Mining asteroids has never looked so cool:
NASA Reveals New Plan for the Moon, Mars & Outward
By Leonard David for Space.com
You gotta check out the Lagrangian point presentation and the Raver Space Miner Video embedded within the article (and linked to at the bottom of both pages, if you have trouble with any of the links above).
Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.space.com/news/beyond_iss_020926-1.html
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NASA Reveals New Plan for the Moon, Mars & Outward
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
26 September 2002
A SPACE.com Exclusive
To boldly go, the timeless and optimistic Space Age theme, looks to have been reclaimed from a NASA lost-and-found drawer as long-range planners prepare to reveal next month a new roadmap for robotic and human missions to deep space, SPACE.com has learned.
The 21st Century, science-driven agenda is designed to propel exploration beyond the International Space Station and involves a new habitation complex that would be built between Earth and the Moon, serving as a portal to Mars and other solar system targets.
Images
A key to relearning how to live and work beyond low Earth orbit is establishing an L1 Gateway, a point of gravitational balance between Earth and the Moon. From L1, space science advancements are possible, as well as moving humankind back to the Moon and onward.
A blend of robots and humans transforms the Moon into a 21st Century hub for science and a jumping off point for deep space missions.
Artificial gravity generated by a Mars rotator transfer vehicle helps thwart the impact of microgravity on the human body during lengthy voyages.
More Stories
The Top 3 Reasons to Colonize Space
Worldwide Focus on Going to the Moon
Moon Holds Earth's Ancient Secrets
Multimedia
See the Vision: Gallery of renderings reveals NASA's plans
Grasp Lagrangian Points: Graphic explains how they work
VIDEO: L1 Gateway
VIDEO: Drilling on the Moon
VIDEO: Transfer to Mars
Somewhat secretive, this behind-the-scenes stratagem has been years in the making.
A NASA Exploration Team (NExT) is prepared to showcase their springboard vision for returning to the Moon, visiting asteroids, and trekking on to Mars and beyond. At the upcoming World Space Congress to be held Oct. 10-19, an expected throng of some 13,000 officials from various nations will descend on Houston, Texas. This once-a-decade gathering provides a status report on global space prowess.
Part of NASA's message at the meeting will be portraying "what next" for exploration beyond low Earth orbit. In exclusive interviews with SPACE.com, key members of NExT detailed the plan.
Step 1: New space hotel
"We've been putting together a multi-disciplinary, long-term strategy a road map, along with defining the necessary strategic investments in key technologies," said Gary Martin, leader of NExT and assistant associate administrator for the Office of Space Flight at NASA Headquarters. "We're looking at a stair-step of capability. Our first stair step is Earth's neighborhood."
This approach will be discovery-driven and technology-enabled, with exploration involving the staging of future missions at the Earth-Moon Lagrange point, L1 -- a literal Gateway to the future of space exploration.
A Lagrangian point -- also called a libration point in space -- is a spot at which a small body, under the gravitational influence of two large bodies, will remain somewhat at rest relative to them. In each system of two heavy bodies -- say the Sun and Jupiter, or Earth and the Moon -- there exist five theoretical Lagrangian points.
The Earth-Moon L1 Lagrange point is at a distance of some 200,000 miles (323,110 kilometers) from the Earth, or 84 percent of the way to the Moon.
NASA's Martin said the L1 Gateway, replete with a habitat for crew occupancy, is a good spot to support a locus of activity. Both humans and their robotic partners can transform this zone into a bustling hub for testing hardware, supporting science operations, and as astronaut training ground to prep crews for long-haul sojourns into deep space.
Beyond L1
Sites on the Moon, for instance, can be easily accessed from an L1 Gateway. The same goes with travel to Mars or asteroid targets. Also, assembly, repair, and maintenance of a "telescope farm" of orbiting instruments can be done on site, then nudged over to the Earth-Sun L2 location.
"The L-points have become unique locations where you can do a lot of things," Martin said. "We found the more we look at them, the more nice things we find."
Harley Thronson, director of technology and senior science lead for NExT, said the semi-stable L1 Gateway offers a number of attractive capabilities. For one, returning back to Earth in a hurry due to an emergency is possible. But it can also be the first step on the way to putting people elsewhere and sending them to even more distant places, he said.
Many tasks would be automated.
"Science facilities could be deployed, rescued, upgraded and checked out there by humans and telerobotic systems or sent into deep space to other libration points throughout the solar system," Thronson said.
Thronson stressed that NExT is not solely dedicated to dispatching human crews outward. Their work is geared to improve robotic capabilities, as well as enhance human attributes, particularly through improved space suits. Studies are also underway to investigate ways to bring human and machine strengths together.
Sights on Mars
NExT has a strong track record for steering NASA to embrace several new initiatives. An in-space propulsion program is underway. A nuclear systems initiative is being pursued. Starting next year, a radiation program is scheduled to begin, said Lisa Guerra, Special Assistant to the Associate Administrator in the Office of Biological and Physical Research.
Some of this work is essential in preparing for crewed missions to Mars.
"It would be a combination of looking at radiation health issues with the crew and a program tied to the space station," Guerra said. "Ground research will also assess potential alternatives to active or passive shielding for future missions."
Shoving off to places like Mars in speedier fashion -- through nuclear propulsion, as example -- can cut down crew exposure time to radiation. In addition, taking a fast route to the red planet also minimizes prolonged human exposure to the debilitating effects of microgravity.
On the other hand, NExT is supporting research into artificial gravity.
"A lot of the data we're getting on our space station increments will help determine performance of the crew in a six-month microgravity environment. If we could limit our missions to six months, with fast transit, then maybe you don't need artificial gravity," Guerra explained.
NExT is nonetheless looking at a vehicle design using artificial gravity. As medical information matures, whether or not an artificial gravity initiative is required is a future decision, she said.
An illustration of the artificial gravity spacecraft and other artist renderings of the new space vision were provided to SPACE.com and are included in an image gallery.
ISS: Technological teething
The International Space Station is a workhorse for furthering NExT goals, Martin said.
"It's a very necessary platform," he said. "The station is going to lay the groundwork not only on ways to protect against radiation, but also bone loss. We actually have a list of 55 critical roadmap items for humans to work safely and productively in orbit."
The ISS serves as a technological teething place, where astronauts learn how to construct and maintain large scientific platforms with the help of robots. How to evolve to advanced "closed life support" systems becomes feasible too, Martin said. "We can't go to the next steps without the station," he added.
What celestial port-of-call deserves first billing, the Moon or Mars?
"NExT is science-driven. We will go where the science says it makes sense that we go," Martin said. "Mars is one of the most important scientific destinations where it looks like humans and robots will actually be helpful to the science research ... over time. But this doesn't end with Mars."
NExT planning calls for "sustainable space capabilities."
"We're not looking at planting flags, not being able to go back for 100 years," Martin said. "The systems we see would take humans to Mars, or to the asteroids. They are reusable systems that might be nuclear in nature, lasting upwards of 10 years and maybe used for three missions or more to Mars or to the asteroids at this point."
Can NASA do it?
The blueprint for the years and decades to come is one of incremental buildup.
There are decision points on how fast, and how far, space exploration can proceed. That enables testing of technologies to achieve greater reliability and understanding of costs for the next steps in exploration.
Yet there is one omnipresent issue that NASA must deal with: Does the space agency even have the talent and tools to pull off a grand plan to move onward and outward?
Martin admits the aging of NASA has taken a toll.
"As plans become crisper and things become more near term, we're looking at skills needed, the core capabilities we need to protect, and what facilities are required. It's a part of the overall strategy that we're building," Martin said.
"Probably the highest priority product of NExT has been the identification of technology priorities that we felt the agency had to invest in," Thronson said. "If we had one goal, it's delivering the tools to understand the technology and the options." That will permit managers and politicians to decide what NASA should do scientifically, robotically, and with humans in space.
"And when they are ready to make the decision, we want to be there with the capabilities, the hardware, the understanding, the scientific goals so they can make those decisions with confidence," Thronson said.
Not your father's space agency
But just how bold and strident should NASA become in scripting a new master plan for space exploration? After all, there have been fumbles in past years.
And given the turmoil that creeps through every squeaky joint of the International Space Station (ISS) project, well, this isn't your father's NASA anymore. Nor is it the Camelot space program fielded by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s.
Howard McCurdy, space scholar and chair of American University's Department of Public Administration in Washington, D.C., suggests a reason behind NASA taking a step-by-step approach to deep-diving space exploration.
Just as the space station was viewed as the "next logical step" beyond the space shuttle, McCurdy told SPACE.com, a return to deep space activities is also viewed as the next logical step beyond the ISS.
See NASA's Vision
Image Gallery
Artist's renderings of the step-by-step plan by John Frassanito & Associates, Inc.
Lagrangian Points Graphic
Learn what they are and how the work.
Cool Videos
Experience the future of spaceflight as if you were there today:
* L1 Gateway
* Drilling on the Moon
* Transfer to Mars
* Mars Geology
"This incremental, step-at-a-time approach was adopted by space advocates after President Richard Nixon in 1970 denied the request for a comprehensive long-range plan," McCurdy said. "NASA leaders have always viewed their mission as the extension of human presence into space. They have chosen to pursue this goal incrementally because they were told not to divert their attention beyond the space station until that project neared completion. Not only are they ready to undertake missions beyond, they have been waiting to do so since the agency was born."
Although the NExT plan is far from being a done deal, the long-range look has been okayed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) -- a tight-fisted handler of money. OMB's primary mission is to assist the President in overseeing the preparation of the federal budget and to supervise its administration in Executive Branch agencies.
The NExT budget is $4 million a year, Martin said.
Spending more money and taking the stepping stone approach as identified by NExT is contingent on approval by the U.S. Congress.
Next Page: NASA emerging from era of uncertainty
**
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NASA Reveals New Plan for the Moon, Mars & Outward (cont.)
NASA on the rebound
NASA is undergoing an important change, said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. There is recent encouragement from top NASA officials that the agency's space planners should become "open and explicit" about the wherewithal for going beyond Earth orbit, he said.
"NASA seems to me to be coming out of a low point, after the months of uncertainty about the future of the ISS and the shuttle," Logsdon said.
Logsdon said the space agency's chief, Sean O'Keefe, has put in place at NASA Headquarters a combination of people new to NASA and veterans of human space flight. "They are painting a quite different and more optimistic future for humans in space than has been the case for the past few years," Logsdon noted.
Images
A key to relearning how to live and work beyond low Earth orbit is establishing an L1 Gateway, a point of gravitational balance between Earth and the Moon. From L1, space science advancements are possible, as well as moving humankind back to the Moon and onward.
A blend of robots and humans transforms the Moon into a 21st Century hub for science and a jumping off point for deep space missions.
Artificial gravity generated by a Mars rotator transfer vehicle helps thwart the impact of microgravity on the human body during lengthy voyages.
More Stories
The Top 3 Reasons to Colonize Space
Worldwide Focus on Going to the Moon
Moon Holds Earth's Ancient Secrets
Multimedia
See the Vision: Gallery of renderings reveals NASA's plans
Grasp Lagrangian Points: Graphic explains how they work
VIDEO: L1 Gateway
VIDEO: Drilling on the Moon
VIDEO: Transfer to Mars
Some space veterans urge NASA to wean itself off of the glory days of Project Apollo -- the lunar landing effort. Paul Spudis, a space scientist formerly with the Lunar and Planetary Institute, is one of them. Spudis will soon start work at a facility that contracts to build and manage NASA missions, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
"NASA has a problem," Spudis says. "It's trying to come up with some rationale that will recreate Apollo and that's not going to happen."
Apollo was not about exploring the Moon. In fact, it was not about space at all, Spudis said during a recent gathering of lunar scientists.
"It was basically a battle in the Cold War," a super-charged competition between the former Soviet Union and the United States, Spudis said.
NASA's current mantra -- to seek and understand life in the universe and to send life out there -- is not a mission, Spudis contends. "That's a catechism a catechism of the true believer. The problem with catechisms is that they are not embraced by the non-believers."
Spudis considers a human return to the Moon within 5 years a doable proposition. Also, it's a politically viable time horizon. Besides, such a program builds up national economic infrastructure and national security.
"A Mars mission doesn't do either of these things, but a Moon mission does both," Spudis said.
Utilizing existing space-launch capability, the ISS, and the L1 Gateway as a jumping off point, reaching for the Moon can be within reach once again, Spudis figures. Once there, learning how to use the precious resources that exist on the Moon for civilian government, private sector, and military purposes is on top of the to-do list.
Meanwhile, one outcome of such a program would be a cultivated region of space between low Earth orbit and the Moon.
Discipline and competence
Stirring up political will in Congress to plow money into space and ease up on entitlement spending will be necessary if NASA is to sustain a more vibrant program. So argues Harrison Schmitt, an Apollo 17 moonwalker and former U.S. Senator from New Mexico.
Schmitt senses that NASA must revisit its roots. That is, mimic its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Before being turned into NASA in 1958, NACA spurred the aeronautical industry into existence, as well as created the tone for private sector investment in air transportation. That needs to happen for space, he said.
Looking back at Apollo, Schmitt adds a cautionary note.
"Deep space is still a very difficult place to work. A highly competent, highly disciplined management structure is going to be essential," the former astronaut said. "That was what made Apollo work, in addition to the motivation and enthusiasm of people in their twenties, those that were actually carrying the spear," he said.
"We can work in low Earth orbit now, with a less than competent management structure," Schmitt says. "We're proving it every day." But deep space exploration requires the discipline and competence that drove the Apollo successes, he said.
"Some day we will extend beyond the Moon," Schmitt says. "But it's not there yet."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
See NASA's Vision in Multimedia
Image Gallery
Artist's renderings of the step-by-step plan by John Frassanito & Associates, Inc.
Lagrangian Points Graphic
Learn what they are and how the work.
Cool Videos
Experience the future of spaceflight as if you were there today:
* L1 Gateway
* Drilling on the Moon
* Transfer to Mars
* Mars Geology
< Back 1 2
I've created a little site with links to the text of the Bill and more information about how you can let your Reps know NOW how much you care:
Save Internet Radio - Vote Yes On the Internet Radio Fairness Act
Is it a lie if a person says what they believe to be true in their own confused mind?
Democratic Congressman Asserts Bush Would Mislead U.S. on Iraq
By John H. Cushman Jr. for the NY Times.
One of the congressmen, Representative Jim McDermott of Washington State, said today that he thought President Bush was willing "to mislead the American people" about whether the war was needed and that the administration had gone back and forth between citing supposed links between Iraq and the terrorist network Al Qaeda and Iraq's supposed attempts to obtain weapons of mass destruction......Speaking of the administration, Mr. McDermott said, "I believe that sometimes they give out misinformation." Then he added: "It would not surprise me if they came up with some information that is not provable, and they've shifted. First they said it was Al Qaeda, then they said it was weapons of mass destruction. Now they're going back and saying it's Al Qaeda again."
When pressed for evidence about whether President Bush had lied, Mr. McDermott said, "I think the president would mislead the American people." But he said he believed that inspections of Iraq's weapons programs could be worked out.
Here's the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/30/international/30CONG.html
Democratic Congressman Asserts Bush Would Mislead U.S. on Iraq
By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 Democratic congressmen who are visiting Iraq this week stirred up anger among some Republicans when they questioned the reasons President Bush has used to justify possible military action against Iraq.
One of the congressmen, Representative Jim McDermott of Washington State, said today that he thought President Bush was willing "to mislead the American people" about whether the war was needed and that the administration had gone back and forth between citing supposed links between Iraq and the terrorist network Al Qaeda and Iraq's supposed attempts to obtain weapons of mass destruction.
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Mr. McDermott and Representative David E. Bonior of Michigan also said it might still be possible to work out a new inspection approach that would satisfy the Iraqis but fall short of what Mr. Bush wants.
The two Democrats' strong comments about a foreign policy matter while traveling abroad drew rebukes from Republicans at a time when the political furor over Iraq and over a bill on domestic security has sharply divided leaders of the two parties.
They spoke on the ABC News program "This Week" and in other broadcast interviews.
Senator Don Nickles, Republican of Oklahoma, who is the party's assistant leader in the Senate, said Mr. McDermott and Mr. Bonior "both sound somewhat like spokespersons for the Iraqi government." He said it was "counterproductive" to undermine Mr. Bush when he was seeking support from allies.
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, was gentler. "As long as they're careful what they say and what they do, then I think it's fine," he said. "But all of us should keep in mind that foreign affairs, national security issues, etc., are generally handled by the executive branch, with the advice and consent of the Congress."
Speaking of the administration, Mr. McDermott said, "I believe that sometimes they give out misinformation." Then he added: "It would not surprise me if they came up with some information that is not provable, and they've shifted. First they said it was Al Qaeda, then they said it was weapons of mass destruction. Now they're going back and saying it's Al Qaeda again."
When pressed for evidence about whether President Bush had lied, Mr. McDermott said, "I think the president would mislead the American people." But he said he believed that inspections of Iraq's weapons programs could be worked out.
"I think they will come up with a regime that will not require coercive inspections," Mr. McDermott said, anticipating meetings on Monday between Hans Blix, the leader of the United Nations inspection group, and Iraqi officials.
"They said they would allow us to go look anywhere we wanted," he said of the Iraqis. "And until they don't do that, there is no need to do this coercive stuff where you bring in helicopters and armed people and storm buildings."
"Otherwise you're just trying to provoke them into war," he added.
Mr. Bonior, the second-ranking Democrat in the House, said: "We've got to move forward in a way that's fair and impartial. That means not having the United States or the Iraqis dictate the rules to these inspections."
Today's the day to fax a letter to your representative asking them to Vote Yes on the Internet Radio Fairness Act!
This is being voted on tomorrow in the House! Act now guys!
Here's the letter I'm faxing out.
I'll have a little site up with more information, like my peace site soon, but I wanted to get this out as soon as possible so you can start sending your own letters to your representatives.
Thanks!
September 29, 2002
Your rep here
FAX Here - Fax it to their Washington Number
Re: Vote Yes on The Internet Radio Fairness Act HR 5469
Dear Representative X:
Please vote "Yes" on the Internet Radio Fairness Act (HR 5469), a bill that will be voted on October 1 by the House of Representatives.
On October 20 a new copyright royalty will have to be paid by all Internet radio services -- even those owned by non-commercial, non-profit and academic organizations (we're talking College and Public Owned/Operated Community Radio Stations!).
Hundreds of small Internet radio services have already shut down as a result of these impending fees and many hundreds more services that cannot afford the royalty and will shut down when the payment comes due, unless HR 5469 can save the day on October 1st.
I hope you will not let CARP's unrealistic pricing structure destroy the incredible range of freely available artistic and cultural diversity that has been made possible by the existence of Internet Webcasting.
Please don't let it all be destroyed overnight.
Vote Yes on the Internet Radio Fairness Act (HR 5469).
Sincerely,
Your Name
Address
City/State/Zip (zip very important)
Phone number good too!
Cory Doctorow's short stories and novels grab you very early on, and you just kinda don't want to put them down until they're finished. He gives you just enough of a glimpse of his worlds to sear images of them into your brain forever -- leaving you ready and waiting for the next voyage to begin.
Here's an excerpt if you want to check it out first before purchasing the novel at 30% off:
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
So what do you say? You can save 30%, you won't be disappointed, and you can help Cory get a bigger contract for his next novel!
Here is the full text of the excerpt in case the link goes bad:
http://www.infinitematrix.net/stories/excerpts/down_and_out1.html
The Infinite Matrix
an excerpt from
down and out in
the magic kingdom
by Cory Doctorow
illustration
The Liberty Square ad-hocs were the staunchest conservatives in the Magic Kingdom, preserving the wheezing technology in the face of a Park that changed almost daily. The newcomer/old-timers were on-side with the rest of the Park, had their support, and looked like they might make a successful go of it.
It fell to my girlfriend Lil to make sure that there were no bugs in the meager attractions of Liberty Square: the Hall of the Presidents, the Liberty Belle riverboat, and the glorious Haunted Mansion, arguably the coolest attraction to come from the fevered minds of the old-time Disney Imagineers.
Lil was second-generation Disney World, her parents being among the original ad-hocracy that took over the management of Liberty Square and Tom Sawyer Island. She was, quite literally, raised in Walt Disney World and it showed. She was neat and efficient in her every little thing, from her shining red hair to her careful accounting of each gear and cog in the animatronics that are in her charge. Her folks were in canopic jars in Kissimmee, deadheading for a few centuries.
I caught her backstage at the Hall of the Presidents, tinkering with Lincoln II, the backup animatronic. Lil tried to keep two of everything running at speed, just in case. She could swap out a dead 'bot for a backup in five minutes flat, which is all that crowd-control would permit.
It had been two weeks since Dan's arrival, and though I'd barely seen him in that time, his presence was vivid in our lives. Our little ranch-house had a new smell, not unpleasant, of rejuve and hope and loss, something barely noticeable over the tropical flowers nodding in front of our porch. My phone rang three or four times a day, Dan checking in from his rounds of the Park, seeking out some way to accumulate personal capital. His excitement and dedication to the task were inspiring, pulling me into his over-the-top-and-damn-the-torpedoes mode of being.
"You just missed Dan," she said. She had her head in Lincoln's chest, working with an autosolder and a magnifier. Bent over, red hair tied back in a neat bun, sweat sheening her wiry freckled arms, smelling of girl-sweat and machine lubricant, she made me wish there were a mattress somewhere backstage. I settled for patting her behind affectionately, and she wriggled appreciatively. "He's looking better."
His rejuve had taken him back to apparent 25, the way I remembered him. He was rawboned and leathery, but still had the defeated stoop that had startled me when I saw him at the Adventurer's Club. "What did he want?"
"He's been hanging out with Debra he wanted to make sure I knew what she's up to."
Debra was one of the old guard, a former comrade of Lil's parents. She'd spent a decade in Disneyland Beijing, coding sim-rides. If she had her way, we'd tear down every marvelous rube goldberg in the Park and replace them with pristine white sim boxes on giant, articulated servos.
The problem was that she was really good at coding sims. Her Great Movie Ride rehab at MGM was breathtaking the Star Wars sequence had already inspired a hundred fan-sites that fielded millions of hits.
"So, what's she up to?"
Lil extracted herself from the Rail-Splitter's mechanical guts and made a comical moue of worry. "She's rehabbing the Pirates and doing an incredible job. They're ahead of schedule, they've got good net-buzz, the focus groups are cumming themselves." The comedy went out of her expression, baring genuine worry.
She turned away and closed up Honest Abe, then fired her finger at him. Smoothly, he began to run through his spiel, silent but for the soft hum and whine of his servos. Lil mimed twiddling a knob and his audiotrack kicked in low: "All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined could not, by force, make a track on the Blue Ridge, nor take a drink from the Ohio. If destruction be our lot, then we ourselves must be its author and its finisher." She mimed turning down the gain and he fell silent again.
"You said it, Mr. President," she said, and fired her finger at him again, powering him down. She bent and adjusted his hand-sewn period topcoat, then carefully wound and set the turnip-watch in his vest-pocket.
I put my arm around her shoulders. "You're doing all you can and it's good work," I said. I'd fallen into the easy castmember mode of speaking, voicing bland affirmations. Hearing the words, I felt a flush of embarrassment. I pulled her into a long, hard hug and fumbled for better reassurance. Finding no words that would do, I gave her a final squeeze and let her go.
She looked at me sidelong and nodded her head. "It'll be fine, of course," she said. "I mean, the worst possible scenario is that Debra will do her job very, very well, and make things even better than they are now. That's not so bad."
This was a 180-degree reversal of her position on the subject the last time we'd talked, but you don't live more than a century without learning when to point out that sort of thing and when not to.
My cochlea struck twelve noon and a HUD appeared with my weekly backup reminder. Lil was maneuvering Ben Franklin II out of his niche. I waved good-bye at her back and walked away, to an uplink terminal. Once I was close enough for secure broadband communications, I got ready to back up. My cochlea chimed again and I answered it.
"Yes," I subvocalized, impatiently. I hated getting distracted from a backup one of my enduring fears was that I'd forget the backup altogether and leave myself vulnerable for an entire week until the next reminder. I'd lost the knack of getting into habits in my adolescence, giving in completely to machine-generated reminders over conscious choice.
"It's Dan." I heard the sound of the Park in full swing behind him children's laughter; bright, recorded animatronic spiels; the tromp of thousands of feet. "Can you meet me at the Tiki Room? It's pretty important."
"Can it wait for fifteen?" I asked.
"Sure see you in fifteen."
I rung off and initiated the backup. A status-bar zipped across a HUD, dumping the parts of my memory that were purely digital; then it finished and started in on organic memory. My eyes rolled back in my head and my life flashed before my eyes.
After I was shot dead at the Tiki Room, I had the opportunity to appreciate the great leaps that restores had made in the intervening ten years since my last death. I woke in my own bed, instantly aware of the events that led up to my death as seen from various third-party POVs: security footage from the Adventureland cameras, synthesized memories extracted from Dan's own backup, and a computer-generated fly-through of the scene. I woke feeling preternaturally calm and cheerful, and knowing that I felt that way because of certain temporary neurotransmitter presets that had been put in place when I was restored.
Dan and Lil sat at my bedside. Lil's tired, smiling face was limned with hairs that had snuck loose of her pony-tail. She took my hand and kissed the smooth knuckles. I dug for words appropriate to the scene, decided to wing it, opened my mouth and said, to my surprise, "I have to pee."
Dan and Lil smiled at each other. I lurched out of the bed, naked, and thumped to the bathroom. My muscles were surprisingly limber, with a brand-new spring to them. After I flushed I leaned over and took hold of my ankles, then pulled my head right to the floor, feeling the marvelous flexibility of my back and legs and buttocks. A scar on my knee was missing, as were the many lines that had crisscrossed my fingers. When I looked in the mirror, I saw that my nose and earlobes were smaller and perkier. The familiar crows-feet and the frown-lines between my eyebrows were gone. I had a day's beard all over head, face, pubis, arms, legs. I ran my hands over my body and chuckled at the ticklish newness of it all. I was briefly tempted to depilate all over, just to keep this feeling of newness forever, but the neurotransmitter presets were evaporating and a sense of urgency over my murder was creeping up on me.
I tied a towel around my waist and made my way back to the bedroom. The smells of tile-cleaner and flowers and rejuve were bright in my nose, effervescent as camphor. Dan and Lil stood when I came into the room and helped me to the bed. "Well, this sucks," I said. I ran the bare, soft soles of my new feet over the tile and considered the circumstances of my latest death.
After the backup uplink, I'd headed straight for Liberty Square through the utilidors. Three quick cuts of security cam footage told the story, one at the uplink, one in the corridor, and one at the exit in the underpass between Liberty Square and Adventureland. I seemed bemused and a little sad as I emerged from the door, and began to weave my way through the crowd, using a kind of sinuous, darting shuffle that I'd developed when I was doing field-work on my crowd-control thesis. I cut rapidly through the lunchtime crowd toward the long roof of the Tiki Room, thatched with strips of shimmering aluminum cut and painted to look like long grass.
Fuzzy shots now, from Dan's POV, of me moving closer to him, passing close to a group of teenaged girls with extra elbows and knees, wearing environmentally controlled cloaks and cowls covered with Epcot Center logos. One of them is wearing a pith helmet, from the Jungle Traders shop outside of the Jungle Cruise. Dan's gaze flicks away, to the Tiki Room's entrance, where there is a short queue of older men, then back, just as the girl with the pith helmet draws a stylish little organic pistol, like a penis with a tail that coils around her arm. Casually, grinning, she raises her arm and gestures with the pistol, exactly like Lil does with her finger when she's uploading, and the pistol lunges forward. Dan's gaze flicks back to me. I'm pitching over, my lungs bursting out of my chest and spreading before me like wings, spinal gristle and viscera showering the guests before me. A piece of my nametag, now shrapnel, strikes Dan in the forehead, causing him to blink. When he looks again, the group of girls is still there, but the girl with the pistol is gone.
The fly-through is far less confused. Everyone except me, Dan and the girl are grayed-out. We're limned in highlighter yellow, moving in slow-motion. I emerge from the underpass and the girl moves from the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse to the group of her friends, Dan starts to move towards me. The girl raises, arms and fires her pistol. A self-guiding smart-slug, keyed to my body chemistry, flies low, near ground-level, weaving among the feet of the crowd, moving just below the speed of sound. When it reaches me, it screams upwards and into my spine, detonating once it's entered my chest-cavity.
The girl has already made a lot of ground, back toward the Adventureland/Main Street, USA gateway. The fly-through speeds up, following her as she merges with the crowds on the street, ducking and weaving between them, moving toward the breezeway at Sleeping Beauty Castle. She vanishes, then reappears, forty minutes later, in Tomorrowland, near the new Space Mountain complex, then disappears again.
"Has anyone ID'd the girl?" I asked, once I'd finished reliving the events. The anger was starting to boil within me now. My new fists clenched for the first time, soft palms and uncallused fingertips.
Dan shook his head. "None of the girls she was with had ever seen her before. The face was one of the Seven Sisters Hope." The Seven Sisters were a trendy collection of designer faces. Every second teenage girl wore one of them.
"How about Jungle Traders?" I asked. "Did they have a record of the pith helmet purchase?"
Lil frowned. "We ran the Jungle Traders purchases back for six months: only three matched the girl's apparent age; all three have alibis. Chances are she stole it."
"Why?" I asked, finally. In my mind's eye, I saw my lungs bursting out of my chest, like wings, like jellyfish, vertebrae spraying like shrapnel. I saw the girl's smile, an almost sexual smirk as she pulled the trigger on me.
"It wasn't random," Lil said. "The slug was definitely keyed to you that means that she'd gotten close enough to sample you at some point."
Right which meant that she'd been to Disney World in the last ten years. That sure narrowed it down.
"What happened to her after Tomorrowland?" I said.
"We don't know," Lil said. "Something wrong with the cameras. We lost her and she never reappeared." She sounded hot and angry she took equipment failures in the Magic Kingdom very personally.
"Who'd want to do this?" I asked, hating the self-pity in my voice. It was the first time I'd been murdered, but I didn't need to be a drama-queen about it.
Dan's eyes got a far-away look. "Sometimes, people do things for reasons that seem perfectly reasonable to them, that the rest of the world couldn't hope to understand. I've seen a few assassinations, and they never made sense afterwards." He stroked his chin. "Sometimes, it's better look for temperament, rather than motivation: who could do something like this?"
Right. All we needed to do was investigate all the psychopaths who'd visited the Magic Kingdom in ten years. That narrowed it down considerably. I pulled up a HUD and checked the time. It had been four days since my murder. I had a shift coming up, working the turnstiles at the Haunted Mansion. I liked to pull a couple of those shifts a month, just to keep myself grounded; it helped to take a reality-check while I was churning away in the rarified climate of my crowd-control simulations.
I stood and went to my closet, started to dress.
"What are you doing?" Lil asked, alarmed.
"I've got a shift. I'm running late."
"You're in no shape to work," Lil said, tugging at my elbow. I jerked free of her.
"I'm fine good as new." I barked a humorless laugh. "I'm not going to let those bastards disrupt my life any more."
Those bastards? I thought when had I decided that there was more than one? But I knew it was true. There was no way that this was all planned by one person: it had been executed too precisely, too thoroughly.
Dan moved to block the bedroom door. "Wait a second," he said. "You need rest."
I fixed him with a doleful glare. "I'll decide that," I said. He stepped aside.
"I'll tag along, then," he said. "Just in case."
I pinged my Whuffie. I was up a couple percentiles sympathy Whuffie but it was falling: Dan and Lil were radiating disapproval. Screw 'em.
I got into my runabout and Dan scrambled for the passenger door as I put it in gear and sped out.
