Big healthcare-related IP portfolio up on the auction block.

Google patent on RSS ads.

Let's call the whole thing off.

MS and patents.

"Mr. Grove, not surprisingly, had mainly contempt for the music industry's early efforts to keep the digital wave from coming to shore. "If the new technology is compelling enough," he said, "it will win out. When the railroads came, Wells Fargo was in trouble. When the printing press came along, the monks didn't stay around very long." Music, telephony, media: they've all faced the same disruptions, and in Mr. Grove's view they are all going to have to adapt - or else."

Hot on the heels of evidence of impotence in Swedish law, Finland passes their own.

Internet...censorship...damage.... Indeed.

Fred von Lohmann will present "Measuring the DMCA Against the Darknet" on Picker MobBlog.

FBI nabs another eight. Twenty or so down, twenty or so million to go.

--Ari

RIAA aims guns against machinima.

Orin Hatch may actually lose his seat.

Future of Music summit.

Nice study on used books spurring sales of new books.

Business plan for the commons?

Database of open content projects.

Patry on Senate Grokster hearings.

MP3 revolution hits classical? I sent a rather large list of classical-friendly feature suggestions to the WinAmp folks about a year and half ago and was met with lukewarm response, but even a simple "group tracks" feature would be a huge improvement.

Teens and the Internet. No good data on music use though.

Canadian Supreme Court rules: no iPod levy.

DVD format wars.

DRM failure.

Games and money.

Hollywood looks to watermarks.

Swedish anti-piracy law has little effect, or not, depending on who you ask.

Games/movies.

Inducement.

Picker on Google and DVRs.

Remixing movies.

NYTimes doubles up on payola.

--Ari

The good folks over at Oyez have Podcasts now.

Cable looks to add wireless packages.

NYTimes on Nitke.

More on printer tagging, this time from the EFF.

Another approach to searching the deep web.

A2K and OA.

Open Culture conference presentations now online. via OANews

Patry on Jennifer Anniston. More Patry.

Subversion. What we need are a set of tools like those developers have. Wikis are a start, but Wikis are web-based. The wiki concept to be truly revolutionary has to be embedded in everything. MS realizes this, I think. Track changes in word is the start, and I believe current versions of Office allow for group track changes. A set of database libraries for PHP or so--or even better, extending the database engine itself--would allow for all sorts of novel applications to be built on top of the framework, allowing collaborative filtering to extend its reach. The combination of easy meta-data tagging, robust collaborative filtering capabilities, and perhaps a relaxation of the uber-democratic norms of the wiki culture (e.g. denial of expertise) would truly launch an explosion of cultural software. Certainly these things are all possible today, but only with great effort.
A compromise credentialing solution might be to make the definition of expertise democratically determined. A user's expertise rating could be determined by how his/her posts were rated, and the user's rating would determine how much weight his/her votes were given. Wikiesque groups could weight the ratings more towards quantity of postings, and highly-academic groups could weight it more towards quality of posts.
Either way, the basic problem remains: to really make this work, software has to go beyond the web-wiki-style paradigm and into the realm of libraries and structures. I registered classical-remix.org about six weeks ago, but it sort of stalled due to lack of a common format to exchange in--all the existing tools do a truly poor job of dealing with binary content--and hacking together some solution involving CVS or Subversion and a web interface is something I don't have the time for right now. So it will have to wait.

--Ari

--Ari

More on stock markets.

FOI request allows look at details of Napster arrangements with schools.

Wired on Netscape and collaboration.

What's wrong with payola? asks Slate

CC back-and-forth in INDICARE.

XM/Napster.

Siva on Grokster.

FCC looks to decrease market competition on former monopolies.

--Ari

Correlation, not causation, but interesting nonetheless.

Studios might agree on digital projection standards.

Freedom to tinker. 10-5 are mostly boring, but the top few are worthwhile.

iPod DJ mixer. Noteworthy because the iPod (well, the Diamond player) was the first real SNIU battle, although it's so long ago that no one remembers the ridiculous claims that were made.

A new government mandate: avoid competition with the public sector?

More on the intersection of previously governmental speech concerns as corporate consolidation marches onward.

Nice roundup on MS DRM.

Deep web searches and Yahoo.

Hot Coffee aftermath.

--Ari

Trademarks.

ID P2P users.

Radio to blog.

Web aggregating data about markets' failures to aggregate fast enough....

Droit de suite.

