I had a great time guest co-hosting with RU Sirius and Jeff Diehl on this week's RU Sirius show. (MP3 - 26 MB)

We talked about election fraud (what a surprise) and interviewed Dan the Automator (Dan's myspace page).

Photos are forthcoming, but I hate to hold up posting for anything these days, because I seem to never get back to it...

Due to an unexpected hosting emergency, my Songs From The Commons podcasts were down for a week or so.

They're back up now on the Mondoglobo site, and hopefully the blog part of it will be back soon too.

I've created my own archive that will always be available here as a backup too.

I have show 16 in the works. All this other stuff has kinda taken over lately, but I'll try to wrap it up this weekend.

This show features great stuff from indieish.com as well as some great stuff from CC Mixter's Copyright Criminals contest. (Note that I had previously linked to indyish.com by mistake - but it turns out they're another great resource for Indy artists, so you should still check them out.)

All the info, with direct links to all media, is available on the website:

Songs From the Commons - Show 15

The next show will be July 17th! Thanks for being so patient guys!

I think my equipment's ok now, so I'll be cutting together my next podcast over the weekend.

Send me your favorite tracks and I promise I'll play them on the show.

Just email me at lisa@lisarein.com.

Thanks!

Show 14

These will start to be more regular now. Sorry for the hold up!

Wow. I can't believe I never posted my
Songs From The Commons show (#12). (Let's just say I'm busier than I think I've ever been in my entire life, doubled. )

But still. How could I have forgotten to tell you about it, after all that work? It took me a long time and I remember feeling good about it when it was done, although right now I'm consumed by too many things to remember why...

Oh yeah, it has my remix of Mc Jack In The Box's remix of Brad Sucks in it, for one thing. I was also pleased with how well Cindy Sheehan and friends' protesting at the UN was adapted to a beat.

The subject is recent developments in Creative Commons search tools:

1. http://creativecommons.org/find/

The CC folks threw a user interface on top of the google and yahoo searches.
It's also a great place to see a lot of great CC repositories all in one place.

2. Flickr's Creative Commons Page

http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

Browse by license on this popular photography site.

3. Google's Advanced search feature:

http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en

Across from the heading "Usage Rights," you will wee a drop down selector.

Finally finished my latest
Songs From The Commons #11.

This one includes a Colin Powell WMD Hoax remix of Ashwan's
Borrow and Take 2, courtesy of yours truly. It's not available yet as a single on CC Mixter, but it will be soon.

It also has a cool remix by MC Jack In The Box of the Brad Sucks source files for "Work Out Fine."

I'm really starting to dig doing these shows.

I'm also writing a lot of my own music lately, and can't wait to finish my Masters in April, so I can get on with recording it...

The Colin Powell WMD Hoax files are from a NOW show that aired 2/3/06 - Video files and MP3s are located here.
A proper blog post is forthcoming...

I've been so busy I forgot to let you know that I put up a new show last week:
Show 10

This one features a new track from cdk and a vocal remix I created of hepepe's "Byrd of Cool."

Hope you like it!

Just went up today.

episode 9.

This went up Tuesday, Dec 13, 2005.
Songs From The Commons #8
Lots of great music from teru's website -- including a mix from teru himself of a mashup of two other remixes.

This One’s For Tookie Williams

No Business As Usual This Show - A Man Imprisoned by the State of California Has Been Put To Death By that same state, and I just want to take a moment to think about it.

It happened around 12:30 am this morning- Dec 13, 2006. I don’t like to be reminded that we’re living in a police state, but things like state-sanctioned executions make it all too crystal clear.

Will we find out months or years from now that Tookie was innocent? We’re learning that innocent people are convicted all the time. It could happen to you or me, but research has proven definitively that it’s much more likely to happen to you if your an african american male.

And what if he was guilty after all? Is he arguably rehabilitated? Or is rehabilitation just a lie?

However you slice it, it leaves me sad. And thinking.

Whether you’re for or against the death penalty, I think you will agree that it’s important that we all think long and hard about what happened today.

This show just went up today:
Why Grokster Shouldn't Be Any More Responsible For When It Is Misused Than Smith And Wesson

As always there is a vocal and music only version available...

Update 12/5/05 3:16pm - I had a link to my old show until now. so sorry about that!

Here's the w/vocals version and the music only version.

This show takes a shot at explaining the similarities between the landmark Universal vs. Sony (Betamax) case of 1984 and the current MGM vs. Grokster case that went in front of the Supreme Court last summer.

I only touch upon it briefly in my show. There's a more complete explanation on the website.

Songs From The Commons #6

The point then, and now, is that, historically, in this country, we choose to criminalize the misuse of a technology, rather than criminalizing the technology itself. Guns, for example, are only made for killing. Killing and maybe target practice. It's what they do. Depending on the circumstances surrounding when the killing takes place, such killing is legal or not. But do we hold gun manufacturers responsible for when gun technology is misused? Of course not. The concept is comical. In fact, legislation was recently passed to protect gun manufacturers from such liability. According to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, even President Bush "believes that the manufacturer of a legal product should not be held liable for the criminal misuse of that product by others."

