Darknet

Behold the Lightnet

You've heard of the Darknet. Now try on its antithesis: Lightnet. An intiguing new meme from Lucas Gonze, with contributions by Mike Linksvayer and Peter van Dijck. I like it.

Dean Gray Tuesday

I'm a huge fan of Green Day, so I was disappointed to learn of the cease-and-desist order that the band's record label, Warner, sent to the creators of the inspired noncommercial, Internet-only mash-up album American Edit.

The result is another Gray Tuesday (after the artists' alias, Dean Gray), this one set for Dec. 13.

Read about it here, and on BoingBoing via Ponderance.

Cory Doctorow nails it:

As I wrote earlier this week, fighting mashups has nothing to do with reducing "piracy." No one who listens to American Edit will shrug her shoulders and say, "Well, heck, now that I've heard that, who needs to buy the Green Day album?" Censoring this art is tantamount to saying, "This music must go because it displeases us."

Torrent or trickle?

News analysis by Xeni Jardin for Wired News: A Torrent or a Trickle? The MPAA's deal with BitTorrent will do little to change the landscape for file swapping -- but it could create the best chance yet for a meaningful and legal P2P media-distribution system.

Sony's escalating 'spyware' fiasco

BusinessWeek Online: Sony's Escalating "Spyware" Fiasco. Along with lawyers, prosecutors, and furious fans, artists are joining the backlash against the label for slipping a hidden, anti-theft program into users' computers.

Darknets: The invitation-only Internet

Globe and Mail: Darknets: The invitation-only Internet.

Grouper, among the largest of the new services, hosts more than 100,000 private groups. Users can build their own darknets or request admission to thousands of publicly listed clubs whose members can browse through group folders, download files and communicate by instant messaging or group blogs.

A Bible group on Grouper, Deepthings, shares e-books and audio tapes. Needles and Pins offers sewing patterns; Skater Paradise posts skateboarding videos.

Grouper is currently a free service, and contextual ads in its group directory help generate revenue; soon the company will include video ads and the option to buy photo prints or CDs. The people behind Grouper say they hope to eventually offer a premium service stripped of ads and the ability to control a PC from afar.

Although unauthorized versions of copyrighted material do sometimes drift across the network, the company says it makes great effort to distance itself from illegal activity.

"Our intent is not to circumvent the copyright world," said Josh Felser, a co-founder of Grouper. "This is about personally generated content."

Felser and other advocates of commercial darknets think they are fulfilling consumer demand for what might best be called personal distribution, a medium whose potential content expands with every video-equipped cellphone and pocket-size digital camera bought.

"The big play for us is personal video," Felser said last month, as he toyed with a moviemaking digital camera in his office in Mill Valley, Calif. "Personal video is everywhere, and people are wanting to share video that they create."

'Just use podsafe music'

Colette Vogel (photo) had this summary of her panel with Denise Howell, Kelli Richards and Gerd Leonhard at the Portable Media Expo earlier this month.

More on the MPAA-BitTorrent truce

Cinematical has a MPAA BitTorrent roundup, quoting Xeni, Brad Hill and others.

EFF sues Sony BMG

ConsumerAffairs.com: The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against Sony BMG, demanding that the company repair the damage done by the First4Internet XCP and SunnComm MediaMax software it included on over 24 million music CDs.

Here's the EFF's account and complaint (PDF).

BitTorrent, MPAA make peace

Here's an odd couple if ever we met one: Dan Glickman, chairman of the MPAA, and Bram Cohen, creator of BitTorrent.

NY Times: Web Site Agrees to Help Curb Access to Movies.

Well, that's nice of the "Web site" BitTorrent. Has this reporter ever been on the Internet? You have to wonder.

Mr. Cohen created BitTorrent a year ago.

Say what? BitTorrent has been around since 2002. Has the Times fired all its mid-level fact-check editors? As Business Week's Heather Green reported some time ago, "BitTorrent was developed and released in 2002 by independent programmer Bram Cohen as a way to efficiently distribute the free Linux operating system."

Certainly, the bottom line here -- that BitTorrent is doing its part to police blatant infringements of Hollywood movies -- is welcome news. But you have to wonder whether they'll police just bootleg copies of Hollywood fare or whether they'll go further and stamp out movie snippets that the studio chiefs won't acknowledge fall under fair use.

Harvard's partnership with Google Books

Sidney Verba, director of the Harvard University Library, is overseeing the university's partnership with the Google Books project.

"The thing that consoles me," Mr. Verba said, "is Google's notion of showing only the snippets, which have everything to do with what's in the book, but nothing to do with reading the book."

Absolutely true. Get a clue, book publishers!