Grokster: Shred your memos.

EFF wins argument, loses case.

--Ari

LawMeme on robots.txt.

Gene patents and Jews. A little creepy.

SpeakFree 2.0?

There's actually a deeper point in the MS Maps/Apple news. Copyright has long encouraged more accurate documentation, and that is a good thing. This strange mash of sources produces funny results.

XM comes to MP3 players.

Podcasts as marketing. Content-based ads really are the future; they can't be filtered.

IdeaSling.

--Ari

Music, society, and culture. Mix'n'match.

UK EFF soon?

Another story of non-tech-folk just not getting it.

Videogame product placement goes FMV.

Grokster hearing lineup. Guessing the Wurld guy will claim that they have a beautiful working product that filters everything but legitimate songs perfectly, and thus everything else should be banned.

Patry weighs in on the Australia linking case.

Dutch podcasting levy to come?

A Chicago guy favors markets. Whodathunkit? The point about the utility of anti-payola laws is well-taken, but we're simply not at a perfectly competitive market yet (or anything close to it), and there is substantial anecdotal evidence that payola has allowed inferior-but-good-enough products to dominate--who do you know that actually thinks the modern major labels put out superior works?

--Ari

Epstein article in Slate. The numbers are incredible. I've been pining after hard numbers for so long now.
Epstein's site is also very good.

--Ari

Just chanced on a new Corante blog: Rebuilding Media. "The economics of media."

US creates piracy czar post.

Copyright Office requests comments on "Preregistration of Certain Unpublished Copyright Claims."

Netherlands blocks distribution of DVD X Copy.

NYTimes on Video Blogs.

New mechanisms for promoting artists "at the bottom of the food chain."

More on watermarking printouts. I think the first version is much more agreeable from a censorship perspective.

Academic presses should launch their own general-purpose OA journals? Although the university competition aspect of this is interesting, this doesn't seem like the greatest solution to me. In general, it seems like OA tends towards non-credentialing. The PLoS model, with high-presige offerings, may produce a faster transition.

PLoS Genetics launches.

Reader's guide to the Orphan Works comments.

Commons blamed, but not at fault, in airport delays.

ISP shuts down site of union.

Sony/Spitzer settlement official.

Quasi-OA. Nice idea.

Patry.

Censorship? Unlikely, but amusing anyway.

MS patents TV filtering for exciting parts of sports games. Now if TiVo tried this....

--Ari

A major contribution to the first collaboratively authored paper for the journal. To get a sense of the size of the contribution you can use the history tool at the top of the page or look at the diff directly.

--Ari

Grokster hearing July 28.

"Legal music downloads triple, but no change in rhetoric."

Big father is watching.

Hackers target P2P networks. It's not who you think.

Sony to settle payola case.

Hackers target P2P. It is who you think.

Just got my MythTV box working, so going to try Torrentocracy and see how much content is available on it. SNIU.

Citizen-created media.

BBC continues its policy of glasnost.

MS attempts to patent the smiley.

BT=illegal hacking tool.

Review of various citizen media P2P programs. SNIU

"The basic message from all speakers was to take more chances, to not be so conservative on choices (not be crazy or do illegal things, but not to be so timid either)." Use it or lose it.

Google Moon inspires starry-eyed dreaming. Sloan is awesome. It would great to see what Google could do with it.

One-page OA handout has a nice roundup of resources. via OANews

"Digital shoplifting" of ringtones. Demoted from swashbuckling sailors to teen miscreants.

Picker continues the back and forth with Felten on DRM and HP.

--Ari

Copyright as bludgeon.

GTA modders under assault. Article refers to the beach volleyball case that was dropped and the original game genie copyright case.

DRM interoperability.

Roberts on the press and copyright. Doesn't look so good. via OANews

--Ari

Roberts was on the three-judge panel that struck down the DMCA's expedited provisions. This is the first major copyright-related find seen related to Roberts' record.

Doctors' offices going open source, effectively. Had a conversation with Dr. Asch in one of my classes once, where he thought Vista was a great business opportunity. Now it's the perfect speed boost for EMR adoption.

Some nice historical alternatives to today's views on copyright.

More Sunstein

--Ari

Peter Suber's always-excellent OA News has picked up on the journal launch with a nice summary.

Levies on media debated.

--Ari

K@W on the semantic web. Baby steps. Clever.

OpenRAW.

