Good news for CD Burner company Roxio — Business is booming and the company is moving into the digital photo and video editing space. Good move — since I predict recordable DVDs will be as popular as recordable audio CDs by this time next year!

See the Businessweek article by Jane Black:

Roxio: Burning Its Way to Bigger Things?.

These days, it’s pretty rare for any company, let alone a high-tech outfit,
to raise its guidance for revenues and earnings per share. But that’s just
what Roxio (ROXI ), which makes popular CD-burning software, did on Feb. 25.
Thanks to its acquisition of Toronto software company MGI and brisk holiday
sales, revenues for fiscal 2002 (ending Mar. 30) are expected to total $142
million, up 5% from its original projection of $135 million. Earnings will
come in at 91 cents per share, up from 89 cents forecast earlier.

The fact that the digital-media sector is littered with failures makes
Roxio’s performance all the more impressive. The company, which went public
in May, 2001, has been profitable throughout its six-year history. And
analysts expect Roxio to keep growing. Its products, which include software
for CD and DVD burning, photo and video editing, and data recovery, dominate
some of the high-tech sector’s most explosive markets.

The number of CD burners will increase from 120 million in 2001 to 546
million in 2005, according to market research firm International Data Corp
(IDC). DVD burning is also expected to take off. In 2001, IDC reports just
2.4 million DVD burners were sold. By 2005, that number will be higher than
72 million, a compound annual growth rate of 135%. Those trends could
translate into big sales and even bigger profits for Roxio. With the stock
trading at around $15, as of Feb. 22, analysts say now could be a good time
to buy.

President Bush is ready to start drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Check out the Wired News article:
Bush’s Energy Plan: Let’s Drill.

Here’s a Salon interview with the plaintiffs in the Eldred vs. Ashcroft case that the Supreme Court agreed to review last week.

See:
Mickey Mouse vs. The People.

Neither Eric Eldred nor Laura Bjorklund intended to become warriors in the battle over copyright. They simply wanted to publish old books; Eldred’s Web site has hosted versions of old Nathaniel Hawthorne novels and Robert Frost poems since 1995, while Bjorklund’s tiny Massachusetts publishing company focuses on genealogy texts and out-of-print histories.

But on Oct. 27, 1998, President Clinton, urged on by a Disney Corp. mindful that its Mickey Mouse copyright was about to expire, passed a law that extended copyright protection for an additional 20 years. Eldred and Bjorklund were outraged. In their view, the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act harmed the public by retroactively taking information from the public domain and putting it back under the control of copyright holders. Corporations would benefit, but small publishers and the general public, they argued, would suffer.

Lawrence Lessig, then a law professor at Harvard, heard their call and took on the case pro bono. Eldred and Bjorklund became the first two plaintiffs in a class action suit brought against Congress itself. On Feb. 19, after nearly four years of litigation, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

At issue is whether Congress — with the constitutional authority to issue copyrights and patents “for limited times” to “promote the progress of science and useful arts” — overstepped its bounds in this case. The previous law, passed in 1978, protected an author’s work for 50 years after an author died, while works for hire — those created for a corporation, like Mickey Mouse — were protected for 75 years. The Bono Act extended both categories by two decades.

Those who favor the law argue that Congress should be allowed to determine the definition of “limited times” and that the Bono Act simply puts the U.S. on equal footing with European intellectual property laws, which offer a similar degree of protection.

Eldred and Bjorklund vehemently disagree. In their first joint interview since the Supreme Court decided to review the case, they exuberantly explained why in a conference call with Salon.

Here’s a nice article by Neil Strauss in Sunday’s New York Times on the latest battle between artists and record industry:

Behind the Grammys, Revolt in the Industry.

The major record labels depend on three things to survive: the money of fans,
the music of their artists and the support of the multinational corporations
that own them. But the labels are suddenly realizing that they can’t depend
on any of these. In the past, downturns were attributed to the cyclical
nature of the recording business. But this is the first time in recent memory
that everyone across the board

Should PayPal be proud of
their recently successful IPO or ashamed of themselved for messing with
the little guy in the process?

Whatever the situation, it’s bad enough that someone felt strong enough to start a PayPal Sucks website.

Okay, I’m ripping off BoingBoing pretty bad today…but what can I say? 🙂
(Thanks, Cory.)

Quote below from Blogger‘s own Evhead (the aforementioned “little guy“).

As of today, PayPal has lost Pyra/Blogger’s business. We’re still using them at the moment (and don’t let this stop you from sending us money ;), but will be transitioning off as soon as we can. The reason is this: Over a week ago, they put a restriction on our account, which means we can’t withdraw or send money, though we can still take it. The supposed reason for the restriction was because they found there were more than the allowed two accounts (one personal, one business) with my contact information. Never mind that two of the accounts were setup for testing purposes and never used. Never mind that they didn’t first bother to email and tell me that this is a problem and could I close some of them. (Or, wait, maybe they shouldn’t have allowed me to create them in the first place?) And never mind even that, although all these accounts have been open for months, they happen to not put on the restriction until we attempted to withdraw several thousand dollars into our bank account

Dumpster Justice. A snitch list is left on several old police computers are eventually thrown away and re-sold to the world at large via an unsuspecting dumpster diver.

See the Associated Press story:
Confidential list of Marion police informants hits streets. (Thanks, Cory.)

Here’s an article by another joker that thinks weblogs are a passing fad for people with nothing better to do.

Many weblogs are little more than the random musings of introverted souls with too much time on their hands.

Yep. That’s me in a nutshell. Introverted. Bored. (She mused randomly.)

This article reminds me of something I saw on Law and Order a couple weeks ago that caught my attention when the cops were able to use a suspect’s library records to get a search warrant for his apartment.

See:
Big Brother is watching you read,
by Christopher Dreher for Salon. (Thanks, Josh.)

Tattered Cover’s ordeal began in March 2000, when the Adams County District Attorney’s Office contacted Meskis to inform her that the Drug Enforcement Agency was planning to subpoena the store for one of her customer’s sales records. During a raid of a methamphetamine lab in a trailer park in suburban Denver, authorities had found an empty Tattered Cover shipping envelope addressed to one of the suspects in an outside trashcan, and two nearly new books, “Advanced Techniques of Clandestine Psychedelic and Amphetamine Manufacture,” by Uncle Fester, and “The Construction and Operation of Clandestine Drug Laboratories,” by Jack B. Nimble, inside the trailer. The DEA planned to strengthen its case by tying the suspect’s illegal activities to his purchases of books outlining how to make methamphetamine.

Meskis answered that such a request was a violation of First Amendment rights and said she would fight it in court. “I thought that was the end,” she recalled, “but it wasn’t.” Instead of bringing it to court, the DEA persuaded a judge to authorize a search warrant, which would be immediately executable and would bypass judicial interference. That’s how the five task-force officers wound up in her bookstore.

Meskis’ first try at quashing the warrant wasn’t as successful as she’d hoped. In October 2000, a Denver district court judge narrowed the warrant’s scope but ordered the store to turn over the information. She appealed that ruling to the Colorado Supreme Court, and on Dec. 5, 2001, lawyers from both sides presented oral arguments. The decision is expected sometime this spring.

It gives me hope to read pieces such as John Perry Barlow‘s The Crime of Sharing. Hope that such a clearly presented argument might actually start the ball rolling towards some change in the right direction.

Over the last several years, the entertainment industry has railroaded a number of laws and treaties through Washington and Geneva that are driving us rapidly toward a future in which the fruits of the mind cannot be shared. Instead they must be purchased

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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