GrafoDexia

This site is devoted to copyright and issues of 'intellectual property,' particularly the issue's analytical aspects. It also concerns itself with the gap between public perception and the true facts, and with the significant lag time between the coverage on more technical sites and the mainstream press. For site feed, see: http://grafodexia.blogspot.com/atom.xml To see the list of sites monitored to create this site, see: http://rpc.bloglines.com/blogroll?html=1&id=CopyrightJournal

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Congressional staffers edit boss's bio on Wikipedia
The issue gets much more interesting when politicians get involved in editing their own Wikipedia biographies and those of their rivals—and did we mention that it was being done at taxpayer expense?

CableCARD certification rules out home-built Windows MCE boxes, possibly other DIY solutions
which means you can at last use your PC as a high definition digital video recorder. Unfortunately, a few obstacles stand between you and the nirvana that is 1080i.

Google to buy Napster?
music industry insiders say that Google is about to announce a partnership with or buyout of Napster

Is your game's copy protection system frying your machine?
No, we're not talking about Sony's rootkit debacle—this time it's copy protection for computer games.

Wired News: Roll Your Own Ringtone
Now MIT's Media Lab hopes to unleash some new creativity into this market with a ringtone composition tool to the masses for free.

Wired News: Law Annoys Private Cord Banks
But thanks to $79 million in federal money that will fund the new public bank, private cord-blood collectors may have a harder time attracting new business. Many doctors say that's just fine, because private blood banking is a rip-off.
Imagine if this logic were applied to PubChem.

Slyck News - Judge Refuses to Rule on Kazaa Contempt Charges
As per order number 4, Sharman Networks was required to enhance Kazaa's already existing key word filter with an additional 3,000 words by December 5, 2005.

John Battelle's Searchblog: Google Going P2P?
The URL sharelive.com resolves to Google (www.sharelive.com/forums/ also resolves to Google, though to a non working page.) Odd, in that ShareLive used to be a file sharing site.
Google to buy Napster?
Google has responded to the Napster story, and it's not happening: [A] Google spokeswoman says, "It's a rumor. It's a fabrication. There isn't any truth in it." Google says in an e-mailed statement that it has "no plans to acquire Napster" or "develop a music store at this time."


AT&T chief says that people are only paying for half the Internet
First, there was the infamous "our pipes" comment, made last year as a warning to VoIP providers. Next came the blasting of Google and Microsoft for being freeloaders on the Information Superhighway. Now, to complete the hat-trick, Whitacre has clarified his comments by announcing that only half of people's Internet access is being paid for:



--Ari

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Seeing Fakes, Angry Traders Confront EBay - New York Times
It said it had no responsibility for the fakes because it was nothing more than a marketplace that links buyers and sellers.
P2P redux.

Visible Earth: Frequently Asked Questions
I thought P2P and Filesharing were illegal! This is a common misconception. BitTorrent, and peer-to-peer (P2P) are protocols, like HTTP and EMail. It is true that they can be used to share files illegally, but the same is true of HTTP. Our use here is legitimate, however, so you should have no need to be concerned.
NASA using BitTorrent. SNIU

AppleInsider | Amazon plans full-length feature film streaming
Online retailer Amazon.com is preparing to enter the digital download space this spring with a service that will likely marry digital video streaming to DVD sales, reports Variety.com.

Slashdot | Court Rules Burning Porn = Making Porn
And how does this affect the lawsuits by the BSA, RIAA, and MPAA?"

Gates gives Asian piracy 10 more years, tops
The minute piracy stops helping the Chinese and Indian tech scenes (at America's expense) and starts seriously hurting it, the countries' governments will start to crack down.
China, in particular, has shown a startling ability to accept those things good from the West and reject the rest.  I wouldn't be surprised if the crackdown came only on indigenous software.

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site
And while I don't contest claims that, with DRM, obscure formats and lack of choice, the offerings from Apple's and its competitors' sites are inferior to what can be had for free elsewhere, I see it as a healthy sign that the cultural connoisseur, with more money that sense, is still very much alive.

Open Access News
We must fight for the promise copyright made to the public: All these economic rights are only in the service of intellectual progress.

Furdlog » Look; Music Marketing Has Changed
“The overall marketing dollars may or may not be the same, but the money’s not just coming out of labels’ pockets anymore. There are many new partners who want exclusive content and are willing to pay for it,” one music executive said.

The Patry Copyright Blog: There's Hole in Your Opinion, Partner
Hank Williams Sr. left a legacy befitting a great musician: enough classic recordings to fill box sets that can be reshuffled and sold anew every holiday season, illegitimate children who can tie up the estate in litigation for years, and undiscovered live recordings whose chain of title is as tortured as James Frey and Doubleday's relationship to the truth.

Slashdot | Wikipedia Entries 'Cleaned' By Political Staffers
According to the Lowell Sun, U.S. Rep Marty Meehan's staff has been heavily editing his Wikipedia bio, among other things removing criticisms.


--Ari

Friday, January 27, 2006

The Home-video Market: Who Rents, Who Buys and Why - Knowledge@Wharton
Option One, whether to pay a flat fee for unlimited consumption or Option Two, whether to pay at each time of consumption.
Sounds like iTMS vs. Napster to me.

Digital Rights Management (DRM): Media Companies' Next Flop? - Knowledge@Wharton
To Hunter, the real cost of DRM schemes is that they keep content out of the hands of future generations. "DRM locks up content that would otherwise be re-used."

Wired 14.02: Phil Knight's Big Leap
Knight says, "You can't work too far outside the system. If one store doesn't want your shoes, you just go to another one. But there are only six or seven big companies in the movie business who can get a picture into theaters. You have to make friends down there."

Wired News: DV Studio Can't Make a Buck
Filmmakers enjoyed creative freedom as InDigEnt slashed production costs and reduced its financial risk by working with well-known talent.
To my knowledge--and the knowledge of the few people I've asked, there is no economic model for this effect.  I am interested in it, particularly for the sciences, where the cost of research has skyrocketed...with corresponding declines in the riskiness of the work undertaken.

Razr vs. Blade: Cloning Is Only Skin Deep - New York Times
songs downloaded directly from Sprint's music store (ludicrously overpriced at $2.50 a song).

Music sales influenced by video games
Unknown artists are finding that getting their music included in a hit video game can be a fast track to success:

Rumors shuffle about a potential Microsoft Portable Device
Despite this plethora of hardware, a Microsoft portable music player would be a significant departure from the company's current online music strategy.

"Making available" == copyright infringement, says RIAA
The cited case law appears to give the argument solid support, but only until you do your homework.

Google May Be Close To Developing iTunes Competitor - Forbes.com
Bear Stearns maintained an "outperform" rating on Google and said the Internet search giant may be looking to expand into the MP3 downloading business.

Slashdot | Google's Cache Ruled Fair Use
A district court in Nevada has ruled that the Google Cache is a fair use

Lawrence Lessig
But interestingly, the “implied license” part of the opinion weakens any such claim in the context of Google Book Search.

The Patry Copyright Blog: Google Caches One
In a passage written before the current China dispute, the court noted in what now seems most ironic

Slashdot | Independents Push For Second Firefly Season
It's possible that subscribers may choose one of three playback options; monthly DVD deliveries, TV On-Demand using your cable or satellite provider, or computer viewing via Streaming Download.'

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site
In their latest effort, they're attempting to re-hoist an argument - that merely having a shared files folder that can be accessed is copyright infringement - already explicitly dismissed by judge Marilyn Hall Patel in her Napster decision.