Putting the Napster genie back in the bottle

NY Times: Putting the Napster Genie Back in the Bottle. Some interesting nuggets:

SHAWN FANNING turns 25 on Tuesday, and it's been a very long seven years since he wrote a little computer program that let him trade electronic music files with his dorm mates at Northeastern University in Boston, where he was a freshman. He called it Napster, after his nickname, and it quickly grew into an Internet phenomenon - not to mention the music industry's bête noire until it was shut down by the courts four years ago. ...

Unlike iTunes and other "closed" systems, where people can buy only what the retailer chooses to sell, Mashboxx is a true "open" peer-to-peer system that in theory can download any song from any computer that participates in a file-sharing network. This could include something that a garage band recorded by itself or a free release by an up-and-coming indie group.

If a Mashboxx user tries to download a song that has been registered as copyrighted in Snocap's database, however, Mashboxx will either block the download or substitute a free but low-quality version on which an announcer invites listeners to pay for a high-quality version without announcements if they like what they hear. The free version would expire after being played five times. ...

After a label sends Snocap all the music it currently publishes, the label's executives can use the software to see all the other tracks available from any particular artist. These are what Mr. Fanning calls "gray tracks" - bootleg recordings made by fans at concerts or in secret by recording engineers in studios. By some counts there are 25 million unique files available on the file-sharing networks, and no more than two million available in authorized download stores.

Some artists and labels may well want to quash these gray tracks, which many consider to be inferior versions of their work. But Mr. Fanning predicted that many would choose to make available - and possibly profit from - music that until now was simply contraband. "There is a huge interest on the part of your fans in this stuff," he said, "and it is already traded, if you don't make available, then you will hinder the growth of your artists' careers."

OnHollywood 100

Here are the nominees so far for the OnHollywood 100. Price is $995 (50% off) through Dec. 31. Mark your calendars for April 25-27, 2006, in Hollywood.

Digital rights mismanagement

For those who missed it, Adam L. Penenberg had this in Slate the other day: Digital rights mismanagement. "The music industry is supposed to sell music, not the medium it comes in, right?"

Emerging 'fair use' doctrine tempers copyright law

Here's an insightful, important piece that deserves a long excerpt here. It's a subject I explore in some depth in "Darknet." LA Times: Copyright isn't the last word. An emerging "fair use" doctrine lets makers of documentary films use some material without obtaining a license.

The documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," Alex Gibney's chronicle of the excesses and collapse of the giant energy company, could not have been made without the use of some unlicensed copyrighted material. Neither could "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," Robert Greenwald's exposé of Fox News, which was packed with damning footage the network would never have cleared.

The message Gibney wants to get out is that not all copyrighted material has to be licensed to be included in films. The "fair use" doctrine, he said, permits filmmakers in certain circumstances to use such material without paying for it.

"Without 'fair use,' corporations could prevent us from talking about certain things by withholding the copyrights," Gibney said. "That infringes on the 1st Amendment, freedom of expression. It also affects the bottom line. Filmmakers are routinely charged $100 or $120 a second to license footage — prohibitive for noncommercial filmmakers. Someone actually wanted me to pay $80,000 for a one-minute clip. I passed, violating history by not including it."

Stories such as these spurred the creation of "The Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use," a document to be released today as a guideline for judging when material is free for use. The statement describes situations in which filmmakers believe the code applies, saving documentarians the cost of consulting attorneys. The law is intentionally vague, intended to be interpreted case by case.

Fifty documentarians, including Gibney, were interviewed in a study funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Because filmmakers create material that could also be licensed, they have one foot in either camp, observed Pat Aufderheide, a professor of documentary film at American University who organized the project along with Peter Jaszi, director of the university's Program on Intellectual Property and Public Media.

"We learned that clearance problems have led to self-censorship," Aufderheide said. "Filmmakers are reluctant to embark on historical or music documentaries or social criticism because clearances loom large. They're also distorting their work, dropping background music, telling their subjects to turn off their TVs or even substituting other programs because they don't know their rights."

In another study, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, researchers investigated the effect of copyright clearance on the distribution process. The acclaimed PBS documentary "Eyes on the Prize," Aufderheide said, is no longer accessible because rights to the material — much of which should have been considered "fair use" — were valid for only five years. Litigation-wary programmers generally demand "errors and omissions" insurance before disseminating a film, in case anything is wrong or overlooked. Insurance companies are reluctant to issue that coverage unless all material has been licensed.

The consolidation of media outlets and the Internet have turned up the heat, said Jack Walsh, co-director of the San Francisco-based National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, which, along with the Assn. of Independent Video and Filmmakers, the Independent Feature Project, the International Documentary Assn. and Women in Film and Video, hosted meetings for members to shape the terms of the document.

