonishing way to recognize Beijing compared to the picutures on the news the previous two months. On a train from Beijing to Shanghi, on a train sitting with a professor who spoke English, and chatted about what all this meant. Lessig was proud of his heritage, traditions, but wanted insight about China. And so wanted the core ideal. But that is also a blindness. The issue of the internet upon thinking about it, may be a blindness, a core, an insight to realize.

Daguerrotype led to Kodak, which led to an expanding market. Question in the courts over whether one needed permission to take and then publish the photo. The answer was no. You were free to capture and share images, and then at that point the explosion of growth in photography took off. But if the courts decided to not make it free, things would have been different. It would have been:

D(aguerre)
M(achine)
C(ontrol)
A(ct)

So is there an insight here for China? (Onscreen:) Insight: China.

...."to steal a book is an elegant offense" -- William P. Alford. Recognizing the complexity of intellectual property. But there is blindness in China too. Cybercafes where monitoring comes up. Surveillance. Access to the internet and control of it shut it down. Cybercafes in the US are the opposite. Very strong freedom for cafes to be free of surveillance in cafes in CA. But there is blindness in the US, too. Blindness about Intellectual Property. The question is the freedom in the context of IP. The stakes of course are different. And don't mean to equate the context and weight in both situations. But do want to look at the parallel. To find what we can teach each other, find the insights. An opportunity to recognize the blindness in each other's cultures, and respectfully tell each other. In the same way that the men on the train to Shanghi thought each needed to know certain things before they could understand each other's cutlures.

Radical change. Dimensions: term, scope, force, reach.

Term: 14 years, x2, but now it's 70 years after death, and for Irving Berlin, his most famous work gets 140 years. Before, the renewal was not done half the time, so the average length of a term was >33 years. But now, the maximum is the average.

Scope: only copyright granted if you registered, but now, everything is automatically copyrighted. Which means that in the beginning of the US, only about 1% was copyrighted, so that 99% was in the public domain. So after 1976, everything gets the benefit of copyright, and the formalities have been eliminated, so that was 25% regulated before 76, is now 100% regulated. Before the Internet, courts and humans regulated. Now: the rule is regulated by technology under-which access is granted. Code. Law. Code is law.

Example, Middlemarch is a public domain book, but the Adobe EBook reader does not reflect this. You can only copy 10 pages every 10 days, print 10 pages every ten days, and read aloud. It's machine readable controls that are enforced by the system.

http://aibopet.com. This site gave info on how to hack your Aibo to "teach your Aibo jazz." Not a crime to dance in the US. Not a crime to teach your dog to dance. But when this Aibo site gave instructures, they were C&D'd by Sony for sharing the hack so that you could have your dog dance. The law protecting the code, protecting access to the code, says the maker has final say, not the owner of the Aibo.

Reach: Used to be that fair use meant that you had free use for certain ordinary uses. But now all those uses can be regulated by machines.

Dimenions: term, scope, force, reach.

Never has the law granted this much power to the few to control "creativity." Very different than when Walt Disney could be creative without asking his lawyers first. The internet squares this ability to create that Disney knew.

Gave a couple of examples including the Grey Album and the Read My Lips video of Tony Blair and George Bush which the audience totally cracked up over. Obviously they'd never seen it. A lot of clapping and giggling.

So when people ask him why he does copyright law, it's because this regulation of copyright law, when tied to digital technology ,says something about how culture and democracy could develop. And yet all the examples are illegal art. And yet none could be sustained. And each sought permission to use the materials. And in each case, the lawyers responded that "it's not funny." But the system of permission forces creators to be disaddents or comply. But if they comply, they can say much less.

So here's the core. The blindness. We see this system regulating potential. Changing the freedom to speak. To speak differently. Not broadcast democracy, or a kind of Soviet system, but as a bottom up system. Not a NYTimes democracy, but a blog democracy. A p2p democracy. The ideals of free culture. That is lost. Because the law has said that without seeking permission first, the answer is no.

Jesse Jordan, at RPI, decided he would make something to allow people to search files on the RPI network. So he tinkered with the technology to enable people to search better and produced a 1 million file network, 2/3 of which had nothing to do with music. But he got C&D'd by the RIAA, and because copyright infringement is $150k per infringement, he had $15,000,000 of exposure. So the RIAA took his $12k in student savings for making a search engine. And in talking with his lawyer-uncle who said he would help, but it would probably cost $250k. So the choice is to send the $12k or spend $250k.

In 1987, the J. M. Barrie estate had "the Little White Bird" enter the public domain. In 1928, Barrie also produced "the Boy that Would Not Grow Up" which will enter the public domain in 2023. This was the basis of Peter Pan. In 2002 Emily Somma wrote "After the Rain" about how people should want to grow up. But she was informed that she would have to wait until ALL the Peter Pan stuff is in the public domain before she can publish her work.

Another example: a film maker wants to publish his documentary with a Meet the Press clip but NBC told him it "does not make the President look good" so he was denied the clip, though the interview was about matters of national importance. So he is not using it.

And there are the Diebold memos and the C&Ds using the DMCA to force the take down of the memos at Swarthmore (and elsewhere including Berkeley).

Copyright is increasingly a feature that stifles. But this is a conference about China and the internet. Where there is a different kind of control. But we can say the same from a different perspective. There is the Yahoo France case, where the French court told Yahoo to take Nazi content down for France. In the US, there was outrage that France was regulating the internet and violating the first amendment. And yet a couple of years before, there was the iCraveTV case in the US where TV was available on the itnernet. In Canada, there was a law that allowed the rebroadcast of TV, so it was made available, but the US court said that Canada had to block US users, and the court asked how well the blocking would have and the answer was 98%. That wasn't good enough, so the US court shut down the Canadian site. So the nature of the case was different, and the content was differet, but the blindness was the same. The core blindness is the same.

The stuff is different, but teh ideal is the same: freedom. Not anarchy. Not a world where standards are not obeyed. But think about the freedom and the prosperity it produced. Not a world without intellectual property. But a world where there are limits over the control. And if we can hear others, and they can hear us, then there is a potential to understand the Kodak moment. Where the moment where freedom that comes from recognizing that blindness is in in both places.

QandA: LL: this is a message for right wing conservatives about control. People have to begin to recognize this is a political issue. When he proposed a reduction in copyright, the MPAA said that it was too much of a burden on poor copyright owners to ask them, 50 years after the origin of the work, to pay $1 to reregister.

Orvill Schell: reflect on china, how important is it for a society to have a first amendment, something to lay out free speech, before it can have it?

LEssig: train, need foundational docs. prof: docs are words, need a culture that recognizes these values first. I think it's an insanely complicated thing to figure this out. Docs have never been used here to lay out culture. Though amendments, 13th, 14th and 15th were the first constitutional laws to attempt make a change in the culture and were totaly unsuccesfull for the frist 100 years. But then when it became a social and culture movement, the change started happening. So docs might be a useful step. But it requires more than just documents to really change.

Q; didn't explain Creative Commons, and we are working on CC in China, and how this will work?
A: CC started 2 years ago, so that creators could mark content, with a some rights reserved model, with human readable, lawyer readable, and machine readable expression, that for ex, Yahoo can now read, for say, photos. Got a million CC licenses out in the first year, but now Yahoo says it's 3 million, in a year and a half. To port the legal code into different systems, and there are more than 50 countries to date, Japan, Brazil, etc., and another 25 coming, it requires making one for each system. But these the code and CC licenses rest on copyright law in each country. Working on this in China.

Q from Jang: always talk about copyright in China, but want to hear about the challenges of piracy, for video, software, my observation is that the most important thing is to cut a balance. In China it's already outlawed. But it's a "lower circus of globalization" where migrant workers who can't find jobs and then they engage in this illegal activity.

A: In the spirit of recognizing the common blindenss. We in the US were born a pirate nation. We didn't protect foreign copyrights until 1889. This was a mistake. Every nation needs to respect foreign IP. But there is a difference between "piracy" and "piracy" which is one, reselling, verses two, creatively reusing as in the examples above.

A lawyer, who said to LL, do you realize that there is a kid with 400k songs on his computer? And LL said, do you really think that that kid would actually buy that or listen to that much music? So what is reasonable? Are you really losing those sales?

You can criticize piracy, and you should, but it's also about ideas of free trade, especially with respect to developing nations. There is something about making a balance here between them.

China Digital Conference Day II: Larry Lessig Keynote.

Xiao Qiang (our host and organizer of the conference): The conference is about China, but not static country, but a dynamic, changing, interconnected country. With that, introduced Larry Lessig (the following are notes from his talk).

Larry Lessig: China's Digital Future (title). 15 years ago he bought his first ticket to China, and was graduating from Law School and wanted to celebrate. His plane was to land on June 3rd, 1989. But they were diverted to the Phillipines, and eventually he made his way to Beijing. It was an astonishing way to recognize Beijing compared to the picutures on the news the previous two months. On a train from Beijing to Shanghi, on a train sitting with a professor who spoke English, and chatted about what all this meant. Lessig was proud of his heritage, traditions, but wanted insight about China. And so wanted the core ideal. But that is also a blindness. The issue of the internet upon thinking about it, may be a blindness, a core, an insight to realize.

Daguerrotype led to Kodak, which led to an expanding market. Question in the courts over whether one needed permission to take and then publish the photo. The answer was no. You were free to capture and share images, and then at that point the explosion of growth in photography took off. But if the courts decided to not make it free, things would have been different. It would have been:

D(aguerre)
M(achine)
C(ontrol)
A(ct)

So is there an insight here for China? (Onscreen:) Insight: China.

...."to steal a book is an elegant offense" -- William P. Alford. Recognizing the complexity of intellectual property. But there is blindness in China too. Cybercafes where monitoring comes up. Surveillance. Access to the internet and control of it shut it down. Cybercafes in the US are the opposite. Very strong freedom for cafes to be free of surveillance in cafes in CA. But there is blindness in the US, too. Blindness about Intellectual Property. The question is the freedom in the context of IP. The stakes of course are different. And don't mean to equate the context and weight in both situations. But do want to look at the parallel. To find what we can teach each other, find the insights. An opportunity to recognize the blindness in each other's cultures, and respectfully tell each other. In the same way that the men on the train to Shanghi thought each needed to know certain things before they could understand each other's cutlures.

Radical change. Dimensions: term, scope, force, reach.

Term: 14 years, x2, but now it's 70 years after death, and for Irving Berlin, his most famous work gets 140 years. Before, the renewal was not done half the time, so the average length of a term was >33 years. But now, the maximum is the average.

Scope: only copyright granted if you registered, but now, everything is automatically copyrighted. Which means that in the beginning of the US, only about 1% was copyrighted, so that 99% was in the public domain. So after 1976, everything gets the benefit of copyright, and the formalities have been eliminated, so that was 25% regulated before 76, is now 100% regulated. Before the Internet, courts and humans regulated. Now: the rule is regulated by technology under-which access is granted. Code. Law. Code is law.

Example, Middlemarch is a public domain book, but the Adobe EBook reader does not reflect this. You can only copy 10 pages every 10 days, print 10 pages every ten days, and read aloud. It's machine readable controls that are enforced by the system.

http://aibopet.com. This site gave info on how to hack your Aibo to "teach your Aibo jazz." Not a crime to dance in the US. Not a crime to teach your dog to dance. But when this Aibo site gave instructures, they were C&D'd by Sony for sharing the hack so that you could have your dog dance. The law protecting the code, protecting access to the code, says the maker has final say, not the owner of the Aibo.

Reach: Used to be that fair use meant that you had free use for certain ordinary uses. But now all those uses can be regulated by machines.

Dimenions: term, scope, force, reach.

Never has the law granted this much power to the few to control "creativity." Very different than when Walt Disney could be creative without asking his lawyers first. The internet squares this ability to create that Disney knew.

Gave a couple of examples including the Grey Album and the Read My Lips video of Tony Blair and George Bush which the audience totally cracked up over. Obviously they'd never seen it. A lot of clapping and giggling.

So when people ask him why he does copyright law, it's because this regulation of copyright law, when tied to digital technology ,says something about how culture and democracy could develop. And yet all the examples are illegal art. And yet none could be sustained. And each sought permission to use the materials. And in each case, the lawyers responded that "it's not funny." But the system of permission forces creators to be disaddents or comply. But if they comply, they can say much less.

So here's the core. The blindness. We see this system regulating potential. Changing the freedom to speak. To speak differently. Not broadcast democracy, or a kind of Soviet system, but as a bottom up system. Not a NYTimes democracy, but a blog democracy. A p2p democracy. The ideals of free culture. That is lost. Because the law has said that without seeking permission first, the answer is no.

Jesse Jordan, at RPI, decided he would make something to allow people to search files on the RPI network. So he tinkered with the technology to enable people to search better and produced a 1 million file network, 2/3 of which had nothing to do with music. But he got C&D'd by the RIAA, and because copyright infringement is $150k per infringement, he had $15,000,000 of exposure. So the RIAA took his $12k in student savings for making a search engine. And in talking with his lawyer-uncle who said he would help, but it would probably cost $250k. So the choice is to send the $12k or spend $250k.

In 1987, the J. M. Barrie estate had "the Little White Bird" enter the public domain. In 1928, Barrie also produced "the Boy that Would Not Grow Up" which will enter the public domain in 2023. This was the basis of Peter Pan. In 2002 Emily Somma wrote "After the Rain" about how people should want to grow up. But she was informed that she would have to wait until ALL the Peter Pan stuff is in the public domain before she can publish her work.

Another example: a film maker wants to publish his documentary with a Meet the Press clip but NBC told him it "does not make the President look good" so he was denied the clip, though the interview was about matters of national importance. So he is not using it.

And there are the Diebold memos and the C&Ds using the DMCA to force the take down of the memos at Swarthmore (and elsewhere including Berkeley).

Copyright is increasingly a feature that stifles. But this is a conference about China and the internet. Where there is a different kind of control. But we can say the same from a different perspective. There is the Yahoo France case, where the French court told Yahoo to take Nazi content down for France. In the US, there was outrage that France was regulating the internet and violating the first amendment. And yet a couple of years before, there was the iCraveTV case in the US where TV was available on the itnernet. In Canada, there was a law that allowed the rebroadcast of TV, so it was made available, but the US court said that Canada had to block US users, and the court asked how well the blocking would have and the answer was 98%. That wasn't good enough, so the US court shut down the Canadian site. So the nature of the case was different, and the content was differet, but the blindness was the same. The core blindness is the same.