[ Part 1 ] [ Part 2 ]
Cory Doctorow has been writing and selling science fiction for a dozen years or so, and after a blizzard of stories appeared, in 1998, 1999, and 2000, in Asimovs Science Fiction, SF Age, Interzone, Amazing, On Spec, and other magazines, a grateful public awarded him the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He is the author, with Karl Schroeder, of The Complete Idiots Guide to Publishing Science Fiction, and his articles have appeared in Wired, Speculations, and other magazines. Cory blogs for boingboing, evangelizes for OpenCola, and generally keeps busy. You can find out more on his website, Craphound.com, if he ever gets around to updating it.
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom will be published by Tor Books in Fall, 2002.
The Infinite Matrix
an excerpt from
down and out in
the magic kingdom
by Cory Doctorow
part 2
illustration
The Mansion's cast were sickeningly cheerful and solicitous. Each of them made a point of coming around and touching the stiff, starched shoulder of my butler's costume, letting me know that if there was anything they could do for me. . . I gave them all a fixed smile and tried to concentrate on the guests, how they waited, when they arrived, how they dispersed through the exit gate. Dan hovered nearby, occasionally taking the eight minute, twenty-two second ride-through, running interference for me with the other castmembers.
He was nearby when my break came up. I changed into civvies and we walked over the cobbled streets, past the Hall of the Presidents, noting as I rounded the corner that there was something different about the queue-area. Dan groaned. "They did it already," he said.
I looked closer. The turnstiles were blocked by a sandwich board: Mickey in a Ben Franklin wig and bifocals, holding a trowel. "Excuse our mess!" the sign declared. "We're renovating to serve you better!"
I spotted one of Debra's cronies standing behind the sign, a self-satisfied smile on his face. He'd started off life as a squat northern Chinese, but had had his bones lengthened and his cheekbones raised so that he looked almost elfin. I took one look at his smile and understood Debra had established a toe-hold in Liberty Square.
"They filed plans for the new Hall with the steering committee an hour after you got shot" Dan explained. "The committee loved the plans; so did the net. They're promising not to touch the Mansion."
"You didn't mention this," I said, hotly.
"We thought you'd jump to conclusions. The timing was bad, but there's no indication that they arranged for the shooter. Everyone's got an alibi; furthermore, they've all offered to submit their backups for proof."
"Right," I said. "Right. So they just happened to have plans for a new Hall standing by. And they just happened to file them after I got shot, when all our ad-hocs were busy worrying about me. It's all a big coincidence."
Dan shook his head. "We're not stupid, Jules. No one thinks that it's a coincidence. Debra's the sort of person who keeps a lot of plans standing by, just in case. But that just makes her a well-prepared opportunist, not a murderer."
I felt nauseated and exhausted. I was enough of a castmember that I sought out a utilidor before I collapsed against a wall, head down. Defeat seeped through me, saturating me.
Dan crouched down beside me. I looked over at him. He was grinning wryly. "Posit," he said, "for the moment, that Debra really did do this thing, set you up so that she could take over."
I smiled, in spite of myself. This was his explaining act, the thing he would do whenever I fell into one of his rhetorical tricks back in the old days. "All right, I've posited it."
"Why would she: one, take out you instead of Lil or one of the real old-timers; two, go after the Hall of Presidents instead of Tom Sawyer Island or even the Mansion; and three, follow it up with such a blatant, suspicious move?"
"All right," I said, warming to the challenge. "One: I'm important enough to be disruptive but not so important as to rate a full investigation. Two: Tom Sawyer Island is too visible, you can't rehab it without people seeing the dust from shore. Three, Debra's coming off of a decade in Beijing, where subtlety isn't real important."
"Sure," Dan said, "sure." Then he launched an answering salvo, and while I was thinking up my answer, he helped me to my feet and walked me out to my runabout, arguing all the way, so that by the time I noticed we weren't at the Park anymore, I was home and in bed.
With all the Hall's animatronics mothballed for the duration, Lil had more time on her hands than she knew what to do with. She hung around the little bungalow, the two of us in the living room, staring blankly at the windows, breathing shallowly in the claustrophobic, superheated Florida air. I had my working notes on queue management for the Mansion, and I pecked at them aimlessly. Sometimes, Lil mirrored my HUD so she could watch me work, and made suggestions based on her long experience.
It was a delicate process, this business of increasing through-put without harming the guest experience. But for every second I could shave off of the queue-to-exit time, I could put another sixty guests through and lop thirty seconds off total wait-time. And the more guests who got to experience the Mansion, the more of a Whuffie-hit Debra's people would suffer if they made a move on it. So I dutifully pecked at my notes, and found three seconds I could shave off the graveyard sequence by swiveling the Doom Buggy carriages stage-left as they descended from the attic window: by expanding their fields-of-vision, I could expose the guests to all the scenes more quickly.
I ran the change in fly-through, then implemented it after closing and invited the other Liberty Square ad-hocs to come and test it out.
It was another muggy winter evening, prematurely dark. The ad-hocs had enough friends and family with them that we were able to simulate an off-peak queue-time, and we all stood and sweated in the pre-show area, waiting for the doors to swing open, listening to the wolf-cries and assorted boo-spookery from the hidden speakers.
The doors swung open, revealing Lil in a rotting maid's uniform, her eyes lined with black, her skin powdered to a deathly pallor. She gave us a cold, considering glare, then intoned, "Master Gracey requests more bodies."
As we crowded into the cool, musty gloom of the parlor, Lil contrived to give my ass an affectionate squeeze. I turned to return the favor, and saw Debra's elfin comrade looming over Lil's shoulder. My smile died on my lips.
The man locked eyes with me for a moment, and I saw something in there some admixture of cruelty and worry that I didn't know what to make of. He looked away immediately. I'd known that Debra would have spies in the crowd, of course, but with elf-boy watching, I resolved to make this the best show I knew how.
It's subtle, this business of making the show better from within. Lil had already slid aside the paneled wall that led to stretch-room number two, the most-recently serviced one. Once the crowd had moved inside, I tried to lead their eyes by adjusting my body language to poses of subtle attention directed at the new spotlights. When the newly remastered soundtrack came from behind the sconce-bearing gargoyles at the corners of the octagonal room, I leaned my body slightly in the direction of the moving stereo-image. And an instant before the lights snapped out, I ostentatiously cast my eyes up into the scrim ceiling, noting that others had taken my cue, so they were watching when the UV-lit corpse dropped from the pitch-dark ceiling, jerking against the noose at its neck.
The crowd filed into the second queue area, where they boarded the Doom Buggies. There was a low buzz of marveling conversation as we made our way onto the moving sidewalk. I boarded my Doom Buggy and an instant later, someone slid in beside me. It was the elf.
He made a point of not making eye contact with me, but I sensed his sidelong glances as we rode through past the floating chandelier and into the corridor where the portraits' eyes tracked us. Two years before, I'd accelerated this sequence and added some random swivel to the Doom Buggies, shaving 25 seconds off the total, taking the hourly through-put cap from 2365 to 2600. It was the proof-of-concept that led to all the other seconds I'd shaved away since. The violent pitching of the Buggy brought me and the elf into inadvertent contact with one another, and when I brushed his hand as I reached for the safety bar, I felt that it was cold and sweaty.
He was nervous! He was nervous. What did he have to be nervous about? I was the one who'd been murdered maybe he was nervous because he was supposed to finish the job. I cast my own sidelong looks at him, trying to see suspicious bulges in his tight clothes, but the Doom Buggy's pebbled black plastic interior was too dim. Dan was in the Buggy behind us, with one of the Mansion's regular castmembers. I rang his cochlea and subvocalized: "Get ready to jump out on my signal." Anyone leaving their Buggy would interrupt an infrared beam and stop the ride-system. I would keep a close watch on Debra's crony.
We went past the hallway of mirrors and into the hallway of doors, where monstrous hands peeked out around the sills, straining against the hinges, recorded groans mixed in with pounding. I thought about it if I wanted to kill someone on the Mansion, what would be the best place to do it? The attic staircase the next sequence seemed like a good bet. A cold clarity washed over me. The elf would kill me in the gloom of the staircase, dump me out over the edge at the blind turn toward the graveyard, and that would be it. Would he be able to do it if I were staring straight at him? I swiveled in my seat and looked him straight in the eye.
He quirked half a smile at me and nodded a greeting. I kept on staring at him, my hands balled into fists, ready for anything. We rode down the staircase, facing up, listening to the clamor of voices from the cemetery and the squawk of the red-eyed raven. I caught sight of the quaking groundskeeper animatronic from the corner of my eye and startled. I let out a subvocal squeal and was pitched forward as the ride-system shuddered to a stop.
"Jules?" came Dan's voice in my cochlea. "You all right?"
He'd heard my involuntary note of surprise and had leapt clear of the Buggy, stopping the ride. The elf was looking at me with a mixture of surprise and pity.
"It's all right, it's all right. False alarm." I paged Lil and subvocalized to her, telling her to start up the ride ASAP, it was all right.
I rode the rest of the way with my hands on the safety-bar, my eyes fixed ahead of me, steadfastly ignoring the elf. I checked the timer I'd been running. The demo was a debacle instead of shaving off three seconds, I'd added thirty.
I debarked from the Buggy and stalked quickly out of the exit queue, leaning heavily against the fence, staring blindly at the pet cemetery. My head swam: I was out of control, jumping at shadows. I was spooked.
I sensed someone at my elbow, and thinking it was Lil, come to ask me what had gone on, I turned with a sheepish grin and found myself facing the elf.
He stuck his hand out and spoke in the flat no-accent of someone running a language module. "Hi there. We haven't been introduced, but I wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your work. I'm Tim Fung."
I pumped his hand, which was still cold and particularly clammy in the close heat of the Florida night. "Julius," I said, startled at how much like a bark it sounded. Careful, I thought, no need to escalate the hostilities. "It's kind of you to say that. I like what you-all have done with the Pirates."
He smiled: a genuine, embarrassed smile. "Really? I think it's pretty good the second time around you get a lot of chances to refine things, really clarify the vision. Beijing well, it was exciting, but it was rushed, you know? I mean, we were really struggling. Every day, there was another pack of squatters who wanted to tear the Park down. Debra used to send me out to give the children piggyback rides, just to keep our Whuffie up while she was evicting the squatters. It was good to have the opportunity to refine the designs, revisit them without the floor show."
I knew about this, of course Beijing had been a real struggle for the ad-hocs who built it. Lots of them had been killed, many times over. Debra herself had been killed every day for a week and restored to a series of prepared clones, beta-testing one of the ride systems. It was faster than revising the CAD simulations. Debra had a reputation for pursuing expedience.
"I'm starting to find out how it feels to work under pressure," I said, and nodded significantly at the Mansion. I was gratified to see him look embarrassed, then horrified.
"We would never touch the Mansion," he said. "It's perfect!"
Dan and Lil sauntered up as I was preparing a riposte.
Dan's gait was odd, stilted, like he was leaning on Lil for support. They looked like a couple. An irrational sear of jealousy jetted through me. I was an emotional wreck. Still, I took Lil's big, scarred hand in mine as soon as she was in reach, then cuddled her to me protectively. She had changed out of her maid's uniform into civvies: smart coveralls whose micropore fabric breathed in time with her own respiration.
"Lil, Dan, I want you to meet Tim Fung. He was just telling me war stories from the Pirates project in Beijing."
Lil waved and Dan gravely shook his hand. "That was some hard work," Dan said.
It occurred to me to turn on some Whuffie monitors. It was normally an instantaneous reaction to meeting someone, but I was still disoriented. I pinged the elf. He had a lot of left-handed Whuffie; respect garnered from people who shared very few of my opinions. I expected that. What I didn't expect was that his weighted Whuffie score, the one that lent extra credence to the rankings of people I respected, was also high higher than my own. I regretted my nonlinear behavior even more. Respect from the elf Tim, I had to remember to call him Tim would carry a lot of weight in every camp that mattered.
"So, how're things going over at the Hall of the Presidents?" I asked Tim.
Tim gave us the same half-grin he'd greeted me with. On his smooth, pointed features, it looked almost irredeemably cute. "We're doing good stuff, I think. Debra's had her eye on the Hall for years, back in the old days, before she went to China. We're replacing the whole thing with broadband uplinks of gestalts from each of the Presidents' lives: newspaper headlines, speeches, distilled biographies, personal papers. It'll be like having each President inside you, core-dumped in a few seconds. Debra said we're going to flash-bake the Presidents on your mind!" His eyes glittered in the twilight.
"Wow," I said. "That sounds wild. What do you have in mind for physical plant?" The Hall as it stood had a quiet, patriotic dignity cribbed from a hundred official buildings of the dead USA. Messing with it would be like redesigning the stars-and-bars.
"That's not really my area," Tim said. "I'm a programmer. But I could have one of the designers squirt some plans at you, if you want."
"That would be fine," Lil said, taking my elbow. "I think we should be heading home, now, though." She began to tug me away. Dan took my other elbow.
"That's too bad," Tim said. "My ad-hoc is pulling an all-nighter on the new Hall. I'm sure they'd love to have you drop by."
The idea seized hold of me. I would go into the camp of the enemy, sit by their fire, learn their secrets. "That would be great!" I said, too loudly.
[ Part 1 ] [ Part 2 ]
Cory Doctorow has been writing and selling science fiction for a dozen years or so, and after a blizzard of stories appeared, in 1998, 1999, and 2000, in Asimovs Science Fiction, SF Age, Interzone, Amazing, On Spec, and other magazines, a grateful public awarded him the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He is the author, with Karl Schroeder, of The Complete Idiots Guide to Publishing Science Fiction, and his articles have appeared in Wired, Speculations, and other magazines. Cory blogs for boingboing, evangelizes for OpenCola, and generally keeps busy. You can find out more on his website, Craphound.com, if he ever gets around to updating it.
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom will be published by Tor Books in Fall, 2002.
Hal Plotkin writes about Eldred in his latest column:
Free Mickey Stanford Law Professor seeks to overturn the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act
To heighten public awareness of the importance of the case an Internet bookmobile is set to depart San Francisco next Monday on a trip that will bring it to the steps of the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., before arguments wrap up. The van, which will be stopping at schools, libraries and senior centers along the way, is equipped to provide free high-speed access to thousands of literary and artistic works that are already in the public domain.Tens of thousands of additional books would have come into the public domain (meaning their copyrights would have expired) over the next few years, but now they won't thanks to the Sonny Bono law.
The U.S. Constitution states:
"The Congress shall have power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
So when Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, what turned out to be the latest of 11 consecutive extensions to the length of copyrights, it raised a very important question: Exactly what does the phrase "for limited times" mean?
Here is the complete text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/09/26/bonoact.DTL
Free Mickey
Stanford Law Professor seeks to overturn the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act
Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate Thursday, September 26, 2002
Opening arguments are set to begin early next month in Eldred vs. Ashcroft, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that will decide the future of copyright law, including how and when artists and writers can build upon the work of others.
At issue is the constitutionality of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which was enacted in 1998 with strong support from Hollywood's politically powerful studios. The law extended the length of copyrights for an additional 20 years (or more in certain cases) and gave new protections to corporations that own copyrights.
Opponents -- which include dozens of the nation's leading law professors, several library groups, 17 prominent economists, and a coalition of both liberal and conservative political action groups -- say it serves no legitimate public purpose, violates the clear intentions of our nation's founders regarding copyrights and is unconstitutional.
To heighten public awareness of the importance of the case an Internet bookmobile is set to depart San Francisco next Monday on a trip that will bring it to the steps of the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., before arguments wrap up. The van, which will be stopping at schools, libraries and senior centers along the way, is equipped to provide free high-speed access to thousands of literary and artistic works that are already in the public domain.
Tens of thousands of additional books would have come into the public domain (meaning their copyrights would have expired) over the next few years, but now they won't thanks to the Sonny Bono law.
The U.S. Constitution states:
"The Congress shall have power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
So when Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, what turned out to be the latest of 11 consecutive extensions to the length of copyrights, it raised a very important question: Exactly what does the phrase "for limited times" mean?
It's this long overdue question that is about to get a hearing before the high court, with Stanford Law School's professor Larry Lessig, co-founder of Creative Commons and author of "The Future of Ideas," representing the lead plaintiff in the case, Eric Eldred.
Eldred operates the Eldritch Press, which offers free online access to a staggering array of published material already in the public domain. Visitors to his site, which include students from around the world, can download everything from English translations of works by Russian writer Anton Chekhov to an early "Introduction to Zoology" written by the father of science in Great Britain, T. H. Huxley. Eldred is suing the federal government to obtain access to the material that would have come into the public domain were it not for the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act.
The public derives obvious benefits from sites such as Eldred's. Further extending copyrights, on the other hand, enriches copyright owners but offers no discernable benefits to the rest of us. That lack of symmetry forms the heart of the case. The U.S. Constitution specifically prohibits Congress from limiting freedom of speech unless doing so serves a clear and important public purpose (preventing pranksters from yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is the classic example).
To be sure, writers and artists need and deserve continued copyright protection. But Eldred's legions of backers maintain that the framers of our constitution never intended to extend that protection to the grandchildren of writers and artists. They add that it's also pretty unlikely that struggling artists would decide not to create something today because their heirs 100 or more years in the future won't be able to keep selling it.
What's really happened, they say, is that corporations that outlive artists and creators have won legal protections that are hurting everyone else.
The original decision made more than 200 years ago to limit the length of copyrights was deliberate and carefully considered. The goal, which was expressed at the time in letters written by Thomas Jefferson and others, was to allow newcomers to build on and improve works produced by others, but only after the original creators of those works were compensated fairly for their efforts. The reason: Human progress builds upon itself.
Take, for example, the invention of the wheel. It led to countless other innovations: gears, flywheels, wheelbarrows, bicycles and cars, to name just a few. Although the wheel was an invention, copyrighted literary and artistic works hold the same potential for creating derivative works that benefit the public. In the time since Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic children's book "The Secret Garden" entered the public domain in 1986, for example, it has, among other products, spawned a movie, a musical, a cabaret adaptation, a made-for-TV movie, a cookbook, a CD-ROM, a second musical adaptation, a stage play, a radio program, a reader's guide and a video, according to a list compiled by Arizona State University law professor Dennis Karjala. And that's just one public domain property.
Little if any of the creative and economic activity those productions unleashed would have taken place if artists, writers and producers were not free to use, embellish and improve upon the original.
So then, if the public domain is such a good thing, what led to the latest extension in the length of copyrights?
In two words: Mickey Mouse.
In the late 1990s The Disney Corporation was panicked because the copyright on its famous rodent was about to expire. So Disney assembled a group of heavy hitters in the entertainment industry, including Time Warner, DreamWorks SKG, the Recording Industry Association of America and Sony Corporation, which poured more than $6 million into congressional campaign coffers. Congress returned the favor by passing the new law, which it absurdly named after the pop-singer ex-Cher-partner-turned-politician who had just died after crashing into a tree while skiing stoned on Vicodin and Valium.
What makes this sorry tale even more ironic is that the Disney Corporation's fortune was itself built largely from commercially successful animated reproductions of free public domain works from the 19th century, including Alice in Wonderland, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Cinderella, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Jungle Book. So what we have is a company that got rich off the works of others that now doesn't want to let anyone else play by those same rules.
Unfortunately, when it comes to copyrights, changing the rules is par for the course.
In 1790, when copyrights were first enacted, they lasted 14 years and could be extended for 14 more if the writer was still living. The latest extension, in 1998, boosted that term by 20 additional years for works copyrighted after January 1, 1923, while works produced by individuals after 1978 got copyrights for the life of the author plus 70 years (up from the previous 50). Meanwhile, intellectual properties made by or for corporations were given 95 years of protection.
Based on actuarial tables, that means a new work produced today by a 25-year-old would not fall into the public domain until about 2127 (80-year life expectancy, plus an additional 70 years).
What's even more mind-boggling is to think about what might have happened if this same law had been in effect during the last century. How many good ideas that we now take for granted would not have been developed, how many shows would never have opened, how much recent social, artistic, literary and scientific progress would not have occurred?
To take it a step further, just imagine if the idea was extended to patents as well, as some have suggested. Humanity would have had to wait an additional century or longer for the advent of commercial television because it was based, in part, on ideas originally developed for radio. Likewise, airplanes might still be on the drawing board, held back in development because some inventor's grandchild tied up access to an essential component they had no role in creating.
The argument that professor Lessig will be making next month is that what is at risk is nothing less than society's right, embodied in our constitution, to continue to develop and grow by building upon the works of previous generations.
Regrettably, Congress has repeatedly shown that it is willing to erode those rights in exchange for campaign contributions.
Now, it's up to the Supreme Court. Let's hope that at least five of the justices have taken time to read the constitution they are sworn to uphold.
Hal Plotkin
Veteran Silicon Valley writer and broadcaster Hal Plotkin is also a contributing writer at Harvard Business School Press. Readers can get more information on Eldred vs. Ashcroft here.
hplotkin@sfgate.com
..
Building the Underground Computer Railroad
By Farhad Manjoo for Salon.
I'm still not quite sure how the title's underground railroad analogy actually fits in to the story (which is about sending computers to remote locations to help bridge the digital divide), but it was an interesting article nonetheless.
Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/09/23/antiglobal_geeks/index.html?CP=RDF&DN=310
Building the underground computer railroad
Anti-globalization activists in Oakland, Calif., are recycling old machines, loading them with free software and shipping them off to Ecuador.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Farhad Manjoo
Sept. 23, 2002 | OAKLAND, Calif. -- It's surprisingly easy to build a computer. "There's only like seven or eight parts in a PC," Eddie Nix says as we stand in the cavernous warehouse of a computer recycling center in Oakland, Calif. We're surrounded by waist-high stacks of unwanted computers, but Nix insists that the systems only look like they're dead -- they can easily be resurrected, he says, and put to good use.
Wearing combat boots and a T-shirt emblazoned with a large skull and crossbones, Nix looks more like a biker than your stereotypical computer geek. He pulls out a "box" -- essentially a computer with all of the parts removed -- from a pile of old machines and sets it on a nearby worktable. "They have all sorts of people coming in here," Nix says of the warehouse, the Alameda County Computer Resource Center (ACCRC). "Some people are from drug rehab programs, from wherever -- and they can have you making computers in a day." He pops open the box and gathers all the necessary parts -- memory chips, a hard drive, a video card, a keyboard and a mouse. In less than a minute, Nix fits all the pieces into the machine and hits the start button.
It's a sunny Saturday afternoon in September, and Nix is here on behalf of the Independent Media Center, a loose affiliation of grass-roots journalists who specialize in staging anti-globalization protests at international conferences devoted to "free trade." In the run-up to the next meeting of delegates to the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which will be held in Ecuador in late October, Nix and a handful of others have spent weeks turning unwanted computer parts donated to the ACCRC into working machines that they plan to use in their protest. Other volunteers are doing the same thing at Free Geek, a recycling center in Portland, Ore., and a group in Los Angeles is helping out as well. Together, the geek activists aim to build about 300 Linux machines, which they'll stuff into a shipping container and send down to Ecuador before the protest.
People at the Independent Media Center pride themselves on the decentralized nature of their organization. There are no actual, official "leaders" -- but I'm here to see Evan Henshaw-Plath, who's the main force behind the Ecuador project. Henshaw-Plath is a 25-year-old programmer who once founded a dot-com and now runs a dot-net: protest.net, a calendar site used by various groups to schedule their demonstrations. During the past year, he's also spent a lot of his time with activists in South America, helping them set up computer labs, networks and Web sites, all in an attempt to stymie what he sees as the formidable, and growing, influence of various international trade organizations in the region. During one of his visits, he met with some of the groups planning to protest at the FTAA meeting and had an epiphany.
Ever since the huge anti-World Trade Organization protest in Seattle in 1999, where the IMC got its start, many of the world's trade meetings have featured chanting, puppet-carrying anti-globalization activists, supported by a cadre of "journalist-activists" from Indymedia. But at most of the protests so far, says Henshaw-Plath, the activists who come in with their own equipment usually took their computers with them when they went back home after the demonstration was over.
"What we haven't been able to pull off is getting a large number of computers to a large part of the society that's at the center of these issues," says Henshaw-Plath, "and that's when we thought about shipping them computers."
After October's protest, the 300 computers that are being shipped to Ecuador will stay there; some will be used in Quito, the capital city, where activists will also set up a citywide wireless network, but many will be sent to various towns and villages all over the region. "It's interesting because on some level you might say these people don't need computers -- they need clean water, housing and some sort of economic base that's not exploited," Henshaw-Plath says. "But we're saying that giving computers to the right people, that's the tool to get that social change."
It's a tool that simply wasn't available as recently as five years ago, he says. One fortunate corollary to Moore's Law -- the hallowed business proposition that predicts that new microprocessors double in power every 18 months -- is that old computers, too, get better and better, but, because they're technically "obsolete," they're dirt-cheap, too. Thanks to this pace of innovation, there's a glut, these days, of old machines that rich societies don't know what to do with -- machines that poor societies could make use of.
The pace of computer obsolescence has been in effect for decades, but more recently, the thriving growth of the free software and open-source software developer communities means there is now a steadily growing body of software applications that are also free. The rise of wireless networking also means that the computers can easily be connected together in regions that don't have a solid communications infrastructure. The foundation for a tech-aided revolution is in place, says Henshaw-Plath; all that's needed is people to do the work, and that's where he and others at the ACCRC come in.
Next page | Going wireless, and anti-global, with a little help from some geek friends
1, 2
***
Building the underground computer railroad | 1, 2
The handful of geek volunteers gathered together at the ACCRC are all dressed casually, in shorts and sandals and T-shirts, and some of them are covered with the grime that comes from working long hours in a warehouse. Many of these people pop in and out of the job, assembling several computers for a few hours and then leaving; but others, like Henshaw-Plath and Nix, have been at this for weeks, nonstop, and they plan to go for at least a week more.
The ACCRC is divided into two sections -- a small workspace where computers are assembled, and a giant warehouse where old computers are dropped off, and where volunteers, working with the care of archaeologists on a dig, plunder the machines for their jewels. The thing most of us refer to as a "computer" -- the big tower that sits under our desks, humming softly as it controls our lives -- is composed of dozens of smaller parts of varying degrees of value. There's gold and other valuable metals in a computer, but there are also toxic substances; a CRT computer monitor has as much as five pounds of lead in it.
Much of what comes into the ACCRC and other computer recycling centers is sent to third-party processors who turn the stuff into usable material. Oso Martin, the executive director of Free Geek, in Portland, says that "about half of what we take in is junk. We test any of the stuff that we know is reusable, and then we have volunteers teach other volunteers how to build machines from it."
Reverend Phil Sano, Free Geek's volunteer coordinator, says that all sorts of people come to Free Geek to learn how to build machines -- from teenagers to senior citizens. (Sano, who's 25, is an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church. After he and his friends once collectively pondered "the meaninglessness of titles," Sano wrote to the church, "and they ended up ordaining me on the spot.") People come to Free Geek because they want to "remove the mystery" of how computers work, Sano says. "And that's the thing that prevents many people from interacting with computers, that mystery. It's what keeps them on that side of the digital divide." After a volunteer has assembled five computers, or "Freek Boxes," he gets to take the sixth one home.
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When you build a machine out of old parts, though, problems are certain to crop up. The computer that Nix built in front of me, for example, doesn't show any signs of life when he attempts to boot it up -- the screen is blank.
"Must be a bad video card," Nix smiles, and goes off to find a new one. A minute later, he's back with a new card, and, after searching for the right screwdriver for a minute, he fits the card into place.
He starts up the computer, looks at the screen ... still nothing.
"Alex," he yells to someone walking by, "where's a stash of semireliable video cards?"
"There aren't any, man," says Alex.
"Great," says Nix. "Here's Mr. Salon coming to see our project and we don't have any video cards."
During the weeks they've been at this, the IMC people have become used to such hassles. Depending on the delivery cycle of old machines, some days they're flush with good equipment -- working video cards, systems with fast processors -- and other days there's nothing left. "The trick," says Henshaw-Plath, "is to look at a pile of machines and pick the good one." If all goes well, you can build a computer in 15 minutes -- spend any more time than that and you better be building a great machine, something with a very fast processor or video editing capabilities.
The software part of the project is less hit-and-miss than the hardware. The activists are using Mandrake Linux with installation scripts provided by Free Geek, which makes the whole thing rather foolproof -- it's the kind of pop-in-a-CD, point-and-click thing a 10-year-old could do. Or a 60-year-old, for that matter. The average volunteer can build about 10 computers in a day, Henshaw-Plath says; people with lots of experience and some luck can build as many as 25.
If you just look at their specifications, the systems the activists are building here seem almost worthless, Pentium 100-class machines with about a gigabyte of hard drive space and 80 megs of RAM. The sort of computer that went for thousands in 1996, but that wouldn't fetch $50 on eBay today.
But if you wipe Windows off these systems and replace it with a Linux-based operating system, and if you just plan to use them for the Web and e-mail, they can be quite useful, says Henshaw-Plath.
In the remote villages of South America, "all they need computers for is communication," says Henshaw-Plath. "They'll use it mostly for e-mail -- and it's not e-mailing someone far off, it's just someone in the next village. They only need some way to communicate between the two of them that will allow them to coordinate and articulate strategies for social change."
For the Amazonian villages where there's no electricity or where phone lines are scarce, the activists plan to set up free computer labs in the nearby cities. Many cities already have commercial Internet cafes, but they cost about a dollar per hour of use, Henshaw-Plath says, which is about a day's wage for most of the population.
The IMC activists plan to ship off these computers to Guayaquil, Ecuador's main port city, by the end of September. Because none of the computers are being sold in Ecuador, and because they're being transferred from an American nonprofit to an Ecuadorian one, the activists won't be charged any international shipping duties on the computers. "It's what you call real free trade," says Eddie Nix.
If it all works out, they say, this will be only the first of many international computer donations. Henshaw-Plath says he has plans to send machines to Brazilian landless peasants, and to people in Argentina hurt by that country's economic meltdown.
"In Argentina, which was once a poster child for IMF policies, the banking system has been shut down," he says. "There's a lot of people who are upset at banks -- and they've occupied them and kicked the bankers out and turned them into social centers. We'll be setting up free media labs that people can use in these occupied banks."
This article also provides some step-by-step instructions for turning it off in Morpehus, Kazaa and LimeWire.
New Software Quietly Diverts Sales Commissions
By John Schwartz and Bob Tedeschi.
Articles like this always just seem to hurt the P2P community as a whole. If it is true, we'd be hurt the most. We'd have been lied to and our money would have been diverted and the merchants we wanted to help will have been hurt too. All because we installed a file sharing program.
But wait! I know that this kind of stealware isn't built into every file sharing program. If these accusations are true, I hope these few bad apples don't scare people away from the entire file sharing experience, which can be quite educational and rewarding.
What the consumers are not told clearly is that if they agree to participate, their computers may be electronically marked: all future purchases will look as if they were made through the software maker's site, even if they were not.In many versions of the software, a purchase will look as if it was made through the software maker's site even if the shopper came in through another site that has its own affiliate agreement with the online store in question. Those affiliate sites include small businesses and even charities that use affiliate links as fund-raisers.
Some version of the diversion software is used by some of the most popular music trading sites that have tried to fill the void left by the collapse of Napster, including Morpheus, Kazaa and LimeWire. The companies say their software has been downloaded by tens of millions of Web surfers.
Here is the full text or the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/27/technology/27FREE.html
New Software Quietly Diverts Sales Commissions
By JOHN SCHWARTZ and BOB TEDESCHI
Some popular online services are using a new kind of software to divert sales commissions that would otherwise be paid to small online merchants by big sites like Amazon and eToys.
Critics call the software parasite-ware and stealware. But the sites that use the software, which is made by nearly 20 companies and used by dozens, say that it is perfectly legal, because their users agree to the diversion.
The amounts involved are estimated by those in the industry to have mounted into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and are likely to continue to grow in part because most users are unaware that the software is operating on their computers.