"Now that fewer companies are holding the rights, competition has decreased," said Walsh. "It's easier to demand higher rates. It's also easier to rip off people's ideas and materials in the digital realm. Piracy has become an issue. The assumption is that everything should be available, but creators need to make money. 'Fair use' isn't a black-and-white issue but shades of gray — and there's strength in being aware of the agreed-upon standards."

The fair use doctrine is a bridge between the monopoly created by copyright law and the right of free speech, said Michael C. Donaldson, former president of the International Documentary Assn. and author of "Clearance and Copyright." Congress integrated the principle into the copyright law in 1978, said Donaldson, who is also an entertainment lawyer on the legal advisory board of the project. The last 10 years have seen a number of cases that have helped define the term.

"The courts have generally supported the rights of filmmakers to use copyrighted material — provided they don't use too much," Donaldson said. Someone can only take what is needed to make the point cinematically. Filmmakers are also required to change the context, or else it's considered copying. ...

Googling literature

From Saturday's NY Times: Googling Literature: The Debate Goes Public.

Darknets as an early warning system

Tech Republic: How darknets can serve as an early warning system for network threats.

Publishers brace for selling bits of books online

San Jose Merc: Publishers brace for selling bits of books online.

Hollywood embraces a p2p service

San Jose Merc: NBC Universal makes deal with Peer Impact. In a sign that Hollywood is beginning to embrace Internet file-swapping after spending years trying to crush the technology, NBC Universal on Thursday announced it will rent movies and television shows through Peer Impact, a new legal file-sharing network.

Washington's threat to the Internet

Missed this in the San Jose Merc the other day: Internet pioneer Vint Cerf sounds alarm on threats to broadband.

Well, no, it's a threat to the Internet. Excerpt:

A narrow interest group may soon have the power to mandate which vendors we purchase our goods from, which news sources we use, which hardware we use to access these services, and what opinions we, the people, may or may not express in the blogosphere. Decidedly not the dynamic, free Internet Cerf helped to create.

IMRadio integrates GoogleTalk playlists

San Jose Merc wire services: IMRadio integrates GoogleTalk playlists

A Santa Clara start-up that lets people legally listen to each other's music online has integrated Google's instant-message service into its software.

The pairing means users of Mercora's IMRadio can now access the playlists of GoogleTalk users and listen to their music.

Mercora's year-old, peer-to-peer service allows people to broadcast music that is on their computers to other Mercora users, acting as miniature online radio stations. Mercora was able to hook into the technology that powers GoogleTalk, an instant-message and voice-chat service that Google introduced in the summer.

i2hub shuts down

Associated Press: The online file-sharing service i2hub, which linked university students and others over the super-fast Internet2 network, has shut down under threat of a lawsuit from the recording industry.

Sony stops making 'anti-piracy CDs'

I've been on the road so haven't been able to blog about Sony Corp.'s wrongheaded decision to include what amounts to spyware in its new CD releases. Here's the latest news about the ruckus:

BBC News: Sony says it will suspend the production of music CDs with anti-piracy technology which can leave computers vulnerable to viruses.

Washington Post Security Fix: Microsoft: Sony Anti-Piracy Software Is Spyware.

Chart Attack: Sony In Hot Water Over Anti-Piracy Software.

Real Tech News: First Sony “Rootkit” Bots Show Up.

Mac Daily News: Boycott Sony products.

DOJ proposes jail time for copyright violators

Wired News reports: People who attempt to copy music or movies without permission could face jail time under legislation proposed by the Justice Department. The bill, outlined by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at an anti-piracy summit, would widen intellectual-property protections to cover those who try but fail to make illicit copies of music, movies, software or other copyrighted material.

Fighting copy protection

International Herald Tribune: Consumers fight copy protection.

PARIS -- All Stéphane Perquin wanted to do was watch David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" at his mother's house in the Burgundy region of France. Since he knew that there was no DVD player in the house, he got out his dual-deck video recorder to transfer the film from the DVD he had bought to a tape so he could watch it on the VCR, as he had done in the past.

Only this time, the movie would not copy. Confused, he checked the packaging and discovered a small "CP" printed in on the back. His disc could not be copied under any circumstances because Universal Pictures had equipped it with copy-protection technology. ...

In the Universal case, the Paris appeals court said that if a DVD was not copyable, there must be a clear and visible warning. The small "CP" symbol does not meet that description, the court said in reversing the lower court. The appeals court also decided that "one of the essential characteristics" of a DVD is that it can be copied. ...