The stuff is different, but teh ideal is the same: freedom. Not anarchy. Not a world where standards are not obeyed. But think about the freedom and the prosperity it produced. Not a world without intellectual property. But a world where there are limits over the control. And if we can hear others, and they can hear us, then there is a potential to understand the Kodak moment. Where the moment where freedom that comes from recognizing that blindness is in in both places.

QandA: LL: this is a message for right wing conservatives about control. People have to begin to recognize this is a political issue. When he proposed a reduction in copyright, the MPAA said that it was too much of a burden on poor copyright owners to ask them, 50 years after the origin of the work, to pay $1 to reregister.

Orvill Schell: reflect on china, how important is it for a society to have a first amendment, something to lay out free speech, before it can have it?

LEssig: train, need foundational docs. prof: docs are words, need a culture that recognizes these values first. I think it's an insanely complicated thing to figure this out. Docs have never been used here to lay out culture. Though amendments, 13th, 14th and 15th were the first constitutional laws to attempt make a change in the culture and were totaly unsuccesfull for the frist 100 years. But then when it became a social and culture movement, the change started happening. So docs might be a useful step. But it requires more than just documents to really change.

Q; didn't explain Creative Commons, and we are working on CC in China, and how this will work?
A: CC started 2 years ago, so that creators could mark content, with a some rights reserved model, with human readable, lawyer readable, and machine readable expression, that for ex, Yahoo can now read, for say, photos. Got a million CC licenses out in the first year, but now Yahoo says it's 3 million, in a year and a half. To port the legal code into different systems, and there are more than 50 countries to date, Japan, Brazil, etc., and another 25 coming, it requires making one for each system. But these the code and CC licenses rest on copyright law in each country. Working on this in China.

Q from Jang: always talk about copyright in China, but want to hear about the challenges of piracy, for video, software, my observation is that the most important thing is to cut a balance. In China it's already outlawed. But it's a "lower circus of globalization" where migrant workers who can't find jobs and then they engage in this illegal activity.

A: In the spirit of recognizing the common blindenss. We in the US were born a pirate nation. We didn't protect foreign copyrights until 1889. This was a mistake. Every nation needs to respect foreign IP. But there is a difference between "piracy" and "piracy" which is one, reselling, verses two, creatively reusing as in the examples above.

A lawyer, who said to LL, do you realize that there is a kid with 400k songs on his computer? And LL said, do you really think that that kid would actually buy that or listen to that much music? So what is reasonable? Are you really losing those sales?

You can criticize piracy, and you should, but it's also about ideas of free trade, especially with respect to developing nations. There is something about making a balance here between them.

China's Digital Future Conference

Just started. Webcast there as well. First introductions....

Orville Schell, dean of the JSchool at UCB: Now in China, there is the question, what does it mean to be Chinese? The internet is one of those places where you begin to see the discussion, weblogs, chatrooms, txt messages.

Will China change the internet? This is an old theme in China: use technology from the west but then also reject politics, value, all the things that create revolution and radical change. Can China use what it wants but keep its own identity, keeping out what it finds too foreign? He quoted John Perry Barlow: the global space you are building will naturally be free of the tyrannies you are imposing... and then noted the posting on the internet in China recently with 14 questions for the propaganda department, why they exist, posing the kind of challenge that Barlow would have been proud of.

Annalee Saxenian, our new dean of SIMS: The Politics of Standards. Some people refer to it as the politics of protectionism.... And key for future development in China: applications, content, engineering and design. And the internet.

Panels on Internet Development in China and Regulation and Control of the Internet. Here are some notes from the second panel this afternoon:

Cindy Cohen, EFF: every time there is a new tool, a free speech mechanism, it has to fight for it's survival...
regarding privacy, the record of the internet has been more mixed... on balance. Architecture as policy - Mitch Kapor. That is an important observation, because the architecture will determine people's rights. In China we see the worst story around, where greatly accelerated internet use, 78 million users in China and 4 million broadband users.
Original strategy was filtering content. But the strategies to get around those are easy to implement and widespread. So now the reaction is not so much content filtering, but a distributed system of surveillance, with systems installed on users computers and used by ISPs -- often made by US companies and government who are trying to use those things here. And the US government has started this with Kalia, and forced it onto foreign governments through standards. China has taken the lead on doing voice recognition software for the purposes of surveillance and for doing video with almost instantaneous high speed transfer.

Bill Xia, pres of Dynamic Internet Projects -- and makes technologies that can get around the surveillance systems: He says the biggest challenge in China today is not technology, but the social issues. In China, surveillance occurs during the routing of packets where the to and from are watched. Also, the government claims that they are blocking things like porn sites, but in fact when you look at the blacklists, this is not true. There is severe overblocking of all sorts of things, including sites like 3dweb.com. Fear: truth or illusion? People say they don't worry because they have nothing to hide. But it occupies people's minds. And destroys traditions, as well as changes language: traditional Chinese characters have been filtered out of the culture. He thinks that there are cracks in the Chinese control system, and the fact that there are 500k users in China of his company's system to get around the control (out of 78 million users in China).

John Battelle (moderator) asked if users feel it's dangerous to use the product. And Xia responded no for regular users, but yes for some others, but then got cut off on the next presentation.

Jonathan Zittrain: Gave a chilling effects example where a DMCA C&D letter caused Google to remove a site, where on the supply side, the links then went to the original info at chilling effects. But on the other hand, other sites are deleted entirely from French and German search sites.

On the demand side, if you go to Google.com in China, you are redirected to the University of Beijing search site. Also, some testing of sites showed they were blocked by China, as well as many key word searches like "std" or "revolution." Found a few thousand sites that were blocked, including news sites, UC Courts, British Courts, porn, etc.

Tracking filtering is becoming more difficult, because there are new forms of filtering including the client side stuff. Also, if you do the wrong search, you are blocked from Google for about 20 minutes. Including searches that are not subversive at all. Comparatively, in Saudia Arabia, it's more bark than bite, verses China, which is the opposite.

Opennet Initiative is Zittrain's latest project examining filtering, along with folks from other universities. Examples of filtering they've found: the word "ass" in any domain gets blocked, which ends up filtering the "US Embassy" site. He clearly relishes giving this example, as with the rest of the presentation. He's having a lot of fun here.

He also challenges the NYTimes to get involved, so that when things open up, they have established their brand, since they are now totally blocked in China.

Jie Cheng, associate professor at Tsinghua University Law School: talked about how the filtering standards need to be revised. The social norms are more important than what the normative law. Later at the cocktain party, she talked about how China needs to be better with filtering, so that they don't block so many harmless sites. Obviously she has a hard job, coming here to explain her country's actions and policies to this audience but she and the audience were cordial in explaining questions and positions. It's a difficult position she's in.

.........................................................................................................
Best quote of the day: Tom Vest, Packet Clearing House: "ruling a great nation is like hooking a small fish, a light touch might be best."

Giga... Tera... Peta. Got it.

Brewster Kahle is chatting up front at CFP (where I've been all week; conf mood? lite paranoia peppered with ironic humor) about the Internet Archive, and the may-we, will-we, should-we questions of archiving the entire universe of digial stuff. It's a lot of stuff too. Peta's full.

Rest of the week has been interesting, RFID, voting issues, awards to the likes of Avi Rubin, a big vote off between Avi and Deirdre Mulligan (one computer voting system said Avi won, one said Deirdre won -- who can tell, no paper trail), ethics of online data collection, privacy statements, the FCC and DRM, music distribution. All the usual folks. And guess what, in the midst of the issues they can laugh at themselves. Like John Gilmore today, at lunch doing a low hiss at one thing the keynoter, Rachel Brand from the DOJ said, and when I turned around and peeked at how serious that was, he giggled.

Honestly, I'm kind of tired and don't have anything interesting to say about these things right now. But still the conference was well put together, had humor and the folks that care about this stuff and doing interesting things.

Brewster just finished with a story: a man who had a bookmobile on a camel, and the answer to he gave to the problem of stability in his system? Have two camels.

As Mike Godwin said later over drinks with the cfp crowd, best cfp in 10 years.

ps, Joe Hall did some great CFP blogging this week.

A9 Search Goes Live... With The Attendent Privacy Issues

From Amazon. What they say it will do:

Search Inside the Book: In addition to web search results we present book results from Amazon.com that include Search Inside the Book. When you see an excerpt on any of the book results, click on the page number to see the actual page from that book. (You will need to be registered at Amazon.com.) Search and Click History of sites visited including the last time you visited that site (I can see the tracking now across users of the same computer... though it is a password protected feature) mouse over Site Info, Web search results licensed from Google, the A9 Toolbar which includes Web Search of the web and Amazon.com's Search Inside the Book, Your History regardless of computer used to access the info, take notes on a webpage with the Diary and do it from any computer, Site Info and stats, Pop-up Blocker.

That's quite a list. However, it offers after sign-in to give me access to some of these features, but the sign-in page is asking for my Amazon.com account and password. Interesting, as they have such an incredible amount of information on heavy buyers and browsers, and tying that together with your search over the web, is some pretty powerful personal information they are aggregating, including your credit card for purchases made mixed with all your other search. Let's see Google best that database of intentions. According to A9's privacy policy, they will be sharing this info with people outside the company under a variety of circumstances. Which means they can really do it whenever they want with whomever they designate a partner.

Don't think I'll be installing the toolbar anytime soon. Reminds me of the GMail controversy in terms of the privacy concerns. While I don't think either create enough problems to warrant not using them at all, I would be careful with both systems.

Update: check out danah's excellent "ickiness factor" and more privacy write-up. She articulates very well the issues around our discomfort with private information leaking out all over, and what designers might do to make things better.

One additional thought has to do with the "A9+everything you every bought at Amazon+everything is that there in your search history" information -- it's a preference threat, as it were, where your preferences are used to make decisions about you because someone can, because they gather your purchasing and browsing data, and decide you are X thing... and then redline you, or treat you differently or one-sidedly change what is happening without your knowing or consenting. It's a kind of threat that can have many manifestations, because the information leaks out to places the person did not intend when exchanging personal information for some purpose. When I get a driver's license, I think of this information, my driving record and the data on the license, as associated with driving, and some kind of state identification. When I purchase at Amazon, I think of that purchase as something between me and Amazon, not me+Amazon+all their partners+those that want to check out my interests beyond purchase (searches and intentions using A9).

This is what is so bothersome, because when I made the Amazon purchases in the past, A9 didn't exist. And yet now, all the personal information and preferences and purchases from that past can be lumped together with all the searching I might do. And they seem, from their privacy policy, to have no concept that I may not want all this information about me to go everywhere, or that I might not want it lumped together. Yes, I could make a different account on Amazon, with a different credit card and email address, buy why not do the right thing. Give me the choice to keep my information separate, and unconnected. Let me use the functionality of their search system, without having to tie it to my credit card.

Killing Expression

JD Lasica writes in The Killing Fields "of culture" about "copyright law and its challenges" and Jed Horowitz, who made Willful Infringement (a documentary for $15k!) during and after being sued by Disney for copyright infringement. Horowitz was making his own trailers for the Disney movies he was lawfully selling through Video Pipeline. He lost, because it's not fair use to make trailers of copyrighted movies. But the experience made him very aware of how copyright law stops innovation and shuts down certain kinds of expression. Many of the movie’s examples show much better than his particular story how copyright law in the digital era has been abused. Disney it seems to me had a case with Horowitz, though I think they should have worked with him, not sued him - and this is part of the problem: copyright holders only seem to know how to work the most extreme angle instead of figuring out a better solution against infringement.

One of the stories from the movie is about two party clowns who've been warned not to make balloon animals that resemble too closely any Disney characters. That seems utterly ridiculous and heavy handed.

Broadcast Flag Event April 21 in SF

Public Knowledge is hosting an event next Wednesday at the Frey Norris Gallery
in SF to celebrate the 21 tech companies that signed off recently on a letter objecting to the Broadcast Flag to the FCC. April 21st, 6:30pm - 9pm.

Companies that signed the letter include:
Aereal Inc., Bauhaus Software, Bitfone Corporation, Blossom Research (“GNU Radio Project”), CEDX Corporation, Damage Studios, Dandin Group, Feedster, Gibeo LLC, Lulu Enterprises, Inc, MySQL, Peak Internet, Slim Devices, Socialtext, Solari, Inc., Sputnik, Stonebrick Group, Ted Roche & Associates, LLC, Webmatter.com, Whizspark Corporation, and Wifinders. Download the attachment.

I can think of many more companies that should have signed off and should be involved going forward, because the BF affects so many technology innovations. But this is a wonderful start!

EFF Acquires the DOJ

Here.

Extension on CFP Early Registration

7 More Days.

Last Day to Register on the Cheap for CFP...

Computers, Freedom and Privacy that is, Ap 20-23, 2004. The major tech policy conference of the year gets more expensive if you register after today. Act now! And with a program like this, you can't justify *not* going to some of this (It's at the Clairmont Hotel in Berkeley).

When Your Users Give You Feedback: Conferences with Lawyers and Technologists

Got back into town yesterday after a couple days with friends skiing (yes, you can parallel and go straight down the black diamond runs after 6 years off the hill -- shocking -- I thought I would be lookin bad after all that time...). Anyway, had an email from David Opderbeck at Seton Hall Law about their latest conference on P2P on April 16, 2004 (check it out, if you can go).

Anyway, there were some others on the email, and I responded to the conference which appears to mainly be by lawyers directed at lawyers with this:

Interesting seminar and there is a chance I'll be in NY that day and might be able to attend.

Regarding the content, as a non-lawyer, technologist type, I’d really like to hear about the legal aspects of broadcatching, or RSS + bitorrent. I’ve been using bitorrent for P2P filesharing for around 10 months, and really like it, and as an RSS user for the past two years, love the idea of getting updates or subscriptions to software, media and the like via this combination. Ernie Miller who understands both the legal and engineering aspects deeply has been writing on this topic, but I haven’t seen anything else anywhere.