There is no cost to the customer, but those who run small Web sites that funnel sales to the big merchants say that they are being hurt. "It's painful when someone walks in and takes sales right from under me," said Shawn Collins, who runs a number of sites that feed customers to Amazon and other merchants. "I probably saw a drop-off of 30 percent in income for the past six months."
The diversion begins when consumers get software from the Internet that helps them swap music or other files, or find bargains online. As they install the software, they are asked whether they would also like to show support for the software maker by shopping through an online affiliate program. These programs typically give a percentage of each purchase back to the affiliate in this case, the software maker as a commission.
What the consumers are not told clearly is that if they agree to participate, their computers may be electronically marked: all future purchases will look as if they were made through the software maker's site, even if they were not.
In many versions of the software, a purchase will look as if it was made through the software maker's site even if the shopper came in through another site that has its own affiliate agreement with the online store in question. Those affiliate sites include small businesses and even charities that use affiliate links as fund-raisers.
Some version of the diversion software is used by some of the most popular music trading sites that have tried to fill the void left by the collapse of Napster, including Morpheus, Kazaa and LimeWire. The companies say their software has been downloaded by tens of millions of Web surfers.
Although estimates are hard to come by, those in the business say that the amount of money involved could be large. The affiliate market, in which smaller sites funnel sales to larger ones in return for commissions, accounts for roughly 15 to 20 percent of the estimated $72 billion online market, said Carrie Johnson, an analyst with Forrester Research. A successful affiliate Web site can make $60,000 a month from referrals alone, said Haiko De Poel Jr., chief executive of Abestweb, an online forum devoted to affiliate marketing. He has organized owners of sites to fight Morpheus and others.
A spokeswoman for Amazon, which has 800,000 affiliate sites feeding it customers, said the company worked to protect those sites from hijacking. "We don't allow sites that use a download or a tool to redirect a shopping session to their account if they do not initiate the shopping session," said the spokeswoman, Patty Smith. "We've kicked out a number of sites for doing that."
Last week, Amazon cut off affiliate payments to Morpheus, one site that employs the shopping software, said an online executive. Coldwater Creek, an online clothing store, has also blocked Morpheus.
Some companies that make and use the diversion software said they were rewriting the programs so that they would no longer take money intended for others. But these changes may not affect copies of the software already installed on millions of computers. "We're not interested in stealing any Web site's revenue," said Greg Bildson, chief operating officer for LimeWire. "We know that this is sort of a new and sort of strange area, but we're interested in doing the right thing." He referred calls to TopMoxie, the maker of the software that LimeWire uses to get affiliate money.
Patrick Toland, a vice president for sales and marketing at TopMoxie, said that the company did not intend for its software to displace other affiliates' rights and that his company had altered the software in the last two weeks to stop substituting its affiliate identification code for those of other sites. "The second we realized this is a problem, we turned that boat around and said, `Let's get this out,' " he said. He added that the amount of money involved was minuscule.
Mr. Toland attributed the losses that the Web sites claimed to a tougher marketplace for small players.
Morpheus referred inquiries to Wurld Media, which operates its shopping rebates program. Kirk H. Feathers, the chief technical officer of Wurld Media, said that it had been wrongly accused of stealing and that the company would readily go to court to defend itself.
He acknowledged that an earlier version of the company's software did divert commissions away from other affiliate sites but said that new versions dealt with that situation. Now, the company said, the softwareoffers a choice to the consumer before each purchase: whether to give the commission to the affiliate or to himself in the form of a rebate, with a portion of the rebate going to Morpheus. The software does not misrepresent the user's computer to sellers' sites, Mr. Feathers said.
Arguments that the diversions are somehow the fault of an unintentional flaw do not persuade Erik Petersen, the chief technical officer at an Internet security company, Polar Cove, in Providence, R.I. Mr. Petersen said that he had received complaints about TopMoxie and LimeWire from friends and took a closer look. After conducting a detailed analysis of the software, he concluded that the TopMoxie program was intricately designed to substitute its affiliate identification code for that of other sites as transactions were made. He said that the program remained on the computer even if the user removed the original LimeWire music sharing software. "I don't buy their explanation," he said. "What kind of accident is that?"
Mr. Petersen also pointed to a statement made in an online forum where the technology was discussed, in which a LimeWire developer characterized accusations that the software diverts money as "pretty accurate," but said, "While I agree that this is really a bit of a scam, it is a way for us to pay salaries while not adversely affecting our users."
A chief executive of one software company was similarly unapologetic about the diversion of commissions. "We look at affiliates as competitors," said Avi Naider, the chief executive of WhenU.com, which makes the diversion software used by the music swapping services Kazaa and BearShare. The software, he said, provides services to users and money to each company "so it doesn't have to charge" for the currently free software and services.
The companies also argue that consumers give consent to the terms of the contract when they download the software, whether they read the agreement carefully or not. An expert in online consumer protection said the companies had a point. In the case of the LimeWire agreement, for example, "there does seem to be some indication to the user of what's going on," said David Medine, a Washington lawyer and former Federal Trade Commission official.
Mr. Medine said that he was, however, uncomfortable with the degree of disclosure. "The question is whether the quality of the notice is as good as it could be," he said. "They don't tell you that it's interfering with other business relationships."
Jeff Pullen, the president of Commission Junction, a company that helps link affiliates with Web sites, said that he was not inclined to cut off companies that divert commissions if the customer has agreed to the diversion. "The tactics that they use, maybe they're on the edge," he said. "Maybe, personally, I don't find them particularly attractive. But if they aren't illegal, it's hard for me to point to my public service agreement and say, `I have a reason to kick you off my network.' "
Still, other online merchants are taking action after being confronted by angry affiliates and they find that they are dealing with a moving target. TigerDirect, an online computer and electronics store, blocked Morpheus from its program earlier this year after discovering that the company was diverting online commissions. "I obviously thought it wasn't honorable," said Andy Rodriguez, the company's manager of affiliate marketing. "They said, `It's our right.' I said, `It's our right to remove you.' "
Morpheus changed its software, Mr. Rodriguez said, but a few weeks ago TigerDirect noticed that sales through Morpheus were "going through the roof" at the same time that many affiliates were complaining of a drop in commissions. So he blocked them again. "Guys at Morphus wanted a piece of the pie for each of our sales," he said. "I'm sorry. Absolutely not.
The diversion programs have made life difficult for affiliate marketers in the last year, said Steve Messer, chief executive of LinkShare, a company that runs a major affiliate network. But he sees a silver lining. "It's showed affiliate marketing has come of age," Mr. Messer said. "If you look at it, the volume of transactions passing through LinkShare's affiliate marketing got so big that when affiliates get upset, the largest merchants in the world react. If it's just a few dollars, nobody would've noticed."
LinkShare is working with other companies in their market to come up with industry standards to govern ethical practices in online advertising, Mr. Messer said. "For some people, WWW stands for the Wild, Wild West," he said. "Hopefully, that's coming to an end."
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Shawn Collins, who feeds customers to Amazon and other online merchants, says his commissions have fallen 30 percent in six months.
A Software Cleanup
Computer users who want to remove shopping software from their machines can do so in a few steps. Instructions for removing three of the most common programs:
BUYERSPORT - The shopping software with Morpheus:
Click the Start button.
Click on Find.
Click on Find Files or Folders.
Type in mbho.dll. Click on find now. When the file appears in the directory window, drag mbho.dll into the trash.
LIMESHOP - The software with LimeWire:
Click the Start button.
Click on Settings.
Click Control Panel.
Double-click Add/Remove Programs.
Click LimeShop.
Click Add/Remove.
SAVENOW - The software used by Kazaa:
Click on Start.
Click Settings.
Click on Control Panel.
Double-click on Add/Remove Programs.
Click SaveNow.
Click on Add/Remove.
Multimedia
Chart: A High-Tech Switch
I know I just asked you to send a letter to try and stop this war, but it turns out that an Internet Radio Bill was introduced last week (HR 5469) that is basically the legislation we've been waiting for to be introduced, has been!
This six month freeze and call for new rates is basically what I was asking for in the song I wrote to James H. Billington and Marybeth Peters.
This thing gets voted on early this week -- making it really important that you fax a letter out to your Representative by Monday morning at the latest!
Thanks for checking it out and spreading the word:
The Rifle Shot
Contact your U.S. Rep NOW! .
Transcription of a clip I saw from Thursday's session in congress on the Daily Show. They were making fun of Byrd's dramatic gestures, but if you listen to what he was saying, it's no laughing matter.
"I've been in this Congress fifty years. I have never seen a President of the United States or the Vice President of the United States stoop to such low levels," said Senator Robert Byrd (D) West Virginia, as he turned and pointed at the people watching at home. "It's your blood," he said. "Your sons and daughters."
Nice.
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB1032988956841142113,00.html
Here's the full text of the Internet Archive Bookmobile part of the WSJ story:
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB1032988956841142113,00.html
Book Mobile
Think of it as a Good Humor truck for books.
But instead of selling ice cream, the Digital Bookmobile gives away books. Brewster Kahle, founder of the nonprofit Internet Archive in San Francisco, is driving cross-country next week with his eight-year-old son in a Ford Aerostar van with a satellite dish mounted on top and high-speed printers and book-binding equipment inside. They're starting in East Palo Alto, a pocket of poverty in the heart of Silicon Valley, and will stop at schools, retirement villages, a bookmobile convention in Columbus, Ohio, and a Carnegie library in Pittsburgh, where the motto "Free to the People" is engraved above the door.
At each stop, they will download books from the Internet, print them out and bind them, all at no charge. "There's a lot of hand-wringing about the dot-com implosion," says Mr. Kahle. "But we're missing the bigger picture of how great the Internet is as a library."
But all is not rosy, he says. A new law extending copyright protection for 20 additional years means that in the next two decades, no new books will enter the public domain. Mr. Kahle plans to pull up in front of the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 9, when the court is scheduled to hear a challenge to the copyright law in the case of Eldred v. Ashcroft.
"The public domain is on trial," Mr. Kahle says. "The bookmobile is a tangible manifestation of the usefulness of the public domain."
--Compiled by Ann Grimes, with contributions from Julia Angwin, Allyce Bess and David Bank.
Updated September 26, 2002
This is an experiment...
If you email me at lisarein@finetuning.com with your full name and snail mail address (or even just your name and zip code) with "FAX A LETTER FOR ME PLEASE" in the subject header, I'll look up your Representative for you and FAX him or her the appropriate letter, depending on whether or not they already support HR 473.
Re: The obvious question -- can you trust me to not use this information in some way other than intended?
How about this: I will permanently delete your email (without saving your address anywhere) and will literally burn the letter I've faxed over for you in my fireplace afterwards. This will be the default procedure unless you explicitly say not to do so in your email. (It's just easier that way.)
I'm just trying to help out those folks who might not have a FAX machine handy, who would still like for their voices to be heard by their Representatives (but don't want to end up on some mailing list either).
Thanks!
So I've got all my HR 473 letter-writing stuff all in one place now.
Letters you can send now, links to the actual texts of the opposing Bills, and what will hopefully be a growing list of Congressional Supporters.
As marches start organizing, I'll try to help get the word out on those too.
(I know there's one this Saturday in San Francisco, for example, but I need to figure out exactly where...)
Anyway there it is. Feedback is very much appreciated.
Here's the letter to send if your Reps aren't yet on this list of supporters for HR 473.
September 26, 2002
Your Rep's name
Complete Address
Fax Number
RE: Yes on HR 473 -- No on Public Law 105-235
Dear Representative X:
I am writing in support of HR 473, Rep. Barbara Lee's resolution to seek
a peaceful solution to the situation in Iraq. I believe that a policy
of deterrence, disarmament, and prevention in the Persian Gulf is the
right thing to do.
I also urge you to vote against President Bush's proposed
Congressional Resolution (Public Law 105-235). This sweeping expansion
of power would grant the President a blank check for military action in
the Middle East, and I do not believe that this is sound policy.
These are trying times, and I know that there is no simple path to
take. However, I hope that you will choose a path that won't plunge
our country into war.
Sincerely,
Your Name
Your Address
Zip Code Important
Phone number good too!
HR 473 is Representative Barbara Lee's Bill that would provide a peaceful alternative to Bush's aggressive military option.
I'll be posting customized versions of these letters soon along with better descriptions of how to do things for those of you who are beginners like me and don't really know where to begin (why do you think this is taking so long :-)
But for those of you who are ready to move on this now, here's a letter and direct links to the websites of the Representatives who are already supporting Lee's Bill.
Stay tuned for letters to send your Representatives who are not yet on the list of supporters, urging them vote yes on HR 473. After that, I'll be writing letters to send to members of the Committee On International Relations, to whom HR 473 was referred...
Many thanks to Ren Bucholz, EFF Activist, for his help on my letters and strategy!
Letter:
September 26, 2002
Your Rep
Complete Address Here
Fax Number Here
RE: Yes on HR 473 -- No on Public Law 105-235
Dear Representative X:
Thank you for supporting HR 473, Rep. Barbara Lee's resolution to seek
a peaceful solution to the situation in Iraq. I believe that a policy
of deterrence, disarmament, and prevention in the Persian Gulf is the
right thing to do.
I also urge you to vote against President Bush's proposed
Congressional Resolution (Public Law 105-235). This sweeping expansion
of power would grant the President a blank check for military action in
the Middle East, and I do not believe that this is sound policy.
Thank you for supporting peace, reason and accountability; I hope you
will continue to do so.
Sincerely,
Your Name
Your address Here
Zipcode really important!
Phone number good too.
*****
List of Reps to send this letter to:
Representative Barbara Lee
U.S. House of Representatives
9th Congressional District, California
http://www.house.gov/lee/
Representative Tammy Baldwin
U.S. House of Representatives
2nd Congressional District, Wisconsin
http://tammybaldwin.house.gov/
Representative Corrine Brown
U.S. House of Representatives
3rd Congressional District, Florida
http://www.house.gov/corrinebrown/
Representative Donna M. Christensen
U.S. House of Representatives
United States Virgin Islands
http://www.house.gov/christian-christensen/
Representative William Lacy Clay
U.S. House of Representatives
1st Congressional District, Missouri
http://www.house.gov/clay/
Representative Eva M. Clayton
U.S. House of Representatives
1st Congressional District, North Carolina
http://www.house.gov/clayton/
Representative James E. Clyburn
U.S. House of Representatives
6th Congressional District, South Carolina
http://www.house.gov/clyburn/
Representative John Conyers, Jr.
U.S. House of Representatives
14th Congressional District, Michigan
http://www.house.gov/conyers/
Representative Danny K. Davis
U.S. House of Representatives
7th Congressional District, Illinois
http://www.house.gov/davis/
Representative Sam Farr
U.S. House of Representatives
17th Congressional District, California
http://www.house.gov/farr/
Representative Bob Filner
U.S. House of Representatives
50th Congressional District, California
http://www.house.gov/filner/
Representative Earl F. Hilliard
U.S. House of Representatives
7th Congressional District, Alabama
http://www.house.gov/hilliard/
Representative Maurice Hinchey
U.S. House of Representatives
26th Congressional District, New York
http://www.house.gov/hinchey/
Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr.
U.S. House of Representatives
2nd Congressional District, Illinois
http://www.jessejacksonjr.org/
Representative Marcy Kaptur
U.S. House of Representatives
9th Congressional District, Ohio
http://www.house.gov/kaptur/
Representative Carolyn Kilpatrick
U.S. House of Representatives
15th Congressional District, Michigan
http://www.house.gov/kilpatrick/
Representative Dennis J. Kucinich
U.S. House of Representatives
10th Congressional District, Ohio
http://www.house.gov/kucinich/
Representative Jim McDermott
U.S. House of Representatives
7th Congressional District, Washington
http://www.house.gov/mcdermott/
Representative Cynthia McKinney
U.S. House of Representatives
4th Congressional District, Georgia
http://www.house.gov/mckinney/
Representative Major R. Owens
U.S. House of Representatives
11th Congressional District, New York
http://www.house.gov/owens/
Representative Lynn N. Rivers
U.S. House of Representatives
13th Congressional District, Michigan
http://www.house.gov/rivers/
Representative Bobby L. Rush
U.S. House of Representatives
1st Congressional District, Illinois
http://www.house.gov/rush/
Representative Jose E. Serrano
U.S. House of Representatives
16th Congressional District, New York
http://www.house.gov/serrano/
Representative Hilda L. Solis
U.S. House of Representatives
31st Congressional District, California
http://www.house.gov/solis/
Representative Pete Stark
U.S. House of Representatives
13th Congressional District, California
http://www.house.gov/stark/
Representative Dianne Watson
U.S. House of Representatives
32nd Congressional District, California
http://www.house.gov/watson/
Representative Lynn Woolsey
U.S. House of Representatives
6th Congressional District, California
http://woolsey.house.gov/
Here is the text of Bush's Congressional Resolution (Public Law 105-235).
Here is the full text of the resolution in case the link goes bad:
http://www.c-span.org/executive/presidential/useofforce.asp
Text of a proposed Congressional resolution submitted by Pres. Bush. on Sept. 19, 2002, authorizing military action against Iraq.
WHEREAS Congress in 1998 concluded that Iraq was then in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations and thereby threatened the vital interests of the United States and international peace and security, stated the reasons for that conclusion, and urged the president to take appropriate action to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations (Public Law 105-235);
WHEREAS Iraq remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations, thereby continuing to threaten the national security interests of the United States and international peace and security;
WHEREAS Iraq persists in violating resolutions of the United Nations Security Council by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population, including Kurdish peoples, thereby threatening international peace and security in the region by refusing to release, repatriate or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq, and by failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait;
WHEREAS the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people;
WHEREAS the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward and willingness to attack the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and coalition armed forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council;
WHEREAS members of Al Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens and interests, including the attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;
WHEREAS Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens;
WHEREAS the attacks on the United States of Sept. 11, 2001, underscored the gravity of the threat that Iraq will transfer weapons of mass destruction to international terrorist organizations;
WHEREAS the United States has the inherent right, as acknowledged in the United Nations Charter, to use force in order to defend itself;
WHEREAS Iraq's demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, the high risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its armed forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack, combine to justify the use of force by the United States in order to defend itself;
WHEREAS Iraq is in material breach of its disarmament and other obligations under United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, to cease repression of its civilian population that threatens international peace and security under United Nations Security Council Resolution 688, and to cease threatening its neighbors or United Nations operations in Iraq under United Nations Security Council Resolution 949, and the United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 authorizes use of all necessary means to compel Iraq to comply with these "subsequent relevant resolutions";
WHEREAS Congress in the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1) has authorized the president to use the armed forces of the United States to achieve full implementation of Security Council Resolutions 660, 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674 and 677, pursuant to Security Council Resolutions 678;
WHEREAS Congress, in Section 1095 of Public Law 102-190, has stated that it "supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of the Security Council resolutions 687 as being consistent with the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq (Public Law 102-1)," that Iraq's repression of its civilian population violates United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 and "constitutes a continuing threat to the peace, security, and stability of the Persian Gulf region," and that Congress "supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of Resolution 688";
WHEREAS Congress in the Iraq Liberation Act (Public Law 105-338) has expressed its sense that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime;
WHEREAS the president has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States, as Congress recognized in the joint resolution on Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40); and
WHEREAS the president has authority under the Constitution to use force in order to defend the national security interests of the United States;
Now therefore, be it
RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This joint resolution may be cited as the "Further Resolution on Iraq."
SECTION 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
The president is authorized to use all means that he determines to be appropriate, including force, in order to enforce the United Nations Security Council Resolutions referenced above, defend the national security interests of the United States against the threat posed by Iraq, and restore international peace and security in the region.
Here's an interview with Congresswoman Barbara Lee from Monday morning that better explains the basis for her peaceful resolution that she has introduced as an alternative to Bush's resolution that calls for military action.
(I transcribed this myself off of my TIVO.)
We can not move forward to take pre-emptive military action against any regime... This doctrine of pre-emption is a very dangerous doctrine. We've supported and continue to support a doctrine of deterrence, disarmament and prevention.
Interview with Congresswoman Barbara Lee, 9/23/02 8:23 AM, KTVU Channel 2 San Francisco
Barbara Lee:
Let me just say one thing: Nuclear weapons are pointed in all directions. We must seek peaceful resolutions to conflicts in the world. I think we need to understand right now what is the purpose of this resolution and the United States' Administration's policy. Is it regime change or is it to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction?
Everyone agrees the world would be a safer place without Saddam Hussein. However, does that justify us going in and using this new doctrine of pre-emption to say it's OK for China?
Ross McGowan:
If the Administration came to you and said: "Congresswoman Lee, we have hard evidence, and we show it to you, classified hard evidence that Sadam Hussein has nuclear weapons or is very close to developing those weapons, could you vote for military action against Iraq in that case?
Barbara Lee:
Inspections have worked in the past. During the 90's when the inspection team was in Iraq, it not only was an inspection team, but it took on the mission of a Search and Destroy mission. That's why the inspection process is very important. We can not move forward to take pre-emptive military action against any regime.
As I mentioned earlier, China and Taiwan. If China believes Taiwan is an imminent threat, with whatever evidence. Is it okay for China to nuke Taiwan? We have India and Pakistan. This doctrine of pre-emption is a very dangerous doctrine. We've supported and continue to support a doctrine of deterrence, disarmament and prevention.
Ross McGowan:
So what you're saying is to go through the U.N., as the U.N. is talking about a resolution right now. Although, over the weekend, already, Saddam Hussein is messing around with the unconditional treatment of the inspectors...unfettered...
Barbara Lee:
We must move forward and insist that the inspection process move in...
Ross McGowan:
But how do you do that if they don't know that there's a consequence at the end?
Barbara Lee:
You do that through world pressure. Through working with our allies to insist on that. I think the President was right in going to the United Nations. The pressure is on Sadam Hussein to do that. I believe we cannot use this military option because, first of all, thousands of young men's and women's lives are at risk. Our own young men and women. Thousands of Iraqi civilians' lives are at risk. Look at the cost: 100 to 200 billion dollars. What's going to happen to education and social security, health care, housing.
Ross McGowan:
So we know. Then your vote is against the (Bush's) resolution?
Barbara Lee:
I'm voting against the resolution. But let me just say that I've put forth my own resolution that I believe sets forth a track and a position that is reasonable.
Ross McGowan:
And you put through your resolution going through the united nations and letting them develop the resolution to go in and let the powers of the countries of the world determine what happens here?
Barbara Lee:
And for inspections. And I am saying that we have 26 members of Congress on that resolution.
Ross McGowan:
I think that most of the American people agree with you. They believe that maybe we should go into Iraq, but that first we should go through the U.N. and develop a resolution that will say "one more messing around on the inspections and military force will be used."
Barbara Lee:
I think the American people are right and I think that we need to stop all of this military...madness at this point. It is provocative. Look at the peace and security issues in the Middle East and all over the world. What is going on in India and Pakistan and China and Taiwan now? What are they believing as being the next phase or the next wave of U.S. Foreign Policy? Are they getting ready also to mount these resolutions and positions to use force? We have to be concerned about that.
Ross McGowan:
Let's say that the security council comes up with one resolution -- that you allow inspectors, if there are any problems with that, military force will take place. In other words, the security council votes for this, it has the agreement of the nations of the United Nations...would then you support military action?
Barbara Lee:
What I'm saying is that I want to see what the United Nations comes up with.
Ross McGowan:
I'm saying if they did...
Barbara Lee:
That's very hypothetical, and I'm not even concerned about "what ifs" at this point because this is a very dangerous and volatile situation and I believe that all of our efforts should be put forth to look at creative diplomacy and peaceful means to resolve this crisis. The military option is always there, but we have to be concerned as peace loving people, as people who want to see security throughout the world. We've got to be concerned about our first step. And that is what my resolution does, and I believe you'll hear more democrats talking about this.
Ross McGowan:
When do you think this is going to be voted on in the U.S. Congress?
Barbara Lee:
Perhaps this week, perhaps next week. Of course, it's very interesting that the session was cancelled for today. A session begins tomorrow night and then our sessions will cancel again on Friday. We have many appropriation bills that we need to move forward. We've got many issues that lay forth the unfinished business of this congress and of the agenda for this year.
For the life of me, the Republican's are really developing a strategy to try to box the Congress in to begin to pass this resolution very quickly.
Ross McGowan:
Before the election...
Barbara Lee:
Yeah. And I don't think it's a partisan issue. It's got to be non-partisan. These are issues of war and peace, life and death.
Please check back this afternoon for a transcription of an interview with Barbara Lee and a letter you can fax and email to your representative.
Hey phone calls are great too!
Let's do this all at once -- Thursday and Friday - we need to really make ourselves heard.
More in a few hours....
Universal Music Faces Lawsuit Over PIN on Bon Jovi Album
By Lingling Wei for the Wall St. Journal
At issue is a promotional program, called "American XS," that was announced on Sept. 16 by Universal Music in connection with the Bounce release -- scheduled for Oct. 8 in the U.S. The plan is based around a unique PIN code, or serial number, that will come with every album shipped.The buyer of the CD can type in the number at the band's Web site (www.bonjovi.com). Then, after providing personal information including age, gender and location, the owner will be registered as a member who will be regularly notified by e-mail of "Bon Jovi exclusives," which may include the opportunity to chat with the band.
While Universal Music didn't mention DownloadCard in its announcement of the "American XS" plan, DownloadCard contends the plan is "precisely the program created by DownloadCard ... and offered to" Universal Music for the Bounce release. Universal Music, though, said in July it wouldn't use the technology for the album release, according to DownloadCard's court filing.
Here is the text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB1032999816716012593,00.html
Universal Music Faces Lawsuit
Over PIN on Bon Jovi Album
By LINGLING WEI
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
NEW YORK -- Vivendi Universal SA's Universal Music Group is being sued by a New York technology company for allegedly infringing upon its antipiracy technology, setting up a potential roadblock for the release of the new album "Bounce" by the band Bon Jovi.
DownloadCard Inc., a provider of antipiracy services, on Wednesday asked a federal court judge in New York to enjoin the world's largest music publisher from engaging in any promotion or marketing efforts that use what DownloadCard says is its proprietary technology.
At issue is a promotional program, called "American XS," that was announced on Sept. 16 by Universal Music in connection with the Bounce release -- scheduled for Oct. 8 in the U.S. The plan is based around a unique PIN code, or serial number, that will come with every album shipped.
The buyer of the CD can type in the number at the band's Web site (www.bonjovi.com). Then, after providing personal information including age, gender and location, the owner will be registered as a member who will be regularly notified by e-mail of "Bon Jovi exclusives," which may include the opportunity to chat with the band.
While Universal Music didn't mention DownloadCard in its announcement of the "American XS" plan, DownloadCard contends the plan is "precisely the program created by DownloadCard ... and offered to" Universal Music for the Bounce release. Universal Music, though, said in July it wouldn't use the technology for the album release, according to DownloadCard's court filing.
"The case is based on misappropriation of trade secret and theft of idea" said Stephen Kramarsky, an attorney at Dewey Pegno & Kramarsky LLP who represents DownloadCard. Mr. Kramarsky said the company has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in this anti-piracy technology.
The case will be heard next Thursday in front of Judge Charles Haight Jr. in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York.
"If he determines that the CD release uses the DownloadCard technology, which we think he will, he'll issue a preliminary injunction on the release," Mr. Kramarsky said.
A spokeswoman at Universal Music declined to comment.
In addition, DownloadCard is also seeking compensatory damages from Universal Music. The amount will be determined at trial and could be more than $750,000, according to the suit.
Write to Lingling Wei at lingling.wei@dowjones.com
Updated September 25, 2002 10:15 p.m. EDT
Universal Music Faces Lawsuit
Representative Barbara Lee has introduced a resolution for working with the U.N. to determine a peaceful solution to the situation in Iraq.
Here's the actual text of the resolution.
I'm creating a letter that I will be sending to my reps supporting this resolution that I will be posting soon and encouraging all of you to do the same.
Launching an unprovoked attack in the middle east is the kind of thing that could change life as we know it forever. There will be no turning back after this thing.
We will be effectively making ourselves the enemy of the world.
The time is now to speak up and be heard. Write your own letter or wait for mine (will post by tomorrow am latest!)
Whereas the true extent of Iraq's continued development of weapons of mass destruction and the threat posed by such development to the United States and allies in the region are unknown and cannot be known without inspections;Whereas the United Nations was established for the purpose of preventing war and resolving disputes between nations through peaceful means, including `by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional arrangements, or other peaceful means';
Whereas the United Nations remains seized of this matter;
Whereas the President has called upon the United Nations to take responsibility to assure that Iraq fulfills its obligations to the United Nations under existing United Nations Security Council resolutions;
Whereas war with Iraq would place the lives of tens of thousands of people at risk, including members of the United States armed forces, Iraqi civilian non-combatants, and civilian populations in neighboring countries;
Whereas unilateral United States military action against Iraq may undermine cooperative international efforts to reduce international terrorism and to bring to justice those responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001;
Whereas unilateral United States military action against Iraq may also undermine United States diplomatic relations with countries throughout the Arab and Muslim world and with many other allies;
Whereas a preemptive unilateral United States first strike could both set a dangerous international precedent and significantly weaken the United Nations as an institution; and
Whereas the short-term and long-term costs of unilateral United States military action against Iraq and subsequent occupation may be significant in terms of United States casualties, the cost to the United States treasury, and harm to United States diplomatic relations with other countries: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That the United States should work through the United Nations to seek to resolve the matter of ensuring that Iraq is not developing weapons of mass destruction, through mechanisms such as the resumption of weapons inspections, negotiation, enquiry, mediation, regional arrangements, and other peaceful means.
Here is the full text of the resolution in case the link goes bad:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:H.CON.RES.473:
GPO's PDF version of this bill References to this bill in the Congressional Record Link to the Bill Summary & Status file. Full Display - 5,967 bytes.[Help]
Expressing the sense of Congress with respect to the importance of the United States working through the United Nations to assure Iraq's compliance with United Nations Security Council... (Introduced in House)
HCON 473 IH
107th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. CON. RES. 473
Expressing the sense of Congress with respect to the importance of the United States working through the United Nations to assure Iraq's compliance with United Nations Security Council resolutions and advance peace and security in the Persian Gulf region.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
SEPTEMBER 19, 2002
Ms. LEE (for herself, Mrs. CLAYTON, Ms. RIVERS, Mr. HINCHEY, Mr. JACKSON of Illinois, Mr. MCDERMOTT, Mr. KUCINICH, Ms. MCKINNEY, Mr. OWENS, Ms. KILPATRICK, Ms. WATSON of California, Mr. RUSH, Mrs. CHRISTENSEN, Mr. HILLIARD, Mr. CLAY, Mr. STARK, Mr. FARR of California, Ms. KAPTUR, Ms. BALDWIN, Mr. FILNER, Ms. WOOLSEY, Mr. CLYBURN, Mr. DAVIS of Illinois, Ms. BROWN of Florida, Mr. SERRANO, Ms. SOLIS, and Mr. CONYERS) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on International Relations
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of Congress with respect to the importance of the United States working through the United Nations to assure Iraq's compliance with United Nations Security Council resolutions and advance peace and security in the Persian Gulf region.
