The EFF has submitted comments on the BPDG's recommendations (as manipulated by its co-chairs, apparently).

You can get the EFF's comments as a text, PDF or Word document, but the BPDG recommendation is not available to for public view and you can check out the drafts for yourself.

The BPDG "process" has been rife with acrimony, arbitrariness and confusion, to an extent that cannot be fully ascribed to mere haste. EFF believes that the failings of the BPDG process stem directly from BPDG's efforts to cloak a inter-industry horse-trading exercise in the trappings of a public undertaking, with nominal participation from all "affected industries." In reality, the representatives were hand-picked by the conveners of the BPDG to minimize any dissent, as is evidenced by the high degree of similarity between the original proposal brought to the group by its conveners and the final report that the co-chairs unilaterally present herein as the group's findings.

Throughout the process, the absence of any formal charter or process afforded the co-chairs the opportunity to manipulate the rules of the group to suit their true purpose while maintaining its illusory openness, as when the scope of the group's discussions was summarily expanded to encompass all unauthorized redistribution of feature films, as opposed to unauthorized redistribution over the Internet.

Blogger Pro has finally implemented its RSS service!

My RSS feed can now be located at:
http://lisarein.blogspot.com/rss/lisarein.xml.

My mail has been out of commission for going on two days now. It's been intermittent, so I haven't been able to determine for sure that this was happening until today.

Email me at lisarein@fastmail.fm until further notice.

Please resend! I think I might have lost the last few days worth of mail...

Here's a copy of the complaint against Audiogalaxy (PDF file)
(http://www.riaa.com/pdf/Audiogalaxy_Filed_Complaint.pdf).

Damn.

Audiogalaxy in RIAA crosshairs, by John Borland for CNET.

The truth about Payola is rearing its ugly head yet again.

Is it me, or does it seem like this happens every couple of years?

Geez fellas, the whole music industry is being put under a microscope right now, but in the end it will probably be just another false alarm. This is no time to start squealing on your friends (or ex-friends).

See the L.A. Times article by Chuck Philips:
Congress Members Urge Investigation of Radio Payola.

I just found SATN.org, a blog David Reed describes as: "...a place where I, Bob Frankston, and Dan Bricklin have decided to put a joint weblog and pointers to a collection of current essays.  Think of it as a stream of consciousness site - and an experiment in exploiting the group forming properties of the Blogging world." (Thanks, Josh)

Let me preface this yap by stating that this is when I yap on this blog about Creative Commons it is me yapping as an artist and a technologist "at-large" and not necessarily in my official capacity as Technical Architect for Creative Commons. (Though most likely if I were to get official about it, the information I am conveying would not change. It might, however, be a lot more official-sounding.)

That said, my answer to a Slashdot reader seemed like it might be of interest to interested parties :-)

...the point I made was that if a commercial entity wished to use a work (in this case I was talking about one of my own songs) for say, a movie soundtrack, after I had released it under an "Attribution" (required) "Non-commercial" Custom License, that commercial entity would still have to contact me directly for such use (to presumably pay me money for such use, as such use would constitute infringement of its terms of use otherwise).

So I never said that our licenses would be used for commercial deals -- but I still apologize for my not being clearer with my example as it has apparently caused some confusion for my audience.

And I do see these licenses as having great potential to promote artists in commercial ways, yes. Artists that have a bevy of songs might want to release one or two under one of our licenses to get tunes out into the artistic community before a concert tour, for instance, or to sell t-shirts or the other kinds of "commercial" shwag, after the music itself has been "given" away.

I would also just like to clarify that we are absolutely *not* trying to water down the notion of what constitutes "public domain", and that's why the two "forks" of the conceptual prototype I demonstrated at E-tech (for our contributor licensing application) are very clearly split off in the beginning: you are creating a Public Domain Dedication *or* a Creative Commons Custom License that allows you to impose terms more restrictive than the Public Domain but less restrictive of copyright.