More Cass Sunstein at LessigBlog. He was on NPR yesterday as well discussing the Roberts nomination.

Patry gives a nice review of some aspects of photographic copyright in a Slate-like beyond the headlines look at the NYT photo collection.

P2P survey.

Another prediction of web of free content shrinking.

Wired on HP piracy.

More iPod skepticism. Until cell phones are unhindered by their lock downs, I doubt they will replace the 'pod.

--Ari

"I understand that the emergence of cheap or free stock is a problem for photographers and I understand why. On the other hand I think change is inevitable because the technology for taking pictures and the methods of distribution are evolving so rapidly." "I should point out that our primary target market is not traditional print or online publishers but rather individual bloggers and webmasters." And that's why the sky hasn't fallen. Those who buy stock aren't those who use free stock.

Small films big business soon?

Huge free web photo collection. Free as in beer, but still....

Broadband top FCC priority.

Perhaps the most rantish and lest sensical article ever by Dvorak.

Hot on the heels of iTunes podcasting support.

Inducers.

Sunstein's guest blogging on Lessig's blog. It's getting interesting. The basis for the utility of collaborative filtering.

Former Clash guitarist sees MP3s like mix tapes.

Roberts and copyright.

Not realeasing an eBook didn't save Potter from swapping.

Scary.

Breathless article on commons' besting traditional media.

Content taking up more internet time. Too broad to be really useful.

--Ari

Copyright Journal launch

Well, after a few months of work, it's finally ready. The journal launched today. Now it's time to spread the word and build a community around it.
--Ari

Submitted the paragraph below to Slashdot. We'll see if they take it.
-------
A new peer-reviewed journal, Copyright, launched today with its call for papers. The editorial team should be familiar to /.ers, as it includes Lawrence Lessig, Michael Geist, and others equally well known in academia. The journal is to my knowledge the only journal focused on copyright in the internet age, certainly the only open-access one. The journal actively encourages participation by those without "Ph.D." behind their name, through forums, a journal club, feature blogs and aggregators, extensive use of RSS, and projects. The most innovative concept behind the journal, though, is wiki-authored peer-reviewed submissions to the journal. Pick a paper in progress that interests you, do some research, and contribute.

SNIU. This is the first one I've seen in a while. Which begs the question: was SNIU-related innovation put on hold while Grokster was uncertain?

--Ari

iPod video.

BBC innovates again.

RSS2 v. Atom 1. Bottom line: Atom is better, less widely adopted.

Discussion on information aggregation.

AP gets a story wrong? Gee, that never happens.

Shared playlist for copyfighters.

Canadian ministers defend controversial copyright law.

MS and Hollywood.

Daily dose of Patry.

More on DVDs and antitrust, this time from Picker.

--Ari

Apple does impressive job mainstreaming yet another geek tech.

Clear Channel gets into online radio business.

MS v. Apple, round 12.

Marketing through piracy.

Amazon continues business method patent abuse.

Worst movie ever enters public domain.

DRM.

Online TV arrives.

Longhorn to require Monitor-based DRM. Can't imagine this will be secure for longer than it takes to say "hardware-based DRM monitor identity changer."

The LP.

Hillary Rosen will be guest blogging on Lessig's blog.

Felten on DRM and monopolies.

Daily dose of Patry.

HP and counterfeit goods.

--Ari

Some interesting work by Chicago's Cass Sunstein over at Lessig's blog.

Open-Source P2P projects continue post-Grokster. Not surprised.

Linking not the problem in Australia case? Doesn't seem too much better (more like a Grokster test). More case analysis here.

Senate affirms NIH Public Access policy.

Norway moves towards open file formats.

Western art piracy by Chinese interests.

Patry.

More opinion on the Noveck patent proposal. General concensus seems to be the same as mine: good idea, impossible to implement. The proposal itself. Note the title's literary reference. She clearly realizes it is an impractical proposal right now, but sometimes the job of an academic isn't always to put forth practical so much as ideal.

A new piece of software called FRAPS can be put to all sorts of Macrovision-defeating uses.

YotoPhoto.

--Ari

This would fail the Grokster test.

Open Content Development System.

--Ari

An extremely disappointing article out of the DP. It's the Summer Pennsylvanian, which we widely regard as a training ground for new folks, but even so, this falls below even the usual "he said/she said" bad articles.
And accompanying editorial, with sections cut out of the bad article and pasted right in.