Furdlog » Another Shakeout Prediction
There are currently around 355 downloads stores worldwide, but with Apple’s share of the market rising to 83 per cent, many of the smaller operators will soon be forced out or absorbed by a larger rival.

Official Google Blog: Watching NBA Games on Google Video
“Yep – just caught it on Google Video.” So come watch the greatest players today play some of the greatest games ever.


--Ari

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

TechCrunch » FireAnt Just Rocks
The result is an extremely versatile, file-type-agnostic videoblogging ecosystem. A tool like this was needed to allow videoblogging to expand to more users.

Wired News: Machinima for the Masses
The Movies game is also geared toward creating genre flicks -- horror, sci-fi, romance, etc. -- and a lot of creators use this feature to tell stories that mainstream Hollywood never would.

Seeking Ways to Fill All Those Tiny Screens - New York Times
But like the digital-audio boom in the late 1990's, this new video territory raises old questions of copyright infringement and users' rights.

Students and Teachers, From K to 12, Hit the Podcasts - New York Times
Currently, iTunes lists more than 400 podcasts from kindergarten through 12th-grade classes, while Yahoo has nearly 900 education-related podcasts.

Broadcast Flag praised, panned in Senate hearing : Page 1
In general, there was a slight bias towards supporting the broadcast flag, although it was clear from listening to the two-plus hour hearing that not all parties involved understand the technology or what is at stake, while some others are embarrassingly dishonest and disingenuous.

The Chronicle: Daily news: 01/25/2006 -- 01
Apple Computer will allow any college or university to set up a customized portion of the iTunes Music Store to distribute course content and other audio and video material.

Freedom to Tinker » Blog Archive » CD DRM: Threat Models and Business Models
It is important to note that the record label and the DRM vendor are separate entities whose goals and incentives are not always aligned.

Slyck News - Major Napster Layoffs? Not Quite
Executives from Napster stated the "layoffs were not indicative of any larger trend, and dismissed any discussions of a future sale or liquidation."

DAVE.TV Rolls Out Content Publishing Network Through IPTV Platform | TVover.net
DAVE.TV, a global IPTV digital entertainment distribution network, today announces the launch of its Content Publishing Network enabling content owners and publishers, for the first time, to deliver their content simultaneously to the TV, PC, portable and mobile devices all over the world and across multiple service provider networks.
SNIU

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site
When you are signed to a label you get $0.70 per CD. Break even costs run about $9.00. Tim then told me that the PDubs latest CD cost them (including studio efforts and disc manufacturing) about $2.50 a CD. They sell them for $10, pocketing $7.50 or ten times more than a label would pay them.

Mac News: Commentary : Oxford University on Pirate-Whacking Campaign
Christ Church, one of its most famous colleges, admits it will act as a Big Four anti-P2P cop, with the cartel's British Phonographic Industry darkly "monitoring" the situation in the background.

RIAA To Target ISPs Next? - // Zeropaid.com News
A Supreme Court victory is nothing to sneeze at, though the opponent was a relative lightweight compared to the internet access industry. While their affect on the overall music industry has been profound, P2P companies are essentially minor league players in terms of overall earnings.

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site
Citing a series of CRIA studies and editorials doesn't prove Bulte's case. It actually makes the point that critics have been raising for the past three weeks.

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site
But seriously now: is John Coltrane going to be pissed at me for downloading Blue Train? I'd hate to show disrespect for the dead.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Digital music: Industry answers
Some of the top executives in the music industry have answered your questions about digital music.

The Patry Copyright Blog: Fantasy Baseball
"Player statistics are in the public domain. We've never disputed that. But if you're going to use the statistics in a game for profit, you need a license from us to do that. We own those statistics when they're used for commercial gain."

Furdlog » Correlation, Causation and Commensuration
We had the last 10 years of the festival’s film guides, which are like inputs, and then a bunch of outputs, like how many people saw a film, did it win anything at Sundance, did it have commercial success. If you could figure out the pattern between the inputs and the outputs, then you could actually predict future winners.


INDICARE : iTunes' terms of service under scrutiny in Norway
iTunes can change the your rights to the music after you downloaded it. This is a violation of basic Principles of consumer contract law. Consumers who want to play they're (sic) music on a non-iPod player must first remove the copy protection


--Ari

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Missed It in the Theater Today? See It on DVD Tonight - New York Times
"So much great film has fallen by the wayside," Mr. Sehring said. "The studios are collapsing the window between the theatrical release and the DVD. We're taking that one step further."

Freedom to Tinker » Blog Archive » Analog Hole Bill Would Impose a Secret Law
The details of this technology are important for evaluating this bill. How much would the proposed law increase the cost of televisions? How much would it limit the future development of TV technology? How likely is the technology to mistakenly block authorized copying? How adaptable is the technology to the future? All of these questions are important in debating the bill. And none of them can be answered if the technology part of the bill is secret.

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site
"The deputies voted changes that would introduce a so-called 'global licence' - allowing Internet subscribers who opt to pay an additional monthly fee to copy as much music as they like online. The additional revenues would be distributed among artists and other copyright owners."

Furdlog » Comparison and Contrast: CBS and Fox Approach To New Distribution
In the fast-moving world of technology, Fox is the tortoise and CBS is the hare.

Gross Hysteria - Do the studios really overpay top talent like Peter Jackson? By Edward Jay Epstein
As one top Viacom executive explained, "The first truism of Hollywood is 'Nobody gets gross—not even a top first-dollar gross player.' "

A Perfect Album Arrives From Britain - You haven't heard of the Arctic Monkeys? You will. By Jody Rosen
Finally, in June of last year, Arctic Monkeys signed on with the London-based indie label Domino Records; their debut single, "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor"," a torrid little punk-pop song about falling in love in a disco, entered the U.K. singles chart at No. 1, beating out Robbie Williams, the U.K.'s biggest hitmaker of the last decade. It felt like a paradigm shift, and it sounded like one, too.

TechCrunch » Pandora v. Last.fm
Pandora is easier to use because it takes absolutely no setup and streams music on the site itself. Last.fm uses tagging and has social network aspects, but you have to download the player to listen to music.

"As I Was Saying to the President …" - Washington and the art of the "glory wall." By John Dickerson
Jack Valenti, a former Lyndon Johnson aide and former superlobbyist for the Motion Picture Association, has perhaps the most impressive photo of proximity to power.

Wired News: The Year of Living DRMishly
This year may be the year that gadget makers finally conquer the living room, replacing DVD players, VCRs and personal video recorders with all-in-one media devices that serve up HDTV, pre-recorded movies and digital music. If so, it will likely also be the year that people learn the meaning of DRM, an acronym the industry says stands for digital rights management, but critics say should stand for digital restrictions mongering.

Wired News: Turning Pages for Those Who Can't
Alas, companies like Microsoft, Adobe and Palm have failed in their e-book endeavors. They've introduced proprietary, encrypted formats that require their respective software to be installed before reading them, in effect destroying a book's inherent characteristic: portability.

Wired News: Awesome, I Sat Through That
When the show was done, band member Adam Yauch (aka MCA, aka Nathanial Hörnblowér) spent a year editing the very raw footage into Awesome, a new kind of concert film premiering this week at the Sundance Film Festival.

Wired News: Real Stern Shocker: No Podcast
But -- aside from cash -- it's hard to see what satellite could do for Stern that podcasting couldn't do better.