One comment I get all the time about bIPlog is that users and technologists who aren’t lawyers really want to get a sense of the impact the law has on technology development and the barriers IP creates for them, but when they read most blogs, they know lawyers, not users are writing, and they can’t figure it out. Your thing may just be for lawyers (and those of us who follow it more closely) but I really think there is a space somewhere there between lawyers talking, and then the confused technologists who don’t know how to map the law onto their stuff. Many bIPlog readers tell me they heave a huge sigh of relief when they see something explained in common terms they can understand, about law and technology and the social impacts, because while they are highly educated, they aren’t lawyers, and just want a more practical and social take. I realize the law isn’t so simple, but it maybe that getting lawyers and technologists talking together about the legal effects on the practical use of P2P serves a community you hadn’t thought of as needing help in this way. Not sure. And maybe this isn’t the day to do it, but I do think you ought to think about it.

Also, I often attend conferences where one group talks and is the focus, often leaving out others. Your thing is the lawyer’s take, but I wonder where are the users, the builders and protypers of tech, the people who see technology and the internet as air we breath for dear life. I know that’s a bit impassioned, but the gulf between people who are 40 and people who are 20 is so huge, it is nearly incomprehensible to those who don’t see the network in everything they touch, everyone they see. For those who operate/socialize that way, the place where they breath and eat the networks, they cannot comprehend why the law reflects what it does, with P2P or any other tech, because those are just tools that better integrate the network they live within. Law is just a set of barriers, sometimes to their activities, and so they think the law and technology should reflect social norms, be mapped to technology and what we do with it. When it doesn’t, they think it’s stupid, like Friendster which is a system that cannot reflect the complicated and messy ways we socialize, any more than copyright law reflects the messy ways we consume and alter technology. (I do realize the age thing doesn’t quite work, because there are 40 year olds breathing the internet and 20 year olds who don’t use any technology, but you know what I mean more generally.)

Anyway, this may seem too frank, but if you really want to think about your topic, I think, it all comes down to how we socialize with the law and technology, because frankly, they are supposed to work for the people, not against them (though people could mean a minority – artists and creators – over a majority – users). And so if it were up to me, I would want to know what is now in the law, how technology differs, what is now in technology and how the law differs (I think these are asymmetrical), what do people do verses how the law is, what do creators do verses what the law is, and how do all four map (could be four transparencies), and then tell me what’s out of sync and let’s think about why. Does it need to change (tech, creators, people or the law) or what? Where is the conflict? What are the mechanisms that are causing that conflict? Maybe it’s not at all what we think now. It might be something no one has yet thought about.

This may not have been too helpful since you already have things planned out, but maybe it’s something to think about in future. But I will blog your event nonetheless, and look forward to attending if I can do so.

Frank Field pointed out (he was on the email too) that Ed Felten has blogged on this same issue here (though I'm behind on site visits and my aggregator still):

Now I have nothing against lawyers. Some lawyers really understand technology. A few even understand it deeply. But if I were running a conference on law and technology, and I invited only technologists to speak, this would be seen, rightly, as a big problem. It wouldn't be much of an excuse for me to say that those technologists know a lot about the law. If I'm inviting ten speakers for a conference on technology and the law, surely I have one slot for somebody whose primary expertise is in the law.

Yet the same argument, running in the other direction, seems not to apply sometimes. Why not?

Well, I guess Ed and I were on the same meme there without realizing it. Anyway, I hope David isn't offended by our questioning of the logic of his conference, and that these discussions lead to conferences which try to map multiple disciplines across the same space, translating the various languages we speak within our disciplines. These problems are so difficult to solve, there is no way we can do this within a single discipline or from a single point of view, because they cross so many areas and expertises.

C&D'd on The Grey Album

Napsterization received a Cease & Desist order from Capital Records for hosting the Grey Album, though due to the change in site hosting and my SFTP issues just after the change, I wasn't able to participate in this civil disobedience and host the album Tuesday, and so I linked to others hosting the album. The letter is below under more and while it was sent Monday, I did not receive it until the middle of last night.

But I want to point out demand #2:

2. identify the names and addresses of any third parties who have supplied you with physical or digital copies of The Grey Album or who are otherwise involved in The Grey Album's unauthorized distribution, reproduction, public performance, or other exploitation;

Well, that feels very "house unamerican activites" committee of them. So I'm guessing they're going to get a lot of cooperation on that one. Not to mention, they demand a full accounting of all your activities! Now, young lady, or we're turning this car right around and going straight home. Spank, spank, spank!

Does it matter if you own the two albums outright already, and simply want the blended version, remixed? The point here is that copyright goes too far, and so any remix is illegal-art without permission, unless it's a public domain work. The properties of digital media work in direct opposition to copyright law, still currently based on analog media which is almost always tied to some physical media. It's time we changed the copyright law to reflect what digital media really is: divorced from physical media and able to move back an forth between the physical and pure byte-state, flexible, recombinable, and with proper metadata machine-readable and alterable, easily distributed across the time and space of the internet; it's information that can no longer be sold just because it must be on physical media but rather must be reconceived as something highly copyable, transformable, and distributable for free. It is different, and the question is how long it will be before the law reflects reality. My guess, as soon as the kids who know this on a cellular level grow up, and there is a critical mass of adults that see these things. Until then, record companies like EMI and Capital can hide behind analog copyright to attempt to protect themselves. But as you read the letter, you realize they aren't protected in any practical way at all.

X-Originating-IP:
Subject: The Grey Album and Misappropriation of Capital Records, Inc.'s Sound
Recordings
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 16:22:29 -0500
Thread-Topic: The Grey Album and Misappropriation of Capital Records, Inc.'s
Sound Recordings
Thread-Index: AcP6UyP/hvf10h3qQmablc8nteX0fA==
From: lawyer
To: "Contact"
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.63 (2004-01-11) on smtp-a.gkg.net
X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-4.4 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,HTML_FONTCOLOR_BLUE,
HTML_FONT_BIG,HTML_MESSAGE autolearn=no version=2.63
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Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, P.C.

LAW OFFICES

1133 Avenue of the Americas * New York, NY 10036-6799

Telephone * Web www.cll.com * Fax

Re: The Grey Album
and Misappropriation of Capitol Records, Inc.'s Sound Recordings

To Whom It May Concern:

We are counsel to Capitol Records, Inc. ("Capitol"), the exclusive U.S. licensee and/or owner and distributor of musical sound recordings featuring performances by The Beatles. We write concerning your announced intention of distributing an unlawful and unauthorized sound recording known as The Grey Album on February 24, 2004. This infringing album contains extensive samples from recorded performances by the Beatles, including "Long, Long, Long," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Glass Onion," "Savoy Truffle," "Mother Nature's Son," "Helter Skelter," "Julia," "Happiness is Warm Gun," "Piggies," "Dear Prudence," "Rocky Raccoon," "Revolution 1," "Revolution 9," "I'm So Tired," and "Cry Baby Cry" (the "Capitol Recordings"). Distribution of The Grey Album constitutes a serious violation of Capitol's rights in the Capitol Recordings - as well as the valuable intellectual property rights of other artists, music publishers, and/or record companies - and will subject you to serious legal remedies for willful violation of the laws. We accordingly demand that you cease any plans or efforts to distribute or publicly perform this unlawful recording.

As you are no doubt aware, The Grey Album is an amalgamation created by an individual named Brian Burton (a/k/a Danger Mouse) of Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' self-titled 1968 album commonly known as The White Album. There is no dispute that The Grey Album incorporates Capitol Recordings, as Mr. Burton acknowledges on his website (http://www.djdangermouse.com) that "every kick, snare, and chord is taken from the Beatles White Album and is in their original recording somwhere [sic]." There is also no dispute that Mr. Burton never requested permission from any of the rights-holders to create The Grey Album.

Capitol has demanded that Mr. Burton cease distribution of The Grey Album, and Mr. Burton has indicated publicly that he intends to comply with Capitol's demands. As reported by Reuters on February 17, 2004:

Danger Mouse said he created the record strictly as a limited-edition promotional item, with only a few thousand copies pressed . . . .

The artist, whose real name is Brian Burton, has agreed to comply with the order and will no longer distribute copies. "He just wanted people to hear the record," says a spokesman in the U.K.

Reuters has also quoted Mr. Burton as saying, "[t]his wasn't supposed to happen . . . . I just sent out a few tracks (and) now online stores are selling it and people are downloading it all over the place." By further distributing The Grey Album, you will not only be violating the rights of those who own the recordings and compositions at issue. You will also be interfering with the intention of the very artist whose rights you purport to vindicate.

We are aware of the so-called "Grey Tuesday" event, sponsored by http://www.downhillbattle.org and described on the http://www.greytuesday.org website as a "day of coordinated civil disobedience" in which participating sites will make the unlawful Grey Album available for downloading, distribution, and file-sharing in order to force "reforms to copyright law that can make sampling legal." Your site is listed among those that will engage in this openly unlawful conduct. Any unauthorized distribution, reproduction, public performance, and/or other exploitation of The Grey Album will constitute, among other things, common law copyright infringement/misappropriation, unfair competition, and unjust enrichment rendering you and anyone engaged with you in such acts liable for all of the remedies provided by relevant laws. These remedies include but are not limited to preliminary and permanent injunctive relief as well as monetary and punitive damages necessary to remedy your openly willful violation of Capitol's rights.

We accordingly demand you:

1. cease and desist from the actual or intended distribution, reproduction, public performance or other exploitation of The Grey Album and any other unauthorized uses of the Capitol Recordings or any other sound recordings owned and/or controlled by Capitol;

2. identify the names and addresses of any third parties who have supplied you with physical or digital copies of The Grey Album or who are otherwise involved in The Grey Album's unauthorized distribution, reproduction, public performance, or other exploitation;

3. provide Capitol with an accounting of all units of The Grey Album that have been distributed via your website, either physically or digitally, and of all instances of public performance of The Grey Album rendered via your website; and

4. preserve any and all documents and records relating to this matter, including but not limited to electronic data and other information which may be relevant/discoverable in the event of litigation.

In addition, to the extent that you have already commenced distribution of The Grey Album, you must make payment to Capitol in an amount to be discussed. We demand that you contact us immediately.

Unless we receive full and immediate compliance with these demands, Capitol will be forced to consider pursuing any and all available remedies at law and in equity.

Nothing herein shall be deemed an admission or waiver of any rights or remedies of Capitol and/or its affiliates, all of which are hereby expressly reserved.

Sincerely,

signature

Grey Tuesday is Today

The album is great. Download it here and check it out. Free the grey album! I think if you have or buy both albums already, black and white, you should be able to hear the grey. Grey Tuesday is in support of the Grey Album. Also look at EMI's C&D on Grey Tuesday.

(ps, I had wanted to host it but having just changed hosters, have not figured out how to get it up there on the new stuff, but if I do, I'll update....)

Update: as noted in the comments the link to the Grey Album was shut down Tuesday night.

Yet Another Copyright / Remix Culture Struggle With a Mouse or Why I Get Whiplash Thinking About the Disney Diachotomy

Noah Shachtman/Wired in Copyright Enters a Gray Area look at DJ Dangermouse's new Grey Album, which piled the words from rapper Jay-Z's Black Album on top of the rhythms and chords from the Beatles' legendary White Album, and which caused EMI to C&D'd Dangermouse. Didn't ask permission. The album is no longer underground, and so as it becomes a mainstream hit, it's been "noticed" and therefore is off-limits. Musicians can pay a fee to cover a song, but can't remix without proper blessings.

After eTech, I went to Disneyland and California Adventure (which is relatively new, and did I mention California Adventure is a trademarked name? Trademark is forever, so remember, you can't officially have a California adventure, at least in name, without getting permission). Hadn't been to Disneyland since I was a junior in high school, and before that when I was 9. It's all still there, pretty much the same, except I understand that it's also been rebuilt, perfected, detailed, not to mention the content which is massaged, packaged, sifted and coiffed, though still very clearly derived from other obvious sources.

Most notable, though was the total remix it all is. Every detail, the California architectures and icons, the colors, materials and plants, the cultural references (the golden gate bridge is there in "miniature" at about 50' high, what looks like Sacramento Street near the Presidio, the Santa Cruz boardwalk, the Ahwanee Hotel, Thomas Molesworth, surfer culture - nonstop they pipe in the beach boys in most sections - Monterey Bay and what looks like Paramount Studios) as well as an Aladdin 45 minute test show (testing for Broadway?) that was okay. Parts of it were well done, the sets, the lights, the flying rug, but otherwise it was just okay, too much cheese-musical, OTT on that, but they had tons of remix cultural references to make it updated, quoting and riffing on lines from recent movies (yes, Austin Powers can fit into Aladdin, in case you were wondering), making jokes, etc.

Disneyland was next, and well, it was the rip, mix, burn experience all the way, babe. Seemed much smaller (shorter, as well as less spacious) than I remembered. At the little theatre showing Steamboat Willie cartoons, they outright rip-off Oliver Hardy, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, with no parody, no commentary. I was wondering if they don't keep that little display going (it wasn't nearly as busy as other attractions with 75 - 90 minute posted waits) so that their Washington DC lobbyists can say that Steamboat Willie is an integral part of the Disneyland experience and therefore we must protect it by extending copyright.... Maybe not, maybe relatively minor as a reason to prolong copyright protection in the scheme of things (read: Mickey Mouse memorabillia), but demostrating that Steamboat Willie is still part of the program can't hurt.

You mother told you: do as I say, not as I do. Riffing is bad. It's stealing. That riff over there, oh no, we thought the whole thing up and therefore deserve complete protection in perpetuity.

Again, architectural, cultural and older (and out of copyright) artistic and literary references are riffed to the hilt. Went on the teacups, but all the other lines were 75 or more minutes of waiting and this was a three hour trip. Disneyland is primarily three things: rides/games/displays, restaurants and food outlets, and shops to sell Disney merchandise, equally spaced visually as you walk along the perfectly groomed, packaged and manicured streets. We stopped by Mickey Mouse's house where cartoons were showing for those in line to see him:

And took a quick photo of the mouse, who, when asked whether he preferred Roy or Mike, shrugged, threw up his hands and smiled. Er, that smile's painted on. But the shrug was real.