Unfortunately, when the Supreme's had a chance to decide MGM vs. Grokster on these grounds, it chose to do something else - to avoid these issues entirely, and create a new kind of indirect infringement: active inducement. Active Inducement takes place if someone intends to make another person infringe and then takes active steps to encourage it.

The court basically said there were two types before (contributory and vicarious) and now there's a new, third kind, called "inducement." That's what the court sent back to the Central District of California Court (9th Circuit) to determine if the defendants were actively inducing infringement.

So there used to be just two kinds of "indirect" infringement, vicarious and contributory.
"Vicarious" is when you're supervising people and making money from it, like at the Flea Market, if the owners of the Flea Market knew that stolen goods were being sold there. (A CA court ruled that Napster did this.)

"Contributory" infringement is where you're supplying the means with knowledge that it will be used illegally. Like if I rented a bunch of CD burners to a bootleger and knew what he was going to do with them. Now, after Grokster, there's a third, where I intend to make you infringe and take active steps to encourage it. That's the test laid out by the decision...

Note: Although there was a development last week in MGM vs. Grokster, where Grokster settled, agreed to shut down, and agreed to pay $59 million in damages, Grokster was not the only named defendant in the case. StreamCast, Sharman Networks (distributor of Kazaa), and the founders of Kazaa are still in litigation.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.mondoglobo.net/thecommons/?p=11

A Better Introduction to Grokster - A Modern Day Sony Betamax Case

In this week's installation of The Grokster Chronicles, I will explain how the Grokster case is really just a modern day revisiting of the principles of the historical Betamax case. The "Betamax" case refers to Universal vs. Sony, in which the Supreme Court decided that a company was not liable for creating a technology that some customers may use for copyright infringing purposes, so long as the technology is capable of substantial non-infringing uses. Said another way, the court decided that, when a technology has many uses, the public cannot be denied the lawful uses just because some (or many or most) may use the product to infringe copyrights.

{{{MP3}}}

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The court weighed the substantially positive noninfringing fair use right of a family being able to timeshift a program and watch it together later against the potential misuse of a person making 300 copies of the television program and selling them (piracy). Keeping this definition in mind, it becomes easier to understand how such judgements clearly apply to the Grokster case. Within the millions of files traded over a Kazaa-based P2P network, some infringe, while others clearly do not.

The point then, and now, is that, historically, in this country, we choose to criminalize the misuse of a technology, rather than criminalizing the technology itself. Guns, for example, are only made for killing. Killing and maybe target practice. It's what they do. Depending on the circumstances surrounding when the killing takes place, such killing is legal or not. But do we hold gun manufacturers responsible for when gun technology is misused? Of course not. The concept is comical. In fact, legislation was recently passed to protect gun manufacturers from such liability. According to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, even President Bush "believes that the manufacturer of a legal product should not be held liable for the criminal misuse of that product by others."

Unfortunately, when the Supreme's had a chance to decide MGM vs. Grokster on these grounds, it chose to do something else - to avoid these issues entirely, and create a new kind of indirect infringement: active inducement. Active Inducement takes place if someone intends to make another person infringe and then takes active steps to encourage it.

The court basically said there were two types before (contributory and vicarious) and now there's a new, third kind, called "inducement." That's what the court sent back to the Central District of California Court (9th Circuit) to determine if the defendants were actively inducing infringement.

So there used to be just two kinds of "indirect" infringement, vicarious and contributory.
"Vicarious" is when you're supervising people and making money from it, like at the Flea Market, if the owners of the Flea Market knew that stolen goods were being sold there. (A CA court ruled that Napster did this.)

"Contributory" infringement is where you're supplying the means with knowledge that it will be used illegally. Like if I rented a bunch of CD burners to a bootleger and knew what he was going to do with them. Now, after Grokster, there's a third, where I intend to make you infringe and take active steps to encourage it. That's the test laid out by the decision.

The trouble with the supremes defining a new type of indirect infringement is that it leaves the questions of "vicarious" and "contributory" infringement wide open, as well as the test of "substantial non-infringing uses" given to us in the Betamax decision. (So no one knows what the rule would have been on those.)

The opinion also contained two "concurrences." What are concurrences? Well, in a formal ruling, there is a majority opinion which lays down the law. It includes what is called a "holding" -- what the court held the law to be. Then there are secondary opinions included in the ruling when judges want to add commentary. They are either "concurrences" (which agree with the holding but perhaps for different or additional reasons) or "dissents" (which disagree with the holding and reasoning of the majority).

Typically, with concurrences, they are sections that the majority didn't support. In Grokster, you had the majority 9-0 but each concurrence only had 3 votes. If either had gotten 5 votes, it would have been part of the majority. Although these two concurrences conflict with each other, the judges writing them agreed generally on the opinion (unanimously in fact).

