Darknet

Don't let Congress shackle digital music

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a disturbing bit of news about a bill introduced by my senator, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.:

Dianne Feinstein's "Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music (PERFORM) Act" would permanently hobble your ability to record off the radio and force webcasters to use DRM formats.

If passed, future satellite and digital radio receivers would be limited by law to what the bill calls "reasonable recording." To the RIAA, this means that all consumers will be banned from choosing and playing back selections based on song title, artist, or genre. According to the Consumer
Electronics Retailers Coalition, even the transmission of a recording from room to room inside a house would be restricted by mandatory blocks and controls.

PERFORM would also mess with streaming Internet radio stations. Right now, MP3 or open format Internet radio can take advantage of statutory copyright licensing to remunerate rights holders and artists. After PERFORM, all streaming music that uses statutory licensing will be required to be in a DRM-encumbered format that forbids interoperability or user-editing. Wave goodbye to MP3 streaming and to moving recorded webcasts to the portable player of your choice.

PERFORM is yet another petulant scrawl by the RIAA on the statute books, placing their short term interests over the freedom to innovate and the future freedoms of America's musicians and customers. Tell your representative not to co-sponsor or vote for PERFORM in the Senate or its
companion bill in the House.

Take action now.

Details and full text of the bill here.

EFF's summary of the bill's implications.

This is not only a terrible misuse of government power but also poor public policy, potentially pushing legions of digital-savvy users into the Darknet.

Legal guide for podcasters

Attorneys Colette Vogele and Mia Garlick (general counsel of Creative Commons and treasurer of Ourmedia) were the legal minds behind the most comprehensive Legal guide for podcasters you'll find anywhere. It's also available in pdf format and they'll soon have it available for print on demand from Lulu.com.

Net neutrality: House ignores people's will

Kos: What happened today in a House committee on Net neutrality.

Sharing Is Caring showcase

From Lawrence Lessig's blog: Harvard Free Culture presents Sharing is Daring, a showcase of new & derivative artworks released under flexible licenses that allow for sharing & remixing. The exhibition will feature a range of graphic, photography, video, and multimedia works.

NPR on Net neutrality

NPR has a piece on the new episode of "All Things Considered" on Net neutrality: Internet Debate: Preserving User Parity.

Josh Marshall on saving the Net

Josh Marshall tonight on the Save the Internet campaign -- he explains it thoughtfully and succinctly:

Last week I mentioned that there's a very bad bill moving through Congress. It's supported overwhelmingly by Republicans but also by a lot of Democrats too. Basically the bill would turn over the control of the Internet to the phone companies -- though 'phone companies' is probably now an antiquated phrase for Verizon and AT&T and other such outfits. There's a lot more underlying complexity to it of course. But the change could make it much harder to access TPM or any source of news or entertainment that isn't owned by some big corporation or, more likely, have the inside track with one of the phone companies. If you're cool with AT&T deciding the sources of use you can access then you probably won't mind. But if you like making those decisions yourself, you may want to speak up.

Here's one group mobilizing against the bill: savetheinternet.com. Another group that is on the case is publicknowledge.org.

This isn't some obscure issue of interest only to policy wonks. It may seem like it, but it's not. It's a very big deal and I strongly encourage you to find out what's going on.

We tend to take for granted how the Internet evolved. For all its shortcomings, it is a remarkably level playing field where all sorts of voices -- the strong and the weak, the popular and the despised -- can all make their voices heard. Yes, Viacom's voice is louder than TPM's or Atrios's or Newsmax's. But if you want to read TPM, we're right here, just as easy to visit as the media giants.

But it won't necessarily stay that way.

The Internet could have evolved very, very differently. It could have turned in to one or two big proprietary networks -- maybe AOL and Compuserve, or AOL and MSN, each closed, each controlled by one company, without the dynamism, freedom and entrepreneurial magic we associate with the web. The big media offerings would be easy to get to and easy to download while the blogs and other moderately funded alternatives, right and left, had to make do with second or third tier access. Or maybe Verizon decides that anti-Verizon content just won't run on their network.

Think of it like Cable TV. Anybody can start a cable channel. But if you can't get on TimeWarner Cable here in Manhattan, for me you might as well not even exist. The Internet could work like that.