Movie director flood. Will all the competition increase the average quality? Only if Hollywood does a good job picking.

Michael Powell seems to argue for distributed something, but gets the whole idea whack wrong. "Journalists are trained not to be emotional, like a doctor doesn't fall in love with his patients," Powell said. "But people experiencing a tragedy can convey what actually happened while at the same time express deep emotion and engage in spirited storytelling. A photo of someone climbing up through train wreckage is extremely powerful. A reporter rolling up to the scene behind a police line can rarely give you that."
I know of very few photojournalists who can possibly be unmoved by what they see in a situation like this. There are constant discussions in the trade magazines about when it is time to put down your camera and help. And I don't really know of anyone who trains their journalists to not be emotional--it just doesn't happen. Professional, yes, unemotional, no. So he finally sides with the little guys, but misses the point entirely: the preponderance of amateur photos in the London coverage doesn't come because the journalists are strolling up to a police line, but because there are simply so many more cameras out there than the professional press corps can field, and because those amateur cameras are wielded by (in general) better-trained amateurs thanks to the near-zero marginal cost of digital. C.f. Lanchester's Law

Beth Noveck proposes collaborative filtering on a massive scale for the USPTO. Incredible idea, assuming the trade secrets bit can be overcome.

Inducing sales up. Non-inducing sales up. Maybe the music market is just plain up? Could lower prices and better delivery systems have finally pushed through profits?

Competing with themselves. Or are they?

Bad copyright legislation could be over-broad in Canada.

Patry on licensing reform.

More parallels to the stock photo industry...how can they compete with free?

First Germany, now that haven for overly-restrictive content controllers joins in. Is the right to link dead outside of the US?

Amazon gets another business method patent.

--Ari

Supernova 2005: "forces that are driving computing from a centralized model to a decentralized one" and "the power of the so-called "long tail" in media and commerce."

K@W on podcasting.
"A lot of the attention has been overdone, but podcasting is not going away," says Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader. "It will continue to grow and resources will be thrown at it. Some will do podcasting well and be rewarded for it."
Couldn't agree more.

More DMCA abuse.

The culture of non-competition extends. Ecoes PubChem battle.

"The problem is that the films are full of archive film and music from a multitude of sources. The reason my series are normally not released on DVD is that it is prohibitively costly and a nightmare - no pun intended - to clear the rights." These things are a net loss for society, and a net loss to both rights holders and potential licensees. The rights holders need to learn--never let greed get in the way of profit.

Can't TiVo this.

Spectrum Wars. via Miller

--Ari

Patents and dictionaries.

Free as in....

Vlogging.

DVD sales slumping.

BBC open source. In an era of increasing commercialization of non-profit and public-good entities, it's good to see some thinking broadly about their mission.
PBS makes some CC content available. The Cringely column is worth a read. "They'll be using a network of distributed servers I've created as a kind of "poor man's Akamai."

RIP, browser. Long live...iTunes?!

90% of owners TiVo ads.

More on monetization of online property.

Senate testimony. Furd has statements.

"Several interviewees identified copyright as the biggest obstacle to advancing digital scholarship in American literature."

Coke copyrights stifle speech.

Hedging your blockbusters.

My name is Ari and I am addicted to Patry. Daily dose.

An Economic Theory of Infrastructure and Commons Management. Looks good. Lessig is publishing a reply in the same issue.

--Ari

New podcast service.

More on the stock photography market transitions.

Open access to metadata allows all sorts of amazing things, like tracking circadian rhythms across all LiveJournal users.

Skype+Boingo.

Amazon buys CustomFlix.

NetFlix plans download service. Miller suggested this a few days ago, I believe.

Dutch piracy case thwarted.

More monetization of online worlds.

Why not to blog. Too late for me, but I've always taken the view that anything you write on the Internet may eventually become public, even while ardently supporting technical provisions for anonymous speech.

Wu continues his campaign to raise awareness about the perils of Chinese Internet censorship.

HP leaked despite NDA's.

Fun new inducing device.

Patry on the Wayback machine case that everyone's talking about.

Felten on DRM and copying.

Weed Idolatry.

Lasica letters. Nice collection on permission culture.

Fair Use of citizen photos by Big Media.

German P2P decisions.

Geist on HP.