As is Disneyland. Part real, part fantasy. Part their imagination, part other's they've stolen (or riffed) from. But considering that everything, right down to the smallest touches and gestures contains both, you'd think they'd lighten up on the protectionist intellectual property bit. Too profitable, I guess, to turn back now. Whoever has the most lobbyists wins. And that's what Dangermouse is facing.

Cool Catalog of Music Posters

Naoki at Music Posters Archive is doing a lovely job of cataloging music posters he cares about (though they are commercially available for order from another rather ugly site). The nice part are Naoki's comments to the side of each poster he lists, which tell us what he thinks, why a poster matters to him. Nice project blending the blog format, digital media and a love of music.

I would love to know what public domain posters exist, those posters given freely by bands to their fans though still under copyright, as well as posters from a variety of sources besides just the one he currently references.

Coleman Hawkins:

Napsterization of TV and Movies From Internet Piracy?

Holland & Knight, a law firm with worldwide presence, has in their latest newsletter an article on FCC Issues Broadcast Flag Order to Protect Digital Content (by Kristen E. Fligel) about how because of fears of napsterization, the MPAA has pushed the FCC to issue the Broadcast Flag order - meant to combat internet piracy. She notes:

The MPAA reports that as a result of piracy, the U.S. motion picture industry loses more than $3 billion each year in potential worldwide revenue, not including Internet piracy losses. According to the MPAA, "It is safe to assume Internet losses cause untold additional damages to the industry."[1]

This isn't quite right. It is very important to note that the $3 billion per year piracy figure is actually that piracy that occurs outside of internet piracy (people selling homemade DVDs and VHS tapes on the street, for example, with movie content videoed from a movie theater). Internet piracy is actually estimated by Informa Media (a Media Industry research company) at about $92 million per year as of last year, because so few people will hang out waiting for 24-36 hours to download a movie over their thus-clogged high-speed internet connection.

the "...Study, from U.K-based Informa Media, concludes that, Hollywood and other film copyright owners have far more to gain through legal streaming, online subscription, e-tailing of discs and other legit downloads than they stand to lose.... But the sector's main advantage so far is speed and infrastructure (or lack thereof). Online film piracy will only reach the problem level that the music industry is suffering when most homes have super high-speed fiber optic connections, and that's not likely to be pervasive before 2020".

Holland & Knight/Fligel may believe they are writing in an objective manner, but leaving out this information slants the story in favor of the MPAA's assertion that the Broadcast Flag was necessary in the first place, when in fact the real piracy problem is unrelated to internet downloading of movie/TV content. In fact, the MPAA's own representatives have asserted that the BF has a lot of problems.

And as far as foreign piracy, Fritz Attaway has "admitted that there were currently no recorded losses from piracy of broadcast shows." He also admitted "the broadcast flag would still be completely and utterly useless at addressing the problem. The thing leaks like a sieve." Attaway goes on to admit that existing consumer electronics and the analog airways will keep the BF from being effective.

The H&N newsletter does mention the many issues still outstanding, including the analog hole, the fair use problems for users trying to do normal things like time shifting TV shows, the analog to digital and digital to analog problem, whether existing equipment will continue to work after July, 2005 when the BF goes into effect, whether the FCC has jurisdiction to order the BF, whether the BF will motivate competition, distribution and facilitate the digital transition, but the article offers no solutions.

Privacy and New Technology: System Openness, User Control and Good Interface are Key to Making Users Feel More Comfortable, But So Would A Blanket Privacy Policy

Ross Mayfield has a really interesting discussion roundup on his site, about users driving policy. As the discussions around various blogs became more specific, much of it centered around privacy and social norms issues, particularly mismatched expectations between users and a system's designers. Design issues at the development level are key to narrowing these, giving users control and notice, as well as a good interface to easily understand and make good choices that suit their privacy needs and intentions with their information or system expectations. But I keep returning to the feeling that, regarding privacy, we really need a blanket privacy policy to make users feel comfortable as they interact in the digital world, and on the internet. This cannot be resolved with better interfaces, user control and system openness alone, though those are key to making information technologies work well and giving users what they want on a system level, leading to more informed users, and integrity in the relationships between systems and users and their data.

Systems and companies may make some relatively small amount of money now by using collected information from and about users, for purposes other than the users intended, for use outside of their relationships with those specific companies. But instances like those discussed below cause users to feel worried and sometimes outright scared, where they then refuse to participate in a system or with a company at all, or find themselves shocked after the fact by the results of their interactions with a company or entity. Unless people feel comfortable and protected, those profits resulting from systems currently selling or manipulating user data in ways the user doesn't intend will remain small in comparison to the tremendous amount of money to be made in web services, social networks, and with all sorts of other information technologies were most users to participate because they felt safe.

Most users will not now participate in information technology systems that require a lot of personal data unless there is something they get in return, and even then, it's a subset of the total internet user population. If users really trusted that they were in control of their own data, so they knew when their data went beyond those specific company systems and relationships, and could decide when and where to participate, instead of operating in a state of uninformed fear as companies currently now offer with no or little privacy policies, and little in the way of overall government protection, those companies (and many new ones based on new technologies) using exactly this kind of personal user data could make many times over what they do now. It is short term greed that keeps companies operating as they do, which keeps users from participating, which leads to few participants out of the whole of those using the internet. And yet, one company's policy to the next is confusing and unreliable, and not something people can or want to keep track of, and the resulting confusion also contributes to far less participation. I believe the only route to real information technology development with personal data and the profits that will follow is a blanket policy that every company will have to follow assuring customers of their own data privacy. Users would feel secure and many many more would participate, and those companies would make far more than they have seen under the current (no) privacy regime.

The discussion Ross catalogued partly centered around this: Danah Boyd responded to Wendy Seltzer (responding to Cory Doctorow saying that the last twenty years have been about technology and the next twenty will be about policy). Wendy suggested that originally, she thought that technology developments bringing about privacy tensions might ease as people became more sophisticated users, but instead she saw the gap as a critical mass of users would always lag behind technology developments as they learned a new information technology well enough to overcome, accept, steer away from or rearrange the privacy breaches, and so social norms developed as a result of these new technologies lag behind. Danah replied that social norms weren't falling behind, they are instead going in one direction while technologies are developed in another, and it baffles the social norms trying to cope.

I think in a way they are both right (both scenarios can exist with the same technology depending on use and result); it's not only lagging user competency and then the attendant reactions from users that will adjust, making some mental calculation with a new technology in order to get the amount of privacy or control they need, and it's not just diverging social norms, but also other issues on the design and development end that might solve this, like notice, good interface and user control, that allow for users to know immediately, and then deal with the privacy issues as they use the new technology, instead of finding out about their loss of privacy when it's too late, that will counter these kinds of issues. Technologists can do much better with design, as could corporate policies for privacy be much better, as could users in learning new technologies and protecting their own privacy as needed. But for most people and companies, the benefits will come when users know they are protected, understand a basic structure of privacy across companies and websites, which all interested can rely on, leading to users releasing information. Interesting uses of people's data will follow while still maintaining privacy and user control.

And yet instances of technology development seem to move in exactly the opposite direction at times, leading to scares with users, resulting in less participation with systems that might benefit us all if many participated, and well designed, with privacy built into the architecture, and privacy as a given right between users and the entities with whom they deal.

John Battelle points to a particularly disconcerting social and privacy issue brought up by a new web service, Cardbrowser. Apparently, they have 17,000 (and counting) business cards they've collected from some major conferences, with no privacy policy posted and little information about whether they let those giving the cards (presumably for the purposes of making a new contact person to person, not being entered into a web-searchable database for the whole internet to search, though this is unknown because they publish nothing about their data or privacy policies) know that the cards would end up there, or allowing users to be in control of their own information, or for that matter whether the companies on those cards know. Also, what about the idea that without your approval, Cardbrowser is linking and distributing your name, title, company name, phone numbers and location, attendance record, and dates, which is information that together with other personal information in publically available databases, might lead to even greater matching and sifting of personal digital identities that people don't want out there for just anyone to see without some reason or a warrant or some kind of permission and reciprocity (as our current analog social norms often dictate).

Similar issues exist with your cell phone keeping tabs on you. There's good and there's bad in systems like that, where some users want to keep track of their kids, which may not be objectionable, but others including the companies that buy the phones for their employees may do it for reasons that are totally unacceptable. These kinds of information technologies can allow uses that previously didn't exist, and therefore, there is a lag before a critical mass of users understands what is happening and does something about it, or at least has notice that the shift has occured and can then make choices about when to allow it, or self-censor.

In the case of the tracking phones, it becomes a matter of each user knowing when the tracking is turned on, and having control over that tracking. It's a matter of notice, and a matter of interface. A good interface, on any system that tracks your behavior, your movements, your private, semi-private, semi-public and public behavior, would show the tracking, and give control choices at the time of use. But well designed systems are rare today, and it's the invisible nature of the tracking, and our relationship to the data from the tracking, that causes consternation and upset. A blanket privacy policy would alleviate many fears and open up many new information technology development possibilities as well as many customers for companies to development relationships.

Privacy and New Technology: System Openness, User Control and Good Interface are Key to Making Users Feel More Comfortable, But So Would A Blanket Privacy Policy

Ross Mayfield has a really interesting discussion roundup on his site, about users driving policy. As the discussions around various blogs became more specific, much of it centered around privacy and social norms issues, particularly mismatched expectations between users and a system's designers. Design issues at the development level are key to narrowing these, giving users control and notice, as well as a good interface to easily understand and make good choices that suit their privacy needs and intentions with their information or system expectations. But I keep returning to the feeling that, regarding privacy, we really need a blanket privacy policy to make users feel comfortable as they interact in the digital world, and on the internet. This cannot be resolved with better interfaces, user control and system openness alone, though those are key to making information technologies work well and giving users what they want on a system level, leading to more informed users, and integrity in the relationships between systems and users and their data.

Systems and companies may make some relatively small amount of money now by using collected information from and about users, for purposes other than the users intended, for use outside of their relationships with those specific companies. But instances like those discussed below cause users to feel worried and sometimes outright scared, where they then refuse to participate in a system or with a company at all, or find themselves shocked after the fact by the results of their interactions with a company or entity. Unless people feel comfortable and protected, those profits resulting from systems currently selling or manipulating user data in ways the user doesn't intend will remain small in comparison to the tremendous amount of money to be made in web services, social networks, and with all sorts of other information technologies were most users to participate because they felt safe.

Most users will not now participate in information technology systems that require a lot of personal data unless there is something they get in return, and even then, it's a subset of the total internet user population. If users really trusted that they were in control of their own data, so they knew when their data went beyond those specific company systems and relationships, and could decide when and where to participate, instead of operating in a state of uninformed fear as companies currently now offer with no or little privacy policies, and little in the way of overall government protection, those companies (and many new ones based on new technologies) using exactly this kind of personal user data could make many times over what they do now. It is short term greed that keeps companies operating as they do, which keeps users from participating, which leads to few participants out of the whole of those using the internet. And yet, one company's policy to the next is confusing and unreliable, and not something people can or want to keep track of, and the resulting confusion also contributes to far less participation. I believe the only route to real information technology development with personal data and the profits that will follow is a blanket policy that every company will have to follow assuring customers of their own data privacy. Users would feel secure and many many more would participate, and those companies would make far more than they have seen under the current (no) privacy regime.

The discussion Ross catalogued partly centered around this: Danah Boyd responded to Wendy Seltzer (responding to Cory Doctorow saying that the last twenty years have been about technology and the next twenty will be about policy). Wendy suggested that originally, she thought that technology developments bringing about privacy tensions might ease as people became more sophisticated users, but instead she saw the gap as a critical mass of users would always lag behind technology developments as they learned a new information technology well enough to overcome, accept, steer away from or rearrange the privacy breaches, and so social norms developed as a result of these new technologies lag behind. Danah replied that social norms weren't falling behind, they are instead going in one direction while technologies are developed in another, and it baffles the social norms trying to cope.

I think in a way they are both right (both scenarios can exist with the same technology depending on use and result); it's not only lagging user competency and then the attendant reactions from users that will adjust, making some mental calculation with a new technology in order to get the amount of privacy or control they need, and it's not just diverging social norms, but also other issues on the design and development end that might solve this, like notice, good interface and user control, that allow for users to know immediately, and then deal with the privacy issues as they use the new technology, instead of finding out about their loss of privacy when it's too late, that will counter these kinds of issues. Technologists can do much better with design, as could corporate policies for privacy be much better, as could users in learning new technologies and protecting their own privacy as needed. But for most people and companies, the benefits will come when users know they are protected, understand a basic structure of privacy across companies and websites, which all interested can rely on, leading to users releasing information. Interesting uses of people's data will follow while still maintaining privacy and user control.

And yet instances of technology development seem to move in exactly the opposite direction at times, leading to scares with users, resulting in less participation with systems that might benefit us all if many participated, and well designed, with privacy built into the architecture, and privacy as a given right between users and the entities with whom they deal.

John Battelle points to a particularly disconcerting social and privacy issue brought up by a new web service, Cardbrowser. Apparently, they have 17,000 (and counting) business cards they've collected from some major conferences, with no privacy policy posted and little information about whether they let those giving the cards (presumably for the purposes of making a new contact person to person, not being entered into a web-searchable database for the whole internet to search, though this is unknown because they publish nothing about their data or privacy policies) know that the cards would end up there, or allowing users to be in control of their own information, or for that matter whether the companies on those cards know. Also, what about the idea that without your approval, Cardbrowser is linking and distributing your name, title, company name, phone numbers and location, attendance record, and dates, which is information that together with other personal information in publically available databases, might lead to even greater matching and sifting of personal digital identities that people don't want out there for just anyone to see without some reason or a warrant or some kind of permission and reciprocity (as our current analog social norms often dictate).

Similar issues exist with your cell phone keeping tabs on you. There's good and there's bad in systems like that, where some users want to keep track of their kids, which may not be objectionable, but others including the companies that buy the phones for their employees may do it for reasons that are totally unacceptable. These kinds of information technologies can allow uses that previously didn't exist, and therefore, there is a lag before a critical mass of users understands what is happening and does something about it, or at least has notice that the shift has occured and can then make choices about when to allow it, or self-censor.