It could have been that way. And it could still become that way. That's what this new debate is about. Find out more about it. And see what you can do to make your voice heard.

Kos has more here.

Congress readies new digital copyright bill

Declan McCullagh in CNET News.com: Congress readies new digital copyright bill.

For the last few years, a coalition of technology companies, academics and computer programmers has been trying to persuade Congress to scale back the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Now Congress is preparing to do precisely the opposite. A proposed copyright law seen by CNET News.com would expand the DMCA's restrictions on software that can bypass copy protections and grant federal police more wiretapping and enforcement powers.

The draft legislation, created by the Bush administration and backed by Rep. Lamar Smith, already enjoys the support of large copyright holders such as the Recording Industry Association of America. Smith is the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees intellectual-property law.

Smith's press secretary, Terry Shawn, said Friday that the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006 is expected to "be introduced in the near future."

"The bill as a whole does a lot of good things," said Keith Kupferschmid, vice president for intellectual property and enforcement at the Software and Information Industry Association in Washington, D.C. "It gives the (Justice Department) the ability to do things to combat IP crime that they now can't presently do."

During a speech in November, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales endorsed the idea and said at the time that he would send Congress draft legislation. Such changes are necessary because new technology is "encouraging large-scale criminal enterprises to get involved in intellectual-property theft," Gonzales said, adding that proceeds from the illicit businesses are used, "quite frankly, to fund terrorism activities."

The 24-page bill is a far-reaching medley of different proposals cobbled together. One would, for instance, create a new federal crime of just trying to commit copyright infringement. Such willful attempts at piracy, even if they fail, could be punished by up to 10 years in prison.

It also represents a political setback for critics of expanding copyright law, who have been backing federal legislation that veers in the opposite direction and permits bypassing copy protection for "fair use" purposes. That bill--introduced in 2002 by Rep. Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat--has been bottled up in a subcommittee ever since.

But one of the more controversial sections may be the changes to the DMCA. Under current law, Section 1201 of the law generally prohibits distributing or trafficking in any software or hardware that can be used to bypass copy-protection devices. (That section already has been used against a Princeton computer science professor, Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov and a toner cartridge remanufacturer.)

Smith's measure would expand those civil and criminal restrictions. Instead of merely targeting distribution, the new language says nobody may "make, import, export, obtain control of, or possess" such anticircumvention tools if they may be redistributed to someone else. ...

'Save the Internet': Net neutrality and access to knowledge

Andy Carvin just posted this to the Videoblogging list:

Right now I'm blogging from the Yale Law School's Access to Knowledge conference. I'm at a standing-room-only session on network neutrality, a contentious policy battle currently taking place in Congress. Telecom providers are lobbying to be able to create a multi-tiered internet, in which people who pay the most get the best bandwidth and access to partner websites, while those who don't get slow access and get blocked from partner sites. For example, Rogers Cable acknowledged that it prioritizes some content and applications over others; they get more bandwidth. Lower prioritization, in contrast, goes to file sharing, podcasting and video blogging, making it more expensive for people to access content and create it.

I've posted notes from the panel session here.

Meanwhile, on Monday there will be the launch of the Save The Internet Campaign to ensure that telecom providers provide equitable access to bandwidth and content to all people and not penalize low-income customers. They're also launching a Save the Internet blog.

Coalition members come from across the political spectrum: Lawrence Lessig, Craig Newmark of Craigslist, Free Press, Consumers Union, Glenn Reynolds, Gun Owners of America, MoveOn.org and many others.

And from Timothy Karr, Campaign Director, Free Press:

A quick heads up on a broad campaign that’s to launch on Monday.

The SavetheInternet.com Coalition is made up of dozens of groups from across the political spectrum that have banded together to save the First Amendment of the Internet: network neutrality. No corporation or political party is funding our efforts. Check it out.

This is the first genuine, public interest grassroots effort to fight for network neutrality, in a debate that’s become increasing crowded by talking points from so-called “Astroturfs” (here, here and here) – front groups for industry.