--Ari

From the fair use article posted earlier: "However, as with xerography, the copy was of lower quality than the original and thus was easily distinguishable from the original. This kept illegal copying (essentially, copying for a profit) below the threshold necessary to threaten the economic interests of the parties involved (authors, publishers, and users)."
This is a common argument, and not a particularly controversial one. Yet the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that it is wrong. Certainly, the copy was of lower quality than the original, but not significantly so. I watched Star Wars hundreds of times as a kid from a copy recorded off the air, still watch from that same VHS sometimes today, and the quality never bothers me. And I'm picky about video/photo quality. So why has this argument gone uncontested all these years? Certainly there were technical barriers to copying, but most of the barriers in the 'good old days' were those of cost: distributing a VHS is simply more expensive than handing them out. Nevertheless, the cost argument appeared nowhere in the fight over DVD copying, because the media in the early days cost upwards of $5 apiece. No, it was the 'perfect copy' argument that held fast. Never mind that only now do we have DVD media capable of storing a perfect copy of the original, and that such media remains so much more expensive that few bother to use it--witness the enduring popularity of programs such as DVD Shrink. The lack of challenge to this argument is particularly egregious in the music field, where, with the exception of a small niche of audiophiles trading FLACs, all of the filesharing that occurs is in MP3's, and largely 128Kbps files, at that. So the illegal copying may or may not have been below a certain threshold--we may never know, given the tenuous-at-best link between filesharing and declining profits--but it certainly wasn't imperfect copying that kept it that way.

--Ari

A wonderful site, marred only by its distribution restrictions. Crying out for CC Non-Commercial, Share-Alike.

--Ari

musiMoto. Will it reach the market this time?

Will volume trump margin? Interesting concept. On a related note, is violating national exhaustion (e.g. reimporting drugs) be morally suspect? The consequences are certainly greater than P2P piracy, even if the actual deed seems less questionable. After all, you've bought the drugs. But there are real consequences to reimportation, namely that pharma is less likely to make it available at a lower price if they can't price discriminate--and, unlike threats of the music industry not to produce any music if they can't protect themselves from piracy, this threat is real. The whole issue is a curious disconnect between consequences and actions.

A communications-related use of the target-the-bottom strategy.

NYTimes on the format wars. Nice lede anecdote.

Ars has insider info on the Apple decision to go Intel. Wonder if they'll get sued.

Cool PSP hacks. Good for Sony (electronics), bad for Sony (music/movie, when those get cracked).

The RIAA doesn't like being the bad-guy, apparently.

Freedom to link.

Fair Use piece. And yes, it is Fair Use Day, according to the basic webpage that some anonymous people threw up on the web.

Seattle Times opinion piece on giving away music. Free music competition.

The daily Patry.

Webcast tomorrow of Senate hearing on music licensing reform.

--Ari

Open Source for hospital software. VISTA is widely regarded as an incredible piece of software, and it's open.

"Old-fashioned DRM."

Licensing deal with iMesh 2.0

Students aren't buying Napster 2.0

--Ari

Negativland remix interview. Via Lessig

Posner/Becker.

Slingbox prognostication.

Senate hearing on Grokster.

Prof. Samuelson on Grokster.

Will MS restrict XBox podcasting if they have it at all?

EFF head supports the Peters proposal.

The Spoken Alexandria project.

Modularity wins. Sort of. Unix pipes are still unpopular in the general populace....

Drastic measures proffered for P2P piracy prevention.

Miller Grokster roundup.

Anonymity helped political commentary back then also.

Celera opens database.

The sincerest form....

Patry, excellent reading as always: 1 2 3

That about covers the post-vacation backlog.
--Ari

AP-like clearinghouse for cameraphone news images.

CC search tools.

EU and P2P piracy laws.

ClickStar, pre-DVD films. Always did like Freeman.

EU Software Patents fail to pass.

Small devices not moviegoers' panacea. Given that cells and other small devices are a DRM haven, this isn't good for content controllers.

Apple to become wireless provider? Do to MCI what MCI did to AT&T.

Online unified European music store?

Remix.

Dell and Napster to offer colleges legit music services.

Open Skype challenger. SNIU

DVD Audio's DRM circumvented.

Opera includes BT. SNIU

Swarm bots. SNIU

Distributed ID. SNIU

Talk about P2P? Lose job.

--Ari

ThinkSecret reverberates in Congress.

Remixing data.

New wireless pipe dream.

Grokster.

Stealthily abusive.