Google Video Store: the experiment is showing signs of improvement : Page 2
Indeed, Google's DRM is also a bit suspect because of privacy concerns. As you can see, Google's DRM is of the phone-home sort.

:: Reviews : Play it again anywhere, Sam: MP3tunes Oboe
Oboe is a cross-platform music and playlist syncing service offered by MP3tunes, and it is worth checking out. Think of it as iTunes for Linux. And Windows. And the Mac. For about $40.00 US per year, you can rent unlimited space on MP3tunes' server to store and sync your music with a few mouse clicks.


--Ari

Friday, January 20, 2006

The Entrepreneurial Mind: Opportunities in Podcasting?
"We've gotten to the point that everybody and their grandmother can produce a podcast and everybody and their grandmother is producing a podcast," he said. "Now it's about separating the wheat from the chaff."
Content is cheap. Filtering is what counts.

Google Video: Trash Mixed With Treasure - New York Times
Why is it that you can download a Charlie Rose talk show to have and to hold forever, but a "CSI" episode self-destructs after 24 hours?

Advocates of Wi-Fi in Cities Learn Art of Politics - New York Times
The move from building physical networks to building political influence

MercuryNews.com | 01/18/2006 | Feds want Google search records
The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches.

Autopia
Radio broadcasters are responding to the static from advertisers miffed about losing market share to satellite radio and iPods by quickly rolling out hundreds of HD Digital Radio stations, and several dashboard tuners are now on the market.

Austen making a publishing comeback (from the public domain). Copyfight: the politics of IP
Yup, even though Austen's books are all in the public domain, so Headline gets no copyright exclusivity in their publication, the publisher still thinks it can make them profitable with clever packaging and marketing.

Freedom to Tinker » Blog Archive » Google Video and Privacy
Google’s decision to use DRM was driven by the insistence of copyright owners, not by any illusion that the DRM would stop infringement.

DMCA review sparks some well-written comments from the public
By most accounts, the DMCA has been tremendously anti-consumer, and these are just two of the many issues that have received comments.

P2P use remains steady, but lawsuits are rising
nfortunately for the industry, their 300 percent growth rate over 2004 could've been much higher if it weren't for all the dirty, dirty pirates swapping copies of "Don't Phunk with my Heart."

Wired News: Rockers Seeking Fame Online
And while the traditional record deal remains the holy grail for up-and-coming acts, the internet's ability to build a fan base from scratch puts more power into artists' hands and is changing the way many labels are doing business.

WSJ.com - Science Journal
Because they don't keep discoveries under wraps until publication, they can build on each other's work sooner.

Apple Matters | Want to Marginalize the iPod? Ask Steve Jobs How!
Were Microsoft to jump headlong into the digital audio player market there would be strong incentive to Apple to begin licensing FairPlay.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | File-sharing 'not cut by courts'
Mr Kennedy also warned that the music industry could sue internet service providers (ISPs) if they do not crack down on their customers who flout copyright rules. Music piracy could be "dramatically reduced within a very short period of time" if ISPs took action against their law-breaking customers, Mr Kennedy said.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Digital music: Ask the industry
The BBC News website has assembled a virtual panel of music industry executives to respond to your questions and comments.

Furdlog » Pre-loaded Video iPods Raise Questions
A tiny Massachusetts company named TVMyPod is selling iPods that come with movies and TV programs already loaded on them, a practice that raises questions of legality as it addresses consumer demand for convenience and portability.

Furdlog » Good Luck With That!
We’re not making any money off of it. We’re not selling it


--Ari

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Digital music sales tripled in 2005
Two years ago, few could have predicted the extraordinary developments we are seeing in the digital music business today.
Few inside the music industry, perhaps....
And the numbers.


German Wikipedia site goes offline after lawsuit
Floricic family has not wanted his name revealed. When the existence of the article—which appeared on wikipedia.de on May 31, 2005—became known to the family, they responded with a lawsuit. On Tuesday, a judge sided with the family and ordered wikipedia.de be taken down until the offending content was removed. However, the site and original article are still accessible through de.wikipedia.org.

Carriers push for tiers, Google isn't buying
The carriers are getting pretty good at spinning this argument to sound benign, as if they are just looking for a fair fee for the greater bandwidth used by larger sites—until one considers the fact that the pipes are already being paid for at either end by web hosts and consumers.

Following the money: how Subway ads ended up in Counter-Strike : Page 1
For Counter-Strike, the code was "included within the game" by means of a special mod developed by IGA that displayed ads at various places in particular maps—but it was never cleared with Valve, the game's creator.
Similar to the recent PSP ad controversy, but digital?


Slyck News - Parallel Success for P2P and iTunes
A large percentage of Napster users (over 50,000) are students who are forced into subscription by virtue of a university “technology fee.”

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site
The Big Four, Warner Music, Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal and EMI have, with the help of the movie and software industries, been able to elevate common-garden counterfeit activities to the level of major crime and they routinely use the USTR as a stick with which to beat countries which don't satisfactorily act against 'pirates,' as they've dubbed criminals who copy CDs and DVDs.

Open Access News
John Willinsky's new book begins - quite effectively - by describing how rising prices and a fluctuating currency have forced the Kenya Medical Research Institute to cancel most of its subscriptions to medical journals.

Furdlog » Some (Transparently) Dangerous Rhetoric
Market systems aren’t natural. They are a scientifically-constructed legal scaffolding as engineered as the blueprint of an Airbus jet or the latest automobile rolling off the BMW factory line.


--Ari

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Open Access News
all this talk by the Baby Bells that Google, Microsoft, Vonage and other successful web companies should pay the telcos extra was simple jealousy. Wilson tells the Bells to "dream on," and while we hope he's right, he may be underestimating the destructive power of jealousy. And, it's not just the Baby Bells who are acting this way -- but plenty of online businesses.

Wired News: Whither the DIY Auteurs of DV?
It's the kind of filmmaker-from-nowhere tale that Sundance and proponents of digital filmmaking have been promising for years, but so far has been relatively rare. Despite the hype, DV hasn't yet revolutionized the industry the way proponents had hoped.

Freedom to Tinker » Blog Archive » CGMS-A + VEIL = SDMI ?
For example, there could be a way for the copyright owner to signal that the customer was free to copy the video for personal use, or even that the customer was free to retransmit the video without alteration. But our representatives didn’t see fit to support those options, even though there are unused states in their design.

Google Talk goes open federation
Google Talk has implemented the industry standard Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), enabling GTalk servers to talk to any other XMPP-capable service without any setup, plugins, or special multi-protocol clients required.
S2S (that's server to server...)
Napster crosses half million subscriber mark on road to... ?
But the company's ability to harness Napster's once-cool image from the freewheelin' piracy days of its youth turned out to be nonexistent. It's not hard to see why; "cool, I can get this for free, Napster rocks!" doesn't easily morph into "cool, I can pay $10 a month and not be able to put my songs on my iPod or burn CDs!"

The Charleston Gazette - News
State investigators have stumbled onto a basement office in the West Virginia Capitol outfitted with computers, video and audio gear, and software used to pirate movies and music recordings, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press.

Search Engines as Leeches on the Web (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
I worry that search engines are sucking out too much of the Web's value, acting as leeches on companies that create the very source materials the search engines index.
Riight. You could argue this about blogs leeching MSM value, but search engines? You want eyeballs, search is a cheap way to get them.
Freedom to Tinker » Blog Archive » How Would Two-Tier Internet Work?
ISPs will be driven to a strategy of providing Internet service alongside exclusive, only-on-this-ISP content. That’s a strategy with a poor track record.