Whereas on April 6, 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, Iraq accepted the provisions of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 (April 3, 1991) bringing a formal cease-fire into effect;
Whereas, in accordance with Security Council Resolution 687, Iraq unconditionally accepted the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless of `all chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents and all related subsystems and components and all research, development, support and manufacturing facilities related thereto', and `all ballistic missiles with a range greater than one hundred and fifty kilometers, and related major parts and repair and production facilities';
Whereas, in accordance with Security Council Resolution 687, Iraq unconditionally agreed not to acquire or develop any nuclear weapons, nuclear-weapons-usable material, nuclear-related subsystems or components, or nuclear-related research, development, support, or manufacturing facilities;
Whereas Security Council Resolution 687 calls for the creation of a United Nations special commission to `carry out immediate on-site inspection of Iraq's biological, chemical, and missile capabilities' and to assist and cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency in carrying out the `destruction, removal or rendering harmless' of all nuclear-related items and in developing a plan for the ongoing monitoring and verification of Iraq's compliance;
Whereas United Nations weapons inspectors (UNSCOM) between 1991 and 1998 successfully uncovered and destroyed large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and production facilities, nuclear weapons research and development facilities, and Scud missiles, despite the fact that the Government of Iraq sought to obstruct their work in numerous ways;
Whereas in 1998, UNSCOM weapons inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq and have not returned since;
Whereas Iraq is not in compliance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1154, and additional United Nations resolutions on inspections, and this noncompliance violates international law and Iraq's ceasefire obligations and potentially endangers United States and regional security interests;
Whereas the true extent of Iraq's continued development of weapons of mass destruction and the threat posed by such development to the United States and allies in the region are unknown and cannot be known without inspections;
Whereas the United Nations was established for the purpose of preventing war and resolving disputes between nations through peaceful means, including `by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional arrangements, or other peaceful means';
Whereas the United Nations remains seized of this matter;
Whereas the President has called upon the United Nations to take responsibility to assure that Iraq fulfills its obligations to the United Nations under existing United Nations Security Council resolutions;
Whereas war with Iraq would place the lives of tens of thousands of people at risk, including members of the United States armed forces, Iraqi civilian non-combatants, and civilian populations in neighboring countries;
Whereas unilateral United States military action against Iraq may undermine cooperative international efforts to reduce international terrorism and to bring to justice those responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001;
Whereas unilateral United States military action against Iraq may also undermine United States diplomatic relations with countries throughout the Arab and Muslim world and with many other allies;
Whereas a preemptive unilateral United States first strike could both set a dangerous international precedent and significantly weaken the United Nations as an institution; and
Whereas the short-term and long-term costs of unilateral United States military action against Iraq and subsequent occupation may be significant in terms of United States casualties, the cost to the United States treasury, and harm to United States diplomatic relations with other countries: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That the United States should work through the United Nations to seek to resolve the matter of ensuring that Iraq is not developing weapons of mass destruction, through mechanisms such as the resumption of weapons inspections, negotiation, enquiry, mediation, regional arrangements, and other peaceful means.
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Composer Mike Batt has agreed to pay a six figure amount to the John Gage trust for his derivative cover of Gage's "4 33" (for 4 minutes, 33 seconds) song of silence.
Composer pays for piece of silence
Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://europe.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/23/uk.silence/index.html
Composer pays for piece of silence
Monday, September 23, 2002 Posted: 1621 GMT
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LONDON, England -- A bizarre legal battle over a minute's silence in a recorded song has ended with a six-figure out-of-court settlement.
British composer Mike Batt found himself the subject of a plagiarism action for including the song, "A One Minute Silence," on an album for his classical rock band The Planets.
He was accused of copying it from a work by the late American composer John Cage, whose 1952 composition "4'33"" was totally silent.
On Monday, Batt settled the matter out of court by paying an undisclosed six-figure sum to the John Cage Trust.
Batt, who is best known in the UK for his links with the children's television characters The Wombles, told the Press Association: "This has been, albeit a gentlemanly dispute, a most serious matter and I am pleased that Cage's publishers have finally been persuaded that their case was, to say the least, optimistic.
"We are, however, making this gesture of a payment to the John Cage Trust in recognition of my own personal respect for John Cage and in recognition of his brave and sometimes outrageous approach to artistic experimentation in music."
Batt credited "A One Minute Silence" to "Batt/Cage."
Before the start of the court case, Batt had said: "Has the world gone mad? I'm prepared to do time rather than pay out. We are talking as much as £100,000 in copyright.
"Mine is a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds."
Batt gave a cheque to Nicholas Riddle, managing director of Cage's publishers Peters Edition, on the steps of the High Court, in London.
Riddle said: "We feel that honour has been settled.
"We had been prepared to make our point more strongly on behalf of Mr Cage's estate, because we do feel that the concept of a silent piece -- particularly as it was credited by Mr Batt as being co-written by "Cage" -- is a valuable artistic concept in which there is a copyright.
"We are nevertheless very pleased to have reached agreement with Mr Batt over this dispute, and we accept his donation in good spirit."
"A One Minute Silence" has now been released as part of a double A-side single.
Here's the skinny from my one of my favorite journalists, Kristen Philipkoski:
Stem Cells Key to Diabetes Cure.
Dr. Fred Levine, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of California at San Diego, is doing similar work."There's a lot of ambiguity about what constitutes a stem cell, and it's becoming less and less clear, rather than more, in this field," Levine said.
He and his colleagues have succeeded in forcing insulin-secreting beta cells to grow in culture, which causes them to revert to an earlier stage of development.
The problem is, cells like to do one of two things: revert to an earlier stage of development and replicate indefinitely, or differentiate into a specific type of cell.
Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,55239,00.html
Stem Cells Key to Diabetes Cure
By Kristen Philipkoski
Print this E-mail it
2:00 a.m. Sep. 20, 2002 PDT
Diabetes sufferer Bob Marks may never again have to stick himself with an insulin injection.
Marks is part of a lucky group of about 100 diabetes patients chosen for a University of Pennsylvania clinical trial of a new procedure called islet cell transplantation. Still, Marks waited a year before doctors called to tell him they'd found a matching donor who could give him islet cells -- the cells in the pancreas that secrete insulin.
See also:
Three Giant Steps for Stem Cells
Study: Humans Not Fit for Cloning
Liberal Anti-Cloners Up to Bat
Read more Technology news
But the 31-year-old attorney from Danville, Pennsylvania, says it was worth the wait. And even though he takes 18 pills a day to prevent the cells from being rejected, Marks has no regrets.
"Almost right away after the surgery I felt better than I have in years," he said. "I could concentrate better and my mind was clear because my sugars weren't going high, then super low."
Marks still has to inject three-quarters the amount of insulin he needed before the surgery, but the life change is extreme, he said.
The biggest plus: Since the cells were transplanted into his liver, his body now gives him warning signs when his blood sugar is low. Before, it could sneak up on him. He no longer fears blacking out while driving his 11-year-old son to school, or arguing a case in court.
Marks is waiting for a second donor, which could eliminate his need to inject insulin, as it has for many other clinical trial participants.
Unfortunately, there are not nearly enough donors to go around. Seven hundred thousand people in the United States have type 1 diabetes (islet cell transplantation can't treat most cases of type 2 diabetes).
Meanwhile, only 6,000 donor organs were available last year -- 2,500 of which were not viable for donation. Moreover, most patients need two transplantations to get off insulin injections.
"Islet cell transplantation is wildly successful in the sense that it's been done in living people who are off insulin and leading a normal life. But it can only help a few people as opposed to many," said Dr. Robert Goldstein, chief scientific officer of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
If the FDA approves islet cell transplantation, which could take three more years, doctors and hospital administrators will have to find a fair way to decide who will qualify for the procedure first.
"The bad news is that with this protocol, there are only enough donor pancreases in the country to meet the needs of 0.2 to 0.5 percent of those who need them. It's an ethical issue who gets them," said Dr. Joel Habener, director of the molecular endocrinology laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Habener has an answer. Unfortunately it's unattainable, at least for now.
"The solution is to make islets in the lab," he said.
1 of 2 Next >>
Stem Cells Key to Diabetes Cure
2:00 a.m. Sep. 20, 2002 PDT
(page 2)
No one has figured out how, but they've gotten closer using stem cells -- both the controversial embryonic stem cells, and the kind taken from adults.
The political and ethical debate surrounding stem cells has been widely reported. People who believe that life begins at conception oppose embryonic stem cell research because the cells are extracted from human embryos, which are destroyed in the process.
Embryonic stem cells have not yet "differentiated" into mature human cells, and they have the ability to become any of the 200,000 types of cells in the human body: hair, blood, skin, toenail and so on.
Embryonic stem cell opponents cite adult stem cells, taken from adult bone marrow, blood or brains, as an answer to the ethical conundrum. But a study published recently in Science by Stanford researchers raised serious questions about the viability of these cells as therapies.
In August 2000, President Bush limited federally funded stem cell research to cells that had already been taken from 64 embryos; that number was bumped up to 72 stem cell "lines" (called that because they can replicate indefinitely) a year later.
Amidst the political and ethical controversy, scientists like Habener continue the search for a diabetes cure.
In July, he and his colleagues reported a study in which an intestinal hormone caused stem cells taken from a pancreas to become the islet cells that secrete insulin, called beta cells, and to proliferate.
"We discovered a totally unexpected population of cells in islets and we can grow and keep them in culture for as long as we want to keep them," he said.
Not surprisingly, scientific controversy exists on top of the ethical one.
Since Habener's research has not yet been replicated, it's not certain that stem cells even exist in the pancreas, let alone whether they can really proliferate new insulin-producing cells.
Dr. Fred Levine, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of California at San Diego, is doing similar work.
"There's a lot of ambiguity about what constitutes a stem cell, and it's becoming less and less clear, rather than more, in this field," Levine said.
He and his colleagues have succeeded in forcing insulin-secreting beta cells to grow in culture, which causes them to revert to an earlier stage of development.
The problem is, cells like to do one of two things: revert to an earlier stage of development and replicate indefinitely, or differentiate into a specific type of cell.
"We force (beta cells) to grow, then we will try to do our best using various tricks of genetic modification to try to keep that growing cell in a state such that it remembers that it was a beta cell," Levine said.
In the meantime the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) -- which is free of President Bush's stem cell research restrictions because it raises money privately -- has funded several embryonic stem cell studies around the world.
The studies are in the early stages, but many scientists think they hold the most promise for success because they say embryonic stem cells are the most flexible kind.
"The field of (embryonic) stem cell research is clearly one of the most promising because it has such a wide impact. We're not just studying stem cells for one disease, it has broad implications for treating disease and understanding human development," said the JDRF's Goldstein.
And the success of islet cell transplantation only gives researchers another reason to hope for the same success with stem cell research.
"It gives us the clinical success story, it provides the basis for us wishing to do stem cell research," Goldstein said, "so we can get an unlimited supply (of islets), instead of a limited supply."
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David Streitfeld has written a great piece for the LA Times about Lawrence Lessig and the Eldred vs. Ashcroft case going up before the Supreme Court October 9th.
The Cultural Anarchist vs. the Hollywood Police State
By extending copyright protection for an additional 20 years, the Bono act essentially functions as a dam, preventing any work from entering the public domain until 2019--an estimated 400,000 books, movies and songs. A handful of classics will remain available, in print or on CDs or DVDs. Everything else will quietly crumble--literally, in the case of the negatives of many films. And for what? Eldred wondered. Just to keep up Disney profit margins and enrich the heirs of Gershwin and Hemingway?It was a blow against the Internet, too. A traditional library with physical books can stock and lend out whatever it wants, whether the volume is in copyright or not; an Internet library like Eldred's is restricted to material in the public domain. ''Companies don't want you to be able to get anything on the Internet for free,'' Eldred says. ''They just want to sell you their own versions on pay-per-view.''
Annoyed and depressed by the Bono act, he contemplated civil disobedience--publishing works from 1923 and '24 until he was arrested. He announced he was shutting down his site. He wrote letters. He fulminated. He became, in short, an activist, which is how Larry Lessig, then teaching at Harvard, heard about him, sought him out and filed a lawsuit on his behalf.
Here's the full text of the article unless the link goes bad:
http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la%2Dtm%2Dcopyright38sep22001450
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COVER STORY
The Cultural Anarchist vs. the Hollywood Police State
A Stanford Professor Is One Supreme Court Decision Away From Ending Copyrights on Thousands of Movies, Books and Songs. If He Wins, the Entertainment Industry Will Have to Find Other Ways to Make Mone
David Streitfeld is a Times staff writer based in the Bay Area.
September 22 2002
Larry Lessig is a 41-year-old Stanford University law professor who still looks like a graduate student, someone who has spent years in library stacks researching arcane subjects, miles from the real world. He's very pale and very quiet, as if he doesn't want to bother the fellow in the next cubicle. His hair sometimes sticks straight up, but he doesn't notice. Lessig has a student's idealism, too; he wants to change the way the world does business.
The entertainment industry, Lessig feels, is locking up old movies, books and songs that long ago should have transcended private ownership and become the property of the people, just as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the other framers of the Constitution intended. At stake, he says, is not only our common cultural heritage, but also the freedom that writers and musicians and filmmakers must have to interpret, reinterpret, adapt, borrow, sample, mock, imitate, parody, criticize--the very lifeblood of the creative process.
But Lessig doesn't merely want to free the past. He wants to free the future as well. That's something else that the entertainment companies want to lock up. The laws they are proposing and the technologies they are developing, he says, will make creativity on the Internet a wholly owned subsidiary of the Recording Industry Assn. of America and the Motion Picture Assn. of America.
His immediate target is a 1998 law that extended copyright protection an additional 20 years. It was a measure so obscure that the Senate passed it unanimously, with no debate and little public discussion. But it so outraged Lessig that he mounted what has become the first constitutional challenge of copyright limits to ever reach the Supreme Court. On Oct. 9, the former Supreme Court law clerk will try to persuade the justices to end private ownership of hundreds of thousands of artistic works, including some of America's most cherished. If he gets the court to agree, both the past and the future will change.
''The world won't end,'' he says. ''Hollywood will just have to find a different way to make money.''
During the past three years, as his copyright lawsuit has wended its way through the courts, Lessig has been talking it up in forums around the country and Europe. Walt Disney, he is always careful to say, is his hero.
Disney, one of the most popular artists of the 20th century, knew what a bountiful resource the past could be. He refashioned the Brothers Grimm's dark fairy tale "Snow White" into an upbeat charmer. He took Perrault's "Cinderella" and made it an enduring fable of pluckiness. "Alice in Wonderland," "The Jungle Book," "Pinocchio," "The Three Little Pigs," "Treasure Island" were all adapted from classics and became classics themselves.
What outrages Lessig is that Disney and other entertainment companies don't want this process repeated with their own works. They want very much to continue earning money by keeping their copyrights forever. Toward that end, Congress has extended copyright 11 times in the past 40 years, effectively locking away everything that Disney and every other entertainment company have ever produced.
If copyright laws lock up the past, they also are a very potent instrument for controlling the Internet. To a group of computer programmers in Monterey, Lessig recounts an anecdote about Sony's robot dog, Aibo. An Aibo fan wrote a software program to make the dog dance to jazz. When the fan posted the code on the Internet so that other Aibo enthusiasts could teach their own dogs to dance, Sony lawyers contacted him and told him he had violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Even though you've spent $1,500 for an Aibo, Sony still has control over how you play with it.
''Ours is less and less a free society,'' Lessig says. ''The law is trying to make creativity a regulated industry.''
Lessig was a professional singer as a child, which gives him a natural ease on stage. His audiences often applaud mightily. But no one writes to Congress protesting how copyright is being abused on the Net. No one holds demonstrations. ''We have this culture of passivity,'' he says. ''Most people like being spoon-fed culture. Look at the reaction to shutting Napster down. There was none. It's like we're the Soviet Union after communism. We've had 80 years of massive broadcast culture. It's the only way we know to experience the world.''
His lawsuit, officially titled Eldred v. Ashcroft, is a way of forcing the issue. It's a measure of the strength and importance of Lessig's case that he will be opposed in court by Theodore B. Olson, the U.S. Solicitor General himself, and not some government underling. Olson won all eight cases he argued before the Supreme Court last term.
The court will consider the passage in the Constitution that states ''to promote the progress of science and useful arts,'' Congress should grant copyright only for ''limited times.'' For Congress in 1790, the limit was 14 years, plus another 14 if the creator was still alive. By that standard, "Snow White," made in 1937, would have joined Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Mark Twain in the public domain in 1965. Instead, "Snow White" is now due to enter the public domain in 2032--unless, of course, copyright is extended again.
Lessig will argue that the extensions give the entertainment companies "a perpetual term on the installment plan.'' For the benefit of big campaign contributors, he contends, Congress is perverting what the framers intended. Olson will respond that since copyright is not literally perpetual, Congress' extensions are constitutional.
There's another wrinkle, one that speaks to Lessig's anger over the broadening of all forms of copyright. Congress, by giving an additional 20 years to copyright holders, is also abridging freedom of speech, he argues. If the justices buy that point, new legislation would have to take Lessig's case into account. It could act as a brake on the entertainment industry's constant search for new legal tactics to put the Internet in lockdown mode while it frisks everyone for unauthorized content.
''The Supreme Court isn't owned by Hollywood,'' Lessig says. ''I'm quite confident they'll see that a free culture is a free speech issue. The law will be struck down.''
It's already getting hard to remember what it was like before the internet brought a million different voices into your home. If you grew up in the 1970s and lived in a small town, the way Lessig did, culture and news were one-way streets. If you wanted to react to something, you could write a letter to the newspaper that they probably wouldn't print, or send a screed to a fanzine that no one except a few like-minded souls would see. The local department store sold a few books and some popular records, but anything the slightest bit out of the mainstream had to be special-ordered--if you even knew about it and if it even existed.
The Internet blew through all those barricades and limitations. In its mid-1990s heyday, the Net was all about experimentation and openness, a place where no one needed a printing press to publish an article or a record company to distribute music or Wall Street's approval to start a company, where the only constraint on innovation was the imagination.
But nothing ordained that it had to stay that way. Very quickly, in fact, various interests got busy lobbying for laws and developing technology that would turn the Net into a closed system. It will bring entertainment directly to your eyeballs and eardrums for a moment, for a price. ''Once you start down this road, there's only one logic, and that's the logic of total control,'' says Duke University law professor James Boyle. ''It's a world of pervasive monitoring, because the creator has to get his money at every stage.''
One reason there's been little uproar about this is that the entertainment industry is very good at seizing the high ground. It long ago took control of all the good words in this fight: Pirate. Thief. Hacker. Stealing. It racheted up the invective, too. An Assn. of American Publishers official last year called librarians who believed in free content--a central principle of libraries for a few centuries--''Ruby Ridge or Waco types.'' Jack Valenti, chief executive of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, calls the struggle against unauthorized copying a ''terrorist war.'' In a February op-ed piece in the Washington Post, he asserted that ''the movie industry is under siege from a small community of professors.''
An industry with about $70 billion in worldwide revenues being thwarted by a handful of scholars, none of whom could get within a mile of Morton's on Oscar night? ''When I read that,'' says Boyle, ''I had a Monty Pythonesque image of a siege of this massive castle by a tiny number of individuals armed only with insults. 'Now open your gates,' they were yelling, 'or we shall taunt you once again.' ''
Yet Valenti might be right when it comes to Lessig. ''He thinks we ought to rise up against Disney like the Serbians attacking Milosevic,'' says novelist and cyber-rights activist Bruce Sterling.
Lessig doesn't boycott mass culture. His wife, Bettina, volunteers that he's always eager to see the latest blockbuster--"Minority Report," "The Sum of All Fears." He just wants to get rid of the lawyers. Disney's most enduring creation, he points out in his lectures, was directly derived from another work: Mickey Mouse was a parody of Buster Keaton's "Steamboat Bill." Nowadays, doing a parody like Mickey on or off-line would be an open invitation to a lawsuit. That's what Alice Randall got when she tried last year to publish "The Wind Done Gone," a parody of "Gone With the Wind" done from the slaves' point of view. The heirs of Margaret Mitchell slapped Randall with a lawsuit, claiming she was infringing on the copyright of the 1936 original. Publication of the novel was held up until an appeals court said it could be released on free speech grounds.
When Mitchell wrote her novel, she expected it would enter the public domain in 1992. With the extensions, this key piece of American culture is off-limits until 2031. ''Creativity always builds off the past,'' Lessig says, ''and if you call that theft, you don't understand what creativity is.''
Valenti says that ''what Larry and some of his cohorts believe is in the digital world everything ought to be available to everyone. No constraints on the rights of creative property at all.''
While this isn't what Lessig thinks, the strange thing is that it's pretty close to what the framers of the Constitution believed. Indeed, what's odd about the current copyright fight is how much it's a contemporary remake of an issue that was discussed, litigated and decided during the 18th century.
Before 1710, the Stationers' Company, a guild of printers, controlled the publication and sale of all works in England, including those of authors who had been dead for thousands of years. The Stationers scoffed at the idea that their monopoly should be in any way limited. For one thing, they warned, if the system were dismantled it would ruin the economy. Equally important, they said, they had a moral right. No other property gets taken away after 10 or 20 years, they wrote in a broadside, so why should books? It's an argument that the music and movie industries are still making today.
Nevertheless, the Statute of Anne in 1710 established a limited copyright term of 14 years. The Stationers spent the next 60 years alternately ignoring and challenging the law as they tried to suppress the Scottish publishers, who followed their own rules and were thus the Internet pirates of the era. But in a landmark case in 1774, the Stationers' monopoly was finally broken and the past was freed.
When the U.S. Constitution was drawn up several years later, this history was still fresh. Jefferson wanted to put a ''restriction against monopolies'' in the Bill of Rights, right alongside trial by jury and freedom of the press. He, like the other framers, hated concentrating power in the hands of a few, and didn't like the idea of the past calling the shots on the future either. The earth belongs to the living, Jefferson wrote Madison on Sept. 6, 1789: ''The dead have neither powers nor rights over it.''
The Eldred case, which could do so much to affect the nature of copyrights, was sparked by a book that had been out of copyright for a century. Emma, Annie and Bonnie Eldred, teenage triplets in Derry, N.H., were assigned "The Scarlet Letter" in school. They didn't like it. Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic tale of sex, shame and redemption seemed fussy and obscure--a slog, in fact. The girls grumbled to their father, a civilian computer contractor for the Navy who was retired on disability and thus had lots of time to ponder the problem.
Eric Eldred wondered if the Internet could help, which wasn't as inevitable a thought in 1995 as it would be now. He found the entire text of the novel on the Net, but the typeface was so ugly and the typographical errors so plentiful it was a strain to read. So Eldred set about making his own online version. He scanned in the text, proofreading it and adding annotations and glossary definitions and features like an 1879 review of the novel by novelist Anthony Trollope. And since "The Scarlet Letter" is more easily understood in the context of Hawthorne's other works, Eldred scanned in "The House of the Seven Gables," "Twice Told Tales," "The Marble Faun," "A Wonder-Book" and just about everything else Hawthorne ever wrote, annotating them as well.
By the time he was done, his site was getting about 3,000 visits a day from students around the globe. It had been applauded by Hawthorne scholars and won a commendation from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Eldred had also seen Bonnie, Annie and Emma graduate from high school. Never enticed by literature, they all became dancers.
Their father, though, had found a calling. There's an old Ray Bradbury story about how, in a time of future suppression, literature remains alive by people essentially becoming the classic writers, literally embodying their work so it doesn't disappear. It was a tale Eldred took to heart. He was Hawthorne, preserving his words and presenting them to the future. He soon became Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ring Lardner, William Dean Howells, Louisa May Alcott, Henry James, as well as lesser-known late 19th and early 20th century masters, including John Boyle O'Reilly, author of the forgotten 1890 classic "Canoeing Sketches," and H.M. Tomlinson's definitive 1912 account of life on a tramp steamer, "The Sea and the Jungle." Since all this work was in the public domain, Eldred didn't have to track down the author or ask anyone's permission or pay any fees. He was one small part of a movement that was putting thousands of old books online, for free, for the betterment of all. The Web was becoming a library. No student would ever be confused by Hawthorne again.
Then the politicians got involved. On Oct. 7, 1998, Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, named after the late congressman and singer who believed, said his widow, Rep. Mary Bono, that ''copyright should be forever.''
Before the Bono act, copyright limits expired 75 years after publication, which means that Eldred was only a few months away from posting Hemingway's "Three Stories and 10 Poems," first published in 1923. The following years, the door would have slowly open on modern culture: "The Great Gatsby," "The Maltese Falcon," early works by Willa Cather and Wallace Stevens, "The Sun Also Rises," ''Winnie the Pooh,'' ''Rhapsody in Blue,'' ''Show Boat,'' the best of Irving Berlin, Ring Lardner and Virginia Woolf, the first talkies.
And Mickey Mouse. The law when it comes to a creation such as Mickey is complex because trademark enters the picture. Still, Mickey, who first gained fame in ''Steamboat Willie'' in 1928, was too lucrative a part of the Disney company, too tied up in its corporate image, to risk. Disney donated money to 18 of the 25 sponsors of the Bono act in the House and Senate, and lobbied heavily for its passage.
By extending copyright protection for an additional 20 years, the Bono act essentially functions as a dam, preventing any work from entering the public domain until 2019--an estimated 400,000 books, movies and songs. A handful of classics will remain available, in print or on CDs or DVDs. Everything else will quietly crumble--literally, in the case of the negatives of many films. And for what? Eldred wondered. Just to keep up Disney profit margins and enrich the heirs of Gershwin and Hemingway?
It was a blow against the Internet, too. A traditional library with physical books can stock and lend out whatever it wants, whether the volume is in copyright or not; an Internet library like Eldred's is restricted to material in the public domain. ''Companies don't want you to be able to get anything on the Internet for free,'' Eldred says. ''They just want to sell you their own versions on pay-per-view.''
Annoyed and depressed by the Bono act, he contemplated civil disobedience--publishing works from 1923 and '24 until he was arrested. He announced he was shutting down his site. He wrote letters. He fulminated. He became, in short, an activist, which is how Larry Lessig, then teaching at Harvard, heard about him, sought him out and filed a lawsuit on his behalf.
Patricia Lessig was pregnant with her third child in late 1960 when she went to see ''Village of the Damned,'' a horror flick about a rural town whose womenfolk are mysteriously impregnated by aliens. The women give birth to a race of superhumans capable of reading minds and imposing their will on others. Four decades later, when Patricia contemplates her super-achieving son, the movie offers the only reasonable explanation. ''I think he came from outer space.''
There is something unearthly about Lessig. He grew up in Williamsport, Pa., where his father, Jack, started a steel-fabricating business that ultimately employed about 150 people. Jack ticks off his son's most memorable qualities: Never indecisive, never seemed to fail in anything, and whatever he got into, whether it was starting a newspaper in the fourth grade or running a Jerry Lewis-style telethon, he became the leader. ''He was always about four or five steps ahead of everyone,'' says Jack.
Lessig wanted someday to be president, and made a good start. He was valedictorian of his high school class, president of the Pennsylvania Teenage Republicans and the youngest member of any delegation to the 1980 Republican convention. Lessig was a sophomore at Penn by then, running a state campaign for a man named Jim Ketcham. Despite Ronald Reagan's long coattails that year, Ketcham lost.
If the campaign cured him of the desire for a life in politics, graduate studies in philosophy at Trinity College at Cambridge University undercut his Republicanism. Studying under the long shadow of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the dark prince of Cambridge philosophers, Lessig learned that the way to influence a seemingly intractable debate was by reframing it, getting both sides to confront something they hadn't seen before. It's a technique that has served him well in the Eldred case.
While attending Yale Law School, Lessig did a summer internship at the highly regarded Chicago law firm of Miller Shakman & Hamilton. ''He was the best any of us had ever seen, and our collective experience stretched back decades,'' remembers Barry Miller, now an assistant U.S. attorney. That ecstatic recommendation helped get Lessig a clerkship with Richard Posner, probably the best-known and most influential appeals court judge in the country.
''He was rather like Ralph Nader, but brighter,'' says Posner. In addition to Lessig's intensity and moral zeal, Posner was struck by something else, something Nader doesn't exhibit: a restlessness. ''You know that novel by Somerset Maugham, 'The Razor's Edge'? The fellow in that book was someone who was searching for something meaningful, just like Larry. He ends up at a monastery in Nepal. He doesn't want to or can't lead a normal life.''
Lessig used his spare energy to travel, trying to see what other people were taking for granted. He hitchhiked through communist Eastern Europe, smuggled a mechanical heart valve for a Jewish dissident into the Soviet Union by hiding it in his pants, read 30 classic novels in 30 days during a trip to Costa Rica. In the house he and Bettina, a lawyer with Bay Area Legal Aid, bought and are remodeling in San Francisco, his passport lies open on a table, as if it might be needed any minute.
The final rung on his educational ladder was the ultimate for any law student: a Supreme Court clerkship, during the 1990-91 term. In his interview with Antonin Scalia, Lessig coolly critiqued the justice's recent rulings. Scalia, who likes to be challenged by his clerks, gave Lessig the job. That annoyed Scalia's other clerks, all of whom correctly suspected Lessig was not a judicial conservative. ''We weren't on speaking terms for much of the year,'' says one of them, Chris Landau.
Lessig first stepped onto the public stage in late 1997, when U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson appointed him a ''special master'' in the Microsoft case. His task would have been to conduct hearings and issue a recommendation to the court, which would have given him an enormously influential role in the most important antitrust case in a century. But Microsoft didn't want anyone to be a special master, and certainly not Lessig: The company claimed he was biased, and tried to prove it by digging up an old e-mail in which Lessig had teasingly equated installing a Microsoft product on his computer with selling his soul to the devil.
Ultimately, an appeals court ruled against the involvement of a special master. Lessig has forgiven Microsoft but not himself for blowing his big moment.
''There's a great song by Sarah McLachlan called 'Angel'--'You spend all your time waiting/ for that second chance/ for a break that would make it OK . . . ' There's a certain sense I'm always feeling that I'm making up for Microsoft. I just want the chance to do some work, some real work, which could do some good.''
After Clinton signed the Bono act, Lessig was in a hurry to challenge it. He thought the retroactive extension so obviously ridiculous, so clearly unconstitutional that he thought there would be dozens of suits. He wanted to be first. Eldred v. Reno, as it then was called, was filed Jan. 11, 1999, in U.S. District Court in Washington. Opposition by the Hollywood studios, the music companies and the book publishers was understandable. But even copyright lawyers fundamentally sympathetic to Lessig didn't think much of the case--which turned out to be the only challenge to the law.
Peter Jaszi, an influential copyright scholar at American University, was one of the early skeptics. ''It's not so much that we thought it was a terrible idea but that it was just unprecedented,'' he says. ''Congress has been extending copyright for 180 years, and this is the first time someone said it violated the Constitution.''
U.S. District Judge June Green confirmed the skeptics' fears. Without letting the matter go to trial, she ruled in favor of the U.S. government on Oct. 28, 1999. The appeals court split its Feb. 16, 2001, decision, ruling 2-1 that Congress had not overstepped its bounds. Lessig appealed to the Supreme Court, but there seemed little reason for hope.
The high court postponed a decision on taking the Eldred case three times last January. Lessig plunged into despair. He thought the court would decline but needed to give one justice time to write an opinion disagreeing with the decision. The likely candidate was Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who had written a Harvard Law Review article in 1970 suggesting ''we should . . . hesitate to extend or strengthen'' copyright.
Larry and Bettina were in Hawaii. He slept a lot, stared into space. ''He's a perfectionist. At everything,'' says Bettina. ''He turned into an abyss of inconsolableness.''
On Feb. 19, the court decided to take the case, which meant at least four justices decided it was worth hearing. The legal community was surprised. Most major shifts by the Supreme Court are widely anticipated, arriving in the wake of broad-based social movements and multiple lawsuits spanning several years, says University of Chicago legal historian Dennis Hutchinson. ''Solitary crusading individuals are very unusual, and law professors acting on their own don't fare very well either,'' he says. Hutchinson could recall only one case involving law professors: Tileson v. Ullman, from 1943, an effort by Yale law professors to make it legal for doctors to prescribe contraceptives if a woman's health was in danger. The case was dismissed on procedural grounds.
The entertainment industry can only hope for a similar escape. The Supreme Court, Jack Valenti says hopefully, is merely having some "legal fun."
