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!