Medicine Index
[Cleveland Clinic now has an enormous open-access textbook.]  Via OANews.

A Free Market Model for Content Distribution
This model both preserves profits for the content publishing industry and, paradoxically, serves to reinforce the standard business model. This is accomplished by dispensing entirely with the notion of intellectual property rights and allowing the price of content to be determined naturally by market dynamics.
Via OANews

--Ari

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Furdlog » Mesh Network Application
Both companies said that sharing high-speed lines might enable users in small neighborhood clusters to download files and Web pages up to 10 times faster.
SNIU.



Brokeback, I Just Can't Quit Ya! - Plus--Unions against solar power. By Mickey Kaus
Has Brokeback's studio cannily covered the falloff in old theaters by adding new cities where a predictably brisk opening-weekend business pulls up the total gross (enabling the flim to maintain its media momentum)?

Lawrence Lessig
In the p2p wars, the side that defended innovation free of judicial supervision was right. But when ordinary people heard both sides of the argument, 90% were against us. In this war, the side that will defend these new creators is right. And when ordinary people hear both sides, and more importantly, see the creativity their kids are capable of, 90% will be with us.

The Patry Copyright Blog: Martin Luther King, Jr.
Among the many things written about Dr. King's birthday, none that I saw dealt with the litigation over his "I had a Dream Speech" being thrown into the public domain.

Broadcast flag also coming to HD Radio
who will buy the CD when they can simply record a pristine digital copy of a song off the radio? (Answer: anyone who wants to hear something besides the 60 songs served up by Clear Channel.)

Slashdot | Sony RootKit Still A Problem?
350,000 networks--many belonging to the military and government--contain computers affected by [Sony's rootkit]." This is down from over half a million last month.

Internet Daily: BellSouth wants new Net fees - Internet Software - Retail - Internet Services - Mobile phones - Travel - Media - Entertainment and Leisure - Airlines - Wireless Technologies - Advertising - Electronic commerce - Internet - Wireless - Trans
BellSouth Corp. confirmed Monday that it is pursuing discussions with Internet content companies to levy charges to reliably and speedily deliver their content and services.

iTunes video boosting TV ratings?
A symbiotic relationship between popular online sales and TV ratings makes sense.
But one between downloads and ratings doesn't?
Slashdot | Google To Buy Radio Advertising Firm
It looks we are finally beginning to see Google's transition to mainstream media.

Trial and Error - New York Times
Here the journal posts a submitted paper online and allows not just assigned reviewers but anyone to critique it. After a few weeks, the author revises, the editors accept or reject and the journal posts all, including the editors' rationale.

Mark Cuban asks for tiered Internet service model
Mark Cuban's latest blog entry makes the case for a multitiered Internet, with priority given to the applications that really matter.

Next Generation - Why PC Gamer Kicked Out Gold Farmers
Lately, 'gold farming' companies such as IGE and Power Leveling — companies whose business is the accumulation and (potentially illicit) real-world sale of virtual MMO property, including gold, in-game items, and characters — have begun running ads in magazines like ours. For the record, PC Gamer’s official stance on these types of companies is that they are despicable: not only do they brazenly break many MMOs’ End-User License Agreements, but they all-too-often ruin legitimate players’ fun.


--Ari

Monday, January 16, 2006

O'Reilly Network: The Problem with Webcasting
The harm this could do to public discourse hit me just recently when I attended a forum on wiretapping, where several TV clips of George W. Bush's speeches were aired. The value of seeing these excerpts was incalculable. But if we had to adhere to the broadcasters' treaty, showing them would have been illegal.

Lawrence Lessig
For of course, when the Internet first reached beyond research facilities to the masses, it did so on regulated lines — telephone lines. Had the telephone companies been free of the “heavy hand” of government regulation, it’s quite clear what they would have done — they would have killed it, just as they did when Paul Baran first proposed the idea in 1964.

Furdlog » Evolution of the Starbucks Distribution Channel
With Starbucks outlets blanketing the country, virtually every Hollywood studio has been wooing the chain, hoping it can help boost lethargic movie attendance and stagnant DVD sales.

Furdlog » Well, Of Course!
“We’ve got to find a way to harmonize this so it’s rational,” said Mitch Bainwol, the RIAA’s chief executive officer. […]

Open Access News
If the data is free, the only cost to building a better utilitization of that data is your time .

Hey, Baby Bells: Information Still Wants to Be Free - New York Times
The digital lifestyle I see portrayed so alluringly in ads is not possible when the Internet plumbing in our homes is as pitiful as it is. The broadband carriers that we have today provide service that attains negative perfection: low speeds at high prices.

It gets worse. Now these same carriers - led by Verizon Communications and BellSouth - want to create entirely new categories of fees that risk destroying the anyone-can-publish culture of the Internet. And they are lobbying for legislative protection of their meddling with the Internet content that runs through their pipes. These are not good ideas.

I n t e l l i g e n t T e l e v i s i o n
ntelligent Television is also commissioning and publishing a working paper on the economics of open content,

Wired News: New GPL Free at Last
Among other things, the new version contains provisions barring GPL code from being used in digital-rights-management schemes, and restricting the patent rights coders can claim in their GPL-licensed programs.

Marketers Interested in Small Screen - New York Times
Television-style advertising is coming to a mobile phone near you.

DVD Jon sets his sights on AACS
AACS, like CSS, will be a success. Not at preventing piracy. That's not the primary objective of any DRM system. Anyone who has read the CSS license agreement knows that the primary objective is to control the market for players. Don't you just love when your DVD player tells you "This operation is prohibited" when you try to skip the intro?

Slashdot | NCC Calls for Laws to Protect User Rights
We're used to reading articles about new and creative ways in which DRM and other such technologies can be used to prevent us from doing whatever we like with our media.

U.K. judge frowns on software patents | CNET News.com
A U.K. judge has questioned whether software patents should be granted, and has criticized the U.S. for allowing "anything under the sun" to be patented.

Slashdot | Review of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
the role of P2P networks in popularizing anime


--Ari

Sunday, January 15, 2006

O'Reilly Network: The Problem with Webcasting
The harm this could do to public discourse hit me just recently when I attended a forum on wiretapping, where several TV clips of George W. Bush's speeches were aired. The value of seeing these excerpts was incalculable. But if we had to adhere to the broadcasters' treaty, showing them would have been illegal.

Lawrence Lessig
For of course, when the Internet first reached beyond research facilities to the masses, it did so on regulated lines — telephone lines. Had the telephone companies been free of the “heavy hand” of government regulation, it’s quite clear what they would have done — they would have killed it, just as they did when Paul Baran first proposed the idea in 1964.

Furdlog » Evolution of the Starbucks Distribution Channel
With Starbucks outlets blanketing the country, virtually every Hollywood studio has been wooing the chain, hoping it can help boost lethargic movie attendance and stagnant DVD sales.

Furdlog » Well, Of Course!
“We’ve got to find a way to harmonize this so it’s rational,” said Mitch Bainwol, the RIAA’s chief executive officer. […]

Open Access News
If the data is free, the only cost to building a better utilitization of that data is your time .

Hey, Baby Bells: Information Still Wants to Be Free - New York Times
The digital lifestyle I see portrayed so alluringly in ads is not possible when the Internet plumbing in our homes is as pitiful as it is. The broadband carriers that we have today provide service that attains negative perfection: low speeds at high prices.