In the case of the tracking phones, it becomes a matter of each user knowing when the tracking is turned on, and having control over that tracking. It's a matter of notice, and a matter of interface. A good interface, on any system that tracks your behavior, your movements, your private, semi-private, semi-public and public behavior, would show the tracking, and give control choices at the time of use. But well designed systems are rare today, and it's the invisible nature of the tracking, and our relationship to the data from the tracking, that causes consternation and upset. A blanket privacy policy would alleviate many fears and open up many new information technology development possibilities as well as many customers for companies to development relationships.

Privacy and New Technology: System Openness, User Control and Good Interface are Key to Making Users Feel More Comfortable, But So Would A Blanket Privacy Policy

Ross Mayfield has a really interesting discussion roundup on his site, about users driving policy. As the discussions around various blogs became more specific, much of it centered around privacy and social norms issues, particularly mismatched expectations between users and a system's designers. Design issues at the development level are key to narrowing these, giving users control and notice, as well as a good interface to easily understand and make good choices that suit their privacy needs and intentions with their information or system expectations. But I keep returning to the feeling that, regarding privacy, we really need a blanket privacy policy to make users feel comfortable as they interact in the digital world, and on the internet. This cannot be resolved with better interfaces, user control and system openness alone, though those are key to making information technologies work well and giving users what they want on a system level, leading to more informed users, and integrity in the relationships between systems and users and their data.

Systems and companies may make some relatively small amount of money now by using collected information from and about users, for purposes other than the users intended, for use outside of their relationships with those specific companies. But instances like those discussed below cause users to feel worried and sometimes outright scared, where they then refuse to participate in a system or with a company at all, or find themselves shocked after the fact by the results of their interactions with a company or entity. Unless people feel comfortable and protected, those profits resulting from systems currently selling or manipulating user data in ways the user doesn't intend will remain small in comparison to the tremendous amount of money to be made in web services, social networks, and with all sorts of other information technologies were most users to participate because they felt safe.

Most users will not now participate in information technology systems that require a lot of personal data unless there is something they get in return, and even then, it's a subset of the total internet user population. If users really trusted that they were in control of their own data, so they knew when their data went beyond those specific company systems and relationships, and could decide when and where to participate, instead of operating in a state of uninformed fear as companies currently now offer with no or little privacy policies, and little in the way of overall government protection, those companies (and many new ones based on new technologies) using exactly this kind of personal user data could make many times over what they do now. It is short term greed that keeps companies operating as they do, which keeps users from participating, which leads to few participants out of the whole of those using the internet. And yet, one company's policy to the next is confusing and unreliable, and not something people can or want to keep track of, and the resulting confusion also contributes to far less participation. I believe the only route to real information technology development with personal data and the profits that will follow is a blanket policy that every company will have to follow assuring customers of their own data privacy. Users would feel secure and many many more would participate, and those companies would make far more than they have seen under the current (no) privacy regime.

The discussion Ross catalogued partly centered around this: Danah Boyd responded to Wendy Seltzer (responding to Cory Doctorow saying that the last twenty years have been about technology and the next twenty will be about policy). Wendy suggested that originally, she thought that technology developments bringing about privacy tensions might ease as people became more sophisticated users, but instead she saw the gap as a critical mass of users would always lag behind technology developments as they learned a new information technology well enough to overcome, accept, steer away from or rearrange the privacy breaches, and so social norms developed as a result of these new technologies lag behind. Danah replied that social norms weren't falling behind, they are instead going in one direction while technologies are developed in another, and it baffles the social norms trying to cope.

I think in a way they are both right (both scenarios can exist with the same technology depending on use and result); it's not only lagging user competency and then the attendant reactions from users that will adjust, making some mental calculation with a new technology in order to get the amount of privacy or control they need, and it's not just diverging social norms, but also other issues on the design and development end that might solve this, like notice, good interface and user control, that allow for users to know immediately, and then deal with the privacy issues as they use the new technology, instead of finding out about their loss of privacy when it's too late, that will counter these kinds of issues. Technologists can do much better with design, as could corporate policies for privacy be much better, as could users in learning new technologies and protecting their own privacy as needed. But for most people and companies, the benefits will come when users know they are protected, understand a basic structure of privacy across companies and websites, which all interested can rely on, leading to users releasing information. Interesting uses of people's data will follow while still maintaining privacy and user control.

And yet instances of technology development seem to move in exactly the opposite direction at times, leading to scares with users, resulting in less participation with systems that might benefit us all if many participated, and well designed, with privacy built into the architecture, and privacy as a given right between users and the entities with whom they deal.

John Battelle points to a particularly disconcerting social and privacy issue brought up by a new web service, Cardbrowser. Apparently, they have 17,000 (and counting) business cards they've collected from some major conferences, with no privacy policy posted and little information about whether they let those giving the cards (presumably for the purposes of making a new contact person to person, not being entered into a web-searchable database for the whole internet to search, though this is unknown because they publish nothing about their data or privacy policies) know that the cards would end up there, or allowing users to be in control of their own information, or for that matter whether the companies on those cards know. Also, what about the idea that without your approval, Cardbrowser is linking and distributing your name, title, company name, phone numbers and location, attendance record, and dates, which is information that together with other personal information in publically available databases, might lead to even greater matching and sifting of personal digital identities that people don't want out there for just anyone to see without some reason or a warrant or some kind of permission and reciprocity (as our current analog social norms often dictate).

Similar issues exist with your cell phone keeping tabs on you. There's good and there's bad in systems like that, where some users want to keep track of their kids, which may not be objectionable, but others including the companies that buy the phones for their employees may do it for reasons that are totally unacceptable. These kinds of information technologies can allow uses that previously didn't exist, and therefore, there is a lag before a critical mass of users understands what is happening and does something about it, or at least has notice that the shift has occured and can then make choices about when to allow it, or self-censor.

In the case of the tracking phones, it becomes a matter of each user knowing when the tracking is turned on, and having control over that tracking. It's a matter of notice, and a matter of interface. A good interface, on any system that tracks your behavior, your movements, your private, semi-private, semi-public and public behavior, would show the tracking, and give control choices at the time of use. But well designed systems are rare today, and it's the invisible nature of the tracking, and our relationship to the data from the tracking, that causes consternation and upset. A blanket privacy policy would alleviate many fears and open up many new information technology development possibilities as well as many customers for companies to development relationships.

Creative Commons 1 Year Celebration

Last night, Creative Commons marked their first year anniversary with a party where Larry Lessig, Glenn Otis Brown and Chris Lydon among others talked about the many, many accomplishments over the past year, and played a wonderful flash animation about CC, particularly emphasizing the export of CC worldwide. They mentioned was that all content online from the radio show, Tech Nation, will now be under a CC license, and they have had more than a million uses of the licenses over the past year.

The party was a great time to meet up with Stanford and Berkeley folks, artists and geeks, and those who support having balance between copyright and the public domain. I got to meet Joi Ito, whose sister I met at a conference last spring, and since she spoke about him in such a sweet way, I have wanted to meet him ever since. So that was fun. Also, the videoblog goddess (and otherwise all around goddess), Lisa Rein was there, taping, and presumably will have the video up on her blog soon.

Also, considering donating to Creative Commons here.

Update 121903: Check out Christopher Lydon's interview with Larry Lessig done just after the event (you can hear the last of us in the background of the audio interview). I gave Chris a ride back to Berkeley and he said he said he would get it up quickly, though he's been traveling, and he did!

Creative Commons 1 Year Celebration

Last night, Creative Commons marked their first year anniversary with a party where Larry Lessig, Glenn Otis Brown and Chris Lydon among others talked about the many, many accomplishments over the past year, and played a wonderful flash animation about CC, particularly emphasizing the export of CC worldwide. They mentioned was that all content online from the radio show, Tech Nation, will now be under a CC license, and they have had more than a million uses of the licenses over the past year.

The party was a great time to meet up with Stanford and Berkeley folks, artists and geeks, and those who support having balance between copyright and the public domain. I got to meet Joi Ito, whose sister I met at a conference last spring, and since she spoke about him in such a sweet way, I have wanted to meet him ever since. So that was fun. Also, the videoblog goddess (and otherwise all around goddess), Lisa Rein was there, taping, and presumably will have the video up on her blog soon.

Also, considering donating to Creative Commons here.

Update 121903: Check out Christopher Lydon's interview with Larry Lessig done just after the event (you can hear the last of us in the background of the audio interview). I gave Chris a ride back to Berkeley and he said he said he would get it up quickly, though he's been traveling, and he did!

Creative Commons 1 Year Celebration

Last night, Creative Commons marked their first year anniversary with a party where Larry Lessig, Glenn Otis Brown and Chris Lydon among others talked about the many, many accomplishments over the past year, and played a wonderful flash animation about CC, particularly emphasizing the export of CC worldwide. They mentioned was that all content online from the radio show, Tech Nation, will now be under a CC license, and they have had more than a million uses of the licenses over the past year.

The party was a great time to meet up with Stanford and Berkeley folks, artists and geeks, and those who support having balance between copyright and the public domain. I got to meet Joi Ito, whose sister I met at a conference last spring, and since she spoke about him in such a sweet way, I have wanted to meet him ever since. So that was fun. Also, the videoblog goddess (and otherwise all around goddess), Lisa Rein was there, taping, and presumably will have the video up on her blog soon.

Also, considering donating to Creative Commons here.

Update 121903: Check out Christopher Lydon's interview with Larry Lessig done just after the event (you can hear the last of us in the background of the audio interview). I gave Chris a ride back to Berkeley and he said he said he would get it up quickly, though he's been traveling, and he did!

Digital v. Analog Cameras, or Why We Must Think More Explicitly About Public and Private Social Spaces

The NYTimes today has an op-ed piece on cell phone's with digital cameras. They totally don't get it. Yes, these phones can be invasive, but any camera could take the kinds of pictures they are complaining about. The real issue is that each time a new disruptive, and often digital, technology arrives, we, the slow moving humans who need time to adapt, have to adjust our social norms. And a critical mass of this adjustment needs to happen before most people are on the same page, in this case making a distinction between public and private places where is either is appropriate, or not, to take photos that may violate people's privacy.

In other words, a gym changing room is a private space. We don't take pictures there now, so why would we do it with a phone camera? A sidewalk is a public space, so if a picture is taken, well, you were out in public. I realize these phone/cameras make it so much easier to take pictures, etc. but the real controversy is whether people get to control the pictures taken of them. Right now, the law says the picture taker owns the picture. Paparazzi anyone? However, do we now regulate this in private spaces, such as workspaces, private business spaces such as gyms and gym locker rooms, offices and homes? Verses say, the street, the park, the city council meeting, the little league game? Some privace spaces are regulated simply because some people are kept out, becasue they represent private property, workplaces restrict certain behaviors, etc.

Without thinking about it, we humans wander in and out of private, semi-private and public spaces, and now the phone/camera is confronting us in a few cases by violating the implicit social norms we were used to before, without realizing it. My suggestion? Rather than regulating, we use peer pressure to acclimate people to respect the differences between these spaces, so that people understand explicitly why some behaviors are anti-social and inappropriate in particular kinds of spaces.

Update 12/15/03: Digital vs. Analog Photography

Glenn Reynolds has a comparison of digital verses analog photography regarding quality of the images and flexibility of use. He also suggests that if Ansel Adams had had Photoshop, he would have used it.

Digital v. Analog Cameras, or Why We Must Think More Explicitly About Public and Private Social Spaces

The NYTimes today has an op-ed piece on cell phone's with digital cameras. They totally don't get it. Yes, these phones can be invasive, but any camera could take the kinds of pictures they are complaining about. The real issue is that each time a new disruptive, and often digital, technology arrives, we, the slow moving humans who need time to adapt, have to adjust our social norms. And a critical mass of this adjustment needs to happen before most people are on the same page, in this case making a distinction between public and private places where is either is appropriate, or not, to take photos that may violate people's privacy.

In other words, a gym changing room is a private space. We don't take pictures there now, so why would we do it with a phone camera? A sidewalk is a public space, so if a picture is taken, well, you were out in public. I realize these phone/cameras make it so much easier to take pictures, etc. but the real controversy is whether people get to control the pictures taken of them. Right now, the law says the picture taker owns the picture. Paparazzi anyone? However, do we now regulate this in private spaces, such as workspaces, private business spaces such as gyms and gym locker rooms, offices and homes? Verses say, the street, the park, the city council meeting, the little league game? Some privace spaces are regulated simply because some people are kept out, becasue they represent private property, workplaces restrict certain behaviors, etc.

Without thinking about it, we humans wander in and out of private, semi-private and public spaces, and now the phone/camera is confronting us in a few cases by violating the implicit social norms we were used to before, without realizing it. My suggestion? Rather than regulating, we use peer pressure to acclimate people to respect the differences between these spaces, so that people understand explicitly why some behaviors are anti-social and inappropriate in particular kinds of spaces.

Update 12/15/03: Digital vs. Analog Photography

Glenn Reynolds has a comparison of digital verses analog photography regarding quality of the images and flexibility of use. He also suggests that if Ansel Adams had had Photoshop, he would have used it.

Digital v. Analog Cameras, or Why We Must Think More Explicitly About Public and Private Social Spaces

The NYTimes today has an op-ed piece on cell phone's with digital cameras. They totally don't get it. Yes, these phones can be invasive, but any camera could take the kinds of pictures they are complaining about. The real issue is that each time a new disruptive, and often digital, technology arrives, we, the slow moving humans who need time to adapt, have to adjust our social norms. And a critical mass of this adjustment needs to happen before most people are on the same page, in this case making a distinction between public and private places where is either is appropriate, or not, to take photos that may violate people's privacy.

In other words, a gym changing room is a private space. We don't take pictures there now, so why would we do it with a phone camera? A sidewalk is a public space, so if a picture is taken, well, you were out in public. I realize these phone/cameras make it so much easier to take pictures, etc. but the real controversy is whether people get to control the pictures taken of them. Right now, the law says the picture taker owns the picture. Paparazzi anyone? However, do we now regulate this in private spaces, such as workspaces, private business spaces such as gyms and gym locker rooms, offices and homes? Verses say, the street, the park, the city council meeting, the little league game? Some privace spaces are regulated simply because some people are kept out, becasue they represent private property, workplaces restrict certain behaviors, etc.