Feeding the commons

Adam Fields, one of our main tech whizzes over at Ourmedia, wrote a blog piece about the commons and monetizing streams instead of individual content.

Feeding the commons is about ongoing effort. Releasing your work to as many people as possible gets you attention for the next thing you do. It’s so simple. It’s not about selling any one thing anymore, it’s about selling your stream.

Open streaming, open standards

Eirik Solheim talks open streaming, open standards for public broadcasters, open source.

Is it time for copyright law to change?

UK's Guardian: Is it time for copyright law to change?

"Culture," Lessig has said, "is remix. Knowledge is remix. Politics is remix. Everyone in the life of producing and creating engages in this practice of remix. Companies do it. Politicians do it ... We all do it. This is what life is in the expression of creativity. Remix is how we live."

Grokster calls it quits

NY Times: Grokster Calls It Quits on Sharing Music Files.

Too bad they didn't pull the plug before mucking up the law for the rest of us.

The popularity of file-sharing networks shows little sign of waning in the wake of the settlement or the earlier court decision. An estimated 9.2 million people are using various so-called peer-to-peer networks at any one time, according to BigChampagne, a data service. The figure has edged up from 8.8 million in June.

The race to become the iTunes of publishing

NY Times: Want 'War and Peace' Online? How About 20 Pages at a Time?

In a race to become the iTunes of the publishing world, Amazon.com and Google are both developing systems to allow consumers to purchase online access to any page, section or chapter of a book. These programs would combine their already available systems of searching books online with a commercial component that could revolutionize the way that people read books.

The idea is to do for books what Apple has done for music, allowing readers to buy and download parts of individual books for their own use through their computers rather than trek to a store or receive them by mail. Consumers could purchase a single recipe from a cookbook, for example, or a chapter on rebuilding a car engine from a repair manual. ...

'Darknet' interview at Filmmakingcentral

David Basulto conducted a 15-minute phone interview with me yesterday about "Darknet," and his podcast is up already (he used Audioblog) at Filmmakingcentral. Here's the mp3.

Will the Internet become a walled garden?

Tim Karr at MediaCitizen: Will the Internet become a walled garden, with the big Internet service providers deciding what areas of the Net you can access?

House considers broadcast flag

Broadcast Flag Bills Floated by House Judiciary Committee. See Public Knowlege, Hollywood Reporter, and a Q&A from our friends at the MPAA.

Support the commons

Over the past few years, one of the most important efforts in the expansion of the public commons has been Creative Commons. Under IRS regulations, the nonprofit needs to broaden its base of financial support from beyond a handful of foundations.

That means individuals and corporations that support the commons need to step up and donate. (I've made a recent contribution.) Just added "Support the Commons" logos in the right nav of my Darknet and New Media Musings blogs.

You can get a button to place on your blog or website here. So far, the fund-raising effort has collected nearly $38,000 in pledges toward a year-end goal of $275,000. Please help out.

Incidentally, I'll be attending Thursday night's Creative Commons party at Aurobora Press, 147 Natoma St., San Francisco, at 6 pm, at which Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales will be inducted as a member of the CC Board.

'Plugging' the analog hole

Lauren Weinstein: Trying to Plug the Analog Hole -- An MPAA Exercise in Futility

As you can read for yourself in a new MPAA draft document [PDF], the MPAA is back with another astoundingly inane proposal that would take Digital Rights Management (DRM) somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. The Target: The infamous "analog hole" and the ability of consumers to digitize analog materials on their own.

'Scan them all!'

Alan Herrell says of the Google Print project and other controversies related to copyrighted books: Scan them all!

What the Darknet is really about

Sid Yadev offers a review of "Darknet." Excerpt:

Darknet is the change of power between the major major companies to ordinary people. Darknet is freedom. It’s a warning, as well as a voice. Or as JD Lasica, Darknet’s author describes the literal meaning, "Darknet is a metaphor for the hidden-away matter of the web-the burgeoning pool of weblogs, independent sites, and grass roots media well outisde the limelight of big media."

To me, reading Darknet was a great experience. The reason I say this is because Darknet is very unique. I would say this kind of a detailed, balanced book about a great great debate is only written once in a very long while. It’s filled with a lot of excitement, stories, arguments, culture, information-that-you-can’t-read-anywhere-in-the-web, and of course, the name of pioneers and startups who we all, as we read their name, have the urge to Google.

I have learnt a lot by reading Darknet, and would recommend it to anyone, anyone at all who has used the Internet and have at least heard (if not used) of things like Tivo. It has real stories of real people that people just get. ... My final rating: 9/10.

