DRM

After trials, tribulations, false starts, wearing of sack cloth and much gnashing of teeth (and the blood of one dead chicken) I have successfully moved my weblog. For the past week I have been posting only at the new location. It works as expected. All is well.

New Home page.
New primary RSS.

Most of the archives will remain here in order to preserve as many links as possible, but I ran out of disk space and had to delete some of the early ones to keep the site under 40MB. All the archives are at the new site. Eventually I will come back here and put in re-direct meta-tags for both web browsers and RSS aggregators to automagically load the new location. In the meantime, if you have subscribed to a particular Category -- i.e. Patento.absurdium -- you can re-link to it via the Category links on the left.

Many thanks to:

Mark Pilgrim for design guidance and CSS creation
Erin Clerico at Weblogger.com for site hosting and comments configuration
Brent Ashley and Matt Mower for technical assistance
the entire Userland discussion group for moral support.

(drum roll please)

Now, on with the show.......................

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

'Fair Use' Irrelvant and Improper

4:59:34 PM

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So says Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Frewing in preparations for the ElcomSoft trial. Frewing is one of the multitude of unelected public servants defending society against evil-doers who would thwart our God-given right to buy copy-protected digital media.

Major test of copyright law set to start. CNET Nov 25 2002 5:39PM ET
The first big courtroom test of a U.S. law that makes it criminal to offer software for cracking digital copyright protections should finally begin next week, after visa delays for two of the case's main players. [Moreover - IP and patents news]

Peter Chernin's Skewed Vision

8:54:55 AM

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Peter Chernin, the Fox exec who proclaimed the Internet a 'moral-free zone', prettied-up his plea for the tech crowd and made a keynote at Comdex. Chernin and his cohorts in the media industry have a seriously skewed view of the world and the people who live in it. Chernin rewrites a little history, to boot. Read Jonathan Peterson's extensive notes for more...

A solution to big media.
What happens when you blog a Fox executive? Blox

Jonathan Peterson deconstructs the comments of Fox CEO Peter Chernin in a Comdex keynote. Great stuff. Thanks for the link to David Weinberger, who adds his own astute comments.

It all comes down to the notion that programming is scarce or, at least, needs to retain the appearance of scarcity to sustain its value. In fact, if you make connections and let value flow, the investment in programming made today can be much more profitable than it is in the broadcast model.

[RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing]

» Folks the solution is simple:

Stop watching TV.

Stop going to the Movies.

Don't buy Music, Videos, Games, Books or Magazines.

Don't by a Tivo, DVD player, stereo, WEGA tv, PlayStation

In a couple of years all the media-related companies (and their dependents) will be bankrupt. It might teach these guys that they need to treat us with a little respect if they want to survive.

We won't do it of course...
[Curiouser and curiouser!]

Thursday, October 24, 2002

The Internet Is Not A Television

6:58:30 PM

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Copyright fights are not nearly so culpable in the dearth of broadband sales as the facts that it costs too much, takes too long, and God help you if you ever need support from the phone company.

I don't want to hear one more mis-informed, self-serving, obsequious politico stand up and claim that all we need is movies over the Internet to spur broadband. They should all go focus on writing laws to stop the creation of fake child pornography pictures or something. Assistant Commerce Sec'y Mehlman should go to work for the MPAA and lose the cover.

Copyright Fights Slowing Broadband Growth. Internet News Oct 24 2002 10:39AM ET
[...] Speaking on a panel discussion entitled "Pirates and Posses: The Battle Over Digital Copyright," Mehlman said, "While users are adapting broadband very rapidly and in line with reasonable expectations for a new technology, the greater availability of movies, music and games from legitimate sources will be critical to more rapid and sustained consumer adoption." [...]
"Companies clamoring every day for government help to accelerate broadband adoption can make significant strides on their own and without government mandates by working with the content community to satisfy their concerns," he said. [...] [ Source: Moreover - IP and patents news]

Wednesday, October 02, 2002

Real Numbers on Record Companies and Artists

1:23:06 AM

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I'm pleased to see some real numbers emerging on the practices the RIAA and MPAA use in dealing with artists. If they will treat heavy-hitters like Henley this way, imagine how they shaft lesser known and less powerful artists. If we could get as much media coverage on this as they want to put on P2P software I suspect the public outcry against these folks would get even louder.