So the idea is to provide licenses that enable artists to either donate to the public domain outright (currently there is NO easy way for them to do so -- you literally have to pay money to figure out how to give you work away...) OR to donate their works in the "spirit" of the public domain (using a CC custom license) without giving the rights away to that movie studio who wants to use the song on a soundtrack. (which would be the case with a public domain track).

That said, I still think the public domain option could have commercially-powerful uses.

For instance, a movie studio may decide to use independent, popular, public domain works on a soundtrack that is *sold* -- what a way for the studio to save money, sure, but also what a way for a no name (like me) to even have a chance of being considered for such a soundtrack.

It goes both ways. My advice to everyone is this: If you are AT ALL WORRIED about the implications of putting your work into the public domain: don't do it -- use one of our Custom Licenses instead.

Wait until you've had a chance to understand fully both the legal implications and potential benefits of putting your work into the public domain, and can do so with complete confidence.

The point is to give artists a choice to contribute to (and reap the benefits of) a world-wide connected artistic community, if they're into it.

Thanks,

Lisa Rein
Technical Architect
Creative Commons
lisa@creativecommons.org

Evan Foster of The Boss Martians plays guitar and bass on a bunch of my Vagrant Records sessions (including Shake All Over).

Evan and the rest of the Boss Martians are currently on a U.S. Tour. Check them out if you're over on the East Cost this month and early June:

* MAY 23 (THUR) - Toledo, OH @ The Bottle Rocket w / Chopzilla
* MAY 24 (FRI) - Philadelphia, PA @ w/ TOILET BOYS @ The North Star Bar
* MAY 25 (SAT) - Providence, RI @ Jakes Bar & Grille
* MAY 27 (MON) - NY, NY @ Mercury Lounge w / The Irreversible Slacks / Candid Daydream
* MAY 28 (TUE) - Cambridge, MA @ Middle East (Upstairs) w/ Bottom / Men of Porn / Binge
* MAY 29 (WED) - Washington DC @ The Black Cat w / Ruff Bucket (ex-members of Black Market Baby)
* MAY 30 (THUR) - Charlotte, NC @ Fat City Deli w / The Cherry Valence
* MAY 31 (FRI) - Atlanta, GA @ Echo Lounge w / Quintron & The Subsonics
* JUNE 1 (SAT) - New Orleans, LA @ El Matador
* JUNE 3 (MON) - Houston, TX @ Rudyards British Pub
* JUNE 4 (TUE) - San Antonio, TX @ Tacoland w / Where the Action Is
* JUNE 5 (WED) - Austin, TX @ EMO'S w / The Sir Finks
* JUNE 6 (THUR) - Dallas, TX @ The Trees w / Bob Schneider
* JUNE 7 (FRI) - Oklahoma City, OK @ The Green Door

I have a small part in Monsturd, a horror-satire about a giant evil toxic turd that wreaks havoc on an unsuspecting town!

I'm the wife of the first hapless victim!

I also sing the theme song: Number Two! (I'll be posting an MP3 of it here any day now...)

I'll be at the Monsturd Premiere June 7th at 8pm at the Victoria Theatre, 16th and Mission, San Francisco.

MONSTURD opens Friday, June 7 at the Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th Street, San Francisco (at Mission across from the 16th street BART station). Show times are: Friday, June 7 at 8 p.m., Saturday, June 8 at 8 and 10 p.m., and Sunday, June 9 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $6.

See you all there at the Craig's List Afterdark Party going on tonight at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco.

The Librarian of Congress and Register of Copyrights aren't buying into the CARP Panel determinations. Check out my O'Reilly Weblog on the subject.

Joey De Villa loans me his hat long enough to take a picture.

I picked this one: .

And this one:

Matthew Haughey worked with Lawrence Lessig on the design of the neat new website for the Eldred v. Ashcroft case that was just launched today.

Go Team!

I think those words ring loudest in my head from last week's E-Tech conference -- probably because they were said by half of the speakers there.