It gets worse. Now these same carriers - led by Verizon Communications and BellSouth - want to create entirely new categories of fees that risk destroying the anyone-can-publish culture of the Internet. And they are lobbying for legislative protection of their meddling with the Internet content that runs through their pipes. These are not good ideas.

I n t e l l i g e n t T e l e v i s i o n
ntelligent Television is also commissioning and publishing a working paper on the economics of open content,

OSx86 Project - Apple's Hidden Message to Hackers: "Dont Steal Mac OS X"
Despite being a lighthearted jab at hackers, it seems that Apple is taking the pirating of the new OSx86 seriously, since the same kext is not found in the PPC version of 10.4.4. Is this simply a hidden message for the interested parties, or is it a new tounge-in-cheek implementation of OS X’s TPM security?


--Ari

Saturday, January 14, 2006

hypebot: P2P Hits All Time High Despite Lawsuits
month to month comparisons of P2P use


Ubicomp | MetaFilter
Ubicomp has been discussed here a few times before (in fact a MeFite went on to write a book about it)...but with a flood of manufacturers racing to offer up their versions of the so-called digital home, is Weiser's vision moving closer to reality?

MiniStore in iTunes 6.0.2 comes with privacy concerns
Sounds like a nice feature, except for one thing: the license for iTunes 6.0.2 nowhere mentions that the software is sending information about your listening habits back to Apple. That's how the MiniStore comes up with clever recommendations.

Users overwhelmingly prefer on demand to online downloads
If the option is between spending US$1.99 on a commercial-less show, or sitting through that same show with ads for no additional cost, then the freebie option is the clear favorite, pulling in 62 percent of the vote.

In India, it's IKEA without the assembly | csmonitor.com
"Whenever we think of doing something for the house, one of the things we always hope we can get our hands on are a few IKEA catalogs," says Arundhati Ray, a consultant who works with nongovernmental organizations in Calcutta. "It's shameless pirating," Ms. Ray adds, showing off an elegant wrought-iron chandelier she commissioned from a local artisan, based on an IKEA picture.

The Big Picture - Gigantic TVs, high-capacity DVDs, and hi-def video at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show. By Paul Boutin
The Gigabeat costs the same as an iPod—$300 for a 30-gigabyte model or $400 for 60 gigabytes. What makes it a bargain is the all-you-can-watch movie service. For $9.99 a month, you can download and watch as many titles as you want from Vongo.


Le Monde.fr : La science, c'est aussi de la culture
L'artillerie lourde contre la liberté des échanges risque de provoquer des dommages collatéraux dans d'autres secteurs, qui n'ont pas pris part au combat. [...] La production scientifique est un processus continu, jamais achevé, qui se construit sur des résultats ou des hypothèses déjà formulés, pour les confirmer, les compléter ou les réfuter. Il diffère en cela de la production artistique, où la diffusion d'une oeuvre se fait à son achèvement.

Somehow it sounds better in French. Anyway, the last two sentences here, roughly (very roughly...haven't really spoken in four years) translated, "Scientific production is a continual one, never achieved, which builds on results or hypotheses already formulated in order to confirm, complete, or refute them. It thus differs from artistic production, where the dissemination of a work completes it." While I think the distinction is largely correct in today's world, I'm not sure the is as much of a natural law as the phrasing makes out. Artistic efforts like the Animatrix or online DVD extras certainly inch towards "continual production," as do TV series, etc. Moreover, viewed as one episode in an argument, scientific production may be continual, but viewed one paper at a time, it is certainly fixed and in some sense is completed by its publication. In fact, just like movies/music/etc., papers can and are monetized to a very large degree by publishers, it just isn't the researchers profiting directly (some would say the starving creator part is similar to the music industry as well...). So the distinction seems a little arbitrary. I'm not sure this is the approach I'd use in promoting OA.

--Ari
Memoirs of a Free Geisha - DVD pirates successfully plunder Academy Award screeners. By Xeni Jardin
But there's one big problem. Academy members and movie production workers may wring their hands over piracy in public, but backstage some of them are apparently file-swapping like tweens.

Wired News: Anonymity Won't Kill the Internet
And that's precisely where Kelly makes his mistake. The problem isn't anonymity; it's accountability. If someone isn't accountable, then knowing his name doesn't help.

Apple's iWeb Promises Blogs for All
The program is the newest member of the iLife suite of applications, which sells for $79. iWeb allows users to build simple sites containing photos, movies, podcasts — both the audio and video variety — and blogs.

Official: iPod owners are not thieves | The Register
A survey of US and UK music buyers reveals that although 25 per cent of people admit to downloading music from file-sharing services, only seven per cent of iPod owners do so. Proving that iPod users are either scrupulously honest or more paranoid they'll get sued by RIAA than owners of lesser music players.

Slashdot | Digital DJs Unaware of Copyright Law
Many DJs are still unwittingly breaking the law by playing unlicensed digital copies of tracks months after a new permit scheme began, the BBC has found. This includes legally-purchased downloads, which are normally licensed only for personal use, as well as copies of tracks from records or CDs.

GROKLAW
Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies are supposed to protect digitized “content”, like movies and musical performances from being illicitly copied or used. DRM technology is sometimes described as security technology when it is really licensing technology –- something very different. In fact, DRM may decrease security and reliability.

Slashdot | Apple Responds to iTunes Spying Allegations
Apple discards the personal information that the iTunes Ministore transmits to Apple while you use iTunes.

Music labels could be in trouble over how they charge subscription services
Spitzer recently launched an investigation into price fixing in online music sales. As the investigation continues, some are calling (subscription required) for him to look into prices offered to the subscription services as well.

First simultaneous release movie opening tonight
With a tiny budget of US$1.6 million plus a wad of pocket lint, no professional actors, and a new and highly controversial delivery schedule, Bubble might look like just another straight-out-of-film-school project, destined for eternal irrelevance. But all the major movie studios are watching this release, and so are the national movie theater chains. [...]  I don't know about you, but substantially different Director's Cuts sounds like something I'd consider paying for more than once, rather than the current model, where you get the exact same thing each time you open your wallet, just in different formats.
This last part brings up the "continuous production" in media argument from yesterday. It could exist, just no one's doing it yet.



Apple trademark filing points to cellular offering
Recent trademark filings by Apple is leading to speculation about the iPod maker's plans regarding the cellular phone market.

Broadband coming (slowly) to US airplanes
Because of this lack of interest in the current service, the FCC wants to auction off the spectrum to allow for more innovative services, such as in-flight broadband.

Furdlog » Kristin Hersh: An Experiment in Sustainability
“It’s kind of an unpopular argument, that musicians shouldn’t make money,” says the Altadena resident, laughing. “But really, they shouldn’t.”
Joseph Henry once thought scientists shouldn't file patents. Edison laughed all the way to the bank.

Furdlog » Movie Industry Adopting Record Industry Pay Model
If it’s a bomb, the studio will be spared the ignoble task of cutting bonus checks on a money-losing dog.


--Ari

Thursday, January 12, 2006

hypebot: P2P Hits All Time High Despite Lawsuits
month to month comparisons of P2P use


Ubicomp | MetaFilter
Ubicomp has been discussed here a few times before (in fact a MeFite went on to write a book about it)...but with a flood of manufacturers racing to offer up their versions of the so-called digital home, is Weiser's vision moving closer to reality?

