Darknet

Brewster Kahle gets FBI to back off

SF Chronicle: Internet Archive gets FBI to back off. Excerpt:

The FBI document, called a national security letter, told [Internet Archive founder Brewster] Kahle he could be prosecuted if he discussed the subject with anyone but his lawyers, and allowed him to speak with his attorneys only in person. ...

Kahle's case is one of only two other instances in which a national security letter has been challenged, his lawyers said Wednesday.

"National security letters allow the FBI to demand extremely sensitive personal information about innocent people, in total secrecy and without meaningful judicial review," said American Civil Liberties Union attorney Melissa Goodman.

"The big question is, How many other improper (letters) have been issued by the FBI and never challenged?" said attorney Marcia Hofmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. ...

May 8, 2008 at 09:32 PM in Free culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Apple to begin selling movies on release date

San Jose Mercury News: Apple to begin selling movies on release date. Excerpt:

[On Apple's iTunes], new releases will sell for $14.99, while most catalog offerings are priced at $9.99. The movies can be viewed on video iPods, iPhones and computers, as well as a widescreen TV connected to an Apple TV. People who purchase a movie through iTunes can play it as many times as they like, just like a DVD. ...

We've been waiting for this for years -- a new wrinkle in Hollywood's film release system. Leave it to Apple to nudge the studios into serving the early adopters.

May 2, 2008 at 10:26 PM in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Scanning a million books page by page for Google

Associated Press: Scanning a million books page by page for Google.

April 27, 2008 at 10:00 PM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Remix culture video contest

Owen Gallagher, Creative Director of TotalRecut.com, passes along word of a remix contest that I'll be a judge in:

TotalRecut.com is hosting a Video Remix Challenge over the next two months and we want you to create a short video using the theme: 'What is Remix Culture?' You can you use any footage you can find, including Public Domain and Creative Commons work, but the finished video cannot be longer than 3 minutes or shorter than 30 seconds long.

The prizes include a laptop computer loaded with video editing and conversion software, a digital camcorder, a digital media player, as well as Special Edition Total Recut T-Shirts, books, DVDs and CDs. We have an amazing lineup of judges for the contest including Lawrence Lessig, Henry Jenkins, Kembrew McLeod, Pat Aufderheide, JD Lasica and Mark Hosler. You can find out more information at: http://www.totalrecut.com/contest1.php.

Entries will be accepted from May 1 until June 2 when public voting will begin. The best 10 videos at the end of the 2-week voting period will be put forward into the final, where they will be voted on by the judging panel. The winners will be announced around the 1st of July. So get busy making those videos!

Here's a link to the YouTube promotional video for the contest.

April 27, 2008 at 09:50 PM in Remixes | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Hollywood and Silicon Valley try again to bridge their divide

NY Times: Hollywood and Silicon Valley try again to bridge their divide.

A story that Dan Scheinman, a senior vice president at Cisco Systems in San Jose, Calif., likes to tell illustrates the cultural divide between Hollywood and his Silicon Valley.

Last year he met with an affluent film producer who marveled at the extraordinary riches afforded Google executives. Mr. Scheinman told him that most got wealthy accepting stock options instead of million-dollar salaries. When Mr. Scheinman asked if the producer would ever accept equity instead of cash if they worked together, the moviemaker sniffed.

“I fly a G4,” he told Mr. Scheinman, referring to the Gulfstream jet he owned. “How far do you think my G4 will go on stock options? I need cash.”

Only 350 miles separate the two California business cultures, and executives are once more trying to bridge the gap between technology and entertainment. But media moguls and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs working together again has all the familiarity of a late-night rerun.  ...

April 14, 2008 at 02:10 PM in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Net Neutrality and network control

NY Times: Beware the New New Thing.

Recently, the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust task force invited me to be the lead witness for its hearing on “net neutrality.” I’ve collaborated with the Future of Music Coalition, and my band, OK Go, has been among the first to find real success on the Internet — our songs and videos have been streamed and downloaded hundreds of millions of times (orders of magnitude above our CD sales) — so the committee thought I’d make a decent spokesman for up-and-coming musicians in this new era of digital pandemonium.

I’m flattered, of course, but it makes you wonder if Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner sit around arguing who was listening to Vampire Weekend first.

If you haven’t been following the debate on net neutrality, you’re not alone. The details of the issue can lead into realms where only tech geeks and policy wonks dare to tread, but at root there’s a pretty simple question: How much control should network operators be allowed to have over the information on their lines? ...

April 5, 2008 at 09:15 PM in Washington & public policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Legal Frontiers in Digital Media

The Media Law Resource Center, Stanford Publishing Courses and Stanford Law School Center for Internet & Society present Legal Frontiers in Digital Media, a conference on the emerging legal issues surrounding digital publishing and content distribution.

When: Thursday & Friday, May 15 & 16, 2008
Where: Stanford University
Details: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/5686
Register: http://publishingcourses.stanford.edu/legal-frontiers/

April 2, 2008 at 12:47 AM in Digital rights & copyright | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Tech-savvy rally for access to Net

Washington Post via San Jose Merc: Tech-savvy rally for access to Net.

Bearing video cameras, laptops and cell phones, a small army of young activists flooded into a recent federal meeting in protest.

Members of public-interest group Free Press weren't there to support a presidential candidate or decry global warming. The tech-savvy hundreds went to the Federal Communications Commission's hearing at Harvard Law School last month to push new rules for the Internet.