Let's hope I can remember them as I build the Creative Commons' infrastructure :-)

For "turning the most heads" at the Etech conference last week.

In the "ask me if I care" department, Sharon Osbourne didn't bother mincing words in a NY Post catfight between Nugent and Osbourne started by the tabloid itself, obviously so they could report on it.

What is it they say: if you don't like the news, go out and make (up) some of your own?

"A judge on Wednesday granted digital video recorder company Sonicblue a stay in its request to reverse an order that would force it to monitor the viewing habits of its customers."

See the CNET story by Richard Shim:
Sonicblue granted stay in "spying" order .

My talk went great today at Etech. It's so incredible to talk to everyone and find out just how much of an incredible demand there is for easy-to-use non-commercial licenses!

The website is up now, so go check it out:
http://www.creativecommons.org.

I suppose we all knew it would happen eventually.

See the Wired News article by Brad King:
Last Rites For Napster.

People keep asking me who "Lulu Press" is, since they are throwing our Creative Commons a little announcement afterparty this Thursday at ETech 2002.

Turns out that LuLu Press is owned by Bob Young (of RedHat Fame) -- here's an article that explains more.

If you can manage to hum a few notes of a song you heard briefly into the telephone, this new student-based software will find your song for you.

Read about it in an article Joanna Corman for the LA Times:
College seniors fine-tune music search
Computer program designed in a for-credit course identifies songs by just a few notes.

This is how it works. You sing a few notes of a song into a microphone or the phone. The software converts the notes into a wave and then extracts the notes and their duration. A database has snippets of 500 melodies. The computer calculates the pitch and rhythm and then compares that data to songs already stored. The top 10 closest matches pop up. Only the "main theme" or melody of the song is stored because it is most recognizable, said Yelinek, the team leader and a computer science major. The program accounts for various versions of the song, including those in different keys. Songs can be hummed, whistled, sung or played.

"You might harmonize it differently. You might have a club mix, but still it's recognized," said Huang, a computer science and music major.

The students' project was part of a program that dates back to the early 1960s. It allows companies, government agencies and nonprofits to approach Harvey Mudd students with problems to solve. Companies give the students, mostly seniors, upward of $30,000 for their research. There have been about 1,000 clinics since the program's inception and it covers computer science, engineering, physics and math. The software, which Seet said should be available later this year, has several uses, including copyright protection. It can be used for karaoke, which Seet called a "huge market."

Cory Doctorow has written an editorial for tha SJ Mercury News that provides the best explanation I've seen so far at what the hell is going on with this BPDG thing:
Hollywood wants a stranglehold on your digital technology.

The people who fought tooth and nail to keep VCRs off the market will have a veto over all new digital television devices, including digital television devices that interface with personal computers. The next generation of home entertainment systems will include only features that don't inspire Hollywood's dread of infringing uses, no matter what the consequences for you, the owner of the device. With today's VCR, you can record an episode of "The Simpsons'' and bring it over to a friend's house to watch. This "feature'' won't be included on the digital VCRs and DVD recorders of tomorrow until and unless Hollywood executives decide you deserve it -- until they decide that the technical means of allowing neighbor-to-neighbor sharing of video won't open the gate to the Internet piracy bogyman.

Amy Harmon has written a little ditty about the Creative Commons for the NY Times!

A New Direction for Intellectual Property

Perceiving an overly zealous culture of copyright protection, a group of law and technology scholars are setting up Creative Commons, a nonprofit company that will develop ways for artists, writers and others to easily designate their work as freely shareable.

Creative Commons, which is to be officially announced this week at a technology conference in Santa Clara, Calif., has nearly a million dollars in start-up money. The firm's founders argue that the expansion of legal protection for intellectual property, like a 1998 law extending the term of copyright by 20 years, could inhibit creativity and innovation. But the main focus of Creative Commons will be on clearly identifying the material that is meant to be shared. The idea is that making it easier to place material in the public domain will in itself encourage more people to do so.