The mere fact that the court took the case has affected the entertainment business. Peermusic, a major independent music publisher based in the Bay Area, has been putting a clause in catalog acquisition contracts saying that the value will be cut if Bono is struck down. But what's more problematic is a deal that was done before the court took Eldred.
Peermusic had acquired the catalog of Hoagy Carmichael and was working to ''rejuvenate it,'' as they say in the business. The studios were reacquainted with songs such as ''Stardust'' and ''Georgia on My Mind''; negotiations were underway with a store chain to sell a line of products based on Carmichael's romantic allure; a musical is in the works.
But if Bono falls, ''Stardust'' goes in the public domain immediately, and ''Georgia" follows in three years. ''There's no incentive for us to do what we're doing if we don't have an opportunity to earn renumeration,'' says chief executive Ralph Peer II. ''I would predict interest in the Carmichael repertoire would take a nose-dive.''
Unless, of course, it increases as studios use work that they earlier would have had to pay for and singers record tunes that are suddenly freely available. Those who favor expirations for copyright point to what happened with Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Secret Garden," the ageless tale of a boy and girl spiritually renewed after discovering a hidden garden on a Yorkshire estate. First published in 1911, the work entered the public domain in 1986. There are now at least 12 print versions of the book as well as two online versions. There has been a TV adaptation, a musical, a big-budget Warner Bros. movie, a cookbook and, undoubtedly, numerous student reworkings.
No one owns "The Secret Garden" anymore, and consequently everyone owns it. Probably the same would happen to Winnie the Pooh and Mickey, but Disney would not give them up without a fight. "Winnie the Pooh" was published in 1926, which means if the law is overturned, it immediately comes out of copyright. This would shave millions off the bottom line of its publisher, Dutton, a division of the British conglomerate Pearson. What's less clear is how such a decision would affect Disney, which controls the merchandising rights and makes a billion dollars a year from Pooh fruit juice and other items.
Could someone start selling their own Pooh fruit juice? Disney would say no, because it has a trademark on the Pooh characters, and trademarks, unlike copyrights, never expire. But at least one appeals court ruling, issued in Missouri in 1890, gives scant comfort to Disney.
In that case, a publisher had reissued a Webster's Dictionary from 1847 that had gone out of copyright. They were sued by the G. & C. Merriam Co., the original publishers of both that dictionary as well as several subsequent Webster's. Merriam argued that their trademark on the Webster's brand was being infringed by an upstart. Samuel Miller, a Supreme Court justice who was sitting in on a circuit court, slapped them down, writing that he didn't believe that ''a party who has had the copyright of a book until it has expired may continue that monopoly indefinitely, under the pretense that it is protected by a trademark or something of that sort."
At the end of August, Lessig was speaking before what he swore would be his last audience, a gathering of the Free Software Foundation in San Francisco. He had the Eldred case to attend to; he was going to Japan for the fall semester; he was finally running out of energy. But he agreed to be a guest at a dinner for big donors to the foundation, and he spoke in a rented club for those who only had $10 to contribute.
Introducing Lessig, software activist Henri Poole says he isn't even going to try to get people at the club to stop playing pinball for the next half-hour because he knows that's impossible. Lessig gamely begins anyway--warning, cajoling, trying to inspire. ''Everything that Washington proposes gets worse than the thing they did before,'' he says.
In March, Democratic Sen. Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina introduced legislation that would require CD players, televisions and computers to block unauthorized copyright material. Opponents dubbed it the ''police state in a computer.''
On July 25, Howard L. Berman, the Democratic representative whose district includes North Hollywood and part of the San Fernando Valley, co-sponsored the Peer-to-Peer Piracy Prevention Act. It would allow anti-copyright vigilantism, giving Hollywood immunity for ''disabling, interfering with, blocking, diverting, or otherwise impairing'' home computers that might hold illegal copyrighted material.
Not since the Licensing Act of 1662 reaffirmed the power of the Stationers' Company to conduct searches and seizures of illegal books and presses has the state given such authority to a private entity. ''Hollywood is terrified'' by the Eldred case, Lessig tells the programmers, ''but whatever victory we can win in the courthouse they can take away with new legislation.''
He says he's pleading with them. ''This war is being waged whether you participate or not. It will be won whether you're on the field or not. The question is by whom.''
After he is finished, a college student comes up and starts talking in a sort of animated fury. This fellow lives in Berman's district. What would be better, he wants to know: to talk sense into Berman or go work for his opponent? ''What do we do?'' he says. ''When do we start?''
A soldier has been enlisted for the battle. It's just one guy, and who knows if he'll even follow through. But Lessig considers it a successful evening.
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David Streitfeld is a Times staff writer based in the Bay Area.
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Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times
Annalee Newitz has mentioned the Internet Archive Bookmobile project in a column about the Public Domain:
techsploitation - the public domain
The Internet Archive volunteers have put about 9,000 public domain books on its site, and now they're driving around the United States in a high-tech bookmobile where people can link to the archive via satellite, download the book of their choice, print it out, and take it home to read. And yes, it's all free. The Internet Archive bookmobile will make its first visit to an East Palo Alto school Sept. 30 and will stop at numerous other schools, libraries, and nursing homes during its cross-country trek...
Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.sfbg.com/36/51/x_techsploitation.html
techsploitation
by annalee newitz
Public domain
THERE WAS SOMETHING so relentlessly cartoony about the television coverage this Sept. 11. Each cable channel put its own targeted spin on the thing, with satirical terrorist specials on Comedy Central and patriotic collectibles being hawked on QVC and various crappy insta-documentaries on the History Channel and A&E. I couldn't tell if Sept. 11 was being treated as some kind of demented celebration or maybe a collective historical reenactment like one of those fake Civil War battles they do every year in Virginia. I flipped on CNN only to see a legend at the side of the screen that read, "Terror alert: high." Some hack in the graphics department had tweaked the weather alert icon to reflect Our National Day of Terrorist Consciousness.
So, in a symbolic act possibly as useless and doomed as the symbolic acts it was intended to critique, I turned off my TV and celebrated freedom.
I began by talking with Lauren Gelman about a new project she's working on with the Internet Archive (www.archive.org). The Internet Archive volunteers have put about 9,000 public domain books on its site, and now they're driving around the United States in a high-tech bookmobile where people can link to the archive via satellite, download the book of their choice, print it out, and take it home to read. And yes, it's all free. The Internet Archive bookmobile will make its first visit to an East Palo Alto school Sept. 30 and will stop at numerous other schools, libraries, and nursing homes during its cross-country trek. "We want to remind people that when things like books enter the public domain, they become a major public good and a public utility," Gelman says.
More to the point, the bookmobile plans to motor into Washington, D.C., Oct. 8, the day before the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Eldred v. Ashcroft, a crucial copyright case that Gelman says will decide how many books are part of the bookmobile's digital library. Gelman explains that although the founders of the United States originally mandated that copyright protection should last only 15 years, with a possible renewal for an additional 15, copyright today is for the author's entire life plus 70 years. Eldred v. Ashcroft is "a challenge to a law that extended copyright by another 20 years [to 70 from 50]," she says.
The fate of the bookmobile's collection reminds us that people in the United States still need to fight to preserve the public domain, where anyone can access ideas for free. "Copyright should last long enough that authors are compensated and people's creativity is encouraged," Gelman says. "But with current copyright laws, ideas are too easily locked down." The public domain is a place for artists, writers, and other copyright holders to give back to the public after the public has compensated them for their work. If you don't catch the bookmobile, you can download the books from the Internet Archive or from other public domain book sites such as Project Gutenberg (www.promo.net/pg) or the English Server (www.eserver.org).
If you want to contribute to the domain of public knowledge and can't wait another minute, you can spend hours, weeks, or years participating in the fast-growing Wikipedia community (www.wikipedia.com). Wikipedia is a group of thousands of people who use WikiWiki, software that allows visitors at a Web site to update it dynamically to build and edit a giant online encyclopedia. The Wikipedia site contains information on everything from algebra to the history of homosexuality, and anyone can add to or revise entries to make it better. Amazingly, this has resulted in one of the most brain-enriching documents I've ever used on the Web. The contributors have worked to maintain a genuinely high standard of accurate information, although there are occasional jokes or bits of absurdity.
And if you want a taste of what the public sphere in the United States could become if we let corporations limit our access to knowledge in the name of profit, check out an interesting site prepared by Ben Edelman, who works at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.
He's been following up on reports that when Chinese citizens type "google" into their browsers, the Great Firewall of China redirects them to a different site whose search results are deemed appropriate. He's detailed how this works, including some weird screenshots at cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/google-replacements. Many U.S. citizens think that this kind of censorship-via-redirection only happens in strongly state-controlled countries like China. But it's likely that the corporate ownership of broadband in the United States will result in a similar situation. AT&T might make a deal with Bob's Search Engine in which anyone typing "google" into their browser would be redirected to Bob's. Or someone looking for Powell's Books might get redirected to Barnes and Noble. Ah, the joys of unchecked capitalism. Almost as good as unchecked state power.
Annalee Newitz (punting@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd who needs to see more explosions. Her column also appears in Metro, Silicon Valley's weekly newspaper.
Patently problematic -- An important new study shows the promise, and pitfalls, of intellectual-property rights for the poor
Today, IPR law is the focus of intense interest, and it is not just lawyers who are paying attention. The original purpose of patents was to encourage innovation, and thus growth, by creating an incentive for inventors to disclose the details of their inventions in exchange for a limited monopoly on exploitation. Some argue that the modern system of IPR law is having the opposite effectdelaying the diffusion of new technology.John Barton, a law professor at Stanford University, wants to see both rich and poor countries start thinking of IPR more as a development tool, and for them to reconsider the notion that strongly protecting the rights of inventors is automatically good for all. For the past year, Dr Barton has chaired the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, a body of lawyers, academics, a bio-ethicist and an industry executive convened by Britain's Department for International Development to look at how IPR can work to the benefit of the world's poor countries.
Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1325219
Patently problematic
Sep 12th 2002
From The Economist print edition
An important new study shows the promise, and pitfalls, of intellectual-property rights for the poor
INTELLECTUAL-PROPERTY rights (IPR), which embrace patents, copyright, trademarks and trade secrets, were once considered an esoteric, and slightly dull, bit of commercial law.
No longer. Today, IPR law is the focus of intense interest, and it is not just lawyers who are paying attention. The original purpose of patents was to encourage innovation, and thus growth, by creating an incentive for inventors to disclose the details of their inventions in exchange for a limited monopoly on exploitation. Some argue that the modern system of IPR law is having the opposite effectdelaying the diffusion of new technology.
John Barton, a law professor at Stanford University, wants to see both rich and poor countries start thinking of IPR more as a development tool, and for them to reconsider the notion that strongly protecting the rights of inventors is automatically good for all. For the past year, Dr Barton has chaired the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, a body of lawyers, academics, a bio-ethicist and an industry executive convened by Britain's Department for International Development to look at how IPR can work to the benefit of the world's poor countries.
The commission's report, published on September 12th, sets out detailed recommendations for how developing countries should craft IPR to suit their conditions. Its central message is both clear and controversial: poor places should avoid committing themselves to rich-world systems of IPR protection unless such systems are beneficial to their needs. Nor should rich countries, which professed so much interest in sustainable development at the recent summit in Johannesburg, push for anything stronger.
All together now
There was a time when countries could go their own way on intellectual-property rights, and introduce legal protection for creators whenever they thought it appropriate. For most of the 19th century, America provided no copyright protection for foreign authors, arguing that it needed the freedom to copy in order to educate the new nation. Similarly, parts of Europe built their industrial bases by copying the inventions of others, a model which was also followed after the second world war by both South Korea and Taiwan.
Today, however, developing countries do not have the luxury to take their time over IPR. As part of a trade deal hammered out eight years ago, countries joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO) also sign up to TRIPS (trade-related aspects of intellectual-property rights), an international agreement that sets out minimum standards for the legal protection of intellectual property. The world's poorest countries were given until 2006 to comply in full with the requirements of the treaty.
Contrary to popular perception, TRIPS does not create a universal patent system. Rather, it lays down a list of ground rules describing the protection that a country's system must provide. These extend IPR to include computer programs, integrated circuits, plant varieties and pharmaceuticals, all of which were unprotected in most developing countries until the agreement. Patent rights are valid no matter whether the products are imported or locally produced, and protection and enforcement must be extended equally to all patent holders, foreign and domestic.
Although many poor countries feel that TRIPS gives them a raw dealall cost and scant benefitsfew want to see the agreement dismembered or removed from the WTO, according to Rashid Kaukab, at the South Centre, a think-tank based in Geneva. That is largely for fear of what might take its place. Instead, a few developing countries, such as India and Brazil, are starting to flex their muscles when it comes to the battle between western standards of IPR protection and matters of public interest, such as health and farming. As the commission points out, the wording of TRIPS gives poor countries considerable latitude to look out for themselves when introducing new systems of IPR protection. It also suggests a few ways that they can make the most of this flexibility in a number of important areas:
Drugs Much of the recent debate over the impact of IPR on the poor has centred on the issue of access to expensive medicines. On paper, many of the world's least-developed countries have laws which provide patent protection for pharmaceuticals. In practice, few enforce them. Spurred on by a victory in April 2001 against drug companies fighting patent reform in South Africa, developing countries issued a declaration at the WTO meeting in Doha last year. This asserted the primacy of public health over IPR. They resolved that the world's least-developed countries should be given at least until 2016 to introduce patent protection for pharmaceuticals.
On September 17th, the WTO council responsible for TRIPS will consider a far trickier proposition in the declaration: how to make compulsory licensing (the manufacture and marketing of a patented drug without the patent-holder's consent) work for the poorest. TRIPS already permits compulsory licensing under certain conditions, including national emergencies. This is fine for countries such as Brazil, which have domestic drug industries to copy the medicines. Brazil has, indeed, used the threat of compulsory licensing to wring price discounts out of drug companies, a ploy which the commission, somewhat controversially, supports.
The problem is what to do with countries which have no drug makers. For the moment, they can import generic copies from the likes of India, but come 2006, when those exporters are supposed to have fallen in with the TRIPS line, who will supply the drugs?
Education and research Alan Story, a specialist in IPR at the University of Kent, in Britain, reckons that copyright, particularly as it pertains to education and research, will be the next big battleground. Those countries that have signed up to TRIPS have also accepted international copyright rules. Although these allow some unauthorised copying for fair use or personal consumption for education or research, the commission worries that these exceptions are too limited, and that copyright may hamper access to textbooks, journals and other educational material in poor countries, by requiring the consent of, and likely payment to, the publisher prior to copying.
The commission is even more worried about the Internet, which has great potential for broadening access to education in poor countries, but in which encryption technologies can override the principle of fair use. Some publications, such as the British Medical Journal, allow free online access for people in poor countries. The commission would like to see more of this. In the meantime, it recommends that developing countries allow users to sneak round technical barriers such as encryption, to gain access for fair use. Not surprisingly, software makers are unenthusiastic.
Traditional knowledge The most glaring conflict between rich and poor over intellectual property comes from the misappropriation of traditional knowledgesuch as ancient herbal remedies that find their way into high-priced western pharmaceuticals without the consent of, or compensation to, the people who have used them for generations. Often, patent examiners are simply unaware that the plant variety which an enterprising businessman is trying to patent has been used for centuries by a tribal community half a world away. The commission recommends that countries create databases to catalogue such traditional knowledge (India is already doing so), and urges that consulting such databases should be made a mandatory part of patent examinations the world over.
More than this, however, Kamal Puri, a lawyer at the University of Queensland, Australia, argues that new systems of IPR protection are needed for traditional knowledge. That is because its communal ownership, uncertain date of creation and unwritten form does not fit the requirements of western systems of IPR. On September 17th, a model law, drafted by Dr Puri and co-sponsored by UNESCO, will be unveiled at a meeting of Pacific island states in New Caledonia. The law gives traditional users jurisdiction over native knowledge, and requires that those who wish to commercialise it must seek the users' consent. All transactions must be registered with a tribal authority, which will deal with subsequent disputes.
Even when armed with these weapons, poor countries will have a hard time deploying them. Drafting IPR legislation and setting up a patent office that has modern information-technology systems and trained examiners does not come cheap or easy. Neither does establishing judicial, customs and competition authorities, and police services to enforce IPR rules. The World Bank reckons that it costs at least $1.5m to create a working system, plus recurrent costs.
Moreover, inventors in poor countries find it tough to use patent systems in the rich world. Merely securing a patent from America's patent office costs at least $4,000. Defending it in court can cost millions. The commission identifies several ways in which rich countries could open their domestic IPR systems, including discounted fees and subsidised technical assistance. It also suggests they should help poor countries to set up their own systems without saddling them with rich-world standards until they are ready to benefit from them. Inventing a way to do that might be worth a patent in its own right. Those who heed the commission's report, however, might well resist the claim.
Stephen Levy has written an article on Lawrence Lessig for Wired that has a lot of backround about him I hadn't heard before...
Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.10/lessig.html
Lawrence Lessig's Supreme Showdown
The Great Liberator Lawrence Lessig helped mount the case against Microsoft. He wrote the book on creative rights in the digital age. Now the cyberlaw star is about to tell the Supreme Court to smash apart the copyright machine.
By Steven Levy
What's left of a dream is stored at the Stanford Law School library in 12 fat green loose-leaf binders and several legal boxes of supporting documents and briefs. They chronicle the 54 days that Lawrence Lessig, the Elvis of cyberlaw, helped Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson with the mother of all tech litigation: Department of Justice v. Microsoft. It was to be Lessig's greatest moment.
Once a "right-wing lunatic," he's become a fire-breathing defender of Net values.
In late 1997, after reading a profile of the super-brainy professor in the Harvard Law Bulletin, Judge Jackson had tapped Lessig to sort out the technical aspects of the case. "He was as knowledgeable as they come," says Jackson, who sits on the US District Court in DC. For the next two months, Lessig and his overqualified clerk, fellow Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain, worked almost nonstop to produce a report. Lessig's time logs, which document the 278 hours he spent on the case (billed at $250 per hour, a bargain rate for someone with his credentials), reveal only one day off: Christmas.
Some days he clocked 11 hours.
What the logs don't show is the quiet transformation Lessig had been undergoing, from a respected constitutional theorist into a fire-breathing defender of Net values. With the Microsoft case, he would be able to make his mark.
On February 3, 1998, Lessig called Microsoft and the government to a public hearing that was to be held in Boston in a few weeks, and flagged the courthouse administrator to prepare for what undoubtedly would be a huge media event. Lessig would use the forum to cut through the self-interested portrayals of the facts on both sides and draw a road map for resolving the thorny questions in cyberspace's grand shootout.
All the while, though, Microsoft had been maneuvering to get Lessig off the case. And that same day, the Federal Court of Appeals had the last word: Lessig was out.
His friends and admirers now view the episode as one that accelerated, by dint of publicity, the most brilliant career in Internet law. Lessig has since published two successful and influential books: The first, Code, is a groundbreaking deconstruction of the digital age. The second, The Future of Ideas, is quickly becoming the bible of intellectual property monkey-wrenchers. Lessig also founded a clinical law center at Stanford Law School, where he now teaches, and has launched Creative Commons, an ambitious project through which he hopes to establish a giant repository of works unfettered by restrictive copyright laws. In the realm of Internet politics and law, no one even approaches Lessig's stature. He is the chief theorist, the most respected mind, the most passionate speechifier. He is cyberlaw.
More than four years after his removal from the Microsoft case, the defeat, if you can call it that, still nags at Lessig. It is the opportunity missed. "Getting the appointment was a charmed thing," he says. "But I missed the chance to write the report. What I really wanted to do was get the right answer."
He had professorship, tenure, prestige. Then he discovered cyberspace.
On October 9, Larry Lessig will again claim a national spotlight.
In Eldred v. Ashcroft, his first argument before the Supreme Court and only his second appearance before any court, in any venue Lessig will attempt to convince the justices to overturn the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. To Lessig it is both an opportunity to make up for losing the prize that was snatched from him some four years ago, and a giant step in his crusade to stop a trend he fears may be inevitable: big-media dinosaurs controlling the Internet.
That's why the law professor has declared war on Mickey Mouse.
It is the third of July in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in a few minutes Larry Lessig is going to tell us how bad things are. Outside it is sweltering, but in Langdell Hall, where the Berkman Center of the Harvard Law School is holding a weeklong seminar, it is comfortably air-conditioned. Sitting in the corner of the lecture amphitheater each seat wired with power plugs and Ethernet ports he feverishly pecks on his iBook. He's wearing a checked Gap shirt and his trademark black jeans. Lessig looks like an intellectual. At 41, his face has the soft pallor of a life spent out of the sun. His features gather toward the center of his face, a configuration accentuated by tiny, Rumpole of the Bailey wire-rim glasses that barely cover his eye sockets. But Lessig's most distinctive feature is a startlingly high forehead; it's almost as if, in an attempt to accommodate his brain, the top of his head was pulled up a couple of inches, like an image stretched by Kai's Power Tools.
Normally, Lessig is a private, even shy, person. His students once asked him to tell them something about himself. He responded with one word: No. Before an audience, however, Lessig becomes electric.
"I was blown away," says Harvard Law's Charlie Nesson of the first time he saw Lessig teach. "He had the ethos, the spirit, the logic, and a Zen quality that goes right to the button." At times, Lessig seems more poet than lawyer. He isolates key phrases, repeating them, stretching them out, and luxuriating in their sound. Punctuating his themes are his distinctively styled PowerPoint slides that he creates using an obscure typewriter font downloaded free from a company called P22.
Today, Lessig is talking about the regulation of speech. He considers naive those who believe that the very existence of the Internet ensures free speech. That may have been part of the original Net code, he argues, but regulation may well disable that code. The freedom of the Internet didn't do much for Napster, did it? We may snicker that Congress is clueless, and chortle over the follies of record labels trying to catch up to the digital world. However, their laws and lawsuits have the potential to ruin the most idealistic aspects of the Net. Lessig believes it's already happening.
He is famously pessimistic about this trend. He has even referred to such pessimism as "my brand," joking that his agent has congratulated him for enhancing his brand identity with a perpetually bleak outlook. He calls it as he sees it, and when it comes to the Internet, his vision has proved sharper than anyone's.
It's not just a vision he's promoting it's a cause. His speech and his slides tell his Harvard audience the story of a valued commons of ideas threatened by big powers. The vast majority of intellectual property used to be in the public domain; now most is available only by permission. He takes particular delight in singling out the Walt Disney Company as the symbol of how the past is using its power to kill the future. The company was a major lobbying force behind the Sonny Bono Act, the law that Lessig is urging the Supreme Court to overturn. The measure was only the latest extension of copyright which the Constitution explicitly dictates should be "limited" from an original 14 years to an automatic 70 past the death of the creator. Most notably, the law protects Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, from slipping into the public domain. (Lessig shows a clip of it in his PowerPoint presentation fair use, one assumes.) The big problem, as Lessig sees it, is that continual extensions of copyright prevent anything new from entering the public domain. This is most ironic, notes Lessig, since Disney dredged the public domain for its most lucrative properties. A PowerPoint slide lists the examples, from Snow White to The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Because of the Bono Act, Lessig asserts, "no one can do to Disney as Disney did to the Brothers Grimm."
The Berkman crowd is predictably appreciative, but being lawyers, they don't get as rowdy as, say, the Usenet conference Lessig spoke to a couple of weeks before. "That was the first standing ovation I ever had," marvels the professor. And it wouldn't be the last. As the Eldred case approaches, Lessig has embarked on a sort of barnstorming tour of conferences and seminars around the world, inveighing about Hollywood's "insane rules," upbraiding like-minded geeks for not taking action, and advocating a "million-bit march" on Washington to urge politicians to understand and embrace intellectual property rights. As he neared the end of his tour, Lessig was frustrated. They stand and applaud, he told himself, but why don't they fight?
A couple of weeks earlier, I'd asked Lessig a slightly different question: Why do you fight? The very question propelled Lessig who seems to casual observers so able and confident that he can resolve even the knottiest dilemma with a built-in Occam's razor into a surprising bout of self-examination. But for a chronically straight arrow, Larry Lessig has always had a flair for surprise.
Lessig was born in 1961 in South Dakota. His father, Jack, was an engineer, and helped build silos for Minuteman missiles. Within a few years, the family moved to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where Jack bought a steel-fabricating company. Larry remembers Williamsport as "a tiny town not tiny in population, but in its understanding of the world." Jack Lessig was doggedly traditional, and moral in a way that would have won Ayn Rand's approval: Once, when he underbid a job, he refused to change the assessment and performed the work at a loss. The family was churchgoing, law-abiding, and above all, faithful to the Grand Old Party. "I grew up a right-wing lunatic Republican," says Lessig.
As early as anyone can remember, Larry Lessig astonished people with his intellect. His sister Leslie (he also has two half-siblings from his mother's first marriage) recalls him as a second grader, running through the list of American presidents backward and forward. Though he engaged in the usual smart-kid stuff stamp collecting, chemistry sets, a thing for Thomas Edison his passion was politics. Specifically, the right-wing lunatic brand of his father. In high school, Lessig was an avid member of the National Teen Age Republicans, and he served as the governor of Pennsylvania in the mock government formed by this cadre of future country clubbers. Everybody around him thought young Larry would one day be president. (That was when a correlation existed between the White House and intelligence.) After high school, he planted his foot in the political ring by running the campaign of a would-be state senator. It was the summer of 1980, and Lessig was the youngest member of Pennsylvania's delegation at the Republican Convention that nominated Ronald Reagan. His state senate candidate got creamed. "It was lucky," says Lessig. "If he'd won, I would now be a political hack."
Disillusioned, Lessig entered the University of Pennsylvania, where his father and grandfather had graduated. Thinking he would follow his father into business, he studied economics and management, earning degrees in both. Once he graduated from Penn, his intellectual path was forever altered. He went to Trinity College in Cambridge, England, for what he thought would be an extra year of coursework. He wound up spending three years there studying philosophy. "I just fell in love with the place," he says. "For the first time, I really felt like I was ... serious."
He also latched onto a different sort of politics. It was the height of the Thatcher Revolution, and Lessig found himself siding with the workers. "I remember going to Cambridge as a very strong libertarian theist," he says. "By the time I left I was not a libertarian in that sense, and no longer much of a theist." He was, however, passionate about freedom, and in particular excited about the prospect of liberty emerging in the former Soviet sphere. "I was obsessed with Eastern Europe and Russia," says Lessig, who hitchhiked through the area (and eventually became involved in its intrigues). Certainly, the Larry Lessig who returned from Cambridge was a shock to his family. "He came back a different person," says his sister Leslie. "His views of politics, religion, and his career had totally flipped."
After earning his master's in philosophy, Lessig decided to shift to something more, well, real. Years earlier, another relative of Lessig's, an uncle named Richard Cates, had given him a lecture on the law. Cates had worked as counsel for the House Impeachment Committee, and in the midst of the Watergate furor visited the Lessig household. "Of course, in our house you couldn't talk about impeachment," says Lessig. "But I remember he and I went for a walk and wound up sitting on this cliff, and he told me about what the law was." This is the only place where reason controls power, Cates instructed his nephew. The moment stayed with Lessig, and in 1986 he entered the University of Chicago Law School.
Lessig spent only one year in Chicago, though. His girlfriend at the time got a fellowship at Yale, and so he transferred there, something that was possible only because he'd wowed his profs in first-year law. The shift wasn't just geographical: Chicago is known as a school where lawyers learn law; Yale's rep is more ephemeral, a place where theories are valued more than the dirty work of contracts and litigation. No problem for Lessig. "He stood out as a brilliant, broad-ranging intellect," says Yale's constitutional law guru Bruce Ackerman. "The kind of depth Larry has isn't so common." Lessig particularly fell in love with constitutional law. He decided he wanted to write about it and teach it himself. At Lessig's graduation, Ackerman told a startled Jack Lessig that Larry was going to be a great professor. The father looked like he'd been struck with a two-by-four. ("He doesn't have a lot of respect for academic types," says Lessig. Now, of course, Jack couldn't be prouder of his celebrated son.)
In the postgrad pecking order, Ivy League law school superstars compete for clerkships with federal judges. Then the cream of the cream rises to the elite fraternity of Supreme Court clerks. After Yale, Lessig served Judge Richard Posner, the sharpest legal mind in the country. Says Posner, "He was terrific, a tremendous worker who had a ferocious intensity." The judge now considers Lessig "the most distinguished law professor of his generation." Lessig completed the legal-giant quiniela by clerking for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. "His clerks hated me because I was a liberal," says Lessig.
Bound by the Supreme Court's ironclad omertΰ against divulging in-chambers skinny, Lessig can't discuss his work on decisions rendered during the 1990 to 1991 term. But he can talk about his participation in one revolution at the high court. For years, he had been a computer nut after college he actually did some programming for a financial forecasting firm and, as an aficionado of good computer design, he despised the clunky Atex system then used by the Supreme Court Printing Office. So Lessig joined with a few other clerks to convince the Supremes to stop, in the name of user-friendliness. The high point of this effort was a demonstration for justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Scalia, and David Souter. Using Lessig's own Dell machine, the clerks staged a software shoot-out between Atex terminals and PCs running desktop-publishing software. Lessig and his colleagues won the day. But to implement a new system, complicated adjustments to some of the PC applications were required. Lessig wound up doing the job himself, hacking "extraordinarily complicated macros inside of WordPerfect." (Talk about code being law.)
After his clerkship, Lessig took the bar exam, then decamped to Costa Rica, where he spent a month reading 35 old novels on a beach blanket. He'd already been hired to teach in Chicago. As Ackerman had predicted, Lessig was on track for an incandescent career as a professor. He passed the next few years teaching constitutional law at Chicago and studying the political transitions in Eastern Europe, even helping the Republic of Georgia write its own constitution.
He had his professorship, tenure, and prestige. He was set for life. "I made it," he says. "That was all I wanted to do."
Then he discovered cyberspace.
On a walk in New York's Greenwich Village one afternoon in 1993, Lessig noticed a headline in the The Village Voice: "A RAPE IN CYBERSPACE." It was Julian Dibbell's account of a virtual sexual assault in a MUD. Lessig had recently read Only Words, a book on sexual harassment by Catharine MacKinnon (he'd taken a course with her at Yale), and as he read Dibbell's piece, Lessig was struck by how closely the concerns of the participants in the virtual world (devastated by "only words") resonated with those of MacKinnon, whose radical views (porn isn't protected speech) were generally considered anathema at the Voice. This suggested to Lessig that cyberspace was virgin intellectual territory, where ideas had yet to be boxed in by orthodoxy.
"It was a place where nobody knows their politics," says Lessig. He began thinking about the concept of law in this nonphysical space, and made notes for a course on the subject.
Lessig taught Law and Cyberspace as a visiting professor at Yale in the spring of 1995. That semester he had his first intuition about the relationship between code and the law. In the course of discussing searches and the Fourth Amendment, a student wrote a paper about how Internet worms could search someone's computer and then disappear. It made Lessig wonder how new technologies could shape law. His thoughts led to something that flew in the face of his students' near-drunken optimism about the Internet: Restrictive code, whether embodied in legal regulations or in computer programs, could trump the seemingly unstoppable freedoms delivered by the Internet. At the time, John Gilmore's exultant claim that "the Internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it" was widely accepted as truth. But Lessig began to think that it was less truism than wishful thinking. The right or wrong code could indeed implement censorship or surveillance or other injustices. "That insight," says Lessig, "became a central way of organizing the law of cyberspace."
Lessig began to develop his ideas into a book, and when he was offered a fellowship at Harvard in 1996, he decided to write it there. At the time, the law school's Charlie Nesson was beginning to organize the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a branch of the law school devoted to cyberspace issues, and the administrator set his sights on hiring the field's first superstar. "We had to have him," says Nesson, who allocated half the center's $5.4 million initial budget to support Lessig as the Berkman professor. Lessig took the post in the summer of 1997 and was almost finished writing Code when, just before Thanksgiving, he got the call from Judge Jackson.