Lawrence Lessig on interoperability

At Creative Commons: Lawrence Lessig on Interoperability. Excerpt:

Why not add DRM to the rights expressed through Creative Commons DRE? What's wrong with a cheap system to enforce the rights still reserved?

There are two problems at least. We can see the first by returning to the picture of what made this network amazing — interoperability. Widespread DRM would disable that interoperability. Or at least, it would disable interoperability without permission first. We could remix, or add, or criticize, using digital content, only with the permission of the content controller. And that requirement of permission first would certainly disable a large part of the potential that the Internet could realize.

The second problem relates to "fair use." The law of copyright has never given copyright owners the right to perfect control over their copyrighted work. Fair use is a codified exception to that control. As we see them today, DRM technologies cannot respect "fair use."

I'm not sure that I agree. But it will be an interesting road ahead in the next two years.

The open source revolution's impact on media

I had missed this interesting piece a little while back: Bob Garfield's column in Advertising Age. Inside the new world of listenomics. How the Open Source Revolution Impacts Your Brands. (1-minute registration required) Excerpt:

To the open-source faithful -- in spite of skepticism of Congress and the courts -- no less consideration should be afforded to other copyrighted material, such as music and video. There is no difference, they maintain, between a properly attributed lifted book quote and the use of a film snippet or a vocal track in a hip-hop song.

“Some people are beginning to get this,” Lasica says. “David Bowie had a mash-up contest last year. Some group in London called DNA took Suzanne Vega’s song ‘Tom’s Diner,’ stripped it down, used her vocals and added their own beat to it. Her lawyers wanted to sue them for copyright infringement. And she said, ‘No, I like what they’ve done. Let’s see if we can get in touch and work out an arrangement.’" The resulting remix was a bigger hit than Vega’s 1987 original.

The online media world, furthermore, is all about sharing. Lasica’s ourmedia.org site is a video-log host featuring citizen works displayed mainly under Creative Commons licenses, often giving viewers wide berth to sample it, excerpt it, remix it and so forth. Increasingly, permission to derive is an article of faith among netizens, and there is no reason to imagine they will regard, say, Ronald McDonald any differently than they do Suzanne Vega. ...

By the way, I've never said that Mickey Mouse should be in the public domain. I've said Disney movies from the 1920s ought to be, but Mickey's character would be protected under trademark laws, not copyright.

O'Reilly, Lessig, 'piracy,' and common sense

A thought-provoking column by Graeme Philipson in Australia's The Age dissects some of the issues surrounding intellectual property in the digital age. Extended excerpt:

It does my heart good. It really does. Amid all the blather and hypocrisy about copyright and intellectual property, a publisher has come out and stated the bleedin' obvious - that the free flow of information helps authors, and restricting it is counterproductive and ultimately futile.

Tim O'Reilly, whose company publishes a highly successful line of technical computing titles, has come out swinging against the restrictions imposed by the current copyright regimen. His comments were made before the current controversy over the Google Print program, but they could have been made in direct response to the stupid reaction of many publishers and writers, who claim that Google's attempt to digitise the contents of some of the world's libraries is a breach of copyright.

Mr O'Reilly has written a short polemic which outlines the changed realities of the digital age as succinctly as I have ever seen it put. And this from a man who made his fortune through the traditional publishing model.

"Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy," he points out. This should be self-evident to anybody with even a passing understanding of publishing, but it seems most people just don't get it.
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"More than 100,000 books are published each year, with several million books in print, yet fewer than 10,000 of those books have any significant sales, and only 100,000 or so of all the books in print are carried in even the largest stores. Most books have a few months on the shelves of the major chains, and then wait in the darkness of warehouses from which they will move only to the recycling bin."

The power of the internet vastly improves the likelihood of a reader and an author linking up. The same is true of music and film. The old distribution models favour a few top-selling authors and musicians, and the big Hollywood studios, to the detriment of lesser-known but in many cases more talented creative artists. ...

Professor [Lawrence] Lessig makes the point that if Google Print is illegal, so is Google itself. Google is simply indexing and organising text, which is what any library does. The fact that it is using the internet to do so is irrelevant - it just makes it easier to do what any visitor to a physical library does. All that's changed is the technology, which means the old ways need to be re-examined. ...

The authors and publishers trying to stop Google indexing their books, the music industry middlemen trying to stop file sharing, the movie moguls clinging to their 20th-century distribution models, and the software companies relying on proprietary development and physical sales, are all on the wrong side of history.

Common sense will prevail. In the meantime, be wary of anybody who benefits from the current outmoded system who defends the system using altruistic arguments. They have either deluded themselves, or they are trying to delude you.