The firm's first project is to design a set of licenses stating the terms under which a given work can be copied and used by others. Musicians who want to build an audience, for instance, might permit people to copy songs for noncommercial use. Graphic designers might allow unlimited copying of certain work as long as it is credited.

The goal is to make such licenses machine-readable, so that anyone could go to an Internet search engine and seek images or a genre of music, for example, that could be copied without legal entanglements.

"It's a way to mark the spaces people are allowed to walk on," said Lawrence Lessig, a leading intellectual property expert who will take a partial leave from Stanford Law School for the next three years to serve as the chairman of Creative Commons.

Inspired in part by the free-software movement, which has attracted thousands of computer programmers to contribute their work to the public domain, Creative Commons ultimately plans to create a "conservancy" for donations of valuable intellectual property whose owners might opt for a tax break rather than selling it into private hands.

The firm's board of directors includes James Boyle, an intellectual property professor at Duke Law School; Hal Abelson, a computer science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Eric Saltzman, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.

Looks like there's prior art on the infamous swinging patent that turned out to have been taken out by a seven year-old.

Here's another gem from Dan Gillmore:
Paranoia, stupidity and greed ganging up on the public.

Dear Reader:

If you are reading this column in the newspaper, but did not read every article and look at every advertisement in previous sections, stop now. You must go back and look at all of that material before continuing with this column.

If you are reading this column on the Web and did not go to the newspaper's home page first, stop now. Go to the home page and navigate through whatever sequence of links our page designers have created to reach this page, and don't you dare fail to look at the ads.

Ridiculous? Of course.

Tell that to the dinosaurs at some major media and entertainment companies. They insist they have the right to tell you precisely how you may use their products...

The law also is still somewhat unsettled when it comes to hard-disk video recorders, also known as personal video recorders or PVRs. But Hollywood is in attack mode against one of the most innovative home products in years, SonicBlue's Replay machine, and the entertainment industry's anger at these devices is growing.

Jamie Kellner, head of Turner Broadcasting, part of the AOL Time Warner conglomerate, told the newsweekly CableWorld that you are a thief if you use one of a PVR's best features -- skipping commercials.

``Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots,'' he said. ``Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis.''

Whenever you fail to watch a commercial, he added, ``you're actually stealing the programming.''

It gets better. When the interviewer asked whether it's OK to go to the bathroom or get a soft drink out of the refrigerator, Kellner replied, `` I guess there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom.''

What a relief. At least AOL Time Warner doesn't believe we should be chained to the sofa when we watch one of its old movies.

It doesn't mean they're after you, but it does mean that the practice of placing surveillance cameras on public streets for reasons to be determined later won't be limited to Washington DC.

Millions spent to develop cameras.

Government agencies have spent more than $50 million during the past five years developing camera surveillance technology, and proposed federal spending on such systems has increased since September 11, according to a recent report released by the General Accounting Office.

The GAO surveyed 35 government agencies from July 2001 to January 2002 at the request of House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Texas Republican, who requested the report last summer after seeing spending increases for automated traffic cameras and facial recognition technology.

Facial recognition research and development made up more than 90 percent of federal surveillance budgets since 1997.

Of the 35 agencies the GAO surveyed, "17 reported obligating $51 million to [red-light, photo radar and biometric camera surveillance] as of June 2001, with the largest amount reported for facial recognition technology."

Two agencies reported promoting the use of the surveillance devices but did not report spending any money on them, the report said. The State Department, for instance, did not devote any money to deploying facial recognition as of June 20, 2001, but said it "planned to work with the Bureau of Consular Affairs to integrate the devices into its counterterrorism database" this year.

Here's what I posted on February 13, 2002 about cameras in DC:

Smile! Next time you go to Washington D.C. remember to smile to the cameras.

Check out the Reuters article:
Washington Plans Unprecedented Camera Network.

(references below are to a Wall Street Journal article that requires registration to access - if anyone has the link, please let me know.)

