Lawrence Lessig was a bit upset yesterday at the prospect of Starbucks not allowing pictures to be taken inside of their stores.
I wonder what would happen if hundreds of people from around the country experimented this holiday weekend by taking pictures at their local Starbucks
From the “we say ‘rip mix burn’ but we don’t really mean it” department.
It’s like Apple saying “when we gave you a telephone connectivity kit, we thought you were only going to call these kinds of people on these kinds of phones — not these other people. Why would you want to use a phone to talk to them? We only wanted you to talk to these kinds of people who are using these kinds of our phones (which we would also like you to buy please).”
“Don’t you see. Although it feels like you’re using your phone to talk to who you want and get the information you need, you’re talking to the wrong people on the wrong kinds of phones (although we also manufacture and distribute the phones you’d like to converse with).”
“Look we have our reasons, ok? So you’d better just give your phone-making kit back! And don’t try anything funny — like making your own phone kit.
We’ll tell you who to talk to and what for from this point on. Got it buddy?”
Here Apple — now you can put this in your pipe and smoke it:
Developer to revive iTunes file-sharing
By Matthew Broersma, Special to CNET News.com.
The developer of a peer-to-peer file-sharing plug-in for
Apple Computer’s iTunes music application has decided
to give the software a new lease on life, after it was put
out of commission by the computer maker’s lawyers
earlier this month.
Two weeks ago, Apple ordered developer James Speth
to return his iTunes software developer kit and to stop
distributing the iCommune plug-in for iTunes. The plug-in
allowed iTunes to play or download music from other Macs
via a network or Internet connection, potentially giving
the music player a peer-to-peer feature.
In a recent message sent to iCommune users, Speth
said that he will honor, Apple’s request to stop
distributing his software, but he will build the same
features into a standalone application. The next
version of iCommune will work with iTunes and
potentially other digital music players and will use
Rendezvous, Apple’s implementation of a protocol
for automatic discovery of network-connected devices.
Speth also said that the new version will be open
source under the General Public License, the
same license used by the GNU/Linux operating system.
Open-source software can be freely modified and
redistributed, as long as the modified code is
returned to the community…
Apple itself has publicly demonstrated the use
of Rendezvous to allow iTunes to access other
\playlists across a network, but has given no
indication of when such a version of iTunes
might appear. The current version 3 of the
program shares playlists with other version 3
“iLife” applications, such as iMovie, iDVD and iCal.
ICommune differs from Apple’s concept, however,
in that it enables music downloads. Services such
as Napster, Aimster, Morpheus and Kazaa have
incurred the legal wrath of the music industry for
enabling users to trade song files, which record
companies say has resulted in mass piracy and
declining CD sales.
However, Apple has said that legal fears played
no part in its decision to pull the plug on iCommune.
The proprietary iTunes software developer kit used by
Speth was intended only for making iTunes connect
to hardware devices, not to other Macs, according to Apple.
Holy cow! Michael Powell got a TIVO and he loves it!
Now he can understand the true joy the modern Consumer can achieve while exercising their fair use and first sale rights.
FCC’s Powell declares TiVo ‘God’s machine’
By Jim Krane for the Las Vegas Associate Press.
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is a new convert — to the personal digital video recorder faithful.
“My favorite product that I got for Christmas is TiVo,” FCC chairman Michael Powell said during a question and answer session at the International Consumer Electronics Show. “TiVo is God’s machine.”
If Powell’s enthusiasm for digital recordings of TV broadcasts are reflected in FCC rulings, the entertainment industry could find it difficult to push in Washington its agenda for technical restrictions on making and sharing such recordings.
Powell said he intended to use the TiVo machine to record TV shows to play on other television sets in his home, and even suggested that he might share recordings with his sister if she were to miss a favorite show.