The formal appointment came on December 11. It was an unusual job and unusually important. As special master, Lessig was given the power to gather information independently, examine witnesses, and evaluate technical data, all with the authority of the court. Then he would produce his own report and recommendations, which theoretically would provide a blueprint for Judge Jackson's eventual ruling and remedy.
Microsoft objected, claiming there was no legal basis for such a role. "We felt that only a federal judge, appointed by the president, could make such determinations," explains Microsoft's general counsel Brad Smith. During the first conference call Lessig organized between the opposing parties, Microsoft's lawyers told the putative special master that they would not be cooperating while his role was under dispute. Lessig politely but firmly informed them that he had a job to do, and would proceed whether or not they argued their side of the facts. Bluff called, Microsoft quickly changed course.
"I like your spirit!" Judge Jackson faxed Lessig after that showdown. "You have the makings of a federal court judge."
Lessig held several more lengthy conference calls between the participants, each time asking for more technical information. Ironically, the same issues he was seeking to resolve like the effect of removing the Explorer browser from Windows are items of contention in the current iteration of the lawsuit, almost five years later. Certainly, Microsoft had the opportunity to have a neutral legal observer navigate the complicated technical issues at a depth that a judge could not attempt. Instead, the company chose to use every measure available to block Lessig's participation.
Specifically, it claimed that he was not neutral. The Softie lawyers recast Lessig's various writings about "code" as an anti-Redmond rant. (In one passage, Lessig compared the relatively open Internet Engineering Task Force to the "absolutely closed Microsoft Corporation." Microsoft claimed this was equivalent to calling the company "a threat to political freedom.") Then they introduced what seemed like a smoking gun: an old email Lessig had sent then-Netscape executive Peter Harter, asking if his copy of Internet Explorer was messing up the bookmarks on his Mac. Lessig had made a joke about installing the software, putting a quote in parentheses: "Sold my soul and nothing happened."
"So Microsoft winds up saying I should be kicked off because I use a Macintosh," explains Lessig. "But they're also talking about how my language about code is political code has values and they would fill their briefs with this, as if I was some lunatic crazy."
Because Lessig was bound by confidentiality, he couldn't speak out. "This was his professional reputation at stake, and he couldn't respond," says Harvard Law's Zittrain. When Judge Jackson ruled on Microsoft's challenge, he predictably dismissed the company's objections, making it a point to call their attacks on Lessig "defamatory." Microsoft appealed. Lessig filed an affidavit explaining that the "sold my soul" line was actually a riff on a Jill Sobule song. "Its meaning in context was not the confession of some profound 'Faustian bargain,'" he wrote. "It was instead a facetious response to an anticipated tease in an email between friends." Lessig also insisted that the passages in his writings about Microsoft in relation to his theories of "code" were similarly neutral.
For Microsoft, the proceedings were just business, as Tony Soprano says. Nothing personal. Even though the controversy is over, company counsel Smith won't go on the record to say that Microsoft dealt unfairly with Lessig. However, he does allow that Lessig "is a principled intellectual thinker" who does not "have an animus toward anyone or anything." (Meanwhile, Lessig has since developed a friendship with Microsoft chief technical officer Craig Mundie; they're co-chairing a panel on identity and cyberspace.) In theory, when the Court of Appeals removed Lessig from the case, the judges could have added a line to the effect that they looked at Microsoft's claims against Lessig and found them without merit. The fact that they didn't still rankles him.
"You know, the Microsoft case was such a gift, and the problem was so interesting and fun," says Lessig. "Not getting a chance to finish was extraordinarily frustrating. And not getting a chance to finish it in the context where lots of people thought I was kicked off because I was biased was doubly frustrating."
At any rate, the episode helped get Lessig's name out. Code was published in 1999 to wide acclaim. Before the book arrived, cyberlaw was an amorphous collection of ideas and issues that awkwardly transferred current laws and regulations to the supercharged new digital landscape. Lessig gave the field a foundation with his sweeping analysis. He argued that the very architecture of software applications and the Internet comprised a sort of legal system unto itself, one that could be altered by outside forces. "Larry looked at an extant debate and said, 'This is the wrong debate,'" says Zittrain. "Once you hear it, [his theory] is obvious." By providing a framework to look at how law applied to the Internet and new technologies, Lessig had, in effect, lifted cyberlaw from the practice of a disparate group of lawyers, representing hackers or toiling in intellectual property or coping with spectrum regulation, into a coherent field of study.
Lessig had mapped the battlefield. It didn't necessarily follow that he should become a warrior. But he did. "Code was an academic book," he says. "There's an argument about how cyberspace is changing and how commerce will change cyberspace. And there's a frustration with libertarians who are oblivious to the sense in which it's regulatable. But it wasn't yet a movement." Writing Code, though, planted the seeds for an activist approach.
One of the potential consequences of Lessig's architecture-as-reality argument was that code could wind up protecting intellectual property in theory, even to the detriment of free speech and conventional fair-use protections. Indeed, when viewing developments on the late-1990s Internet through that filter, Lessig saw that copyright holders were implementing such a system boldly and expeditiously.
"The things I was pessimistic about [in Code] happened more dramatically and quickly than I thought they would," he says. "What turned me into an advocate was seeing how the law was being used [to implement] an extremist conception of intellectual property. It was dishonest, in a certain sense, an overreaching corruption of a political system." The Napster case was a prime example: By shutting down Shawn Fanning's peer-to-peer music distribution network, the record labels had ended an infinitely promising experiment. To Lessig, it was the classic move of a dinosaur using its heft to stifle innovation.
A different dinosaur tactic now occupies Larry Lessig: the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Because of Disney's role in juicing Congress to pass the bill, some have nicknamed it the Mickey Mouse Preservation Act. To Lessig, the extension was a power grab, particularly troubling in the world of the Internet, where copyright is a bigger club than in the predigital world. (Simply reading something on the Internet involves copying it, and the movement of files can be tracked.) Lessig had originally been excited by the Internet's potential as a vast commons of shared information. The Bono Act was a prime example of how the law could starve that commons. Working with the Berkman Center, Lessig set out to challenge the law.
"Sold my soul," he joked about Microsoft. The email became a smoking gun.
But how would he frame it? The obvious way was to say that with its most recent extension, Congress had finally gone beyond any reasonable interpretation of what the framers could have meant by "limited." That approach hadn't worked in the past, so Lessig constructed a different argument. In Article 1, Section 8, the founding fathers not only instructed Congress what to do regarding copyright secure "for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries" but also stated why they should do it ("to promote the progress of science and useful arts"). Of course, Lessig's complaint includes the idea that Congress' continual extensions make a mockery of the word "limited" (one professor called it perpetual ownership "on the installment plan"). But the main thrust of Lessig's argument rests on the fact that, as with previous extensions, the Copyright Term Extension Act not only grants new copyright holders a longer term of exclusivity, it grandfathers in previous works. A retroactive extension of copyright clearly violates the Constitution.
In Lessig's view, the wigheads in Philadelphia had laid out a bargain for creators of intellectual property: We want you to develop original art and science, so we'll give you an incentive a temporary monopoly on the use of your work. In theory, this means that Walt Disney would lay out the money to make a cartoon knowing that he'd have a certain number of years to collect the royalties. Yet granting Walt (or his heirs) a longer period for works created before most of us were born doesn't promote progress; Steamboat Willie is already here. Obviously, a retroactive extension can't provide an incentive "Gershwin isn't going to write any more music," notes Lessig. To the contrary, the cause of "art and science" actually suffers under retroactive extensions, because works that otherwise would have been returned to the public are kept in private hands.
Lessig's arguments are controversial. Intellectual property lawyers generally never considered them: The very basis of their universe is the assumption that Congress can do whatever it wants with the copyright clause. "I am a great admirer of Larry Lessig," says Jack Valenti, Hollywood's master lobbyist. "But Congress has the power to say what 'limited' is. It's there, it's unambiguous. Fifty-five men in Philadelphia decided it, and there's no way a court can overrule that." When Lessig went to his colleague Arthur Miller, he heard much the same thing: Of course Congress can do this. (Miller later wrote an amicus brief in defense of the law.)
Lessig's response is fairly unlawyer-like. "This is one of those issues where you're not permitted to disagree," he says. "There are a lot of issues where that's fair. This is not one of them. They're just plain wrong. I believe that if they weren't working for clients who had millions of dollars hanging on it, if we sat down in good faith and talked about it, they'd come around to seeing it my way."
So Lessig and Berkmanites Nesson and Zittrain put together a team to launch the challenge, including corporate attorney
Geoffrey Stewart. Stewart considered Lessig "a genius," but was surprised by his passion. "He wasn't out to make a statement, but wanted to win," he says.
The next step was finding a plaintiff, someone suffering harm by the extended copyright period and the abuse of the Constitution it represented. Actually, several would be needed, each absorbing a different blow from that abuse. Lessig and his team collected a stellar cast. There was Dover Publications, forced to scrap its plans to publish The Prophet and Edna St. Vincent Millay's The Ballad of the Harp Weaver (both prevented by the act from entering the public domain). There was a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving old movies. (Because early films are protected with copyright often assigned to owners who can't be traced there's no incentive to save them from the ravages of erosion, and they're literally killed by copyright.) A choir director at an Athens, Georgia, Episcopal church who relied on public-domain sheet music. Two publishers of historical works. But the most important among them would be the lead plaintiff.
The obvious choice was Michael Hart, founder of the Project Gutenberg. For years, Hart had been posting text files of public-domain books on the Internet; his online library was approaching 6,000 titles. When Lessig and his colleagues flew to Hart's hometown of Urbana, Illinois, to explain the case, though, Hart was adamant that the Berkman team's briefs integrate his manifestos attacking the greed of copyright holders. Anything less, he felt, would make him a mere "figurehead." Lessig wouldn't compromise: "Our view was that populist appeals are great, but you've got to frame a constitutional argument." Finally, Hart said, "Enough you can't use my name."
The Berkman team desperately cast about for another lead plaintiff. The answer was a 59-year-old former Unix administrator named Eric Eldred who publishes HTML-based works in the public domain from his cable modem-equipped house in New Hampshire. He wanted to use some early Robert Frost poems whose copyrights were due to expire until the Bono Act dictated otherwise. And so Eldred became a name that may one day join Roe, Brown, and other famous plaintiffs in Supreme Court decisions. The complaint was filed in January 1999.
The first round took place in the DC District Court before Judge June Green. As is the custom, Lessig and his team filed their initial complaint and gathered supporting complaints from lawyers who joined the litigation. Kathleen Sullivan, the dean at Stanford Law, advised them on a friend-of-the-court brief charging that the Bono Act violated the First Amendment by restricting access to speech without the special scrutiny required in such circum-stances. The government's brief countered that Congress is free to set whatever term it feels is appropriate, period. In October, Judge Green sided with the government, on the briefs alone. "I wasn't surprised she upheld the statute," says Lessig. "I was just surprised she did it without allowing an argument." Strike one.
The Berkman team took the case to the Court of Appeals later that year. This was the first and only time Lessig appeared in court on behalf of a client. "It was one of the better arguments I've ever seen," says Geoffrey Stewart. "He knew all the cases, and there was no point too grand or too trivial to escape his grasp. At a certain point, the level of questioning changed from a classic appellate argument to a dialog of genuine give-and-take." Lessig himself was pleased: "I was nervous before it started, but once it got going it was great fun," he says. The proof, though, would be in the decision: Since an ultimate victory would come only in the Supreme Court, a favorable ruling wasn't absolutely necessary yet if the decision unanimously upheld the law, there would be practically no chance the Supreme Court would agree to hear the case.
The verdict was 2 to 1 supporting the government. Strike two. Even so, Lessig got his dissent, from the most conservative judge. When the Berkman team asked the entire circuit to hear the case en banc, the request was denied 7 to 2, but they picked up another dissent, this time from a liberal judge. Those into reading legal tea leaves noted that such range made the case more attractive to the Supreme Court. However, most observers thought that the Supremes would leave it alone and thus were surprised when the Court granted cert to the case earlier this year.
I catch Larry Lessig for our last interview at his office at Stanford, his home base since leaving Harvard in 2000. (He's still an affiliate at Berkman.) Lessig explains that his wife, lawyer Bettina Neuefeind, wanted to move to the West Coast, and Stanford offered him a chance to promote his brand of activist cyberlaw by starting new initiatives. The beginnings of a mini-empire have sprung up around Lessig at Stanford. First he formed the Center for Internet and Society, a combination think tank and law clinic that handles and sometimes takes the lead litigating cases involving civil rights and issues of digital technology. With the Creative Commons, he hopes to provide a technological means through which content creators can publish their work unconstrained by current copyright restrictions.
It's an ambitious project requiring complicated protocols that let authors tag their works as publicly available and help readers locate and reuse those works. "It's a conservancy, like a land trust, where people can get access to content in the public domain that otherwise wouldn't be there," says Lessig. Will people flock in droves to give their work away? It's an interesting question; Lessig, who adores the open source movement, is betting they will. "I think it could be widely used," he says. He plans to spend most of next year getting the organization off the ground.
After the interview, we whiz up Highway 280 from Stanford to San Francisco in Lessig's two-seater Audi TT sports car purchased with his special master fees for an informal dinner with his wife. She is a former student (Lessig, ever the picture of probity, assures me there was no funny stuff until three years after her graduation) who works in Oakland representing low-income defendants in housing cases. It's a different kind of lawyering than Lessig's: If she loses a case, her client is on the street.
Which takes us back to the issue of why he fights. Sometimes, in his own dark way, Lessig notes the lack of gritty urgency in his own work, and questions his direction. In an earlier interview I asked him why, of all possible causes, in a world fraught with terrorism, hunger, and oppression, he has chosen to storm the ramparts for the cause of intellectual property. It's something he's asked himself frequently.
"This is the first time I have an answer. There are issues I think are deeply unjust about our legal system, outrageously so. You know, the legal system for the poor is outrageous, and I'm wildly opposed to the death penalty. There are a million things like that you can't do anything about them. I could go be a politician, but I just could never do something like that. But [cyberspace] was an area where, the more I understood it, the more I felt there was a right answer. The law does give a right answer."
Since that conversation, however, he's been working over the question and he's having doubts. Compared with his wife's involvement in the high drama of real life, what impact is he really making?
It's interesting that he's taking the question so seriously but totally consistent with his glass-half-empty approach to life. From the outside, it seems that Larry Lessig's existence has been privileged. Nice upbringing. Ivy League education, then Cambridge and top law schools. The best clerkships. Tenured law professor. And now an acclaimed author, speaker, and, ultimately, Supreme Court litigator. Yet he doesn't see it that way at all. "I always feel I should have been better at each of those steps. I bring to it this expectation that there's a lot more somebody else could have done."
"So far I've lost, lost at every level."
What about Eldred v. Ashcroft, where Lessig took a case that no one thought plausible and now has it before the Supreme Court, with a chance to make history? Glass half empty. "So far I've lost," he says. "Lost at every level."
Still, those representing the dinosaurs of the old economy would be mistaken if they assumed that the introspection of the private Lessig in any way compromises the strength of the public Lessig. Fighting the government will be a mesmerizing speaker armed with the confidence of superior brainpower and a conviction that he's on the side of the angels. It was this belief that made his 278-plus hours as a special master a blissful idyll: Despite all the previous failed attempts to do so, Lessig felt he could see the right way out. And he feels it again now. "You know," he says, "going to the Supreme Court with this case I created this case is that kind of chance."
To anyone who's followed Lessig's brilliant career, the Microsoft episode is long over. But to the man himself, the legal boxes and loose-leaf binders he carried to Stanford are very serious baggage. On October 9, Larry Lessig will get his chance to finally leave it behind.
Contributing writer Steven Levy (steven@echonyc.com), the author of Crypto, profiled Stephen Wolfram in Wired 10.06.
There's a big industry in renovated, santized content. But nobody's asking the creators of that content for permission to alter the creative nature of their artwork. Yuck.
I remember seeing a story on the news about a company that was "cleaning up" Titanic. "This couldn't be legal or OK with the directors," I mused. Well it turns out it is illegal -- there are laws against altering movies and reselling them under the same name. And the directors are plenty pissed about it too.
See the story by Rick Lyman for the NY Times:
Hollywood Balks at High-Tech Sanitizers
"This is very dangerous, what's happening here,"
said Jay D. Roth, national executive director of
the Directors Guild of America. "This is not about
an artist getting upset because someone dares to
tamper with their masterpiece. This is fundamentally
about artistic and creative rights and whether
someone has the right to take an artist's
work, change it and then sell it."
Here's the entire text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/19/movies/19CLEA.html
September 19, 2002
Hollywood Balks at High-Tech Sanitizers
Photofest
New technology can clean up popular films like "Titanic."
By RICK LYMAN
OS ANGELES, Sept. 18 After months of watching a gradual proliferation of companies offering sanitized versions of Hollywood hits to sensitive or politically conservative consumers, movie studios and filmmakers have decided it is time to get a handle on this phenomenon.
"This is very dangerous, what's happening here," said Jay D. Roth, national executive director of the Directors Guild of America. "This is not about an artist getting upset because someone dares to tamper with their masterpiece. This is fundamentally about artistic and creative rights and whether someone has the right to take an artist's work, change it and then sell it."
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The issue goes well beyond this small, growing market in cleaned-up movies, whether it's taking the violence out of "Saving Private Ryan" or the nude scenes from "Titanic." As the entertainment industry moves into the digital age, and as more movies and other entertainment forms are reduced to easily malleable electronic bits, the capability will grow for enterprising entrepreneurs to duplicate, mutate or otherwise alter them.
"We're just beginning to understand that this is part of a wider issue," said Marshall Herskovitz, the veteran writer, director and producer. "As long as something exists as digital information, it can be changed. So as a society we have to come to grips with what the meaning of intellectual property will be in the future."
To filmmakers, who point to a federal law that prohibits anyone from altering a creative work and then reselling it with the original title and artist's name attached, it is a simple question of artistic rights.
"If people can take out stuff and do what they want with it and then sell it, it just completely debases the coinage," the director Michael Apted said. "You don't know what version of a film you're buying, frankly. I think it's ridiculous." To the studios the implications concern both copyright and branding. "This is all new to us," said Alan Horn, president of Warner Brothers. "We're all trying to understand it. But it doesn't sit well with me, frankly, because these people could go the other way, too, with more sex and more violence."
To the companies involved in selling these altered versions or software that does the altering for you the question is one of consumer choice. "We leave it entirely up to consumers where their comfort level lies," said Breck Rice, a founder of the Utah company Trilogy Studios, whose MovieMask software can filter out potentially offensive passages. "People get to choose for themselves."
At issue is a string of companies, based largely in Utah and Colorado, that offer edited videotapes and DVD's or software that allows users to play any DVD with the offensive passages automatically blocked.
One of the earliest to enter this field, a Utah company called CleanFlicks, has a chain of rental stores that offer sanitized versions of more than 100 Hollywood films, like "The Godfather" and "Mulholland Drive." Video II offers what it calls E-rated films (cleaned up versions of box-office hits) at several dozen Albertson's retail stores in Utah.
MovieMask has a different approach. Its software can be downloaded onto home computers and will shortly be available embedded into laptops and DVD players that can be connected directly to televisions. The software allows the consumer to watch more than three dozen possible versions of a movie, including the original one shown in theaters. It works only on films, about 75 so far, that have been watched and tagged by MovieMask editors.
Both the numbers of such companies and their reach have expanded in just the last few months. One company, ClearPlay, already offers its software embedded into a $699 DVD player. Another, Family Shield Technologies, offers a set-top box for $239.99 it calls MovieShield that offers its own array of filters, including making the screen go blank during offensive moments.
Although CleanFlicks has been operating for more than two years, it was not until MovieMask executives made a series of presentations around Hollywood in March that the issue came to the fore.
"We came to show them what our technology was capable of doing, purely to grab their attention," Mr. Rice said. "It certainly did that."
The directors were not pleased by what they saw. A swordfight from "The Princess Bride" (1987) was altered so it looked like the characters were using "Star Wars" light sabers. The scene from "Titanic" (1997) of Leonardo DiCaprio sketching a nude Kate Winslet has been altered by covering her with a digital corset. These are currently available from MovieMask but were intended to show the software's potential, Mr. Rice said. What it did, however, was to mobilize the directors and their organization to find a way to put a stop to this.
Last month the owner of several CleanFlicks stores in Colorado filed suit against 16 top Hollywood directors, including Steven Spielberg, asking the court to declare that what CleanFlicks was doing was perfectly legal. The company argues that anyone who buys a work of art is free to alter it, and that CleanFlicks is only providing a service to those who have already purchased copies of the film or become members of its rental club. CleanFlicks officials did not return calls for comment today. But Jeff Aldous, a lawyer for the company, said it had no knowledge of the Colorado lawsuit before it was filed and did not support it. "We realize there's going to be an issue at some point in time that we've got to discuss," he said.
Perhaps as early as this week the Directors Guild will file a response to the lawsuit, probably including some counterclaims. And for the first time, the major Hollywood studios, which have been strangely silent on this issue, may also support the action.
Exactly why the studios have not joined the fray is not entirely clear. But several people involved in the talks between the studios and the directors and writers guilds said the problem was a difference of opinion among the studios about the whole issue. They said some felt that the proliferation of these companies showed that a market existed for sanitized products, so perhaps the studios themselves should get into that business. Others felt that the market was too small to be worth the costs, especially since some video chains had indicated they would stock only one version of a film to conserve precious shelf space. And still others were more worried about protecting their brands.
"If you're a studio that's spent a lot of money developing a 'Spider-Man' brand, do you want to dilute it by having a `Spider-Man Lite' on the market competing with it?" asked an executive involved in the talks.
Officials for the clean-movie companies point out that Hollywood already does release sanitized versions of movies to airlines and some television networks. But directors respond that those versions are made with input from the filmmakers.
"That's exactly what we're trying to do here," said Mr. Rice of Trilogy Studios. "We want them to a part of our process, too. We believe that the technology is available today where everyone can win."
And if the directors are upset about what they have seen so far, they probably will not like to hear that MovieMask just signed a contract with a product-placement company to insert products into existing films, perhaps even region by region.
"The law as it stands now is just not sophisticated enough," Mr. Herskovitz said. "I think there won't be a satisfying solution until the laws are all rewritten."
If our 2000 election seemed like more of a homeland invasion when it was finished, it's no coincidence.
Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President
By Neil Mackay for the Sunday Herald.
(Thanks, Pete)
The PNAC report also:l refers to key allies such as the UK as 'the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership';
l describes peace-keeping missions as 'demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations';
l reveals worries in the administration that Europe could rival the USA;
l says 'even should Saddam pass from the scene' bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently -- despite domestic opposition in the Gulf regimes to the stationing of US troops -- as 'Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has';
l spotlights China for 'regime change' saying 'it is time to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia'. This, it says, may lead to 'American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratisation in China';
l calls for the creation of 'US Space Forces', to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent 'enemies' using the internet against the US;
l hints that, despite threatening war against Iraq for developing weapons of mass destruction, the US may consider developing biological weapons -- which the nation has banned -- in decades to come. It says: 'New methods of attack -- electronic, 'non-lethal', biological -- will be more widely available ... combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool';
l and pinpoints North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes and says their existence justifies the creation of a 'world-wide command-and-control system'.
Here's the complete text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.sundayherald.com/27735
Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President
By Neil Mackay
A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001.
The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'
The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.
This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as possible', the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'.
The report describes American armed forces abroad as 'the cavalry on the new American frontier'. The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that said the US must 'discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role'.
The PNAC report also:
l refers to key allies such as the UK as 'the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership';
l describes peace-keeping missions as 'demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations';
l reveals worries in the administration that Europe could rival the USA;
l says 'even should Saddam pass from the scene' bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently -- despite domestic opposition in the Gulf regimes to the stationing of US troops -- as 'Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has';
l spotlights China for 'regime change' saying 'it is time to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia'. This, it says, may lead to 'American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratisation in China';
l calls for the creation of 'US Space Forces', to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent 'enemies' using the internet against the US;
l hints that, despite threatening war against Iraq for developing weapons of mass destruction, the US may consider developing biological weapons -- which the nation has banned -- in decades to come. It says: 'New methods of attack -- electronic, 'non-lethal', biological -- will be more widely available ... combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool';
l and pinpoints North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes and says their existence justifies the creation of a 'world-wide command-and-control system'.
Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said: 'This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war.
'This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.'
See the article by David Lieberman for USA Today:
Recording industry faces music: CD prices may need to fall
This quote is pretty ironic:
The Recording Industry Association of America ( news - web sites) (RIAA) likes to remind people that most albums lose money after you factor in artist royalties and marketing. What's more, a study it recently commissioned found that if CD prices had grown as much as inflation since they rolled out in 1983, they'd now be $38.23.So $14.70 should be seen as a bargain.
Considering the cost of making CDs has consistently decreased steadily since they were originally introduced in the early 90s.
That's like saying that we're lucky blank CDs aren't $100 a piece since they used to be $12 a pop in 1995 (when I used to be the Asst. Multimedia Editor for CD-ROM Today and it was a *big* deal to have a bad burn). If blank CDs are cheaper for us now ($10 for over 100) the cost has to even less for bulk manufacturers.
Here is the full text of the article
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20020909/bs_usatoday/4428969
The price fixing we've all known as the real reason that sales have (barely) gone down this last year may be coming to an end.
Recording industry faces music: CD prices may need to fall
Mon Sep 9, 7:20 AM ET
David Lieberman USA TODAY
Brace yourself to see something startling next time you go to a record store. You might see some reasonably priced CDs.
Most of the major music companies are starting to offer retailers limited-time rebates on some releases. As a result, many consumers paid just $10 for new albums by young performers including Ashanti and Vanessa Carlton, as well as veterans Sean ''P. Diddy'' Combs and Bruce Springsteen.
That's a big deal in an industry that consistently raised CD prices since 1996. Consumers now pay about $14.70 for CDs, although most new releases list for $19 or more.
But don't cheer too loudly just yet. It's still way too early to say how widely or how long companies will offer discounts. Most executives, and even the industry's trade organization, don't like to talk about pricing.
And, strange as it sounds, lower prices may backfire on consumers. Music companies aren't rolling in profits anymore. Most would probably get a higher return by putting their cash into bonds instead of albums, although industry leader Universal Music generates a tidy 15% margin. So price cuts mean ''they'll have to fire people, renegotiate artist contracts, make fewer videos and sign fewer bands,'' says Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Michael Nathanson.
Why are they doing it?
''There's a good deal of panic in the recorded music business,'' says investor Strauss Zelnick, who used to run Bertelsmann's BMG music arm.
Sales of albums and singles are off 11% this year following a drop of 10% in 2001 and 7% in 2000. Only 21 albums sold more than 1 million units in the first half of this year vs. 37 albums during the period in 2001.
Lower prices may at least stop the bleeding.
But that's tough for executives to admit. It calls into question their long-held belief that CDs are not only fairly priced but a good value.
The Recording Industry Association of America ( news - web sites) (RIAA) likes to remind people that most albums lose money after you factor in artist royalties and marketing. What's more, a study it recently commissioned found that if CD prices had grown as much as inflation since they rolled out in 1983, they'd now be $38.23.
So $14.70 should be seen as a bargain.
''People spend quite a bit of money to go to a concert,'' Artemis Records CEO Danny Goldberg says. ''Sometimes the parking costs more than a CD. So they're willing to pay'' for music.
He says the recent price cuts are merely a tactic to help companies introduce new acts. ''For developing and new artists you'll see lower prices for the first 100,000 units sold.''
Yet executives may soon be forced to acknowledge that a few, isolated cuts won't do the trick -- that consumers really are fed up with rising CD prices.
A lot of that skepticism is natural as people discover that it costs them just about as much for an hour-long stereo CD as it does for a DVD, which offers a two hour-movie and six channels of sound.
Music executives counter that the CD is meant to be played over and over, while people usually just watch a movie once.
But that's not true anymore. Consider Monsters, Inc.
The coming-soon, two-disc DVD, priced on Amazon.com at $18, will have two short features, outtakes, games, a music video, a sound-effects only track, storyboards and a look at how computer animation is done, in addition to the movie.
That looks like a heck of a bargain next to the one-disc CD soundtrack of the movie with Randy Newman's songs and score. It's just $3 less on Amazon.
And it's not a given that CD buyers will play popular albums over and over. Most know what it's like to buy a CD based on a hit song, only to find that the remaining tracks are mediocre filler.
What's more, CDs are a bigger gamble for the consumer than some other forms of entertainment.
''When you go to a bad movie, you're not angry about what you paid,'' says Zelnick. You only expected a two-hour experience. ''But if you buy a bad CD, you are because you expected to listen to it more.''
It's no wonder that so many consumers look for ways to avoid that letdown. They simply copy CDs and swap them with friends. It's easy to make digitally perfect replicas of albums on recordable CDs that cost less than $1 apiece.
Many also download tunes for free over the Internet. The RIAA is so frightened about this that it is starting to go after individual music fans who send and receive music over the Web -- not just services that facilitate the practice as Napster ( news - web sites) did.
Last month the trade group subpoenaed Verizon to identify a broadband subscriber believed to be transmitting music online. Verizon refused, arguing that it violated legal procedures and the customer's right to privacy.
But executives don't want to go to war with their fans. And some acknowledge that they have to find ways to give consumers more value, even if today's price cuts don't last.
For example, Goldberg says, companies might package CDs with videos and opportunities to buy front-and-center concert seats or go backstage.
''The actual audience for music is bigger than it's ever been,'' he says. ''And the older generation is more interested in music than ever.''
For now, though, all eyes are on how consumers will respond to the new, low prices.
''That is the punter's bet -- that what you lose in pricing you make up in volume,'' Nathanson says. ''But we haven't seen it yet.''
Scientists build mouse for the blind
Lines on a graph were represented by tones that would vary in pitch according to whether the line was rising or falling.Several such tones could be used to represent different lines of the same graph as the person entered a "soundscape."
"You can get across quite complex information just using sound," he said, adding that the technique could even be of use to sighted people such as share traders who could be alerted on their mobile phones by a tone representing a move up or down.
Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-957092.html
ZDNet: Reviews | Downloads | Tech Update | Prices
Page OneApplicationsNetworkingeBusinessHardwareCommentary
Hardware
Scientists build mouse for the blind
Reuters
September 9, 2002, 7:44 AM PT
TalkBack!
LEICESTER, England--Scientists looking for ways to help blind people get more out of computers have developed a mouse that goes bump and have combined it with sound representations of graphs that would otherwise be inaccessible to the blind.
Mike Burton of Glasgow University told reporters at the British Association for the Advancement of Science annual festival that the mouse vibrated every time it met a line on a graph, giving a blind operator a tactile tip-off.
"The technique is a very good way of presenting information to blind and sighted people," he said. "The bottom line is that the cheapest and most flexible solution works."
Click Here.
Likening the jumping mouse to electronic Braille, Burton said one of the most daunting tasks facing visually impaired people is trying to assimilate information giving an overview of data or events.
Reinforcing the tactile jolt of the mouse, fellow Glasgow University scientist Stephen Brewster said his team had developed sound graphs that could be combined with the mouse.
Lines on a graph were represented by tones that would vary in pitch according to whether the line was rising or falling.
Several such tones could be used to represent different lines of the same graph as the person entered a "soundscape."
"You can get across quite complex information just using sound," he said, adding that the technique could even be of use to sighted people such as share traders who could be alerted on their mobile phones by a tone representing a move up or down.
He declined to speculate on the sound of a stock market crash.