Record industry defends practices to Senate. The Joint Hearing of the Senate Committee and Senate Select Committee on the Entertainment Industry is underway in LA, investigating artists' claims that the labels engage in unfair and corrupt business-practices. The first day's findings at the hearings are really quite remarkable:

By contract, artists are prohibited from showing royalty statements to third parties. Normally this would not include their mangers, lawyers, consultants, or others who could aid them in getting paid, but apparently this is not necessarily the case. Senator Kevin Murray, leading the initiative for artists' rights, claimed the that Cary Sherman, Chief Counsel for the RIAA himself, said to him in an interview, that RIAA members (the major labels) would sue any artist that broke ranks and shared information with the Committee. This claim was rejected by Sherman but supported by others in the room. Don Henley, among them, outwardly dared his record company to sue him for bringing royalty statements to the hearing. He presented his most recent royalty statement for "Hell Freezes Over," which showed the panel that even though his contract called for a no more than a 10% "reserve" on sales of records shipped, Universal Music had held back more than that for eleven pay periods (roughly under three years) and that, even though his contract calls for no free goods in Europe, they had deducted $87,000 in free goods charges to Europe.
(Thanks, Paul!) [ Source: Boing Boing Blog]

Tuesday, October 01, 2002

Berman and Coble Cry Foul

11:17:29 AM

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Repost: During the first Congressional hearing on their heinous P2P bill, Senators Berman and Coble -- the Congressional Bonnie and Clyde of Right to Read laws -- are crying foul over the media tumult they created. Some months back I made a post claiming this bill was nothing but a publicity stunt. Berman has since claimed his only goal was to start a debate on these serious issues, and now both he and Coble claim they have been unfairly treated by the media.

Copyright bill slurs are lies, say US senators. ZDNet Sep 30 2002 4:07AM ET
[...] "There have been some truly outrageous attacks," Berman said. "I never expected that anyone would challenge the underlying premise of the bill, namely that copyrighted owners should be able to use reasonable, limited measures to thwart peer-to-peer piracy". [...]

If I may be so bold, I believe this was exactly what Berman wanted, although I suspect he is genuinely a bit surprised at the negative public perception of his bill. The fact that he actually announced his bill at a meeting of the Computer and Communications Industry Association shows just how little he really understood.

[...] "I've never received such notoriety from a bill that I did not introduce," Coble said. "But if Howard Berman asked me today to co-sponsor it, I would do it again. It is our responsibility to promote efforts to reduce infringement or piracy of intellectual property."
Coble added, "Actually, Howard, when I decided to co-sponsor your bill, I thought it was relatively noncontroversial. But there are others who don't share your convictions about property rights and are currently attempting to march me into the woods for political re-education." [...]

Coble appears to know even less, and when speaking without the benefit of his aides spoon feeding him the words, makes a genuine ass of himself. This pair is the Laurel and Hardy of Intellectual Property but, sadly, are far more dangerous. They have no business making Copyright law, discussing Intellectual property in any form, or taking on themselves the responsibility of securing the creative freedom of our future. They simply have no clue except what they are told by MPAA and RIAA execs.

In typical, self-reinforcing fashion, only one person was asked to speak in criticism of the bill (there's really no need to listen to the opposing side when you already know you're right.)

[...] Gigi Sohn, president of the Public Knowledge nonprofit group, was the only opponent asked to testify. Under harsh questioning from the panel, Sohn stressed that she was not a copyright abolitionist and believed that there was a role for government in punishing widespread infringement. [...] [ Source: Moreover - IP and patents news]