“I’d like to move it to other TVs,” he said of his digitally recorded programming. A number of products already allow that…
Powell said the FCC was examining the broadcast flag issue to determine whether the agency has a regulatory role. He suggested that Congress might “assign us a role so we have clear jurisdiction and resources to do it.”
Powell said he understood the needs to balance consumers’ fair use rights to make personal copies of television shows with Hollywood’s fears that TiVo-like technology allows exact copies to be made and easily sent over the Internet.
Right on schedule!
I got this press release today:
Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act Re-Introduced
The bill addresses two key provisions of the 1998 law which prohibit the circumvention of a technical protection measure guarding access to a copyrighted work even if the purpose of the circumvention is to exercise consumer Fair Use rights. The bill re-introduced this week would limit the scope of the prohibition to circumvention for the purpose of copyright infringement. Circumvention for the purpose of exercising Fair Use rights would be permitted under the legislation…
The bill also amends the provisions of the 1998 law which prohibit the manufacture, distribution or sale of technology which enables circumvention of the protection measures. Under the current law, trafficking in those technologies is a crime if the technology was primarily designed to be used for copyright infringement. Claiming that this legal standard is too subjective to give manufacturers confidence to introduce new products, the legislation would instead focus on whether or not the technology had substantial non-infringing uses. If the technology is capable of substantial non-infringing use, the manufacture, distribution, and sale of the product would be lawful under the bill they have sponsored…
Supporters of the Digital Media Consumers Rights Act include Intel, Verizon, Philips Electronics North America Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Gateway, the Consumer Electronics Association, Computer and Communications Industry Association, the Association for Computing Machinery, the Computer Research Association and a variety of trade associations representing technology companies, the American Library Association, the American Association of Universities, the National Humanities Alliance, the Digital Future Coalition, the Consumers Union, the Home Recording Rights Coalition, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, the National Writers Union and other organizations representing the public interest and the consumers of digital media.
How nice to see during this current frenzy of copyright vigilantism.
Students Learning to Evade Moves to Protect Media Files
By Amy Harmon for the NY Times.
Nor does Cornell consider the trading of copyrighted music files to be among the more serious infractions. Students are typically required to perform a few hours of community service.
“It’s theft and you’re not supposed to steal, but this is different from someone engaging in credit card scams or breaking into a building to steal a computer,” Ms. Grant said. “We’re not in the business of trying to punish a student; we want them to learn from their mistake.”
Indeed, the push from copyright holders for universities to police their networks has raised questions in the academic world about how to instill students with a sense of morality
I’ll be writing more about the process of converting these documents soon so that more of you can start making your own relevant legal documents more web accessible.
For the time being, suffice to say that I expect to be converting a ton of legal documents from this day forward — in order to make the information they contain more accessible to the consumers that need to know about it.
I’ve created two different kinds of HTML version: one preserving the “navigation” of the PDF file and one in a single HTML “plain” file for printing, but with the page numbers clearly marked and consistent with the page numbers of the PDF versions.
Microsoft Anti-Trust Case: Final Documents Converted to Web-friendly formats
I’m creating text versions of these documents — but it’s a busy afternoon so they might not all be done till din-din time Saturday morning Sunday afternoon…
Here’s a link to web-friendly versions of all of the PDF documents listed below.
Final Decree
(http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/Opinions/2002/Kotelly/FinalDecree.pdf)
Memorandum Opinion
(http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/Opinions/2002/Kotelly/Lit11-1.pdf)
Public Interest Order
(http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/Opinions/2002/Kotelly/PubIntOrd.pdf)
Opinion on the State Settlement
(http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/Opinions/2002/Kotelly/StateSettlement.pdf)
State Settlement Order
(http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/Opinions/2002/Kotelly/Statesord.pdf)
I haven’t had time to positively determine for myself if this is good news or bad news yet, but at first glance, it sure seems like a bad idea to put Digital Radio in the hands of a single company.
See the USA Today story on it:
FCC approves plan for radio stations to go digital
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.