Without thinking about it, we humans wander in and out of private, semi-private and public spaces, and now the phone/camera is confronting us in a few cases by violating the implicit social norms we were used to before, without realizing it. My suggestion? Rather than regulating, we use peer pressure to acclimate people to respect the differences between these spaces, so that people understand explicitly why some behaviors are anti-social and inappropriate in particular kinds of spaces.

Update 12/15/03: Digital vs. Analog Photography

Glenn Reynolds has a comparison of digital verses analog photography regarding quality of the images and flexibility of use. He also suggests that if Ansel Adams had had Photoshop, he would have used it.

Pew Asks...

In the

...

Are you an artist -- musician, writer, painter, or other type of artist? We would like to know how you use the Internet and your views on copyright issues. Specifically, what's your opinion about file-sharing programs and their impact on the artistic community?

Via Frank.

Pew Asks...

In the

...

Are you an artist -- musician, writer, painter, or other type of artist? We would like to know how you use the Internet and your views on copyright issues. Specifically, what's your opinion about file-sharing programs and their impact on the artistic community?

Via Frank.

Pew Asks...

In the

...

Are you an artist -- musician, writer, painter, or other type of artist? We would like to know how you use the Internet and your views on copyright issues. Specifically, what's your opinion about file-sharing programs and their impact on the artistic community?

Via Frank.

Historical Copyright Has Clues for Digital Copyright

Chris Barton at the New Zealand Herald: Copyleft may become the new copyright

Imagine a world without copyright - where there is no legislated right to prevent copying. A recipe for anarchy? Maybe, but that's how it was in the early 18th century and before.

The British Statute of Anne in 1710 was the first copyright act. On the face of it, the legislation was to protect the rights of authors, but in reality it was a deal to protect printers.

...We're in the midst of a technological revolution that's really upset the apple cart. The printing press is a fine piece of copying technology. But it has been well and truly usurped by the far superior copying (and distribution) technology of the internet and personal computers.

In other words, he's saying the printing press has been napsterized by the internet and personal computers. And that old, freer media model may be what's needed to deal with it.

Historical Copyright Has Clues for Digital Copyright

Chris Barton at the New Zealand Herald: Copyleft may become the new copyright

Imagine a world without copyright - where there is no legislated right to prevent copying. A recipe for anarchy? Maybe, but that's how it was in the early 18th century and before.

The British Statute of Anne in 1710 was the first copyright act. On the face of it, the legislation was to protect the rights of authors, but in reality it was a deal to protect printers.

...We're in the midst of a technological revolution that's really upset the apple cart. The printing press is a fine piece of copying technology. But it has been well and truly usurped by the far superior copying (and distribution) technology of the internet and personal computers.

In other words, he's saying the printing press has been napsterized by the internet and personal computers. And that old, freer media model may be what's needed to deal with it.

Historical Copyright Has Clues for Digital Copyright

Chris Barton at the New Zealand Herald: Copyleft may become the new copyright

Imagine a world without copyright - where there is no legislated right to prevent copying. A recipe for anarchy? Maybe, but that's how it was in the early 18th century and before.

The British Statute of Anne in 1710 was the first copyright act. On the face of it, the legislation was to protect the rights of authors, but in reality it was a deal to protect printers.

...We're in the midst of a technological revolution that's really upset the apple cart. The printing press is a fine piece of copying technology. But it has been well and truly usurped by the far superior copying (and distribution) technology of the internet and personal computers.

In other words, he's saying the printing press has been napsterized by the internet and personal computers. And that old, freer media model may be what's needed to deal with it.

Broadcast Flag Threat Models - Are They Realistic?

Ed Felten has this on the Broadcast Flag:

The Broadcast Flag, and Threat Model Confusion

The FCC has mandated "broadcast flag" technology, which will limit technical options for the designers of digital TV tuners and related products. This is intended to reduce online redistribution of digital TV content, but it is likely to have little or no actual effect on the availability of infringing content on the Net.

The FCC is committing the classic mistake of not having a clear threat model. As I explained in more detail in a previous post, a "threat model" is a clearly defined explanation of what a security system is trying to prevent, and of the capabilities and motives of the people who are trying to defeat it. For a system like the broadcast flag, there are two threat models to choose from. Either you are trying to keep the average consumer from giving content to his friends and neighbors (the "casual copying" threat model), or you are trying to keep the content off of Internet distributions systems like KaZaa (the "Napsterization" threat model). You choose a threat model, and then you design a technology that prevents the threat you have chosen.

Felten's analysis is really useful, and reminds that technically, the BF is full of holes and will more likely frustrate users trying to watch shows tagged with the BF, as they attempt to use media in ways we do now with VCRs. It won't, most likely, keep shows off the internet. If the Pew reports are correct, as well as Consumer's Union predictions, we are 20 years away from having a large section of the US population that will have enough home use of broadband to be able to download such large files (2 - 4 gb verses a music mp3 which is typically 2-5k). Therefore, the napsterization of the music business is not so comparable to the napsterization of the movie business, which hasn't yet happened.

Broadcast Flag Threat Models - Are They Realistic?

Ed Felten has this on the Broadcast Flag:

The Broadcast Flag, and Threat Model Confusion

The FCC has mandated "broadcast flag" technology, which will limit technical options for the designers of digital TV tuners and related products. This is intended to reduce online redistribution of digital TV content, but it is likely to have little or no actual effect on the availability of infringing content on the Net.

The FCC is committing the classic mistake of not having a clear threat model. As I explained in more detail in a previous post, a "threat model" is a clearly defined explanation of what a security system is trying to prevent, and of the capabilities and motives of the people who are trying to defeat it. For a system like the broadcast flag, there are two threat models to choose from. Either you are trying to keep the average consumer from giving content to his friends and neighbors (the "casual copying" threat model), or you are trying to keep the content off of Internet distributions systems like KaZaa (the "Napsterization" threat model). You choose a threat model, and then you design a technology that prevents the threat you have chosen.

Felten's analysis is really useful, and reminds that technically, the BF is full of holes and will more likely frustrate users trying to watch shows tagged with the BF, as they attempt to use media in ways we do now with VCRs. It won't, most likely, keep shows off the internet. If the Pew reports are correct, as well as Consumer's Union predictions, we are 20 years away from having a large section of the US population that will have enough home use of broadband to be able to download such large files (2 - 4 gb verses a music mp3 which is typically 2-5k). Therefore, the napsterization of the music business is not so comparable to the napsterization of the movie business, which hasn't yet happened.

Broadcast Flag Threat Models - Are They Realistic?

Ed Felten has this on the Broadcast Flag:

The Broadcast Flag, and Threat Model Confusion

The FCC has mandated "broadcast flag" technology, which will limit technical options for the designers of digital TV tuners and related products. This is intended to reduce online redistribution of digital TV content, but it is likely to have little or no actual effect on the availability of infringing content on the Net.

The FCC is committing the classic mistake of not having a clear threat model. As I explained in more detail in a previous post, a "threat model" is a clearly defined explanation of what a security system is trying to prevent, and of the capabilities and motives of the people who are trying to defeat it. For a system like the broadcast flag, there are two threat models to choose from. Either you are trying to keep the average consumer from giving content to his friends and neighbors (the "casual copying" threat model), or you are trying to keep the content off of Internet distributions systems like KaZaa (the "Napsterization" threat model). You choose a threat model, and then you design a technology that prevents the threat you have chosen.

Felten's analysis is really useful, and reminds that technically, the BF is full of holes and will more likely frustrate users trying to watch shows tagged with the BF, as they attempt to use media in ways we do now with VCRs. It won't, most likely, keep shows off the internet. If the Pew reports are correct, as well as Consumer's Union predictions, we are 20 years away from having a large section of the US population that will have enough home use of broadband to be able to download such large files (2 - 4 gb verses a music mp3 which is typically 2-5k). Therefore, the napsterization of the music business is not so comparable to the napsterization of the movie business, which hasn't yet happened.

Digital Media Redux

Two thoughts before we get into the meat of it:
Pixel Power! (Linda Yablonsky/NYTimes)
David Byrnes Alternative PowerPoint Universe (Veronique Vienne/NYTimes)

And now for the meat of it:
Frank points to this: Finally, the video revolution in art has led to the Napsterization of it as well: When Fans of Pricey Video Art Can Get It Free by Greg Allen/NYTimes.

Not so long ago, the idea that video could be a medium for artistic expression was radical fringe; today, as Mr. Barney's success shows, it has become conventional cultural wisdom. And so, increasingly, is the idea that video, along with film, animation, and slide-based work, can be sold in the same exclusive manner as painting and sculpture. Through the Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Mr. Barney sold each "Cremaster" film in a limited edition of 10, numbered and encased in table-size vitrines. These pieces have since sold at auction for as much as $387,500. Other emerging stars like Pipilotti Rist, the Swiss installation artist, or Pierre Huyghe, the French recipient of the 2002 Hugo Boss Award, also now command five- and six-figure prices for their video work.

But while artists and dealers are limiting the supply of videos, and placing them in the private homes of wealthy patrons, a new breed of collector has staged a quiet revolt. These aren't the people who keep auction prices afloat, or whose lavish support turns struggling newcomers into art-world celebrities. Instead, these are journalists, gallery staffers, professors and art students who trade bootleg copies of the coveted videos - just as Napster users did with MP3 files. Because digital technology makes these bootlegs so easy to duplicate and distribute, and because they are so close to the "original" editions sold in galleries, they pose an intriguing challenge to the authenticity on which art's value is traditionally based.

[...] Even if it's for love and not money, though, copying and distributing work without the artist's permission is against the law. "Whether it is video or a painting, the principle is the same: artists own and control the copyright to their work," explains Dr. Theodore Feder, president of the Artists Rights Society, which manages and monitors copyrights for artists. None of these underground traders have been prosecuted - yet - but the music industry's recent legal pursuit of online file swappers prompts most traders to keep a low profile.

Nevertheless, Chris Hughes, a 25-year-old artist and self-taught video art expert, has put his entire catalog online, at www.freehomepages.com/crhughes/. With 1,500 works, representing early pioneers like Vito Acconci and Yoko Ono as well as current stars like Mr. Huyghe, Douglas Gordon and Gillian Wearing, the breadth of Mr. Hughes's collection rivals those of many museums. The difference, however, is that he got almost all of it through unsanctioned trading.

[...] But some critics - even some video artists themselves - have argued that such a business model, useful in the sale of prints, cast sculptures and photography, is meaningless for video. "For videos, editions are fake," says Pierre Huyghe, in a comment seemingly designed to alarm his dealer. "When Rodin could only cast three sculptures of a nude before the mold lost its sharpness, it made sense. But all my works are on my hard drive, in ones and zeros." His dealer, Marian Goodman, has nonetheless sold certified copies of Mr. Huyghe's videos for prices estimated in the high five figures. Artists have the same right as anyone else to make a living, she points out, and limited editions represent a "logical, established tradition" which makes that possible.

[...] Loss of control can also yield fortuitous results, however, by allowing video artists to experiment with one another's work in much the same way that musicians sample and remix one another's songs. (Because the experiments are artistic projects in their own right, they may not violate copyright law.) In an editing tour de force, the Swiss artist Christian Marclay combined over 600 sound and film clips from over a hundred classic movies to create an intense, 15-minute musical composition, synchronized over four 10-foot screens. In preparing the work, which was commissioned by SFMOMA and the Grand Museum of Luxembourg, and exhibited in New York at the Paula Cooper Gallery, Mr. Marclay didn't bother to pursue the rights to any of those films. Instead he pulled freely and without permission from whatever movie tapes or DVD's he could lay his hands on.

And a young Baltimore video artist, Jon Routson, whose work explores bootlegging itself, has tackled Matthew Barney's work head-on. In April at New York's Team Gallery, Mr. Routson showed his "made for TV" version of "Cremaster 4." He cut a grainy VHS bootleg of Mr. Barney's 45-minute film down to 22 minutes, dropped in actual commercials, compressed the end credits and even floated ABC's logo in the lower corner of the screen. The result: a hilarious, smart, and brazen work, which drew critical praise and which may be a sign of things to come.

Why troubling? The art world, as it embraces digital technologies, seems not to have given any more thought to the implications of digital delivery than any other industries have. And each successive industry that goes into these technologies without thinking through the implications is going to add their voices to the chorus of the RIAA's and MPAA's songs of woe. [emphasis mine]

Why, yes. They do get it, there at the end, don't they?

Digital Media Redux

Two thoughts before we get into the meat of it:
Pixel Power! (Linda Yablonsky/NYTimes)
David Byrnes Alternative PowerPoint Universe (Veronique Vienne/NYTimes)

And now for the meat of it:
Frank points to this: Finally, the video revolution in art has led to the Napsterization of it as well: When Fans of Pricey Video Art Can Get It Free by Greg Allen/NYTimes.

Not so long ago, the idea that video could be a medium for artistic expression was radical fringe; today, as Mr. Barney's success shows, it has become conventional cultural wisdom. And so, increasingly, is the idea that video, along with film, animation, and slide-based work, can be sold in the same exclusive manner as painting and sculpture. Through the Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Mr. Barney sold each "Cremaster" film in a limited edition of 10, numbered and encased in table-size vitrines. These pieces have since sold at auction for as much as $387,500. Other emerging stars like Pipilotti Rist, the Swiss installation artist, or Pierre Huyghe, the French recipient of the 2002 Hugo Boss Award, also now command five- and six-figure prices for their video work.

But while artists and dealers are limiting the supply of videos, and placing them in the private homes of wealthy patrons, a new breed of collector has staged a quiet revolt. These aren't the people who keep auction prices afloat, or whose lavish support turns struggling newcomers into art-world celebrities. Instead, these are journalists, gallery staffers, professors and art students who trade bootleg copies of the coveted videos - just as Napster users did with MP3 files. Because digital technology makes these bootlegs so easy to duplicate and distribute, and because they are so close to the "original" editions sold in galleries, they pose an intriguing challenge to the authenticity on which art's value is traditionally based.