For the first time, Congress and the FCC are debating wide-reaching Web regulations and policies that would determine how much control cable and telecommunications companies would have over the Internet. The issue has given rise to a new political constituency raised on text messaging and social networking and relies on e-mail blasts and online video clips in its advocacy.

Although Free Press has generated buzz for its aggressive and sometimes controversial tactics online, its ringleader in Washington is an unlikely crusader. A soft-spoken 30-year-old doctoral candidate, Ben Scott has become an operator in multibillion-dollar battles involving corporate titans, regulators and consumers debating policies over who controls the media and the Internet.

"There have been policy moments in the past when the market has been shaped by decisions made in Washington - radio in the 1930s, television in the 1950s and cable in the 1980s. That moment is now for the Internet," said Scott, who runs a nine-member office. ...

March 29, 2008 at 11:39 PM in Washington & public policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Net Neutrality: Where do we go from here?

Ethan Strimling wants your input and feedback on Net Neutrality: Where Do We Go From Here?

March 29, 2008 at 10:00 PM in Washington & public policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Tell the FCC to keep speech free

From Public Knowledge today: Tell the FCC to Protect Text Messaging and Keep Speech Free.

This past September, Verizon blocked its customers from receiving NARAL Pro-Choice America action alert text messages—messages that Verizon’s customers asked to receive.

After the New York Times exposed Verizon, the wireless provider backed down, but only after making it clear that Verizon believes it’s entitled to decide who their customers can communicate with and what kinds of speech can reach them. NARAL may have eventually gotten its message out after the Times story, but some companies are still being blocked—companies like Rebtel which offers text-based services to make cheaper long distance and international calls using short codes (5- and 6- digit numbers used for text messages).

Verizon claims to have a new policy that won’t block political speech. Its new internal policy is not public, and Verizon asks us to trust them despite the fact that they can change it whenever they like. Tell the FCC that Verizon’s closed policies are not good enough: text messages and short codes need to be subject to nondiscrimination rules, just like phone calls are.

Explain to the FCC now how you use text messages. Tell them if you subscribe to alerts from causes you believe in, if your organization uses text messages or short codes to reach its supporters, and tell them every other way in which text messaging and freedom of speech on our phone networks are important to you.
We’ve made it easy to file your comments with the FCC. Just select the following link and fill out the comment form:

http://www.publicknowledge.org/fcccomment/protect-text-messaging

You are filing comments in WT Docket No. 08-7, Petition for Declaratory Ruling that Text Messages and Short Codes are Title II Services or are Title I Services Subject to Section 202 non-Discrimination Rules. More information from the FCC on this issue can be found here (PDF).

March 12, 2008 at 04:13 PM in Washington & public policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Is Scrabulous 'piracy'?

NY Times: Online Scrabble Craze Leaves Game Sellers at Loss for Words. The companies that own the rights to the Scrabble board game say Scrabulous, a popular online knockoff, is piracy.

March 1, 2008 at 10:21 PM in Piracy | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Judge restores Wikileaks website

NY Times: Judge Says Wikileaks Site Can Have Its Web Address Back.

A federal judge in San Francisco said on Friday that he would withdraw an order that shut down the Web address for Wikileaks.org, a site that allows anonymous posting of documents to assist “peoples of all countries who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations.” ...

February 29, 2008 at 11:18 PM in Free culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Crackdown on leaked papers backfires

Associated Press: Crackdown backfires. Leaked papers spread on Web after bank's bid to block them. Excerpt:

In federal court in San Francisco, the bank asked a judge to take down the site. Much to the outrage of free-speech advocates and others, the judge did.

But instead of the information disappearing, it rocketed through cyberspace, landing on other Web sites and Wikileaks' own "mirror" sites outside the United States. The digerati call the online phenomenon of a censorship attempt backfiring into more unwanted publicity the "Streisand effect."

Techdirt Chief Executive Mike Masnick coined the term on his popular technology blog after actress Barbra Streisand's 2003 lawsuit seeking to remove satellite photos of her Malibu house. Those photos are now easily accessible, just like the bank documents.

Masnick said the bank's lawsuit demonstrates the ineffectiveness of such legal actions in the Internet age, when anyone with a computer and online connection can thumb his nose at a judge's ruling and resurrect the "banned" information elsewhere.

"It's a perfect example of the Streisand effect," Masnick said. "This was a really small thing that no one heard about and now it's everywhere and everyone's talking about it."

The case has also become the latest anti-censorship cause celebre, drawing legal filings from the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several media organizations. Those arguments will be heard Friday when the bank presses on with its efforts to have Wikileaks permanently barred from posting the documents. ...

Sometimes, justice takes place outside the courtroom.

February 28, 2008 at 11:18 PM in Free culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Recording industry loses infringement suit

The Inquirer (via Shelly Palmer): The recording industry lost a major ruling in Atlantic v. Brennan when a federal judge in Connecticut ruled that merely making music available to other users is not evidence of copyright infringement. The judge also found that no proof of infringement was supplied by the record companies that brought the suit. With two of three findings going to the defendant, the case was thrown out.

A rare victory for common sense.

February 28, 2008 at 12:49 AM in Digital rights & copyright, Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

More teens ignore CDs in buying their tunes

San Jose Mercury News: More teens ignore CDs in buying their tunes.

February 27, 2008 at 10:58 PM in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)