Worth the read:

Libertarians Should See Net Neutrality as (Lack of) Competition Issue
Public Citizen: The zillion dollar question is, in a marketplace of "competition" between two companies—neither of which is required to offer an open Internet to their customers—will consumers and businesses have equal broadband access to the Internet as we know it?

Net Losses
New Yorker: Without net neutrality, decisions that once were made collectively by hundreds of millions of Internet users would be shaped in large part by a handful of telecom executives.

And from SaveTheInternet.com Coalition:

A diverse SavetheInternet.com Coalition will hold a national conference call Monday to announce a campaign to defend the free and open Internet from a bill being voted on in the House of Representatives beginning next week.

On Monday, April 24, at 1:00pm, Vint Cerf – the “father of the Internet” – will join Gun Owners of America, Consumer Federation of America, American Library Association, Public Knowledge, major public interest groups and others to announce this diverse grassroots coalition. The coalition is spearheaded by Free Press, a national, nonpartisan group focused on media reform and Internet policy issues, and the Web site is already up at www.SavetheInternet.com. ...

Without Net Neutrality, issue organizations would essentially have to pay protection money to dominant Internet providers or risk that their Web sites were not as fully functional as corporate sites.

“Gun Owners of America opposes any attempt to limit or curtail political speech,” said Craig Fields, director of Internet operations for Gun Owners of America. “Without statutory network neutrality, there is nothing to prevent big telecom companies from injecting political bias into the very skeleton of modern communications. If the telecoms believe they can frame opposition to their power grab as a liberal or anti-free-market attack, they are sadly mistaken.”

Also, here's Alex Curtis’s video on net neutrality (already seen over 8,000 times).

I was just interviewed by NPR on this subject, and the report should air on All Things Considered this Tuesday. I'm told the Commerce Committee begins its meeting on the issue Tuesday night and the language will be hammered out on Wednesday.

Amazon book pages: not built for authors

I visited the Darknet page on Amazon.com for the first time in a couple of months. I've got to say that the format of these pages bothers me quite a bit. You have reviewers who obviously haven't read the book -- like the latest scribe, Arnaud "Arnaud" of Venice, CA -- make wildly false statements, eg, that "the book encourages file sharing" and the book is anti-artist. Nothing could be further from the truth, as anyone who has read "Darknet" knows.

As a blogger, it's frustrating to me that there is no opportunity for the author to respond on my own book page.

Google takes down today's `painted' logo

San Jose Mercury News: Artist's family asks Google to take down today's `painted' logo.

After angering authors last fall with a wide-ranging book-copying project, Google may now be alienating some visual artists as well by allegedly reproducing famous works in drawings on the search giant's home page.

Today, the family of Joan Miro was upset to discover elements of several works by the Spanish surrealist incorporated into Google's logo. Google has since taken the logo off its site.

The Artists Rights Society, a group that represents the Miro family and more than 40,000 visual artists and their estates, had asked Google to remove the image early this morning.

``There are underlying copyrights to the works of Miro, and they are putting it up without having the rights,'' said Theodore Feder, president of Artists Rights Society.

In a written statement to the Mercury News, Google said that it would honor the request but that it did not believe its logo was a copyright violation. ...

AOL censors group opposing 'email tax'

Tim Karr at MediaCitizen: AOL Censors Opposition Group. AOL was caught red-handed today censoring email to AOL customers that included a link to the AOL opposition site www.DearAOL.com.

StreamCast to fight music biz

mp3.com: StreamCast to fight music business. Maker of Morpheus file-sharing service says negotiations to gain industry support have broken down, and now they will take their case to court -- again.

'Da Vinci Code' author wins in court

NY Times: Idea for 'Da Vinci Code' Was Not Stolen, Judge Says.

Congress turns deaf ear to Net neutrality

San Jose Mercury News editorial: Congress turns a deaf ear to need for Internet neutrality.

Freenet: The first scalable darknet

Slashdot:

The Freenet Project has just released the first alpha version of the much anticipated Freenet 0.7 branch. This is a major departure from past approaches to peer-to-peer network design, embracing a 'scalable darknet' architecture, where security is increased by allowing users to limit which other peers their peer will communicate with directly, rather than the typical 'promiscuous' approach of classic P2P networks. This means that not only does Freenet aim to prevent others from finding out what you are doing with Freenet, it makes it extremely difficult for them to even know that you are running a Freenet node at all. This is not the first P2P application to use this approach, other examples include Waste, however those networks are limited to just a few users, while Freenet can scale up almost indefinitely.

p2pnet.net: The first "pure darknet" alpha version of the completely re-written Freenet 0.7, a p2p network purpose-built to allow the free sharing of information online, is now ready for public testing.