[...] Even if it's for love and not money, though, copying and distributing work without the artist's permission is against the law. "Whether it is video or a painting, the principle is the same: artists own and control the copyright to their work," explains Dr. Theodore Feder, president of the Artists Rights Society, which manages and monitors copyrights for artists. None of these underground traders have been prosecuted - yet - but the music industry's recent legal pursuit of online file swappers prompts most traders to keep a low profile.

Nevertheless, Chris Hughes, a 25-year-old artist and self-taught video art expert, has put his entire catalog online, at www.freehomepages.com/crhughes/. With 1,500 works, representing early pioneers like Vito Acconci and Yoko Ono as well as current stars like Mr. Huyghe, Douglas Gordon and Gillian Wearing, the breadth of Mr. Hughes's collection rivals those of many museums. The difference, however, is that he got almost all of it through unsanctioned trading.

[...] But some critics - even some video artists themselves - have argued that such a business model, useful in the sale of prints, cast sculptures and photography, is meaningless for video. "For videos, editions are fake," says Pierre Huyghe, in a comment seemingly designed to alarm his dealer. "When Rodin could only cast three sculptures of a nude before the mold lost its sharpness, it made sense. But all my works are on my hard drive, in ones and zeros." His dealer, Marian Goodman, has nonetheless sold certified copies of Mr. Huyghe's videos for prices estimated in the high five figures. Artists have the same right as anyone else to make a living, she points out, and limited editions represent a "logical, established tradition" which makes that possible.

[...] Loss of control can also yield fortuitous results, however, by allowing video artists to experiment with one another's work in much the same way that musicians sample and remix one another's songs. (Because the experiments are artistic projects in their own right, they may not violate copyright law.) In an editing tour de force, the Swiss artist Christian Marclay combined over 600 sound and film clips from over a hundred classic movies to create an intense, 15-minute musical composition, synchronized over four 10-foot screens. In preparing the work, which was commissioned by SFMOMA and the Grand Museum of Luxembourg, and exhibited in New York at the Paula Cooper Gallery, Mr. Marclay didn't bother to pursue the rights to any of those films. Instead he pulled freely and without permission from whatever movie tapes or DVD's he could lay his hands on.

And a young Baltimore video artist, Jon Routson, whose work explores bootlegging itself, has tackled Matthew Barney's work head-on. In April at New York's Team Gallery, Mr. Routson showed his "made for TV" version of "Cremaster 4." He cut a grainy VHS bootleg of Mr. Barney's 45-minute film down to 22 minutes, dropped in actual commercials, compressed the end credits and even floated ABC's logo in the lower corner of the screen. The result: a hilarious, smart, and brazen work, which drew critical praise and which may be a sign of things to come.

Why troubling? The art world, as it embraces digital technologies, seems not to have given any more thought to the implications of digital delivery than any other industries have. And each successive industry that goes into these technologies without thinking through the implications is going to add their voices to the chorus of the RIAA's and MPAA's songs of woe. [emphasis mine]

Why, yes. They do get it, there at the end, don't they?

Digital Media Redux

Two thoughts before we get into the meat of it:
Pixel Power! (Linda Yablonsky/NYTimes)
David Byrnes Alternative PowerPoint Universe (Veronique Vienne/NYTimes)

And now for the meat of it:
Frank points to this: Finally, the video revolution in art has led to the Napsterization of it as well: When Fans of Pricey Video Art Can Get It Free by Greg Allen/NYTimes.

Not so long ago, the idea that video could be a medium for artistic expression was radical fringe; today, as Mr. Barney's success shows, it has become conventional cultural wisdom. And so, increasingly, is the idea that video, along with film, animation, and slide-based work, can be sold in the same exclusive manner as painting and sculpture. Through the Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Mr. Barney sold each "Cremaster" film in a limited edition of 10, numbered and encased in table-size vitrines. These pieces have since sold at auction for as much as $387,500. Other emerging stars like Pipilotti Rist, the Swiss installation artist, or Pierre Huyghe, the French recipient of the 2002 Hugo Boss Award, also now command five- and six-figure prices for their video work.

But while artists and dealers are limiting the supply of videos, and placing them in the private homes of wealthy patrons, a new breed of collector has staged a quiet revolt. These aren't the people who keep auction prices afloat, or whose lavish support turns struggling newcomers into art-world celebrities. Instead, these are journalists, gallery staffers, professors and art students who trade bootleg copies of the coveted videos - just as Napster users did with MP3 files. Because digital technology makes these bootlegs so easy to duplicate and distribute, and because they are so close to the "original" editions sold in galleries, they pose an intriguing challenge to the authenticity on which art's value is traditionally based.

[...] Even if it's for love and not money, though, copying and distributing work without the artist's permission is against the law. "Whether it is video or a painting, the principle is the same: artists own and control the copyright to their work," explains Dr. Theodore Feder, president of the Artists Rights Society, which manages and monitors copyrights for artists. None of these underground traders have been prosecuted - yet - but the music industry's recent legal pursuit of online file swappers prompts most traders to keep a low profile.

Nevertheless, Chris Hughes, a 25-year-old artist and self-taught video art expert, has put his entire catalog online, at www.freehomepages.com/crhughes/. With 1,500 works, representing early pioneers like Vito Acconci and Yoko Ono as well as current stars like Mr. Huyghe, Douglas Gordon and Gillian Wearing, the breadth of Mr. Hughes's collection rivals those of many museums. The difference, however, is that he got almost all of it through unsanctioned trading.

[...] But some critics - even some video artists themselves - have argued that such a business model, useful in the sale of prints, cast sculptures and photography, is meaningless for video. "For videos, editions are fake," says Pierre Huyghe, in a comment seemingly designed to alarm his dealer. "When Rodin could only cast three sculptures of a nude before the mold lost its sharpness, it made sense. But all my works are on my hard drive, in ones and zeros." His dealer, Marian Goodman, has nonetheless sold certified copies of Mr. Huyghe's videos for prices estimated in the high five figures. Artists have the same right as anyone else to make a living, she points out, and limited editions represent a "logical, established tradition" which makes that possible.

[...] Loss of control can also yield fortuitous results, however, by allowing video artists to experiment with one another's work in much the same way that musicians sample and remix one another's songs. (Because the experiments are artistic projects in their own right, they may not violate copyright law.) In an editing tour de force, the Swiss artist Christian Marclay combined over 600 sound and film clips from over a hundred classic movies to create an intense, 15-minute musical composition, synchronized over four 10-foot screens. In preparing the work, which was commissioned by SFMOMA and the Grand Museum of Luxembourg, and exhibited in New York at the Paula Cooper Gallery, Mr. Marclay didn't bother to pursue the rights to any of those films. Instead he pulled freely and without permission from whatever movie tapes or DVD's he could lay his hands on.

And a young Baltimore video artist, Jon Routson, whose work explores bootlegging itself, has tackled Matthew Barney's work head-on. In April at New York's Team Gallery, Mr. Routson showed his "made for TV" version of "Cremaster 4." He cut a grainy VHS bootleg of Mr. Barney's 45-minute film down to 22 minutes, dropped in actual commercials, compressed the end credits and even floated ABC's logo in the lower corner of the screen. The result: a hilarious, smart, and brazen work, which drew critical praise and which may be a sign of things to come.

Why troubling? The art world, as it embraces digital technologies, seems not to have given any more thought to the implications of digital delivery than any other industries have. And each successive industry that goes into these technologies without thinking through the implications is going to add their voices to the chorus of the RIAA's and MPAA's songs of woe. [emphasis mine]

Why, yes. They do get it, there at the end, don't they?

Senator Coleman on Filesharing and Suing Your Customers

Via BoingBoing:

Sen. Norm Coleman is beginning to germinate a clue. He's figured out that turning one in six Americans into a felon for engaging in file-sharing is corrosive to the body politic, but his answer is to call for reduced penalties for file-sharing, not a new copyright deal -- like the one that created the recording indusustry in 1908 in order to legalize piano rolls, the first big Napsterization of music. Still, in this MPR interview (mp3), he does admit to having downloaded some Bob Dylan MP3s.

Senator Coleman on Filesharing and Suing Your Customers

Via BoingBoing:

Sen. Norm Coleman is beginning to germinate a clue. He's figured out that turning one in six Americans into a felon for engaging in file-sharing is corrosive to the body politic, but his answer is to call for reduced penalties for file-sharing, not a new copyright deal -- like the one that created the recording indusustry in 1908 in order to legalize piano rolls, the first big Napsterization of music. Still, in this MPR interview (mp3), he does admit to having downloaded some Bob Dylan MP3s.

Senator Coleman on Filesharing and Suing Your Customers

Via BoingBoing:

Sen. Norm Coleman is beginning to germinate a clue. He's figured out that turning one in six Americans into a felon for engaging in file-sharing is corrosive to the body politic, but his answer is to call for reduced penalties for file-sharing, not a new copyright deal -- like the one that created the recording indusustry in 1908 in order to legalize piano rolls, the first big Napsterization of music. Still, in this MPR interview (mp3), he does admit to having downloaded some Bob Dylan MP3s.

Creative Commons Licensing Works

Nice piece in Scientific American on CC license use and adoption. See the CCsite for some examples.

Creative Commons Licensing Works

Nice piece in Scientific American on CC license use and adoption. See the CCsite for some examples.

Creative Commons Licensing Works

Nice piece in Scientific American on CC license use and adoption. See the CCsite for some examples.

Incumbent's Protection

Hollywood and Whine: Why are Democrats helping the entertainment industry stamp out new technologies that fuel economic growth? by Brendan I. Koerner at Washington Monthly.

Same old, same old:

It's a political tale as old as Capitol Hill: A lumbering industry selects a certain corporate-friendly party to be its Beltway patsy. In exchange for the requisite campaign donations and other perks, members of said party use their clout to push through the industry's legislative agenda--an agenda that would rip off consumers and harm the overall economy but enrich the corporate string-pullers immensely. Pundits and public-interest types grumble over the bald-faced cronyism, but as long as the money keeps flowing, the beneficiaries don't seem to care a whit.

Sounds like the buddy-buddy relationship between Republicans and the energy industry, right? The characters cited in the above scenario, however, are the Democrats and Hollywood, one of Washington's coziest couples. For years, Hollywood has poured money into the Democrats' campaign coffers and been rewarded with indispensable assistance on the industry's crusade of the moment--squelching new technologies that allow the dissemination of digital content in ways Hollywood can't control. One bill being hatched by Democrats would allow media companies to hack into networks like KaZaA, a file-sharing service which has replaced Napster as the most popular MP3 clearinghouse on college campuses. Another would outlaw high-tech devices that don't come equipped with government-approved hardware to make it impossible to copy digital media. And yet another would strip consumers of the right to play their legally purchased CDs on multiple devices. The Democrats' Pavlovian alignment with the grossest impulses of the entertainment industry was even written into the Democratic platform back in 2000, when the party urged "all steps necessary" against the leakage of copyrighted materials--a plank pushed on them by Hollywood.

Conclusion, the Dems can afford to lose some entertainment support in favor of new tech support, because it is the future, and the way to innovating news jobs and culture.

Incumbent's Protection

Hollywood and Whine: Why are Democrats helping the entertainment industry stamp out new technologies that fuel economic growth? by Brendan I. Koerner at Washington Monthly.

Same old, same old:

It's a political tale as old as Capitol Hill: A lumbering industry selects a certain corporate-friendly party to be its Beltway patsy. In exchange for the requisite campaign donations and other perks, members of said party use their clout to push through the industry's legislative agenda--an agenda that would rip off consumers and harm the overall economy but enrich the corporate string-pullers immensely. Pundits and public-interest types grumble over the bald-faced cronyism, but as long as the money keeps flowing, the beneficiaries don't seem to care a whit.

Sounds like the buddy-buddy relationship between Republicans and the energy industry, right? The characters cited in the above scenario, however, are the Democrats and Hollywood, one of Washington's coziest couples. For years, Hollywood has poured money into the Democrats' campaign coffers and been rewarded with indispensable assistance on the industry's crusade of the moment--squelching new technologies that allow the dissemination of digital content in ways Hollywood can't control. One bill being hatched by Democrats would allow media companies to hack into networks like KaZaA, a file-sharing service which has replaced Napster as the most popular MP3 clearinghouse on college campuses. Another would outlaw high-tech devices that don't come equipped with government-approved hardware to make it impossible to copy digital media. And yet another would strip consumers of the right to play their legally purchased CDs on multiple devices. The Democrats' Pavlovian alignment with the grossest impulses of the entertainment industry was even written into the Democratic platform back in 2000, when the party urged "all steps necessary" against the leakage of copyrighted materials--a plank pushed on them by Hollywood.

Conclusion, the Dems can afford to lose some entertainment support in favor of new tech support, because it is the future, and the way to innovating news jobs and culture.

Incumbent's Protection

Hollywood and Whine: Why are Democrats helping the entertainment industry stamp out new technologies that fuel economic growth? by Brendan I. Koerner at Washington Monthly.

Same old, same old:

It's a political tale as old as Capitol Hill: A lumbering industry selects a certain corporate-friendly party to be its Beltway patsy. In exchange for the requisite campaign donations and other perks, members of said party use their clout to push through the industry's legislative agenda--an agenda that would rip off consumers and harm the overall economy but enrich the corporate string-pullers immensely. Pundits and public-interest types grumble over the bald-faced cronyism, but as long as the money keeps flowing, the beneficiaries don't seem to care a whit.

Sounds like the buddy-buddy relationship between Republicans and the energy industry, right? The characters cited in the above scenario, however, are the Democrats and Hollywood, one of Washington's coziest couples. For years, Hollywood has poured money into the Democrats' campaign coffers and been rewarded with indispensable assistance on the industry's crusade of the moment--squelching new technologies that allow the dissemination of digital content in ways Hollywood can't control. One bill being hatched by Democrats would allow media companies to hack into networks like KaZaA, a file-sharing service which has replaced Napster as the most popular MP3 clearinghouse on college campuses. Another would outlaw high-tech devices that don't come equipped with government-approved hardware to make it impossible to copy digital media. And yet another would strip consumers of the right to play their legally purchased CDs on multiple devices. The Democrats' Pavlovian alignment with the grossest impulses of the entertainment industry was even written into the Democratic platform back in 2000, when the party urged "all steps necessary" against the leakage of copyrighted materials--a plank pushed on them by Hollywood.

