Darknet

A digital rights PAC

David Weinberger:

Matt Stoller and others have started IPaction, a political action committee to preserve our right to use and remix creative works. Take a look. Then perhaps join, as I just did.

From the IPac site:

IPac is a nonpartisan group dedicated to preserving individual freedom through balanced intellectual property policy.

We believe that technological innovation and individual creativity are vital to the future of this country. We believe that a prosperous and democratic society depends on freedom for all individuals to pursue scientific invention and artistic expression. Unfortunately, new intellectual property laws threaten to stifle these freedoms and restrict public participation in science, art, and political discourse.

User-generated content: MP3.com data mining

From Derrick Oien: User Generated Content: MP3.com data mining. Excerpt:

Most content businesses are driven by people with a subjective understanding of content whose taste can discern whether or not something can be a hit. My hypothesis was that when you have a large number of people, quantitative data can be used as a proxy for subjective or qualitative measures that typically come from A&R etc.

Personalized audio on your media player

Rick Ellis at NBC13.com: 'Podcasting' Brings Personalized Audio Programs To Your Media Player. New Software Allows Users To Easily Subscribe To Audio Programs.

[A] new idea has sprung up in recent months that promises to change the way listeners view radio in much the same way that Napster changed the landscape of the music business and Tivo altered the viewing habits of millions of TV owners.

"Podcasting" is a term that is probably unfamiliar to most people, but it represents a real potential change in the radio landscape. A small group of enthusiasts has begun cobbling together a way to easily share homemade radio shows, eventually allowing people to reach large numbers of listeners by completely bypassing the current structure of radio.

Here is the non-technical explanation:

Podcasting allows you to subscribe to feeds, which include links to audio programs. Every time one of your subscriptions posted a new program, it would automatically download onto your computer. You could then transfer those shows to a portable music device, listen to it throughout your house via a wireless connection and take it with you wherever you go. Think of it as a personalized radio station that you program and change whenever you want.

DIY radio with Podcasting

At IT Garage, Doc Searls explains Do-It-Yourself Radio with Podcasting. Dan Gillmor says, "This is going to be a big deal, sooner than you think."

Doc writes:

Since the Net and the Web came along in the early and mid-90s, I've had a growing impatience with waiting around for stuff on the radio I might care about. Another way to look at it: All radio, commercial and noncommercial, including what we call the "content", was turning into the same kind of stuff-to-endure as the advertising and promotional announcements that paid for it.

But now most of my radio listening is to what Adam Curry and others are starting to call podcasts. That last link currently brings up 24 results on Google. A year from now, it will pull up hundreds of thousands, or perhaps even millions.

So this morning, here in my hotel room, I listened to the latest edition (September 27) of Adam Curry's Daily Source Code, Dave Winer's Morning Coffee Notes about the open-sourcing of Frontier, and a conversation between Adam and Dave about all the above, iPodder, Trade Secrets Radio and much more.

What matters is that all the standards we're working with here are open. They're the new and growing infrastructure for a new class of 'casting. It won't replace old-fashioned broadcasting, just as FM didn't replace AM, and TV didn't replace radio. And it's not narrowcasting, which is conceived as broadcasting for fewer people. It's podcasting. I'll create an acronym for it: Personal Option Digital 'casting. ...

PODcasting will shift much of our time away from an old medium where we wait for what we might want to hear to a new medium where we choose what we want to hear, when we want to hear it, and how we want to give everybody else the option to listen to it as well.

I hesitate to promote it, because, as Adam points out, the NAB — National Association of Broadcasters — is one of the most powerful lobbying organizations on Earth: far more influential, even, than the RIAA. (For more about that, and other alternatives to traditional radio, read Scott Woolley's Broadcast Bullies, at Forbes.) And the day will come, perhaps soon, when commercial broadcasters, and perhaps even NPR affiliates, will feel threatened by personal podcasting.

So what the hell. Let's bring it on.

File-swap software poses threat to Hollywood

The estimable Dawn C. Chmielewski takes an extended look at BitTorrent in a San Jose Mercury News article today headlined, "File-swap software poses threat to Hollywood." Naturally, there's no evidence presented that file-sharing software like BitTorrent does anything of the sort, and no one is quoted questioning Hollywood's assertions.