MiniStore in iTunes 6.0.2 comes with privacy concerns
Sounds like a nice feature, except for one thing: the license for iTunes 6.0.2 nowhere mentions that the software is sending information about your listening habits back to Apple. That's how the MiniStore comes up with clever recommendations.

Users overwhelmingly prefer on demand to online downloads
If the option is between spending US$1.99 on a commercial-less show, or sitting through that same show with ads for no additional cost, then the freebie option is the clear favorite, pulling in 62 percent of the vote.

In India, it's IKEA without the assembly | csmonitor.com
"Whenever we think of doing something for the house, one of the things we always hope we can get our hands on are a few IKEA catalogs," says Arundhati Ray, a consultant who works with nongovernmental organizations in Calcutta. "It's shameless pirating," Ms. Ray adds, showing off an elegant wrought-iron chandelier she commissioned from a local artisan, based on an IKEA picture.

The Big Picture - Gigantic TVs, high-capacity DVDs, and hi-def video at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show. By Paul Boutin
The Gigabeat costs the same as an iPod—$300 for a 30-gigabyte model or $400 for 60 gigabytes. What makes it a bargain is the all-you-can-watch movie service. For $9.99 a month, you can download and watch as many titles as you want from Vongo.


Le Monde.fr : La science, c'est aussi de la culture
L'artillerie lourde contre la liberté des échanges risque de provoquer des dommages collatéraux dans d'autres secteurs, qui n'ont pas pris part au combat. [...] La production scientifique est un processus continu, jamais achevé, qui se construit sur des résultats ou des hypothèses déjà formulés, pour les confirmer, les compléter ou les réfuter. Il diffère en cela de la production artistique, où la diffusion d'une oeuvre se fait à son achèvement.
Somehow it sounds better in French. Anyway, the last two sentences here, roughly (very roughly...haven't really spoken in four years) translated, "Scientific production is a continual one, never achieved, which builds on results or hypotheses already formulated in order to confirm, complete, or refute them. It thus differs from artistic production, where the dissemination of a work completes it." While I think the distinction is largely correct in today's world, I'm not sure the is as much of a natural law as the phrasing makes out. Artistic efforts like the Animatrix or online DVD extras certainly inch towards "continual production," as do TV series, etc. Moreover, viewed as one episode in an argument, scientific production may be continual, but viewed one paper at a time, it is certainly fixed and in some sense is completed by its publication. In fact, just like movies/music/etc., papers can and are monetized to a very large degree by publishers, it just isn't the researchers profiting directly (some would say the starving creator part is similar to the music industry as well...). So the distinction seems a little arbitrary. I'm not sure this is the approach I'd use in promoting OA.

--Ari

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Hollywood's New Zombie - The last days of Blockbuster. By Edward Jay Epstein
As far the studios are concerned, other than collecting the money that Blockbuster owes them for past movies, the video chain has little relevance to their future.

TechCrunch » Yahoo Acquires WebJay
Webjay is an interesting application that allows users to publish music playlists on the web.

The Cult of Mac Blog


In his keynote speech, Jobs demonstrated how photos and galleries in a new version of iPhoto can be pushed, or photocast, to subscribers' computers.

America Online Buys Developer of Video Search Service - New York Times
Furthering its efforts to focus on Internet video, America Online said yesterday that it had acquired Truveo, a private Silicon Valley company that runs a search engine for video clips.

Anonymous Internet annoyance illegal? Yes and no.
I believe that McCullagh has rushed to judgment somewhat

Study blames downloading for growing apathy towards music
While the conclusions of the study may be spot on, the issue of causality remains unanswered. Did music becoming more accessible create user apathy, or was it something else?

Apple unveils Intel-based Macs (and more)
Apple sold 14 million iPods in the holiday quarter and has sold 42 million since 2001

The Globe and Mail: Chinese ban on Wikipedia prevents research, users say
Others said the blocking of Wikipedia has been a major blow to their research projects and even to their prospects of passing civil-service exams. "How can I do my thesis now?" a university student asked on another Chinese website.

Mises Economics Blog: I Get Knocked Down, But I Get Up Again
Early US records (eg Brunswick Records, who released, among others, Robert Johnson) had “Not for play on Radio” stamped on them, for fear that radio play might harm Sheet Music sales.

Holiday Music Downloads Set Records
For the year, digital downloads surpassed 350 million, an increase of 147 percent over 2004. The spike is attributed to a 7 percent drop in CD sales, a rush on MP3 players like Apple's iPod, and music download gift cards. Around half a billion dollars worth of MP3 players were sold in the month prior to Christmas.

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site
"Advanced Access Content System will complement new innovations in the next-generation of optical discs, and enable consumers to enjoy next-generation content, including high-definition content." Moreover, it'll be a hit, just like CSS, otherwise known as Content Scramble System. That's what Jon Lech Johansen, aka DVD Jon, believes. And he's probably right. But it won't be a lot of good at preventing piracy, he says on his blog. Because, "That’s not the primary objective of any DRM system. Anyone who has read the CSS license agreement knows that the primary objective is to control the market for players. Don’t you just love when your DVD player tells you 'This operation is prohibited' when you try to skip the intro?

The Patry Copyright Blog: In Praise of Imitation
Copyright is often cast as a battle between creators and users, but more importantly, it involves issues with other authors, and within ourselves. We will be poorer, as Kaplan noted and as Bloom cautioned, if we don't facilitate the working out of creative anxieties.


--Ari

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Hollywood's New Zombie - The last days of Blockbuster. By Edward Jay Epstein
As far the studios are concerned, other than collecting the money that Blockbuster owes them for past movies, the video chain has little relevance to their future.

TechCrunch » Yahoo Acquires WebJay
Webjay is an interesting application that allows users to publish music playlists on the web.

DRM kills award chances for Munich
The DVDs were encoded for Region 1 (US and Canada), not Region 2 (most of Europe). As a result, only those who had seen Munich in the theaters were able to vote on it.

Music downloads growing faster than reported
With all of these numbers in hand, we can calculate the total market share downloads enjoy today, and it's a healthy 7.3 percent.

IP Democracy
If instead of e-mail these companies delivered express-postal mail, it would be like the consumer deciding to pay more for a fast FedEx shipment (as they have for broadband) and then FedEx turning around (unbeknownst to the consumer) and also requiring the receiver of the package to pay more in order to ensure the package receives priority treatment and arrives on time. It’s a double dip.

Wired News: PearLyrics' True Love Story
Sometimes I wonder what Warner Chappell would say if they realized they'd just gone after an unhappy love story -- the kind of stuff their songwriters write songs about in the first place.

Wired 14.01: POSTS
The Warhol Foundation is "vigorous in enforcing our rights when it comes to people wanting to use Warhol's art for commercial purposes," Wachs said. But when it comes to artists and scholars, the rules are very different.

U.S. Office Joins an Effort to Improve Software Patents - New York Times
An open patent review program would set up a system on the patent office Web site where visitors could submit search criteria and subscribe to electronic alerts about patent applications in specific areas. The third initiative is focused on the creation of a patent quality index that would serve as a tool for patent applicants to use in writing their applications. It is based on work done by R. Polk Wagner, an intellectual property expert at the University of Pennsylvania.

Microsoft preps Napster clone | The Register
Microsoft plans to 'embrace and extend' peer-to-peer file sharing technology with a Napster-style system of its own. Codenamed Farsite, the program is currently little more than a research project, according to a ZDNet US story.

Hollywoodreporter.com
Aimed at music, film and software companies, PeerMind can provide detailed reports, online chart data and custom research based on 24/7 monitoring of the major P2P networks.