Conclusion, the Dems can afford to lose some entertainment support in favor of new tech support, because it is the future, and the way to innovating news jobs and culture.

Bill Moyers on Big Media

Distribution, according to Ernest Miller, is more important to copyright and the First Amendment, than the right of reproduction. Bill Moyers talked with John Nichols and Robert McChesney about the current state of media in the United States and how it affects democracy, earlier tonight. The FCC is planning to overhaul the ownership concentration rules, and with less distribution, think less freedom of expression, because what is out there will be more closely controlled by a very small number of people.

Bill Moyers on Big Media

Distribution, according to Ernest Miller, is more important to copyright and the First Amendment, than the right of reproduction. Bill Moyers talked with John Nichols and Robert McChesney about the current state of media in the United States and how it affects democracy, earlier tonight. The FCC is planning to overhaul the ownership concentration rules, and with less distribution, think less freedom of expression, because what is out there will be more closely controlled by a very small number of people.

Bill Moyers on Big Media

Distribution, according to Ernest Miller, is more important to copyright and the First Amendment, than the right of reproduction. Bill Moyers talked with John Nichols and Robert McChesney about the current state of media in the United States and how it affects democracy, earlier tonight. The FCC is planning to overhaul the ownership concentration rules, and with less distribution, think less freedom of expression, because what is out there will be more closely controlled by a very small number of people.

Copyright Protection? Economic Sense?

Via John Battelle: See this Brookings Institute paper which concludes that copyright protection does not make good economic sense.

...not only may copyright law’s prohibition against unauthorized copying (17 U.S.C. §106) not be necessary to stimulate an optimal level of new creations, but that §106 appears to have a net negative effect on such output! It observes that the higher revenues that §106 generates for popular creations are, in the lottery-like entertainment markets, generally used for promotional efforts (rent seeking), and that such marketing crowds out many borderline creations. The article also identifies and explains how new technologies and social norms provide many viable business models for financing new creations relying on only a heavily abridged version of §106. Hence, the article questions whether the current §106 [copyright regime] could survive the intermediate scrutiny standards of the First Amendment, given the lack of evidence that the benefits of §106 exceed its costs.

Since they are talking about the economic sense of analog copyright, I would venture that it's possible that an entirely new conception of copyrights might (see Taking the Copy Out of Copyright or here - pdf by Miller/Feigenbaum) help us, something that reflects this new digital world and the issues we face here that are so different than in the analog world. Essentially, digital copyright.

Here is a /. discussion of the paper.

Copyright Protection? Economic Sense?

Via John Battelle: See this Brookings Institute paper which concludes that copyright protection does not make good economic sense.

...not only may copyright law’s prohibition against unauthorized copying (17 U.S.C. §106) not be necessary to stimulate an optimal level of new creations, but that §106 appears to have a net negative effect on such output! It observes that the higher revenues that §106 generates for popular creations are, in the lottery-like entertainment markets, generally used for promotional efforts (rent seeking), and that such marketing crowds out many borderline creations. The article also identifies and explains how new technologies and social norms provide many viable business models for financing new creations relying on only a heavily abridged version of §106. Hence, the article questions whether the current §106 [copyright regime] could survive the intermediate scrutiny standards of the First Amendment, given the lack of evidence that the benefits of §106 exceed its costs.

Since they are talking about the economic sense of analog copyright, I would venture that it's possible that an entirely new conception of copyrights might (see Taking the Copy Out of Copyright or here - pdf by Miller/Feigenbaum) help us, something that reflects this new digital world and the issues we face here that are so different than in the analog world. Essentially, digital copyright.

Here is a /. discussion of the paper.

Copyright Protection? Economic Sense?

Via John Battelle: See this Brookings Institute paper which concludes that copyright protection does not make good economic sense.

...not only may copyright law’s prohibition against unauthorized copying (17 U.S.C. §106) not be necessary to stimulate an optimal level of new creations, but that §106 appears to have a net negative effect on such output! It observes that the higher revenues that §106 generates for popular creations are, in the lottery-like entertainment markets, generally used for promotional efforts (rent seeking), and that such marketing crowds out many borderline creations. The article also identifies and explains how new technologies and social norms provide many viable business models for financing new creations relying on only a heavily abridged version of §106. Hence, the article questions whether the current §106 [copyright regime] could survive the intermediate scrutiny standards of the First Amendment, given the lack of evidence that the benefits of §106 exceed its costs.

Since they are talking about the economic sense of analog copyright, I would venture that it's possible that an entirely new conception of copyrights might (see Taking the Copy Out of Copyright or here - pdf by Miller/Feigenbaum) help us, something that reflects this new digital world and the issues we face here that are so different than in the analog world. Essentially, digital copyright.

Here is a /. discussion of the paper.

The Copyright Wars Heat Up

With this: KaZaa is suing the RIAA. Apparently the countersuit is meant to assert that they have “obscenely” abused their copyright powers.

And this from the Economist:

...Certainly, the content industries are likely to experience the most upheaval. They may be able to retard the growth of copying on the internet for a time, but they cannot hold back the advance of technology altogether. This will undermine their existing business models, based as they are on print, analogue broadcasting and the sale of physical products such as compact discs. Even if the “total copyright protection” scenario sketched above prevails, content providers will have to reinvent themselves."

What can you say. Spot on.

The Copyright Wars Heat Up

With this: KaZaa is suing the RIAA. Apparently the countersuit is meant to assert that they have “obscenely” abused their copyright powers.

And this from the Economist:

...Certainly, the content industries are likely to experience the most upheaval. They may be able to retard the growth of copying on the internet for a time, but they cannot hold back the advance of technology altogether. This will undermine their existing business models, based as they are on print, analogue broadcasting and the sale of physical products such as compact discs. Even if the “total copyright protection” scenario sketched above prevails, content providers will have to reinvent themselves."

What can you say. Spot on.

The Copyright Wars Heat Up

With this: KaZaa is suing the RIAA. Apparently the countersuit is meant to assert that they have “obscenely” abused their copyright powers.

And this from the Economist:

...Certainly, the content industries are likely to experience the most upheaval. They may be able to retard the growth of copying on the internet for a time, but they cannot hold back the advance of technology altogether. This will undermine their existing business models, based as they are on print, analogue broadcasting and the sale of physical products such as compact discs. Even if the “total copyright protection” scenario sketched above prevails, content providers will have to reinvent themselves."

What can you say. Spot on.

NET Act May Be Coming to You

Declan McCullah of Cnet recently wrote a piece on an obscure law called the No Electronic Theft Act (1997) which could be used soon by the Justice Department to prosecute P2P file sharing pirates. Several US Senators sent a letter last summer to the DOJ asking for this, but not much came of it. However, according to the article, the RIAA and the Business Software Alliance have been active with the DOJ in pursing this. Apparently there have already been some successful convictions using the NET Act, but not for P2P piracy. While the odds of being the test case are low, it may be that someone somewhere soon is the target. Of course, if this happens, the NET Act won't be obscure for long.

On a related note, a consortium of music sellers including Best Buy, Hastings Entertainment, Tower Records, Trans World Entertainment, Virgin Entertainment and Wherehouse Music has decided to collaborate to sell digital music online. So there may soon be better alternatives to P2P piracy on the way.

NET Act May Be Coming to You

Declan McCullah of Cnet recently wrote a piece on an obscure law called the No Electronic Theft Act (1997) which could be used soon by the Justice Department to prosecute P2P file sharing pirates. Several US Senators sent a letter last summer to the DOJ asking for this, but not much came of it. However, according to the article, the RIAA and the Business Software Alliance have been active with the DOJ in pursing this. Apparently there have already been some successful convictions using the NET Act, but not for P2P piracy. While the odds of being the test case are low, it may be that someone somewhere soon is the target. Of course, if this happens, the NET Act won't be obscure for long.

On a related note, a consortium of music sellers including Best Buy, Hastings Entertainment, Tower Records, Trans World Entertainment, Virgin Entertainment and Wherehouse Music has decided to collaborate to sell digital music online. So there may soon be better alternatives to P2P piracy on the way.

NET Act May Be Coming to You

Declan McCullah of Cnet recently wrote a piece on an obscure law called the No Electronic Theft Act (1997) which could be used soon by the Justice Department to prosecute P2P file sharing pirates. Several US Senators sent a letter last summer to the DOJ asking for this, but not much came of it. However, according to the article, the RIAA and the Business Software Alliance have been active with the DOJ in pursing this. Apparently there have already been some successful convictions using the NET Act, but not for P2P piracy. While the odds of being the test case are low, it may be that someone somewhere soon is the target. Of course, if this happens, the NET Act won't be obscure for long.

On a related note, a consortium of music sellers including Best Buy, Hastings Entertainment, Tower Records, Trans World Entertainment, Virgin Entertainment and Wherehouse Music has decided to collaborate to sell digital music online. So there may soon be better alternatives to P2P piracy on the way.

Compulsory Licensing

Derek Slater has the notes on Terry Fisher's talk on his Compulsory Licensing plan. The talk was given at Stanford's CIS. Webcast here. It's a start on figuring out how to get creators paid in the era of P2P. I don't yet know what to think about this, but it does seem like a very good start, and on first pass, very possible.

Compulsory Licensing

Derek Slater has the notes on Terry Fisher's talk on his Compulsory Licensing plan. The talk was given at Stanford's CIS. Webcast here. It's a start on figuring out how to get creators paid in the era of P2P. I don't yet know what to think about this, but it does seem like a very good start, and on first pass, very possible.

Compulsory Licensing

Derek Slater has the notes on Terry Fisher's talk on his Compulsory Licensing plan. The talk was given at Stanford's CIS. Webcast here. It's a start on figuring out how to get creators paid in the era of P2P. I don't yet know what to think about this, but it does seem like a very good start, and on first pass, very possible.

Napsterization of the Movies On Trial

Laura Rich and Hane Lee's Analysis: Napsterization: Music was just the beginning covers the movie industry's fight over DeCSS, and their attempts to stop the posting of the code, that frankly, is all over the internet.

For now, the MPAA is wading through constant legal battles in an attempt to stave off video piracy. But increasingly, consumers are capable of trading film files the same way they've been trading songs. Such activity could begin to impact the $8 billion video-rental market within a year if online distribution isn't properly addressed.

Well, we know that didn't happen (this was written in 2000). In the past year or two, there are a few who download movies, but broadband doesn't have the home penetration yet, to really have the impact that has occured with music. So far, few people seem willing to spend 20-30 hours downloading one film, via KaZaa or Gnutella.

Check out Sight Sound mentioned in the piece, though. They sell downloads of movies over the internet. Thank goodness somebody's trying to work legitimately, with the interent, instead of against it.

Napsterization of the Movies On Trial

Laura Rich and Hane Lee's Analysis: Napsterization: Music was just the beginning covers the movie industry's fight over DeCSS, and their attempts to stop the posting of the code, that frankly, is all over the internet.

For now, the MPAA is wading through constant legal battles in an attempt to stave off video piracy. But increasingly, consumers are capable of trading film files the same way they've been trading songs. Such activity could begin to impact the $8 billion video-rental market within a year if online distribution isn't properly addressed.

Well, we know that didn't happen (this was written in 2000). In the past year or two, there are a few who download movies, but broadband doesn't have the home penetration yet, to really have the impact that has occured with music. So far, few people seem willing to spend 20-30 hours downloading one film, via KaZaa or Gnutella.

Check out Sight Sound mentioned in the piece, though. They sell downloads of movies over the internet. Thank goodness somebody's trying to work legitimately, with the interent, instead of against it.

Napsterization of the Movies On Trial

Laura Rich and Hane Lee's Analysis: Napsterization: Music was just the beginning covers the movie industry's fight over DeCSS, and their attempts to stop the posting of the code, that frankly, is all over the internet.

For now, the MPAA is wading through constant legal battles in an attempt to stave off video piracy. But increasingly, consumers are capable of trading film files the same way they've been trading songs. Such activity could begin to impact the $8 billion video-rental market within a year if online distribution isn't properly addressed.

Well, we know that didn't happen (this was written in 2000). In the past year or two, there are a few who download movies, but broadband doesn't have the home penetration yet, to really have the impact that has occured with music. So far, few people seem willing to spend 20-30 hours downloading one film, via KaZaa or Gnutella.

Check out Sight Sound mentioned in the piece, though. They sell downloads of movies over the internet. Thank goodness somebody's trying to work legitimately, with the interent, instead of against it.

Creative Commons Launch

Last night, at the Creative Commons launch, we chatted about Napsterization, what it is, why we think it is about the bigger issues, beyond music, that disrupt digital media and technology, affecting so deeply old economy businesses and institutions. The Napsterization of Hollywood is only one part. It's happened with journalism, law, cultural institutions, education, social space, even things we think of as digital like older software and hardware. It's become common to hear the word, napsterization, describe these things, as last night I overheard a number of people using it.

Oh, and Brewster Kahle downloaded, printed and signed a public domain copy of Alice In Wonderland for me. How cool is that?

Creative Commons Launch

Last night, at the Creative Commons launch, we chatted about Napsterization, what it is, why we think it is about the bigger issues, beyond music, that disrupt digital media and technology, affecting so deeply old economy businesses and institutions. The Napsterization of Hollywood is only one part. It's happened with journalism, law, cultural institutions, education, social space, even things we think of as digital like older software and hardware. It's become common to hear the word, napsterization, describe these things, as last night I overheard a number of people using it.

Oh, and Brewster Kahle downloaded, printed and signed a public domain copy of Alice In Wonderland for me. How cool is that?

Creative Commons Launch

Last night, at the Creative Commons launch, we chatted about Napsterization, what it is, why we think it is about the bigger issues, beyond music, that disrupt digital media and technology, affecting so deeply old economy businesses and institutions. The Napsterization of Hollywood is only one part. It's happened with journalism, law, cultural institutions, education, social space, even things we think of as digital like older software and hardware. It's become common to hear the word, napsterization, describe these things, as last night I overheard a number of people using it.

Oh, and Brewster Kahle downloaded, printed and signed a public domain copy of Alice In Wonderland for me. How cool is that?