The article does, however, serve as a nice primer on using BitTorrent. Excerpts:

BitTorrent can transfer a feature-length film in about two hours -- a fraction of the 12 hours it typically takes with file-sharing services like Kazaa. What's more, the speed of the download actually increases with the number of people sharing a particular file.

``One of the scary things about BitTorrent is how effective it is at redistributing content,'' said Andrew Parker, chief technical officer at CacheLogic, a British firm that monitors Internet traffic.

Funny he said "scary" rather than "dazzling" or "spectacular."

Movies aren't the only large files that can be found on BitTorrent distribution Web sites like www.torrentreactor.net or www.suprnova.org. For instance, on Monday, Torrentreactor offered copies of the Doom 3 video game and Apple's OS X operating system for Macintosh computers as well as dozens of other software titles. ...

BitTorrent is not nearly as easy to use as Kazaa and other popular file-sharing programs. It lacks a built-in search feature, like that found on those services. So anyone seeking to download a copy of the new video game ``The Sims 2'' has to hunt for it by entering the name of the game and the word ``torrent'' on Google or another Internet search engine. The search result points the way to Web sites that distributes pirated video games, movies and software.

Once a download is completed, the network disconnects and disappears without a trace.

House passes song swapper bill

Reuters: Users of Internet "peer to peer" networks, already dodging lawsuits from the recording industry, could face up to three years in prison under a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday.

The Senate approved a similar bill in June, but differences must be reconciled before President Bush signs it into law. This is different than the Induce Act -- which would make it easier to sue peer-to-peer networks -- but it's no less wrongheaded to steer FBI agents away from terrorist suspects and instead have them investigate intellectual-property crimes.

Senate could pass Induce Act this week

Reuters: U.S. Senate to Weigh Bill Targeting Web Song Swaps.

The Senate may vote this week on the detestable INDUCE Act (Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act), making it easy for Hollywood to sue P2P networks like Kazaa and LimeWire that allow users to copy music and movies over the Internet. But the bill would do much more than that.

[The bill] must overcome fierce opposition from copyright activists and technology companies, which worry that makers of iPods and photocopiers could be held liable as well.

``This is absolutely critical, it threatens the survival of our industry,'' said Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association.

The EFF, as usual, is all over this, and they announced today:

Earlier this month, thousands of EFF supporters called on Congress to throw out the Induce Act, a bill that threatens the future of innovation in America. We need your help again. Last time, we targeted the committee that is reviewing the bill. Tomorrow, we want to be sure that every Senator hears from constituents who oppose the Induce Act. Sign up here to add your voice.

Virgin enters online music biz

Internet News: Virgin Enters Online Music Business. Virgin Group Ltd. today launched its online music store, pitting the retailer best known for its music "megastores" with tech companies such as Apple Computer Inc.

'Promises to Keep': a book on the copyright wars

Harvard professor William Fisher's new book is out. Promises to Keep: Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment explores the copyright wars and lays out a proposal for an alternative compensation system for digital media.

Fisher has posted the introduction and Chapter 6 of his book online here.

Writes Larry Lessig on his blog:

Professor Terry Fisher’s new book is the most serious, comprehensive treatment of the alternatives we face for protecting copyright in a digital age. While it’s famous for his particular solution, it is most effective when you see his solution against the background of the complete set of alternatives that he surveys.

I think this book deserves extremely serious consideration by all who think seriously about this issue.

Brewster Kahle's efforts to archive the Net

The Hindu Business Line profiles Brewster Kahle and his efforts to archive just about the entire Internet. Key Brewster quotes:

"Universal access to all human knowledge is within our grasp. It could be one of the greatest achievements of all time."

"There's an ongoing tradition, started by the Grateful Dead, amongst jam bands that you are allowed to tape and trade recordings of live performances as long as you don't make profit out of it."

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is an "amazing piece of Soviet-era legislation where `everything is illegal unless we give permission.'" It is the "antithesis of what the United States used to stand for."