Story Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Nelson Mandela: The United
States of America is a Threat to
World Peace
In a rare interview, the South African demands that George W. Bush win United Nations support before attacking Iraq
Nelson: "...there is no doubt that the United States now feels that they are the only superpower in the world and they can do what they like. And of course we must consider the men and the women around the president. Gen. Colin Powell commanded the United States army in peacetime and in wartime during the Gulf war. He knows the disastrous effect of international tension and war, when innocent people are going to die, young men are going to die. He knows and he showed this after September 11 last year. He went around briefing the allies of the United States of America and asking for their support for the war in Afghanistan. But people like Dick Cheney I see yesterday there was an article that said he is the real president of the United States of America, I dont know how true that is. Dick Cheney, [Defense secretary Donald] Rumsfeld, they are people who are unfortunately misleading the president. Because my impression of the president is that this is a man with whom you can do business. But it is the men who around him who are dinosaurs, who do not want him to belong to the modern age. The only man, the only person who wants to help Bush move to the modern era is Gen. Colin Powell, the secretary of State.
(Interviewer) I gather you are particularly concerned about Vice President Cheney?Nelson: Well, there is no doubt. He opposed the decision to release me from prison (laughs). The majority of the U.S. Congress was in favor of my release, and he opposed it. But its not because of that. Quite clearly we are dealing with an arch-conservative in Dick Cheney.
Here is the complete text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/806174.asp?cp1=1
The former South African president with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz at the Earth Summit last week
Nelson Mandela: The United
States of America is a Threat to
World Peace
In a rare interview, the South African demands that George W. Bush win United Nations support before attacking Iraq
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Sept. 10 Nelson Mandela, 84, may be the worlds most respected statesman. Sentenced to life in prison on desolate Robben Island in 1964 for advocating armed resistance to apartheid in South Africa, the African National Congress leader emerged in 1990 to lead his country in a transition to non-racial elections. As president, his priority was racial reconciliation; today South Africans of all races refer to him by his Xhosa clan honorific, Madiba. Mandela stepped down in 1999 after a single five-year term. He now heads two foundations focused on children. He met with NEWSWEEKS Tom Masland early Monday morning in his office in Houghton, a Johannesburg suburb, before flying to Limpopo Province to address traditional leaders on the countrys AIDS crisis. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Why are you speaking out on Iraq? Do you want to mediate, as you tried to on the Mideast a couple of years ago? It seems you are reentering the fray now.
Nelson Mandela: If I am asked, by credible organizations, to mediate, I will consider that very seriously. But a situation of this nature does not need an individual, it needs an organization like the United Nations to mediate. We must understand the seriousness of this situation. The United States has made serious mistakes in the conduct of its foreign affairs, which have had unfortunate repercussions long after the decisions were taken. Unqualified support of the Shah of Iran led directly to the Islamic revolution of 1979. Then the United States chose to arm and finance the [Islamic] mujahedin in Afghanistan instead of supporting and encouraging the moderate wing of the government of Afghanistan. That is what led to the Taliban in Afghanistan. But the most catastrophic action of the United States was to sabotage the decision that was painstakingly stitched together by the United Nations regarding the withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace. Because what [America] is saying is that if you are afraid of a veto in the Security Council, you can go outside and take action and violate the sovereignty of other countries. That is the message they are sending to the world. That must be condemned in the strongest terms. And you will notice that France, Germany Russia, China are against this decision. It is clearly a decision that is motivated by George W. Bushs desire to please the arms and oil industries in the United States of America. If you look at those factors, youll see that an individual like myself, a man who has lost power and influence, can never be a suitable mediator.
--inserted quote-- What about the argument thats being made about the threat of Iraqs weapons of mass destruction and Saddams efforts to build a nuclear weapons. After all, he has invaded other countries, he has fired missiles at Israel. On Thursday, President Bush is going to stand up in front of the United Nations and point to what he says is evidence of... -- end inserted quote
Scott Ritter, a former United Nations arms inspector who is in Baghdad, has said that there is no evidence whatsoever of [development of weapons of] mass destruction. Neither Bush nor [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair has provided any evidence that such weapons exist. But what we know is that Israel has weapons of mass destruction. Nobody talks about that. Why should there be one standard for one country, especially because it is black, and another one for another country, Israel, that is white.
So you see this as a racial question?
Well, that element is there. In fact, many people say quietly, but they dont have the courage to stand up and say publicly, that when there were white secretary generals you didnt find this question of the United States and Britain going out of the United Nations. But now that youve had black secretary generals like Boutros Boutros Ghali, like Kofi Annan, they do not respect the United Nations. They have contempt for it. This is not my view, but that is what is being said by many people.
What kind of compromise can you see that might avoid the coming confrontation?
There is one compromise and one only, and that is the United Nations. If the United States and Britain go to the United Nations and the United Nations says we have concrete evidence of the existence of these weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we feel that we must do something about it, we would all support it.
Do you think that the Bush administrations U.N. diplomatic effort now is genuine, or is the President just looking for political cover by speaking to the U.N. even as he remains intent on forging ahead unilaterally?
Well, there is no doubt that the United States now feels that they are the only superpower in the world and they can do what they like. And of course we must consider the men and the women around the president. Gen. Colin Powell commanded the United States army in peacetime and in wartime during the Gulf war. He knows the disastrous effect of international tension and war, when innocent people are going to die, young men are going to die. He knows and he showed this after September 11 last year. He went around briefing the allies of the United States of America and asking for their support for the war in Afghanistan. But people like Dick Cheney
I see yesterday there was an article that said he is the real president of the United States of America, I dont know how true that is. Dick Cheney, [Defense secretary Donald] Rumsfeld, they are people who are unfortunately misleading the president. Because my impression of the president is that this is a man with whom you can do business. But it is the men who around him who are dinosaurs, who do not want him to belong to the modern age. The only man, the only person who wants to help Bush move to the modern era is Gen. Colin Powell, the secretary of State.
I gather you are particularly concerned about Vice President Cheney?
Well, there is no doubt. He opposed the decision to release me from prison (laughs). The majority of the U.S. Congress was in favor of my release, and he opposed it. But its not because of that. Quite clearly we are dealing with an arch-conservative in Dick Cheney.
Im interested in your decision to speak out now about Iraq. When you left office, you said, Im going to go down to Transkei, and have a rest. Now maybe that was a joke at the time. But youve been very active.
I really wanted to retire and rest and spend more time with my children, my grandchildren and of course with my wife. But the problems are such that for anybody with a conscience who can use whatever influence he may have to try to bring about peace, its difficult to say no.
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc
David Coursey, AnchorDesk's Senior Editor, explains why:
The fatal flaw inside MS's new Media Center PCs.
This really gets to the heart of the matter: since when did making copies of music to play on your other devices become piracy?
Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2879600,00.html
DavidCoursey
David Coursey The fatal flaw inside MS's new Media Center PCs
David Coursey,
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Monday, September 9, 2002 Talk back!
If Microsoft's handling of digital-rights management in its new Media Center PCs is any indication, Redmond is perfectly happy to sell out its customers to keep the entertainment industry happy.
What I'm talking about are features built into Windows XP Media Center Edition that let some next-generation PCs act like TiVo-esque personal video recorders (PVRs). The first Media Center machines, due before Christmas from HP, also come with a DVD burner. That combination means you can copy TV programs you've recorded using the PVR features from your hard drive to DVD.
THAT'S WHERE the catch comes in: The DVDs you burn can only be played on the same machine on which they were recorded.
I'll pause now to let you reread that last sentence because you couldn't believe your eyes the first time through.
Click Here!
Microsoft says it's designed the Media Center this way to block the "wholesale" copying of copyrighted material. But--stop me if I'm wrong--I always thought "wholesale" referred to one person making a million copies of something and selling them, rather than a million people copying a single program for their own private use.
LET'S SAY I record The West Wing on my Media Center PC, but don't have time to watch it at home. Wouldn't it be great to burn the program and maybe a few others onto a DVD to watch on my laptop while I'm on an airplane? Or take it over to a friend's house, so we all can watch?
My TiVo lets me dub programs to videotape so I can carry them around. Why shouldn't my PC's DVD burner give me the same flexibility?
Microsoft says that making DVDs viewable only on the machines that burned them will help Hollywood see the PC not as a threat, but as an ally. But in so doing, the software giant could really be encouraging customers to see Media Center PCs as, well, useless.
Why is MS willing to make this trade-off?
I THINK the real goal here is to convince Hollywood that Microsoft itself--forget PCs!--isn't a threat, which will in turn make it easier for Bill Gates to cut preferential deals with the entertainment moguls. If solving Hollywood's piracy problems is what it takes for Bill to ink those deals, who cares what consumers want?
Or maybe Microsoft is trying to do to the entertainment business what many people believe the company did to the desktop software industry--helping potential competitors sail to their own doom. It's possible that Microsoft is acceding to Hollywood's wishes in order to let Tinseltown anger customers and make a fool of itself. Then Microsoft can say, "We tried doing it their way and look what happened!"--and then proceed into the digital-entertainment business as it pleases.
Whatever Microsoft's motives really are, I think that eventually consumers will inflict their wrath upon both MS and Hollywood. The entertainment industry needs to find new revenue models that reflect the realities of digital media and consumer preference. By kissing up to the Hollywood powers, Microsoft is only delaying the inevitable and siding with the bad guys against its own customers.
THE CHALLENGE IS for Microsoft to solve the rights-management problem in a way that consumers will accept (hint: lots of "fair" use), yet prevents thieves from getting rich off someone else's intellectual property. For example, Microsoft could have designed the system so that DVDs burned on Media Center machines could play on any DVD player, but be impossible to copy.
(Or maybe it won't really be impossible to copy Media Center DVDs: When I asked an HP rep about the DVD "problem" I was told--with a wink--that his company didn't think consumers would worry too much about the copy protection. Which I interpret as: "Easily downloadable hacks available everywhere soon!")
But if the Media Center PC's copy-protection scheme is an example of Microsoft's best thinking in this area, Redmond is off to a really lousy start.
What do you think? Was it wrong for Microsoft to build copy protection into the Media Center PC? How else could MS have prevented unwarranted copying while preserving fair use? TalkBack to me, and take my QuickPoll below!
Was it wrong for Microsoft to build copy protection into the Media Center PC?
Yes
No
Next Story
Consider this blog entry a little greeting card to whoever it is that made this donation...
An anonymous donor has given a million dollars to Duke University that will be used to finance a new center for research on curtailing copyright extensions.
See the Register's:
Anonymous $1m grant to test copyright laws
Here's the entire article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.theregus.com/content/6/26213.html
Anonymous $1m grant to test copyright laws
By John Leyden
Posted: 09/05/2002 at 10:07 EST
An anonymous gift of $1 million to Duke University in the US will be used to finance a new centre conductin research into curtailing recent extensions of copyright law.
James Boyle, a Duke law professor, said the centre is likely to take a close and critical look at laws like America's highly-controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
"This is an attempt to figure out the balance between intellectual property and the public domain," Boyle told CNET's Declan McCullagh . "If you want to have a rich culture and an innovative society, you have to leave a large amount of material freely available for all to use."
Boyle is not in favour of abolishing copyright, merely addressing the balance between the rights of copyright holders and the general public, which has got out of kilter, he suggests.
Congress has been too willing to swallow the views of the entertainment industry when considering copyright laws, rather than consider other perspectives on the issue, according to Boyle.
Duke intends to help fill this knowledge deficit, something that can't come a moment too soon after Congressman Howard Berman's soft-headed suggestion that copyright holders should be allowed to hack into and disrupt P2P networks with impunity.
In related news, Adobe - which initiated the first DMCA prosecution against ElcomSoft and Dmitry Sklyarov - has found itself scurrying off to the courts in hopes that it of confirming it hasn't run foul of the DMCA itself.
Claims of violations against the DMCA by Adobe came up during contractual disputes with font suppliers Agfa Monotype and ITC (International Typeface Corporation), whose technology is embedded in Acrobat.
Speed of Gravity To Be Measured
Astronomers at the world's largest radio telescopes are gearing up to measure the speed of gravity.It is the first attempt to verify a key prediction of Einstein's theory of general relativity, which says that nothing, not even the influence of gravity itself, can travel faster than light.
No one has ever tested this prediction, even though the assumption that gravity travels in waves or gravitons with a finite speed underpins much of theoretical physics. The difficulty is that if light and gravity travel at the same speed, how can you hope to see evidence of gravity's speed?
The answer, says Sergei Kopeikin of the University of Missouri, Columbia, is by watching a distant quasar as the planet Jupiter moves in front of it and its gravity bends radio waves from the quasar. This event is due to happen over the weekend of September 7 and 8. "When I first gave a talk about the idea everybody got excited and said we have to do this," says Kopeikin.
Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992763
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Speed of gravity to be measured
12:34 05 September 02
Astronomers at the world's largest radio telescopes are gearing up to measure the speed of gravity.
It is the first attempt to verify a key prediction of Einstein's theory of general relativity, which says that nothing, not even the influence of gravity itself, can travel faster than light.
No one has ever tested this prediction, even though the assumption that gravity travels in waves or gravitons with a finite speed underpins much of theoretical physics. The difficulty is that if light and gravity travel at the same speed, how can you hope to see evidence of gravity's speed?
The answer, says Sergei Kopeikin of the University of Missouri, Columbia, is by watching a distant quasar as the planet Jupiter moves in front of it and its gravity bends radio waves from the quasar. This event is due to happen over the weekend of September 7 and 8. "When I first gave a talk about the idea everybody got excited and said we have to do this," says Kopeikin.
Together with Ed Formalont of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Kopeikin will get data on Jupiter's eclipse of the quasar from the NRAO's Very Long Baseline Array, a series of ten 25-metre radio telescopes strung between the Virgin Islands and Hawaii. The data will show the changes to the quasar's radio image to an accuracy of more than a millionth of one degree.
Astronomers usually assume that so-called "lensing events" convert a point-like source like the quasar into a ring, as the radio waves are bent round the edges of the lensing object - in this case Jupiter. But this assumes that the gravitational fields are static, while the light or radio waves move.
So in 2001 Kopeikin decided to develop a more realistic model. In this, as Jupiter moves, the changing gravitational field interacts with the radio waves coming from the quasar. The calculations show that if gravity has a finite speed, the ring-like image seen at Earth will be subtly warped compared to the shape expected if the gravitational changes propagate instantaneously.
It was a neat piece of work, but Kopeikin never expected to be able to test his idea so soon. "These lensing events only happen about once per decade," he says. The results from the experiment should be known within two months.
Eugenie Samuel
Jimmy Carter has written an editorial for the Washington Post about the tragic misdirected messages our government's statements and actions must be sending out to the world:
The Troubling New Face of America.
Some new approaches have understandably evolved from quick and well-advised reactions by President Bush to the tragedy of Sept. 11, but others seem to be developing from a core group of conservatives who are trying to realize long-pent-up ambitions under the cover of the proclaimed war against terrorism.Formerly admired almost universally as the preeminent champion of human rights, our country has become the foremost target of respected international organizations concerned about these basic principles of democratic life. We have ignored or condoned abuses in nations that support our anti-terrorism effort, while detaining American citizens as "enemy combatants," incarcerating them secretly and indefinitely without their being charged with any crime or having the right to legal counsel. This policy has been condemned by the federal courts, but the Justice Department seems adamant, and the issue is still in doubt...
...Belligerent and divisive voices now seem to be dominant in Washington, but they do not yet reflect final decisions of the president, Congress or the courts. It is crucial that the historical and well-founded American commitments prevail: to peace, justice, human rights, the environment and international cooperation.
Here is the complete text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38441-2002Sep4.html
The Troubling New Face of America
By Jimmy Carter
Thursday, September 5, 2002; Page A31
Fundamental changes are taking place in the historical policies of the United States with regard to human rights, our role in the community of nations and the Middle East peace process -- largely without definitive debates (except, at times, within the administration). Some new approaches have understandably evolved from quick and well-advised reactions by President Bush to the tragedy of Sept. 11, but others seem to be developing from a core group of conservatives who are trying to realize long-pent-up ambitions under the cover of the proclaimed war against terrorism.
Formerly admired almost universally as the preeminent champion of human rights, our country has become the foremost target of respected international organizations concerned about these basic principles of democratic life. We have ignored or condoned abuses in nations that support our anti-terrorism effort, while detaining American citizens as "enemy combatants," incarcerating them secretly and indefinitely without their being charged with any crime or having the right to legal counsel. This policy has been condemned by the federal courts, but the Justice Department seems adamant, and the issue is still in doubt. Several hundred captured Taliban soldiers remain imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay under the same circumstances, with the defense secretary declaring that they would not be released even if they were someday tried and found to be innocent. These actions are similar to those of abusive regimes that historically have been condemned by American presidents.
While the president has reserved judgment, the American people are inundated almost daily with claims from the vice president and other top officials that we face a devastating threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and with pledges to remove Saddam Hussein from office, with or without support from any allies. As has been emphasized vigorously by foreign allies and by responsible leaders of former administrations and incumbent officeholders, there is no current danger to the United States from Baghdad. In the face of intense monitoring and overwhelming American military superiority, any belligerent move by Hussein against a neighbor, even the smallest nuclear test (necessary before weapons construction), a tangible threat to use a weapon of mass destruction, or sharing this technology with terrorist organizations would be suicidal. But it is quite possible that such weapons would be used against Israel or our forces in response to an American attack.
We cannot ignore the development of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, but a unilateral war with Iraq is not the answer. There is an urgent need for U.N. action to force unrestricted inspections in Iraq. But perhaps deliberately so, this has become less likely as we alienate our necessary allies. Apparently disagreeing with the president and secretary of state, in fact, the vice president has now discounted this goal as a desirable option.
We have thrown down counterproductive gauntlets to the rest of the world, disavowing U.S. commitments to laboriously negotiated international accords.
Peremptory rejections of nuclear arms agreements, the biological weapons convention, environmental protection, anti-torture proposals, and punishment of war criminals have sometimes been combined with economic threats against those who might disagree with us. These unilateral acts and assertions increasingly isolate the United States from the very nations needed to join in combating terrorism.
Tragically, our government is abandoning any sponsorship of substantive negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. Our apparent policy is to support almost every Israeli action in the occupied territories and to condemn and isolate the Palestinians as blanket targets of our war on terrorism, while Israeli settlements expand and Palestinian enclaves shrink.
There still seems to be a struggle within the administration over defining a comprehensible Middle East policy. The president's clear commitments to honor key U.N. resolutions and to support the establishment of a Palestinian state have been substantially negated by statements of the defense secretary that in his lifetime "there will be some sort of an entity that will be established" and his reference to the "so-called occupation." This indicates a radical departure from policies of every administration since 1967, always based on the withdrawal of Israel from occupied territories and a genuine peace between Israelis and their neighbors.
Belligerent and divisive voices now seem to be dominant in Washington, but they do not yet reflect final decisions of the president, Congress or the courts. It is crucial that the historical and well-founded American commitments prevail: to peace, justice, human rights, the environment and international cooperation.
Former president Carter is chairman of the Carter Center in Atlanta.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is it me? Or does the NY Times gets more and more annoying everytime I go there with the popups and the animated ads and the flashing lights and the (insert noise from the science freak guy on the simpsons here)....
Right now, DVD recorders convert an analog signal to digital data, but the day will soon arrive when broadcasters send that digital information straight to your home. At that point, the television shows you record may look as beautiful as the movies you buy. On the other hand, if broadcasters move to protect that digital signal from copying, you may not be able to record the shows at all.
Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/05/technology/circuits/05BASI.html?ex=1032319314&ei=1&en=b39a032ef4f8d1f2
Burning Your Own DVD's
By WILSON ROTHMAN
WHEN buyers began snapping up DVD players a few years ago, the allure of better sound and picture in the home theater was enough. But until recently, DVD systems in living rooms (and in PC's) lacked the feature that would send the VCR to the eight-track graveyard: they couldn't record.
Now, recordable DVD is a reasonably affordable reality. With a recordable DVD system, you can record television shows, either as permanent keepsakes or temporary files. You can also convert your old home movies into digital video and then store them for centuries. If you have a digital camcorder, you can send the video straight to DVD for editing and archiving, and even stream it back out to digital video.
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There is a catch, though: an industrywide format war. Just like CD burners, DVD recorders generally support write-once discs ("R") and rewritable discs ("RW"), but you can't just go to the store and buy one or the other. About half of the manufacturers build recorders for DVD-R and DVD-RW discs (and occasionally the largely incompatible DVD-RAM), while the other half build them for DVD+R and DVD+RW media. Each camp makes claims about the compatibility and functionality of its chosen format, and although there are technical differences, the most obvious one is still the choice of punctuation in the format's name.
So what do you really need to know? First, a DVD-R/RW recorder can't use DVD+R/RW media and vice versa. Second, appropriately prepared DVD-R and DVD+R discs will almost always work in third-party DVD players, while their rewritable counterparts may not be as successful.
"The biggest issue for consumers is to not buy the wrong kind of blank media," said Wolfgang Schlichting, a research manager at the technology research firm IDC.
Before you can buy any media, however, you need a recorder, and there are more out there than you might think. Formats aside, the two basic types are the PC drive and the home-theater component. Most desktop-system offers now include an optional DVD recorder, and I tested three such systems: Apple's new 17-inch G4 iMac with a Pioneer-built DVD-R SuperDrive ($1,999); Gateway's Pentium 4-powered 700XL with a Panasonic DVD-R/DVD-RAM drive ($2,999); and a Hewlett-Packard Pavilion 772n, which also has Pentium 4 plus HP's own DVD200i DVD+R/RW drive ($1,349, with the monitor sold separately).
With a recordable drive comes DVD-authoring software, which makes a title page and prepares video files so that the disc you create will play in a standard DVD player. SuperDrive-equipped Apples ship with the company's own iDVD; Gateway offers Pinnacle Express, while HP features MyDVD by Sonic Solutions. I also tested Roxio's new VideoWave Movie Creator ($80).
The test was simple: record video with a digital camcorder (in this case, a Samsung SCD86), dump it onto each computer, then turn the final product into a DVD that could be viewed on a standard DVD player. As far as title pages go, Apple's iDVD was the only program that allowed me to place text and icons exactly where I wanted them, and the only one with animated backgrounds. Sonic's MyDVD titles were funky and easy to customize but, alas, static. Roxio's program had mostly themed templates (births, birthdays, sporting events and weddings), but at least they were attractive. I thought Pinnacle Express had the ugliest selections, and the title page I made with it didn't even display appropriately on the TV screen.
Once video content was selected and a title page was made, it was time to record. The process is similar to burning a CD: throw in the blank disc, click the Record button and wait. Creating a five-minute DVD took 15 to 20 minutes on each system; two-thirds of that was spent preparing the material, and the other third recording data. The experience was not only quick and painless but fairly entertaining, too.
Creating DVD's of home movies is nice, but who really spends a lot of time watching home movies? What I really want is television on DVD. To start my video library, I borrowed three of the most popular home-theater recorders: the Philips DVDR985, the Pioneer Elite DVR-7000 and the Panasonic DMR-HS2. Each combines a high-end progressive-scan DVD player with DVD recording capability and a converter to digitize incoming television signals. In addition, all of these recorders use the VCR Plus+ system (the codes printed in local listings) for automatic recording, and all connect directly to digital camcorders.
The Philips DVDR985 ($1,000) works exactly as it should. When your show comes on, you throw in a blank disc and press record. Once it is finished, push Stop, then take a look at the title page. You can enter the name of the program you recorded; otherwise it will show the channel and a time stamp. If you use a rewriteable disc in Philips's case, a DVD+RW you can choose a thumbnail image from each show and add and delete recordings as you go. If you use DVD+R, you may use titles for your programs, but you can't choose a thumbnail, and once you have deleted something, the space cannot be reclaimed.
A DVD+R disc (as well as DVD-R and DVD-RW) must be finalized closed to further recording for it to behave like a store-bought read-only DVD. DVD+RW discs don't require a finalizing process, but they are not as compatible as DVD+R's. That the Philips model offers no video-editing perks is a blessing in disguise; it was the easiest to use of the players I tested.
With more features, the Pioneer Elite DVR-7000 ($2,000) can be tricky, although recording to and finalizing DVD-R couldn't be simpler. Complications arise with DVD-RW discs, which can be designated for one of two separate recording modes: video mode, essentially an erasable version of the DVD-R; and VR mode, which gives the disc more flexibility with recording quality and video editing. It is useful, yes, but once a DVD-RW is initialized for VR mode, it can only be played in the DVR-7000. If you wanted to send an edited summer-vacation video to Grandma, you would probably have to bounce it out to the camcorder, then transfer it back onto a DVD-R.
That aside, what irks me about the Pioneer model is the short recording time. The Philips lets you record up to four hours per disc, and the Panasonic gives you six. Although the Pioneer allows up to six hours in VR mode, you only get two in the more compatible video mode.
The Panasonic DMR-HS2 ($1,000) has the most to prove. Not only does it record DVD-R and DVD-RAM discs, but it also has a hard drive inside for temporary recording of shows and home videos, which can then be edited and "dubbed" to DVD. The exterior is sleek by Panasonic standards; the setup was easy, and the remote control is remarkably simple. But once you're plugged in, you're at the mercy of a user-unfriendly and occasionally misleading interface. This product will make good on its many promises you can record a show, then edit out the commercials before sending it to DVD-R; cut an hour of home video into a snappy five-minute show; and combine still images and video on the same disc but it will require trial and error.
If you get both a DVD-recording computer and an entertainment unit, it is best to stick with the same media format for example, pair HP with Philips for DVD+R and DVD+RW, or Gateway with Panasonic for DVD-R. (Blank DVD-R's are as inexpensive as $3 apiece, and you can get any of the others for $8 or less if you look around.)
As for picture quality, with home videos it largely depends on your digital camcorder, although it is hard to find one that can't keep up with a typical TV set. When you record from cable or a VCR, there are other variables. A disc set for two hours should look better than a disc set for six, but if the signal is poor, recording it to DVD won't make it better.
Right now, DVD recorders convert an analog signal to digital data, but the day will soon arrive when broadcasters send that digital information straight to your home. At that point, the television shows you record may look as beautiful as the movies you buy. On the other hand, if broadcasters move to protect that digital signal from copying, you may not be able to record the shows at all.
More coverage trickling in from OSCON 2002 -- I've still got a piece or five to finish myself...
Lessig on Freedom: Use It or Lose It
How totally bizarre. This is how the Greek government has decided to fight back against online gambling.
See the CNET story by Matt Loney and Rupert Goodwins:
In Greece, use a Game Boy, go to jail.
The law applies equally to visitors from abroad: "If you know these things are banned, you should not bring them in," said a commercial attachι at the Greek Embassy in London, who declined to give her name.Internet cafes will be allowed to continue to operate, providing no games-playing takes place. If a customer is found to be running any sort of game, including online chess, the cafe owner will be fined and the place closed.
This goes for visitors too!
Here's the text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-956357.html
In Greece, use a Game Boy, go to jail
By Matt Loney and Rupert Goodwins
Staff Writers, CNET News.com
September 3, 2002, 11:18 AM PT
In Greece, playing a shoot-'em-up video game could land you in jail.
The Greek government has banned all electronic games across the country, including those that run on home computers, on Game Boy-style portable consoles, and on mobile phones. Thousands of tourists in Greece are unknowingly facing heavy fines or long terms in prison for owning mobile phones or portable video games.
Greek Law Number 3037, enacted at the end of July, explicitly forbids electronic games with "electronic mechanisms and software" from public and private places, and people have already been fined tens of thousands of dollars for playing or owning games.
The law applies equally to visitors from abroad: "If you know these things are banned, you should not bring them in," said a commercial attachι at the Greek Embassy in London, who declined to give her name.
Internet cafes will be allowed to continue to operate, providing no games-playing takes place. If a customer is found to be running any sort of game, including online chess, the cafe owner will be fined and the place closed.
The Greek government introduced the law in an attempt to prevent illegal gambling. According to a report in the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, Greek police will be responsible for catching offenders, who will face fines of 5,000 to 75,000 euros (about $4,980 to $74,650) and imprisonment of one to 12 months. "The blanket ban was decided in February after the government admitted it was incapable of distinguishing innocuous video games from illegal gambling machines," the report said.
The Greek gaming community has reacted with a mixture of shock, disbelief and anger. One Web site, www.gameland.gr, has started a news service about the ban and opened a petition to protest it. In addition, it is posting English translations of the law and messages of support from around the world.
A test case is to come before the Greek courts next week, and the Greek gaming community is already planning protests in the event that the defendant is convicted.
"We are trying to organize a protest against this law," said Petros Tipis of Thessaloniki-based gaming company Reload Entertainment, which has had to cancel a gaming tournament that was to be held this week.
If the prosecution of the defendant next week is successful, said Tipis, the Greek gaming industry will take the case to the European Court.
In the meantime, Tipis told ZDNet UK, a lot of people in Greece are very worried about the new law. "They are taking it very seriously," he said. "It even affects the games that come with Windows. This law isn't the right one," he added. "It is unfair. It was introduced too quickly."
Reload's tournament, which was to be held Fridah, was a qualifier for the CPL Oslo 2002 gaming tournament. "Now we are trying not to lose the two slots we were given from CPL for the tournament," Tipis said. "This was the first time for a qualifier (for this tournament) in Greece."
ZDNet UK's Rupert Goodwins and Matt Loney reported from London.
Update June 24, 2003. The RAVE Act passed earlier this year when it was attached to the AMBER alert bill. Here's an explanation about how the bill passed and what's taken place as a result since then from the Drug Policy Alliance.
Here's a summary
and further analysis of the RAVE Bill by the Drug Policy Alliance.
Yikes! It's even worse than I thought!
The language of this RAVE Bill would make any citizen throwing a party liable for any drug use an ambiguously-defined general vacinity. We're talking jail time here for someone else's illegal activity that you had no knowledge of whatsoever.
It basically puts RAVEs under the juristiction of crack houses. As if, by definition, they were places used for the sale and manufacture of drugs.
Just the fact that "chill rooms" are cause for suspicion at a dancing venue is quite disturbing. What's suspicious about getting hot and wanting to sit down and "chill" for a while after dancing to some great music. Dancing is a healthy activity that should be encouraged, not persecuted.
Here's the full text:
http://www.drugpolicy.org/action/RaveBill.html
Proposed Law Could Subject You to 20 Years in Prison
The Senate is poised to pass legislation that would give federal prosecutors new powers to shut down RAVEs, hemp festivals, marijuana rallies and other events and punish business owners and activists for hosting or promoting them. Because of its broad language, the proposed law would also potentially subject people to enormous federal sentences if some of their guests smoked marijuana at their party or barbecue. It would also effectively make it a federal crime to rent property to medical marijuana patients and their caregivers.
Stop the Senate From Banning Marijuana Rallies and Other Events: Take Action Now!
The bill, known as the Reducing American's Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act (RAVE Act), was just introduced in the Senate on June 18th and has already passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is moving VERY rapidly and could be passed by the Senate as early as this week. While it purports to be aimed at ecstasy and other club drugs, it gives the federal government enormous power to fine and imprison supporters of marijuana legalization, even if they've never smoked marijuana.
Health advocates worry that the bill will endanger our nation's youth. If enacted, licensed and law-abiding business owners may stop hosting raves or other events that federal authorities don't like, out of fear of massive fines and prison sentences. Thus, the law would drive raves and other musical events further underground and away from public health and safety regulations. It would also discourage business owners from enacting smart harm-reduction measures to protect their customers. By insinuating that selling bottled water and offering "cool off" rooms is proof that owners and promoters know drug use is occurring at their events, this bill may make business owners too afraid to implement such harm-reduction measures, and the safety of our kids will suffer.
Read more about this bill, with an analysis by the Alliance.