Should indexing be fair use?

Michael Lesk of Rutgers University at IEEE: Should Indexing Be Fair Use? The Battle over Google Book Search.

Video mash-ups at Canadian art fest

Toronto Star: Dice and splice artists step up to throw-down.

While terms like remix and mash-up are more readily used to describe the sampling and cut-and-paste movement in the audio world, video artists are increasingly slicing, dicing and reconstituting to create something new.

Today's Videodrome 2 event at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art further busts open the frame. Four groups will perform a live throw-down of their audio-visual art, a real-time twist on the typically taped displays.

"The concept is a video battle, which is like the traditional deejay battle or emcee battle, with people who make video and audio at the same time. It's four crews squaring off against each other in a tournament and basically they're trying to outdo each other by showing a better video," says Jubal Brown, one of the five members of Toronto contingent Famefame, and an organizer of the event.

"Most of them will be doing some live mixing, with prepared DVDs in most cases, and they're playing those with fairly new technologies that allow you to scratch and manipulate the DVD as you would a record."

It's the type of event that tries to put the "arty" in party.

Dubbed an International Hardcore Video Tournament, master of ceremonies will be video collage artist Pinky Beckles, of TV Carnage. Renowned local deejay and party thrower Will Munro will also spin.

Despite the current craze of personal broadcasting with people uploading found and created video to sites like Youtube.com and Google Video, fellow Famefame founder Tasman Richardson says this event will feature art that's much more complicated.

"Remixing video with a rudimentary beat is one thing, but breaking things down to one-30th of a second and reconstructing two-dimensional compositions while integrating harmonies, melodies and really complicated tempos, sub-rhythms and breaks, it's almost impossible to do live," says Richardson. "I mean, we've scoured the world for these folks and the people that we're going to have here ... are the only ones who we could find that are even remotely close to what we were looking for."

The contenders:

Famefame: While this local collective is a five-person squad, usually only one performs at a time. The group pre-records DVDs ("Right now, we're all editing furiously to try and make as much material as possible," says Richardson) and plays them with the program Final Scratch Pro. The group attempts to use more harmony and melody than their counterparts.

Madame Chau: Coming from New York, Richardson says Chau comes from the "really underground" scene and is influenced by "breakcore" and "gabber" (really speedy techno) music. "I'm sure he'll have aggressive visuals that are really heavily layered. The audio will be more related to noise and repetitions. Less harmony than us and more brute force," he says. Adds Brown: "He was thinking of bringing his hacked version of Sony PlayStation that he plays live. It's a rig that he wears on his body and controls while he interacts with the audience."

V-Atak: From Paris, this group actually holds the Videodrome title (yes, there is one), and their approach is more focused on creating and mixing live elements. "They do rhythmic work and they're still trying to get this breakthrough live element, which is difficult. It's not as fast or as complicated as some others, but that's sort of the give-and-take," says Richardson. "They believe that having the ability to push the button and create images right in front of people adds to the excitement."

Eclectic Method: Considered to be some of the best video mash-up artists in the world, this London-based group works with rock videos in an extremely processed way. "It's quite overwhelming and there is a high rate of turnover. Like 30 seconds of one clip, 10 seconds of another. It moves really fast, and it's all mixed into a perfectly danceable party mix," says Brown.

Richardson says that he's been trying to do this type of work for a decade and thanks to eases in technology, it just gets more sophisticated, as does the audience reaction to an event that can be jarring with its juxtaposition of images and sounds.

"I call it the post-television-era existence," he says. "Video was a consumer thing almost immediately and it's taken a really long time for people to realize that anything can be recorded and therefore everything will be recorded.... It's only now people are starting to realize this intuitively. We're all raised on this television language before we can even speak, so now people are choosing to remix that material. And people respond to it instantly, because they speak the language too."