Furdlog » Verizon’s VCast and DRM
The V Cast upgrade disables that capability for now

Yet another example of why the creep of DRM into PC hardware is a bad thing.

Furdlog » LATimes Grades the Studios
SONY: When it comes to ineptitude, this studio belongs right up there with the 1962 Mets (who lost 120 games) and the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (who went 0-14).

How Apple Could Mess Up, Again
In the modular PC world, that meant Microsoft and Intel (INTC ), and the same thing will happen in the iPod world as well. Apple may think the proprietary iPod is their competitive advantage, but it's temporary. In the future, what will matter will be the software inside that lets users find exactly the kind of music they want to listen to, when and where they want to, with minimal effort.

The same situation as with young Fader's iPod, but the opposite direction. I'm starting to see your point now. It all hinges on how flexible Apple is, although I'm not convinced that a) the decision of proprietary vs. not can't be made top-down style, b) Apple won't assimilate other models, particularly subscription music services, well enough to survive (a la video iPod), and c) the "copyleak" from broken FairPlay that's already going on with e.g. Real may be sufficient to keep them on top despite their potentially self-destructive behavior.

--Ari

Monday, January 09, 2006

Independent Online Edition > Media
What is innovative is that, after watching the film, you find that if you disagree with its stance you can - with the film-makers' blessing - download the unedited interviews that make up the film and re-use them to cut your own version.

Slashdot | MySpace Users Revolt Against Murdoch
The intervention by News Corp in the traditionally open-access world of the web - in particular the alteration of personal user profiles - provoked a storm of angry posts.

Game Buyers Could Influence New Direction in DVD Format - New York Times
Yet after all the jockeying by these companies, it may be the relatively low-priced video game consoles that tip the balance toward one format - or prolong the stalemate for several more years.

Buying Music From Anywhere and Selling It for Play on the Internet - New York Times
The Orchard is seeking to make money by purchasing music from small independent and foreign labels, and then distributing it to digital music services.

Create an e-annoyance, go to jail | Perspectives | CNET News.com
It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.

TheStar.com - Geist: Tech laws we need
Predicting the future of Canadian technology law is challenging at the best of times, but during an election campaign prognostications are admittedly likely to be about as accurate as a coin flip. With that caveat in mind, I offer up likely developments in the coming year gleaned from a pair of crystal balls — one that assesses what Canada needs and the other what we are likely to get.


--Ari

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Semantic Descriptors To Help The Hunt For Music
Currently under development by the SIMAC project, it is a major leap forward in the application of semantics to audio content, allowing songs to be described not just by artist, title and genre but by their actual musical properties such as rhythm, timbre, harmony, structure and instrumentation.

Linking a Device to a Gadget That's Wired to a Gizmo - New York Times
That battleground for things like who makes the biggest flat-screen TV with the highest-definition picture was, of course, in full force at the show. But it is now only one of two battlegrounds. The other - call it branded ubiquity - is about who controls the interaction between the consumer and that gadget and, more and more, all the other gadgets in the house as they become interconnected.

The FCC at CES
When the question of copyright and DRM came up, Martin was similarly hands-off. "I have always tried to stay away from pushing any one kind of control," he said, noting the FCC would need congressional action to act in that area. He did say that "those investing in content" should have "some way of ensuring a return."

Slashdot | Microsoft Deal Limits Verizon MP3 Phones
It turns out that the ability to play MP3s still exists but only because the software first converts it to the WMA format. This conversion, however, is not available for phones on Mac or Linux, leaving these customers unable to play MP3s.

edublogs: File-sharing, social software and the law
Suppose the mainstream media, fed up with the buzz bloggers keep getting and with bloggers criticizing their stories, decided to exact revenge. They initiate a vigorous copyright enforcement strategy, launching a barrage of lawsuits against bloggers as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has done to music file sharers. What would happen?

The blogosphere would be in for some tough times I bet.

Legitimate music downloading enjoys dream week | Tech News on ZDNet
There was so much legitimate downloading in the final week of 2005 that it recalled the impossible tallies research firms used in the late 1990s to dazzle venture capitalists and scare the daylights out of major-label executives.

Wired News: Diary of an Expat Downloader
Sure, illegally downloaded sitcoms, homemade pizza and piles of Nicorette gum hardly qualify for Ernest Hemingway liver-braising debauchment. Thanks to recent crackdowns on Euro downloaders, though, our get-togethers have that tinge of sin associated with expat journalists.


--Ari

azerbic - Antonia Zerbisias - Toronto Star Blog: Funny Money Raiser
Geist is particularly concerned with Bulte's connection to copyright reform legislation and the sources of these contributions

Freedom to Tinker » Blog Archive » Predictions for 2006
DRM technology will still fail to prevent widespread infringement. In a related development, pigs will still fail to fly.

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site
Now, "relying on its own proprietary copy-protection technology, Google threatens to compound the frustration that some consumers feel when they buy songs from one online source like the iTunes store, only to discover the music can't be played on an incompatible gadget such as Creative Technologies' Zen player."

informitv - Interactive TV - Opinion - Sky by Broadband shows internet television promise
The Sky by Broadband service uses the same underlying peer-to-peer distribution technology as the BBC integrated Media Player, but offers a consistently coherent consumer proposition with far superior navigation.

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site
The editorial from, "Hollywood's home town daily paper" concludes, "In the meantime, if the goal is to deter illegal copying, Hollywood should work harder to help viewers watch what they want when they want to. And Congress should understand that piracy cannot be curbed simply by giving Hollywood more control."

Web site publishes stored P2P photos - Computerworld
Call it a flickr.com for the unwilling: Users of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are finding photos stored in shared folders are being published on a new voyeuristic Web site that went live a few days ago, but the site may violate laws, a legal expert said.

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: The Last of the Gang to Die
It looks as if Morpheus, the last surviving member of the first wave of popular peer-to-peer services, might be about to call it a day.

Project Neon: Media Sharing Network
Keep it in the family - privately stream your videos to your friends, even behind firewalls.

SNIU, or just the only way to launch a new P2P service post-Grokster?

P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » The Peer to Peer Foundation needs your cooperation
The Foundation aims to develop a knowledge base concerning three related social movements

Open Access News
Will 2006 be the year of the mashup? Originally used to describe the mixing together of musical tracks, the term now refers to websites that weave data from different sources into a new service.

Open Access News
The economic impact of the “sui generis” right on database production is unproven. Introduced to stimulate the production of databases in Europe, the new instrument has had no proven impact on the production of databases.

Furdlog » Missed This: From Sunday’s WaPo
that DRM will become a race issue

Furdlog » Music Retail Dynamics
Album sales are in decline, music consumers continue to migrate to music downloading and CD-burning. The loss-leader approach to CD sales at giant chains such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy have smothered mom-and-pop outfits. And when prerecorded CDs are sold, more and more often it’s through new-approach merchants that are as varied as Amazon.com and Starbucks.

Furdlog » LATimes on Movie Ticket Trends
A plot of the ticket sales statistics versus real average ticket prices (using average CPI as a deflator) shows an unsurprising correlation, though.

Furdlog » Emerging Media Model?
Other networks and producers are following “Lost” closely to see if this multimedia franchising model can work for them.

Inside Higher Ed :: A Tenure Reform Plan With Legs
The creation of “multiple pathways” to demonstrating research excellence. The monograph is one way, but so would be journal articles, electronic projects, textbooks, jointly written books, and other approaches.