So, for the two concurrences that received three votes each, one said that the Sony Betamax test of "substantial non-infringing uses" was more than satisfied. The other said that Sony should be revisited and overturned.

So you may say "well, it would certainly be hard to prove that, until you look at the decision a bit closer. In Grokster, the supreme court said that even using the name "-ster" as in Grokster showed intent to induce infringement, because it was similar to Napster.

The tech community knows that "ster" doesn't have this kind of meaning at all. It's more like a name for doing fun things -- Friendster, a social network and Feedster, and RSS syndication feed service, certainly have nothing to do with contributory copyright infringement. Google's Gmail even uses "ster" as their default name suggestion when someone tries to get an email address and their name on its own is taken, rather than applying a number to the end.

This kind of confusion about technology and computer culture means it will be easier to sue companies and imply that they are encouraging people. Then its costly to defend -- because you're going to have to go to trial every time, costing you millions. You may win eventually, but who cares by then, because you're out of business.

And what does this mean to the average consumer? It means that you're not going to get as much new cool technology, and when you do get it, it's going to cost you more because of the added legal risks now associated with software development in general.

Note: Although there was a development last week in MGM vs. Grokster, where Grokster settled, agreed to shut down, and agreed to pay $59 million in damages, Grokster was not the only named defendant in the case. StreamCast, Sharman Networks (distributor of Kazaa), and the founders of Kazaa are still in litigation.

Special Thanks to Jason Schultz at the EFF for double checking the technical accuracy of my legal analysis.

Songs
1.
Slipping Away v. 2.0 Studio
by Lisa Rein.

http://www.lisarein.com/slippingaway2.0.html

Available under an Attribution 1.0:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/

2.
one moment (cdk play it cool mix)
by cdk
http://ccmixter.org/media/files/cdk/2884

Available under the: Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike v 2.5 license:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/

uses samples from:
midnight bliss dub samples by cdk
Moment of Green by Antony Raijekov
Blues and misc by Burnshee Thornside

3.
"Wake Up" from The Time is Now
by Inna Crisis
http://www.jamendo.com/album/352/
Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike v. 2.0:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

4. Theme Song to this show - “Unison” by dissent - from the upcoming Primal Deconstruction CD/LP. The track and an in has been pre-released by Wide Hive Records under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-No Derivs license. http://www.widehive.com/unison.html

5.
Patrick Fitzgerald Announcing the Scooter Libby Indictments
Scoop

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0510/S00315.htm

My archive of it lives here:

Resources

1. EFF's page on the Grokster case:
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/MGM_v_Grokster/

2. EFF's page on the Betamax case:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/betamax/

3.
Shoot someone? Not Smith & Wesson's fault. Copy a movie? Grokster's fault.
by RadicalRuss for the Daily Kos.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/26/2160/13925

I just uploaded my fifth SFTC podcast.

This show features tracks from Wired's Creative Commons CD DJ Dolores, Dan The Automator, The Beastie Beastie Boys, and Thievery Corporation. Everything is available under CC's Sampling Plus License.

More music, less talk, this show. And starting next week, all of these shows will be available in a "yapping free" format. I'm doing this because, it seems to me, that after you hear the spoken portion once or twice, you'd probably be done with it. While a music-only version can live on in your Ipod...FOREVER! (crescendo...echo...fade out...)

I just uploaded a new Songs From The Commons podcast.

Lots of great music and some basic information on Creative Commons Licenses.

Enjoy!

This is from September 22, 2005. I was interviewed on
Junket 415 -- another of Mondoglobo.net's cool podcast shows.

Here's a
direct link to the show. (My interview starts at 14:23.)

Hey! My new
Songs From The Commons podcast is up.

Please check it out :-)

My Second show is up.

Direct link to MP3

My first
Songs From The Commons show is up. Check it out.

Everything in the show (music and spoken word) is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

I'm trying to cover just the most basics of Copyright Law in these first two shows...Then we'll start talking about cases...

Hope you like it.

I'm producing a new weekly podcast for RU Sirius' new venture, Mondo Globo. The focus will be a combination of Copyright developments and Creative Commons licensed works.

I've been fishing around all the directories for good stuff, and I've found a few gems, but it's slow moving listening to every track one by one.

Then I remembered that I should ask you to send me links to CC-licensed stuff you already know is good.

Hand it over! :-)

Okay thanks,

lisa

So I've got a
Feedburner Feed up and running now. There's a link and icon at the bottom of my homepage too.

It's supposedly working.

I'm sure you guys will let me know if it's sufficient :-)

Many of you have requested a podcast of my blog. I didn't understand what a podcast was, at first, so I couldn't tell you yes or no about it. But now I get it, and it sounds like something that would be easy to produce that would be a lot of fun ad kind of be perfectly suited for my content.

This is great timing too because I was already going to put up some MP3s of my old radio shows when I was on Free Radio Berkeley in 1995. Now I can slice up the shows into my podcasts.

I never thought about it before (an mp3 version of my blog), but now I can't wait.