Audience participation. I'm not sure that newspapers turning into blogs is the right idea. There is a place for newspapers, and a place for blogs, and the two can feed off each other. The problem with newspapers these days, as I see it, is a decline in the valuation of expertise. They used to filter, to make judgement calls. And if you didn't like one newspaper's filter, you went to another one that more closely reflected what you perceived as truth. Today, under the banner of 'objectivity,' our press has subscribed to he said, she said journalism, and the result is that the more extreme side always wins. It's truly unfortunate, and it's ingrained in the philosophy of just about everyone I've talked to in the press, from DP editors right up to the editors of the NYTimes and AP. Fix the expertise problem, and newspapers will become newly relevant.

Blogs as marketing. Redux.

Downloadable movies may finally become reality. For all the talk of not repeating the recording industry's mistakes, the movie industry still committed the big one: not offering your own service before the P2P ones become entrenched.

AOL Live8 concert broadcast is a hit.

Times on Podcasting. Apple press hit, perhaps.

3d tv. The bad part? 3d ads.

Another bad patent. Which begs the question: is there any example out there of a good business method patent?

NYTimes article on $1 DVDs. I own some. They're not bad.

More tinkering.

Pirates of the Commons. Via OANews

Miller on Warez/DRM.

DVD sales slumping?! Could just be bad fare. Maybe Batman Begins will revive their fortunes.

Going on a river trip down the Tennessee for a few days, so no posts until at least Saturday, and the journal launch is July 11, so probably nothing until after then either.

--Ari

Professional photography world in transition

Another frivilous patent ruling goes the right way.

One of my leftover readings from my days as photo editor is PhotoTalk, a blog for pro photography. There have been some links posted from there before, but two recent ones caught my attention, along with several earlier ones about stock groups partnering with video libraries. Basically, it really seems like the stock market--always a competitive one--is coping with changing norms and, yes, massive piracy by end-users by innovating and focusing on the commercial uses of their product. Of course, they also try going after the providers of replication and distribution services, which is why there have been a slate of articles about WalMart et. al not allowing pro-looking photos to be copied, but those are mostly in the private commissioned sector.
That sector, the domain of professional photographers taking pictures for a lump sum plus reprint costs--many of whom are good friends of mine, and a field from which I have earned some fairly significant sums over the last few years--is experiencing a sea change. Supply is increasing (at least that's my perception, haven't seen any hard data), as digital allows for easier training (instant feedback). There is more 'piracy,' as the cost of scanners and photo printers drops to virtually nothing. But the same technologies allow costs to dramatically go down. The DP used to spend $3K per month on film. Now we have $100K in photo equipment, but no recurring costs. One of the best pro photographers I know shoots thousands of frames per gig, something downright impossible with film. So for now the decreases in cost have offset the loss in revenue from reprints. But the business model is broken. Eventually reprints will drop to near-zero, and that revenue will be lost. One friend, at least, doesn't charge for reprints. He demands--and can get--higher rates with transfer of noncommercial rights. The striking thing is how his attitude is different. When there is commercial use of his work without authorization he goes after them, but he doesn't decry his customers as 'pirates' for making copies of his work.
Back to stock imagery, two posts. In the first, a new stock method is first allowed to exist and examined, then the withheld judgement is passed. In the second, Corbis' acquisition points out another similarity to the music industry, that the short head of the old image files are still valuable.

Wouldn't normally have posted this, but the similarities to the music/movie industries are as striking (as well they should be; they are all content industries) as the solutions are divergent. The contrast is a pretty dramatic illustration of the differences between a highly concentrated market with substantial political clout and a highly competitive one with virtually none.

--Ari

Big raids appear in the wake of Grokster. $50mill=1HDD. In a bunch of countries. Suing each other. But Germany makes it even harder to sue end users. Sweden passes new laws. More on suits.

EZPeer is off the hook, however.

Moves towards simultaneous release.

BBC culls its own repository. Not such a good idea, given the virtues of copyleak in preservation.

TheStreet on why Grokster won't stop the activity.

Real ad campaign.

Lasica's final guest post. "When I first began conducting research for Darknet three years ago this month [...] [copyright issues] were known to only a very, very small segment of the online community." "But that's beginning to change."

Eldred begat Grokster? Maybe, but either way, Eldred + Grokster is a recipe for cultural stagnation.

Tech loses ally with O'Connor.

DRM as opt-out? Only works when content sources are pluralistic, but still a cool inversion of the way of thinking about things.

Slingbox, space-shifting.

--Ari