Search Results - THOMAS (Library of Congress)
[P]rivate motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts . . . When technological change has rendered its literal terms ambiguous, the Copyright Act must be construed in light of this basic purpose.

Saturday, January 07, 2006


Monkey Bites
two cool Flickr mash-ups



DirecTV to Get Early View of Fox Shows - New York Times
In a further erosion of the decades-old model for distributing TV shows, subscribers of DirecTV will be able to pay to download some Fox Entertainment Group programs to their digital video recorders up to two days before they appear on television.



Rising Competition in Cellphone Music - New York Times
Verizon will charge $1.99 for a song sent over the air. It will also sell songs downloadable to phones through a PC from a Verizon music site for 99 cents each, the same price charged by online music stores like Apple iTunes.

As long as the cell providers lock up their content tightly, this won't be much competition for Apple.


The Nitpicking of the Masses vs. the Authority of the Experts - New York Times
After the Nature report, Wiki's entry, like the others deemed to have flaws, was flagged at the top with a warning label ("This article has been identified as possibly containing errors") and retreated temporarily into the safety of imprecision



Provider of TV Movie Channels Looks to Expand to PC's and Video Players - New York Times
Starz Entertainment Group is introducing a $9.99-a-month subscription service that will allow people to download movies from the Internet and watch them on their computers, portable video players and television sets.

Subscription may not be taking off in music, but for movies, this seems like an incredible idea.


Google CES keynote: a Pack of Video
Describing the CES as a geek convention, Page bemoaned the fact that he can't easily connect a camera with a "pocket hard drive" because of a lack of software and open standards. He encouraged manufacturers and developers to embrace open standards to allow devices to interoperate easily and to work the same, no matter where you plug them in.



Are MMORPG goods theoretically taxable?
On April 15, 2004, I will truthfully report to the IRS that my primary source of income is the sale of imaginary goods and that I earn more from it, on a monthly basis, than I have ever earned as a professional writer.



DRM lurks in the background at CES
Will we see movement towards a more unified DRM? From what I've seen here at CES, I think prospects are looking good.



Verizon CEO says Google and Microsoft should pay more for the use of high-bandwidth web apps
Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg stated that he feels web application vendors such as Google and Microsoft are not paying enough for the bandwidth these applications use.

Umm, don't the users pay for the bandwidth they use?


DirecTV and Microsoft make love connection
DirecTV and Microsoft have signed a long-term agreement that will tightly integrate DirecTV's programming with PCs running Windows Media Center edition, the Xbox 360, and some portable devices.



Intel pimps Viiv with a baker's dozen of major partners
"If it is protected content, it will move throughout your home but it's still very much protected."



BBC offers classic news clips for free
For the first time we are sharing content with the public, who have already paid for it, and also allowing you to share it with others - as long as it is not used for commercial purposes.



Broadcom's hybrid HD DVD, Blu-ray chip
While the start to the next-gen optical format wars is just now heating up, some companies are working on ways to force a cease-fire.



Lenovo to embed cellular connections in laptops
Cingular Wireless has reached an agreement with PC manufacturer Lenovo to include links for its fastest wireless service in its new laptops.



Slashdot | Interactive Campaigning ala Wiki
But Ashdown's site takes public participation on his campaign Web site one step further -- opening his platform to all. The site is based on the "Wiki" open-source model made famous by Wikipedia.



TechCrunch » AllPeers Is The FireFox “Killer App”
AllPeers is a simple, persistent buddy list in the browser. Initially, interaction with those buddies will be limited to discovering and sharing files - If you choose to, you can share any file on your network with one or more of your friends. They will be able to see what files you choose to share (even getting an RSS feed of new files you include), and with a single click download it to their own hard drive.

SNIU


FORTUNE: Congress botched digital TV - Jan. 4, 2006
Yes, the very same federal government that is cutting back on college loans and food stamps will soon be issuing TV vouchers.



Microsoft unveils entertainment strategy - Jan. 5, 2006
Urge launches with over 2 million tracks for purchase or as part of an all-you-can eat subscription, an option the iTunes music store doesn't have. The offering will include exclusive material from MTV, though it will not be compatible with iPods, which are currently the most popular MP3 player.



Slashdot | The Engineer Behind Microsoft's TV Strategy
Gates in an email to Mr. Belfiore asked why Apple's remote control had just six buttons. The standard Media Center remote from Microsoft has 39 buttons. (Mr. Belfiore's explanation: Front Row computers don't have TV or digital video recorder functions and thus don't need as many buttons.

No word on whether Gates buys it. (Having just used one of the six-button remotes, I'll offer a hint: it's about good design.)


PBS | I, Cringely . January 5, 2006 - A Commercial Runs Through It
Google is going to let the telco and cable companies burn their capital building out IP-TV, knowing that Google will still be the only game in town for the crux of the whole thing: the ability to show every viewer the specific ads that companies will pay the most to show him at that specific moment.



Slashdot | Apple Sues Burst.com in iTunes Patent Dispute
Burst.com, a patent holder of many patents covering streaming video and time-shifting of video, has been sued by Apple after license negotiations broke down.



Slashdot | New Music Player to Spread Files Wirelessly
get on the subway to work and when you arrive there your available music has doubled

Not sure this is really SNIU...but cool.


Slashdot | Sony to Settle Spyware Suit with Downloads?
The court papers said Sony BMG would try to offer Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes as one of the download services available to the consumers.

Sony enshrines iTunes as standard.


GameDAILY Biz: The news source for video game industry professionals
Some of the films set for BD include The Fifth Element, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Desperado, For a Few Dollars More, The Guns of Navarone, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, A Knight's Tale, Kung Fu Hustle, The Last Waltz, Legends of the Fall, Resident Evil Apocalypse, Robocop, Sense and Sensibility, Stealth, Species, SWAT and XXX.



Slashdot | Motorola Unveils iRadio
An article in Reuters says that iRadio will be a subscription music service that will go on sale this year.



Slashdot | The Patent Epidemic
usinessWeek is running an editorial titled The Patent Epidemic, which chronicles not only how abusive and absurd our patent system has become for software and business method patents, but how it hurts even traditionally innovative fields such as the automobile industry.



Slashdot | Swedish Filesharers Start 'The Piracy Party'
Tired of being called criminals, a group of Swedish filesharers have started a new political party, The Piracy Party (Piratpartiet in Swedish).


--Ari

Wired News: Google Goes for Web Video Gold
Google's flexible pricing model sets its service apart.



Wired News: When in Rome ... or Beijing
"When we operate in markets around the world we have to ensure that our service complies with global laws as well as local laws and norms," Richardson said.
Global laws? Although the Wired article doesn't mention it, it seems MS has gone above and beyond the call of CCP duty and blocked the website globally, not just locally.


Wired News: Coffee, Tea or Wi-Fi TV?
San Francisco International is planning to hawk TV programs and movies to travelers with laptops, and deliver them over its in-house Wi-Fi network.



Wired 14.01: POSTS
"Isn't that a bit late?" I ask Chadduck. "I won't presume to speak for the White House," he replies testily.



The Cult of Mac Blog
What a weird bunch of crap Disney is rolling out with its latest expanded TV offerings for iTunes.



Wired News: Will Digital Cinema Can Pirates?
Digital projectors can't stop people from recording movies, but they can allow studios to trace every illegal copy back to the specific time and theater where it was recorded.



This post brought to you courtesy of Performancing for Firefox. I like it so far.

--Ari