***
full text of:
http://www.drugpolicy.org/action/RaveAnalysis.html
RAVE Act Analysis
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Reducing Americans Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act of 2002 (The RAVE Act)
(S. 2633)
Overview
S. 2633 (the RAVE Act) broadly expands Section 416(a) of the Controlled Substance Act (21 U.S.S. 856(a)), also known as the "crack house statute", to allow the federal government to fine or imprison businessmen and women if customers or tenants sell, use, or manufacture drugs on their premises or at their events. Just introduced in the Senate on June 18th, the RAVE Act has already passed the Senate Judiciary Committee and could be voted on under unanimous consent rules very soon.
Essentially the bill modifies two sections of the "crack house statute" to make it applicable to those who (1) knowingly open, lease, rent, use, any place either permanently or temporarily for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, or using any controlled substance, or (2) manage or control any place [building, room, or enclosure], whether permanently or temporarily, either as owner, lessee, agent, employee, occupant, or mortgagee, and knowingly and intentionally rent, lease, profit from, or make available for use, with or without compensation, the place [building, room, or enclosure] for the purpose of unlawfully manufacturing, storing, distributing, or using a controlled substance. (Bold words are additions to statute, brackets are subtractions.)
The bill also gives federal prosecutors greater power to charge people civilly, rather than criminally, and provides for declaratory or injunctive relief.
What is Wrong with the RAVE Act?
Brief: The RAVE Act unfairly punishes businessmen and women for the crimes of their customers and is unprecedented in U.S. history. The federal government can't even keep drugs out of prisons, yet it seeks to punish business owners for failing to keep people from carrying drugs onto their premises. It is a danger to innocent businessmen and women, especially restaurant and nightclub owners, concert promoters, landlords, and real estate managers. Section 4 of the bill goes so far as to allow the federal government to charge property owners civilly, thus allowing prosecutors to fine property owners $250,000 (and put them out of business) without having to meet the higher standard of proof in criminal cases that is needed to protect innocent people.
Point-by-Point
* The RAVE Act is too broadly written and could subject innocent business owners to enormous fines or prison sentences. While supporters of the bill claim that innocent business owners don't need to worry because it only applies to people that knowingly open, lease, rent, use or maintain a place for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, or using a controlled substance, "knowingly" and "for the purpose of" are too undefined to provide adequate protection to innocent businessmen and women. A nightclub owner that decides to play music at his club knows that certain young people will probably use drugs while they dance to the music. Despite good security, the owner could potentially be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars and forced into bankruptcy. Because prosecutors could charge owners civilly under this law, the standard of proof is too low to adequately protect innocent property owners. The bill's addition of the word "temporarily" undermines the very purpose of the "crack house statute" which was targeting property that was being used primarily for drug offenses, not making property owners liable for isolated actions that occur on their property, whether they are there or not.
* The bill is so broadly written that individuals could potentially face 20-year sentences for using drugs at home. As currently written, the proposed law would make it a federal crime to temporarily use a place for the purpose of using any illegal drug. Thus, anyone who used drugs in their own home or threw an event (such as a party or barbecue) in which one or more of their guests used drugs could potentially face a $500,000 fine and up to twenty years in federal prison. If the offense occurred at a hotel room or on a cruise ship, the owner of the property could also be potentially liable.
* The bill could endanger our nation's youth. If enacted, licensed and law-abiding business owners may stop hosting raves and other musical events, out of fear of massive fines and prison sentences. Thus, the RAVE Act will drive raves and other musical events further underground and away from public health and safety regulations. It would also discourage business owners from enacting important measures to protect their customers. By insinuating that selling bottled water and offering "cool off" rooms is proof that owners and promoters know drug use is occurring at their events, this bill may make business owners too afraid to implement such harm-reduction measures, and the safety of our kids will suffer.
* The bill is a dangerous threat to free speech and the right to dance. Property owners, promoters, and event coordinators could be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars or face up to twenty years in federal prison if they hold raves or other events on their property. If the bill becomes law, property owners may be too afraid to rent or lease their property to groups holding hemp festivals, all-night dance parties, rock concerts, or any other event rightly or wrongly perceived as attracting drug users (essentially any event that attracts a young crowd.)
* The bill punishes property owners that rent to people following state law. The bill effectively makes it a federal crime to rent property to medical marijuana patients and their caregivers. While those using or providing marijuana are prosecutable under federal law, this bill would make any property owner that leased or rented property to such people also liable for their offenses.
* Passage of the Senate bill would give momentum to a similar House bill (HR 3782) that is even more broadly written. That bill declares that "Whoever knowingly promotes any rave , dance, music, or other entertainment event, that takes place under circumstances where the promoter knows or reasonably ought to know that a controlled substance will be used or distributed in violation of Federal law or the law of the place were the event is held, shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned for not more than 9 years, or both." (Emphasis ours).
Here's the full text of the Bill for S 2633, as painfully obtained eventually from Thomas.loc.gov.
This bill is so totally confused about RAVE culture and what it represents, I won't even try to defend it here. RAVE culture is the newest of the music communities and so, easier to pick on. But don't be fooled. Any music community could be next -- this law could be used to disrupt any music event, not just RAVEs.
Here is the text of the painfully obtained text from thomas.loc.gov:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c107:1:./temp/~c107sg39oE::
Bill 1 of 2
There is 1 other version of this bill.
GPO's PDF version of this bill References to this bill in the Congressional Record Link to the Bill Summary & Status file. Full Display - 8,422 bytes.[Help]
RAVE Act (Introduced in Senate)
S 2633 IS
107th CONGRESS
2d Session
S. 2633
To prohibit an individual from knowingly opening, maintaining, managing, controlling, renting, leasing, making available for use, or profiting from any place for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, or using any controlled substance, and for other purposes.
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
June 18, 2002
Mr. BIDEN (for himself and Mr. GRASSLEY) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
A BILL
To prohibit an individual from knowingly opening, maintaining, managing, controlling, renting, leasing, making available for use, or profiting from any place for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, or using any controlled substance, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act of 2002' or the `RAVE Act'.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
(1) Each year tens of thousands of young people are initiated into the drug culture at `rave' parties or events (all-night, alcohol-free dance parties typically featuring loud, pounding dance music).
(2) Some raves are held in dance clubs with only a handful of people in attendance. Other raves are held at temporary venues such as warehouses, open fields, or empty buildings, with tens of thousands of people present.
(3) The trafficking and use of `club drugs', including 3, 4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (Ecstasy or MDMA), Ketamine hydrochloride (Ketamine), Flunitrazepam (Rohypnol), and Gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB), is deeply embedded in the rave culture.
(4) Many rave promoters go to great lengths to try to portray their events as alcohol-free parties that are safe places for young adults to go to dance with friends, and some even go so far as to hire off-duty, uniformed police officers to patrol outside of the venue to give parents the impression that the event is safe.
(5) Despite such efforts to convince parents that raves are safe, promotional flyers with slang terms for Ecstasy or pictures of Ecstasy pills send the opposite message to teenagers, and in effect promote Ecstasy along with the rave. According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, raves have become little more than a way to exploit American youth.
(6) Because rave promoters know that Ecstasy causes the body temperature in a user to rise and as a result causes the user to become very thirsty, many rave promoters facilitate and profit from flagrant drug use at rave parties or events by selling over-priced bottles of water and charging entrance fees to `chill-rooms' where users can cool down.
(7) To enhance the effects of the drugs that patrons have ingested, rave promoters sell--
(A) neon glow sticks;
(B) massage oils;
(C) menthol nasal inhalers; and
(D) pacifiers that are used to combat the involuntary teeth clenching associated with Ecstasy.
(8) Ecstasy is the most popular of the club drugs associated with raves. Thousands of teenagers are treated for overdoses and Ecstasy-related health problems in emergency rooms each year. The Drug Abuse Warning Network reports that Ecstasy mentions in emergency visits grew 1,040 percent between 1994 and 1999.
(9) Ecstasy damages neurons in the brain which contain serotonin, the chemical responsible for mood, sleeping and eating habits, thinking processes, aggressive behavior, sexual function, and sensitivity to pain. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, this can lead to long-term brain damage that is still evident 6 to 7 years after Ecstasy use.
(10) An Ecstasy overdose is characterized by an increased heart rate, hypertension, renal failure, visual hallucinations, and overheating of the body (some Ecstasy deaths have occurred after the core body temperature of the user goes as high as 110 degrees, causing all major organ systems to shutdown and muscles to breakdown), and may cause heart attacks, strokes, and seizures.
SEC. 3. OFFENSES.
(a) IN GENERAL- Section 416(a) of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 856(a)) is amended--
(1) in paragraph (1), by striking `open or maintain any place' and inserting `open, lease, rent, use, or maintain any place, whether permanently or temporarily,'; and
(2) by striking paragraph (2) and inserting the following:
`(2) manage or control any place, whether permanently or temporarily, either as an owner, lessee, agent, employee, occupant, or mortgagee, and knowingly and intentionally rent, lease, profit from, or make available for use, with or without compensation, the place for the purpose of unlawfully manufacturing, storing, distributing, or using a controlled substance.'.
(b) TECHNICAL AMENDMENT- The heading to section 416 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 856) is amended to read as follows:
`SEC. 416. MAINTAINING DRUG-INVOLVED PREMISES.'.
(c) CONFORMING AMENDMENT- The table of contents to title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Prevention Act of 1970 is amended by striking the item relating to section 416 and inserting the following:
`Sec. 416. Maintaining drug-involved premises.'.
SEC. 4. CIVIL PENALTY AND EQUITABLE RELIEF FOR MAINTAINING DRUG-INVOLVED PREMISES.
Section 416 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 856) is amended by adding at the end the following:
`(d)(1) Any person who violates subsection (a) shall be subject to a civil penalty of not more than the greater of--
`(A) $250,000; or
`(B) 2 times the gross receipts, either known or estimated, that were derived from each violation that is attributable to the person.
`(2) If a civil penalty is calculated under paragraph (1)(B), and there is more than 1 defendant, the court may apportion the penalty between multiple violators, but each violator shall be jointly and severally liable for the civil penalty under this subsection.
`(e) Any person who violates subsection (a) shall be subject to declaratory and injunctive remedies as set forth in section 403(f).'.
SEC. 5. DECLARATORY AND INJUNCTIVE REMEDIES.
Section 403(f)(1) of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 843(f)(1)) is amended by striking `this section or section 402' and inserting `this section, section 402, or 416'.
SEC. 6. SENTENCING COMMISSION GUIDELINES.
The United States Sentencing Commission shall--
(1) review the Federal sentencing guidelines with respect to offenses involving gamma hydroxybutyric acid (GHB);
(2) consider amending the Federal sentencing guidelines to provide for increased penalties such that those penalties reflect the seriousness of offenses involving GHB and the need to deter them; and
(3) take any other action the Commission considers necessary to carry out this section.
SEC. 7. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS FOR A DEMAND REDUCTION COORDINATOR.
There is authorized to be appropriated $5,900,000 to the Drug Enforcement Administration of the Department of Justice for the hiring of a special agent in each State to serve as a Demand Reduction Coordinator.
SEC. 8. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS FOR DRUG EDUCATION.
There is authorized to be appropriated such sums as necessary to the Drug Enforcement Administration of the Department of Justice to educate youth, parents, and other interested adults about the drugs associated with raves.
You've heard me rant before about the Right to Peaceably Assemble and this importance of this right in any kind of free society.
Well, that right is coming under attack again. This time in the name of the war on drugs. Take a look at: S 2633 the "Reducing America's Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act of 2002".
There are some petitions (C.A.R.A. - Citizens Against the R.A.V.E. Act and A.A.R.A. - Americans Against the R.A.V.E. Act) and there will be a huge nation-wide demonstration (NY, LA, DC) on demonstrations on September 6, 2002.
The R.A.V.E. Act was introduced in the Senate on June 18th and passed the Senate Judiciary Committee a week later, without a public hearing or recorded vote. It has been placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar and could come up for a full Senate vote in September. A number of organizations including civil liberties groups, business associations, and groups associated with the rave community, are working to defeat the RAVE Act or amend it to better protect innocent business owners, free speech, and public health. Tens of thousands of voters have signed petitions, and faxed or called their Senators to oppose this Act. Protests in opposition to the RAVE Act will be held simultaneously in cities around the country, including a rave and protest on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol on September 6th.
Here's the full text in case the link goes bad:
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/08/30/083247.php#20020830083247
"For Immediate Release:
August 28, 2002
Music Community Unites
To Fight Unconstitutional R.A.V.E. Act:
Protests Scheduled for LA, NYC and DC on
September 6th
Los Angeles, CA - A coalition of members of the music community have come
together to protest the unconstitutional R.A.V.E act now being considered
by
the US Senate. The R.A.V.E. (Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy)
Act, bill number S.2633 would expand the federal "crackhouse" statute.
Water
Bottles, Glowsticks and chill out rooms could be classified as "drug
promotion." Business people, promoters, venue owners and even homeowners
will be liable for any drugs used on their premises.
Clearly such a sweeping change in the law requires a response. The Los
Angeles protest will take place September 6th from 3pm - 8pm on the
Northwest Lawn of the Westwood Federal Building at 11000 Wilshire Blvd.
Numerous luminaries of the LA and international DJ community including Doc
Martin, Richard Humpty Vission, Garth Trinidad, Colette, Curious, Daniel,
Kid Dragon, Freddy B and others will DJ. The event has been organized
through a coalition of organizations in LA's world renown electronic music
community including: Hi-Roller, Rock The Vote, Green Galactic, EM:DEF, V
Squared Labs, Project Sweatshop, PAS, WAX, Sound Lessons, Insomnia, Good
Stuff, Junglist Platoon, B3 Cande, eventvisuals.com, and Solid.
The R.A.V.E. Act was introduced in the Senate on June 18th and passed the
Senate Judiciary Committee a week later, without a public hearing or
recorded vote. It has been placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar and
could come up for a full Senate vote in September. A number of
organizations
including civil liberties groups, business associations, and groups
associated with the rave community, are working to defeat the RAVE Act or
amend it to better protect innocent business owners, free speech, and
public
health. Tens of thousands of voters have signed petitions, and faxed or
called their Senators to oppose this Act. Protests in opposition to the
RAVE
Act will be held simultaneously in cities around the country, including a
rave and protest on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol on September 6th.
Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) is the primary sponsor of the bill, but it is
also being co-sponsored by Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Charles Grassley
(R-IA), Richard Durbin (D-IL), and Patrick Leahy (D-VT). The R.A.V.E. Act
expands the federal "crack house statute" to make it easier for the federal
government to fine or imprison businessmen up to 20 years in federal prison
if they fail to prevent customers or tenants from selling or using drugs on
their premises or at their events. The RAVE Act increases the civil and
criminal liability that business owners and event promoters could face if
customers commit drug offenses on their property.
The RAVE Act is not just about Ecstasy and Raves. While proponents of the
RAVE Act are trying to target the electronic music community, the RAVE Act
would allow federal prosecutors to target other events, such as Rock or Hip
Hop concerts, country music events, and world music festivals. It could
apply to hotel and motel owners, cruise ship operators, stadium owners,
landlords, real estate managers, and event promoters. The bill is so
broadly
written that individuals could potentially face 20-year sentences for using
drugs at home. Anyone who used drugs in their own home or threw an event
(such as a party or barbecue) in which one or more of their guests used
drugs could potentially face a $500,000 fine and up to twenty years in
federal prison. If the offense occurred in a hotel room or on a cruise
ship,
the owner of the property could also be potentially liable.
For those unable to attend the protest in person we strongly recommend
writing (preferable), faxing or calling your Senator on September 6th. A
fax form, sample letter and senator info is available at:
http://www.emdef.org/s2633/. A link to the petition, the Drug Policy
Alliance's analysis of the bill along with the full text of the bill and
the
introductory statements for the bill from the Congressional Record are also
available at that link.
# # #
For more information please contact Susan Mainzer at Green Galactic,
323-466-5141 or susan@greengalactic.com"
See the Time Magazine article by Massimo Calabresi:
Colin Powell: Planning for an Exit.
...he has privately grown more frustrated, and now, sources close to Powell tell Time, he has a firm plan for his exit: he will step down at the end of President Bushs current term. He will have done a yeomans job of contributing over the four years, says a close aide. But thats enough. The aide says Powells view of the matter is, I did what my heart told me to do. I got (Bush) here and set him up. I did the best I could do. If Bush wins a second term, only the imminence of a major diplomatic victoryin the Middle East, for examplecould induce him to stay a short while longer. By the same token, the aide stresses that Powell is determined to serve out the entire termeven if the U.S. launches an invasion of Iraq, which Powell has fought to delay or derail.
Joey DeVilla has created an 0wnz0red Glossary to go with Cory's latest story.
Here is the entire text of the glossary, in case the link goes bad:
http://kode-fu.com/shame/2002_08_25_archive.shtml#85394171
An annotation for Cory Doctorow's "0wnz0red" (page 1)
You've read Cory Doctorow's wonderful little short story, "0wnz0red", but got lost in the jargon and hacker cultural folderol. What's a layperson to do? Well, for starters, you can read my annotation...
If you haven't seen it yet, go to Salon and read Cory Doctorow's 0wnz0red.
0wnz0red, like Cory, is steeped in the culture and lingo of the high-tech world, and just in case you got lost, you can consult my handy-dandy annotation. This is the first installment, which covers page one. It's going to take me a while to annotate it completely, as the story's a dense dwarf star of Silicon valley folderol. The terms are listed in order of their appearance, unless a supplementary definition is required.
(Special note to my programmer friends, especially Dan: this is written for non-geeks, and I may be skimming over some details. I'm going for layperson undertsanding rather than strict technical correctness here. If you feel you must, feel free to correct me in the comments.)
1337: leet, a shortening of the word elite, which means in possession of computer knowledge.
1337speak (also 13375p34k): leetspeak. Hacker slang. While its often used for speaking, 1337speak really comes into its own when used in the written medium of the Internet, where character substitution is used. For example, the character 3 looks like a backwards E (a la Eminem), so its used as a substitute for that letter. In 1337speak, the word beer becomes b33r.
haxor (also H4X0R): hacker.
X0R is often used as the suffix -er; for instance fucker becomes fuX0r in 1337speak. Often a 1337speak noun ending in X0R becomes a present tense verb when followed by s or z or a past tense verb when followed by ed. For instance, this beer sucks becomes this beer sux0rz (or, if you really want to go whole-hog, +|-|1z b33R sUx0rz.
0wnz0red: owned, which means screwed over. If someone has cracked your computers security and taken it over or beaten you in a game of Quake, that person has 0wned (or 0wnz0red) you.
It also is used to describe a computer that cracked (taken over by someone who's not supposed to), as in "Back in 2000, Mafiaboy 0wned a mess of vulnerable machines and used them attack eBay and other major Web sites."
Note that this is different from the term 0wns (owns), which means is very good or rules. An example: I love my new computer! It 0wns!
pr0n: porn. pron is a common typo that eventually got accepted as a synonym for porn; it then was made more 1337 by turning the o into a zero.
censoring proxy: a proxy is a computer that acts as a go-between between your computer and the rest of the Internet. Many offices, in an attempt to keep workers from slacking off and viewing inappropriate web sites, install web proxies that block access to these sites.
Lets say you worked in an office with one of these proxies and you were surfing the Web. Youd enter an URL into your browser, and the request for that page would go to the proxy. The proxy would then check the URL against its list of inappropriate sites. If the URL you entered was not on the list, the proxy would allow your request for the Web page out onto the Internet, and youd be able to view your page. If the URL you entered was on the list say a job search site or ratemyrack.com the proxy would not forward your request to the Internet and would simply give you a Web page saying that you werent allowed to look at such a page on company machines and company time.
CVS: Concurrent Versions System. This is software that keeps track of revisions made to documents by one or more people. One of the most important features of CVS is that it allows you to backtrack to any prior version of a document, which is incredibly useful if youve painted yourself into a corner with what youve written and would like to start from where you were a couple of days ago. Another feature of CVS is that it allows more than one person to work on the same document at the same time; it attempts to merge the changes that several people make and usually alerts you when your changes would stomp on someone elses.
You might be wondering what this has to do with programming. Programmers use programming languages to write source code, which are just documents that consist of instructions for the computer to follow. Source code is saved in CVS.
CVS is treated like a library; many people even use library terms when using it. When you want to edit some source code, you check it out of CVS, and when youre done with it, you check it in.
A piece of software called a compiler turns source code (which is understandable by humans, or at least humans who program computers) into executables (which is understood by computers). This process is called compiling. Compilers (and a good number of computer programmers, for that matter) are fussy, pedantic sons of bitches. Any slight error in the source code and they will simply refuse to compile it into an executable.
It is considered to be the mark of a bad programmer and a mortal sin to check code into CVS that doesnt compile.
Orange County: A suburb of Los Angeles. Home to a number of second- and third-generation punk (and punk-ish) and third-generation ska (and ska-ish) bands including Save Ferris, No Doubt, The Offspring, Reel Big Fish and Goldfinger, to name just a few of the better-known names.
Moores Law: The looser, layperson-friendly version of Moores Law is that computing power doubles every 18 months. The practical upshot of this is that in 18 months, you can buy a computer twice as fast with twice as much memory as you bought today.
The more strict definition of Moores Law is here.
Named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who made this observation in 1965.
Hongcouver: One of the clever names that Canadians use for Vancouver, a city on the west coast of Canada. Refers to the large number of immigrants from Hong Kong who came to Vancouver before the British lease on Hong Kong expired in 1997.
azz: ass. One of Corys favourite expressions of approval is this kicks all kinds of ass.
Fourbucks: Starbucks. A reference to how much it costs to get a coffee there.
Swedish Disposable Moderne Desque: A reference to Douglas Couplands Swedish semi-disposable furniture, which in turn is a snide reference to IKEA, official furniture supplier to Generation X. Coupland himself is a furniture designer, and oddly enough, his stuff would fit in perfectly in an IKEA showroom.
strike price: In the case of an employee who gets stock options in a company for which s/he works, the strike price is the specified share price at which s/he can sell his/her options as soon as s/hes vested (that is, s/hes owned the shares long enough and is now allowed to sell them assuming theyre worth anything, that is).
Canadian pesos: Canadian dollars, with a mocking reference to how weak it is next to the real dollar, the U.S. dollar. I used this term around Cory a lot; he may have gotten it from me.
Ah, screw it. He got it from me.
G0nzored: gone.
Fi0red: fired.
Sh17canned: 1337speak for shitcanned.
Vangroover: Another clever name that Canadians use for Vancouver. Refers to the fact that like its counterparts in the U.S., Vancouvers west coast-ness tends to attract a lot of hippies and its year-round mild climate is excellent for growing weed. Vangroovy is another oft-used variation on this theme.
Honorable Computing Initiative: A play on Microsoft's "Trusted Computing Initiative". Read more about it here.
API: Application Programming Interface. Code thats already been written that a programmer can use to work with other peoples code, whether it be a software component like QuickTime, or a whole operating system. An example: when writing a Windows program, the programmer doesnt actually have to write all the code to create a new window; s/he simply calls a pre-built piece of code in the Windows API that creates new windows.
secondment: One of Corys favourite terms. Its just a ten-dollar word for temporary reassignment.
posted by Joey deVilla at 12:46 PM Eastern Standard Time
Salon has published a brand-spanking new novella by Cory Doctorow that gives a new meaning to the term "Human Computer Interface":
The API was great, there were function calls for just about everything. He delved into the cognitive stuff right off, since it was the area that was rawest, that Liam had devoted the least effort to. At-will serotonin production. Mnemonic perfection. Endorphin production, adrenalin. Zen master on a disk. Who needs meditation and biofeedback when you can do it all in code?Out of habit, he was documenting as he went along, writing proper tutorials for the API, putting together a table of the different kinds of interaction he got with different mods. Good, clear docs, ready for printing, able to be slotted in as online help in the developer toolkit. Inspired by Joey, he began work on a routine that would replace all the maintenance chores that the platform did in sleep-mode, along with a subroutine that suppressed melatonin and all the other circadian chemicals that induced sleep.
MP3 Patent Info
Overview of MP3 Royalty Rates from Thomson Multimedia
(http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/index.html)Thomson Multimedia Developer and Manufacturer Q and A
(http://www.mp3licensing.com/help/developer.html)End User Q and A from Thomson Multimedia
(http://www.mp3licensing.com/help/enduser.html)Hardware Royalties
(http://www.mp3licensing.com/help/enduser.html)Software Royalties
(http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html)
Open Letter to Thomson Multimedia.
Thank you for setting a precedent in providing free technology until the world has become hooked on it, and then charging a lot of money afterwards. This isn't a new idea, but we're glad that you've taken a stand to ensure that this practice will continue as long as vested interests control patents on multimedia. We hope that you'll continue in this pattern with MPEG-4, since we'll be releasing a free MPEG-4 competitor next summer.
Here is the full text of the open letter in case the link goes bad:
http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/openletter.html
[ogg logo] the Xiphophorus company
August 27th, 2002
Dear Thomson Multimedia:
Thank you for removing the license-fee exemption for the release of free mp3 decoders.
Thank you for the unbelievable amount of free publicity we have received in the wake of this announcement. If it weren't for the change in mp3 licensing, there's a very real chance that the continued adoption of our open standards may have slowed down.
Thank you for presenting a reminder to people that when they choose a patented alternative over a free one, they will eventually have to pay in one way or another. It's been difficult to send this message all by ourselves; we're glad you've decided to step up to the plate and knock it out of the park.
Thank you for providing the impetus for millions of people and hundreds of companies to give an open, free alternative a try. We love it when people get a chance to evaluate technology, and we've been happy to present them with a superior alternative to mp3. If it weren't for the removal of the free-decoder exemption, it might have taken even longer for people to try it out.
Thank you for setting a precedent in providing free technology until the world has become hooked on it, and then charging a lot of money afterwards. This isn't a new idea, but we're glad that you've taken a stand to ensure that this practice will continue as long as vested interests control patents on multimedia. We hope that you'll continue in this pattern with MPEG-4, since we'll be releasing a free MPEG-4 competitor next summer.
Also, with all of the tech-trade brouhaha over your decision, we're certain that people will continue to donate to our fine organization, in the hopes that we'll continue to release open source software that out-performs proprietary alternatives. After all, with tiny donations that represent a mere fraction of your minimum royalties, we can ensure that open standards for multimedia will thrive.
Please be sure to threaten those who challenge your license fees with lawsuits and draconian collections efforts. We officially support any action you take to drive home the 'mp3 costs money' message. Thanks again, and best of luck!
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation
Hey, Slashdot and Linux and Main readers, and other assorted people of the world! Join us on IRC on #vorbis at irc.xiph.org!
OggSQUISH, Ogg Vorbis, Xiph.Org, the Xiph.Org Fish Logo, the Thor-and-the-Snake logo and the Laser-Playback-Head-of-Omniscience logo are trademarks (tm) of Xiph.Org. These pages are copyright (C) 1994-2002 Xiph.Org. All rights reserved.
Comments and questions about this web site are welcome.
Meanwhile, college webcasting continues to hang in the balance.
See CNN's: Net radio fees threaten college webcasts -
New royalty rates too steep for most school stations
For college stations and other nonprofit webcasters, the fees work out to two cents per listener per 100 songs, plus an 8.8 percent surcharge to cover temporary copies of music needed for streaming.So a station playing 12 songs an hour around the clock would owe $23 per listener each year. Averaging 21 simultaneous listeners keeps the station at the $500 annual minimum. Beyond that, the station has to pay extra.
Here's the complete text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://europe.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/08/28/college.webcasting.ap/index.html
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Net radio fees threaten college webcasts
New royalty rates too steep for most school stations
August 28, 2002 Posted: 1531 GMT
Rachel Bradley, manager of San Diego State University's KCR radio station, fears an end to her station's online broadcasting after fees were imposed by Congress.
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SAN DIEGO, California (AP) -- The signal from San Diego State University's KCR station is so weak it can barely be heard on campus -- if at all. Yet for the past six years its eclectic programming has reached the entire world.
"The Internet has been a vital part of our broadcasting," said Rachel Bradley, 23, a graduate student and the station's general manager. "It seems to be our lifeline to be an actual, viable radio station."
KCR and many other college stations fear they'll have to give up their newfound "antenna" by year's end because of new webcasting fees.
For listeners, this could mean being cut off from most of the nation's 1,300 college radio stations, which operate on small budgets and play music not heard on commercial radio.
In June, the U.S. Copyright Office issued rates for royalties that webcasters must pay music labels and musicians for sound recordings. The minimum is $500 a year but fees are retroactive to 1998, and many college station's simply can't afford the assessments of at least $2,000.
"Within days I was receiving e-mails from radio stations saying, 'We're going down. You can add another station to your list,'" said Will Robedee, vice chairman of Collegiate Broadcasters Inc.
Stations that have already halted or suspended webcasting include University of California-Los Angeles Radio, KBVR at Oregon State University and New York University's WNYU.
"We didn't want to be liable for any of these huge fees that would cripple us or threaten our existence," said Gabriel Mousesyan, an economics major and general manager of WNYU, which killed its four-year-old webcast in April.
Down to the penny
For college stations and other nonprofit webcasters, the fees work out to two cents per listener per 100 songs, plus an 8.8 percent surcharge to cover temporary copies of music needed for streaming.
So a station playing 12 songs an hour around the clock would owe $23 per listener each year. Averaging 21 simultaneous listeners keeps the station at the $500 annual minimum. Beyond that, the station has to pay extra.
New online royalty rates have strained the budgets of many college stations, such as Gabriel Mousesyan's WNYU, putting the webcasts' future in doubt.
WNYU averaged about 100 listeners, which could result in retroactive fees of more than $9,000. John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange -- a collector and distributor of royalty revenue -- said he would be surprised if more than a few college stations exceeded the minimum.
Robedee, who also acts as the general manager for KTRU at Rice University, said the station averages just under 20 listeners at any one time.
However, KTRU's audience has been doubling every 10 months as use of the high-speed Internet connections needed to listen to Webcasts increases.
Because most college radio stations are classified as noncommercial, they cannot run ads to offset the additional costs. San Diego's KCR operates on a $3,500 annual budget -- a budget it spends down to the penny.
KTRU has a budget of $5,000.
Should stations change their status to commercial, their royalties would more than triple. Commercial broadcasters pay seven cents per 100 songs per listener, and they, too, have been complaining and, in some cases, shutting down.
Webcasters and over-the-air radio stations already pay composers and music publishers royalties for the music they play, based typically on a percentage of their revenues.
Traditional radio broadcasters have been exempt from paying separate royalties to music labels and musicians after successfully arguing they already were promoting the music.
But the music industry succeeded in persuading Congress in 1998 to require such fees from webcasters, and the U.S. Copyright Office set the rates after years of hearings.
Copyright compensation
The Recording Industry Association of America says the fees are needed to compensate copyright holders. The music industry is looking to the Internet as a source of supplemental income so it will not have to live and die by the sale of CDs, Simson said.
"The Internet has been a vital part of our broadcasting. ... It seems to be our lifeline to be an actual, viable radio station."
Rachel Bradley,
KCR general manager
He added that there is no evidence to support broadcaster assertions that webcasting has promotional value. He said artists and copyright holders lose money every time their music is played for free.
Wayne Coyne -- singer, songwriter and guitarist for The Flaming Lips, a college radio favorite -- agrees the promotional value is marginal. But he does not believe college stations should be charged.
"I have faith that people love to shop," Coyne said.
Simson said he is willing to work on a separate deal with college stations. He denied the new fees were intended to curtail webcasting and said the RIAA and SoundExchange wanted the new medium to continue.
"This is a great new revenue stream," Simson said.
College broadcasters also fear yet-to-be-released record-keeping requirements; the Copyright Office is expected to rule soon on what information broadcasters must report about every song they play.
Stations say if the royalties do not shut them down, the administrative costs associated with the reporting requirements will.
"We are a nonprofit radio station on a college campus, so your options for funding are very limited," Bradley said. "How many bake sales can you do, and how many bowling fund-raisers can you have to offset the costs?"
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