Cameras installed by the police have been programmed to scan public areas automatically, and officers can take over manual control if they want to examine something more closely.

The system currently does not permit an automated match between a face in the crowd and a computerized photo of a suspect, the Journal said. Gaffigan said officials were looking at the technology but had not decided whether to use it.

Eventually, images will be viewable on computers already installed in most of the city's 1,000 squad cars, the Journal said.

The Journal said the plans for Washington went far beyond what was in use in other U.S. cities, a development that worries civil liberties advocates.

Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, noted there were few legal restrictions of video surveillance of public streets. But he said that by setting up a "central point of surveillance," it becomes likely that "the cameras will be more frequently used and more frequently abused."

"You are building in a surveillance infrastructure, and how it's used now is not likely how it's going to be used two years from now or five years from now," he told the Journal.

The European Commission is contemplating giving the US a taste of its own medicine.

See:
Europe plans $300m sanctions retaliation on US,
by Michael Mann and Edward Alden for the Financial Times.

The European Commission on Friday proposed slapping more than $300m of trade sanctions on politically-sensitive US products, including fruit, T-shirts, steel, guns and even billiard tables, in retaliation for US-imposed steel tariffs.

The Commission's proposal for retaliation, which would require majority backing from the 15 EU member states, is designed to "hit the US where it hurts" by targeting exports from states crucial to US president George W. Bush's re-election. These include citrus fruits from Florida, apples and pears from Washington and Oregon, and steel from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. The plan would levy tariffs worth E377m ($336m) on US exports of those products.

The plan calls for the sanctions to be imposed on June 18. But the US warned such early retaliation would be a fundamental violation of international trading rules. One US trade official said it would "strike at the heart of the multilateral trade system".

The Commission proposal is aimed at increasing pressure on the US to reconsider its decision last month to impose tariffs of up to 30 per cent on steel imports, including E2.4bn ($2.1bn) of steel from Europe.

Okay, I get it: Levying tariffs on US imports into Europe would 'strike at the heart of the multilateral trade system', but imposing 30% tariffs on european steel imports into the US just sort of 'nibbles in between the toes of the multilateral trade system.' (Aw heck, the multilateral trade system probably likes it.)

Brian Zisk explains the nuts and bolts of the RIAA's plan to make webcasting too expensive for anyone but the majors (and all in the name of record keeping and compulsory license fees).

CNET Expert Sound-Off - The law that could kill Webcasting

One proposed reporting requirement that particularly infuriates Webcasters is the need for each and every Webcaster to waste huge amounts of resources entering loads of data already known by the copyright holders. No one disputes the need to submit information uniquely identifying each song since reporting is needed to ensure that copyright holders are compensated when their music is Webcast. The DMCA itself requires that only three data fields be displayed to the listener: the title of the sound recording, the album title, and the name of the featured recording artist. These basic pieces of information also seem to satisfy songwriting organizations such as ASCAP and BMI. Now, let's take a look at what the copyright office wants Webcasters to submit for each and every song that they play--information that in most cases the RIAA's SoundExchange database already has or that is totally irrelevant to the reason for the reporting requirements, ostensibly to ensure that copyright owners receive reasonable notice of the use of their sound recordings. The copyright office's list or requirements reads as follows:

A) The name of the service
B) The channel of the program (AM/FM stations use station ID)
C) The type of program (archived/looped/live)
D) Date of transmission
E) Time of transmission
F) Time zone of origination of transmission
G) Numeric designation of the place of the sound recording within the program
H) Duration of transmission (to nearest second)
I) Sound-recording title
J) The ISRC code of the recording
K) The release year of the album per copyright notice, and in the case of compilation albums, the release year of the album and copyright date of the track
L) Featured recording artist
M) Retail album title
N) The recording label
O) The UPC code of the retail album
P) The catalog number
Q) The copyright owner information
R) The musical genre of the channel or program (station format)

This is absurd! All that's reasonably needed is enough information to uniquely identify the track, when it was played, and how many people were listening.