Darknet

'Darknet' in French, Italian

Darknet will be coming out in French and Italian in the next couple of weeks. (It was great to meet my French and Italian publishers in Cannes and Milan when I hit Europe earlier this month.) I've added links to the publisher sites/blogs in the right nav. I especially liked the book jacket of the French version, and I wish I could read Italian so I could follow Unwired Media's Area 51 blog.

Apple's iTunes solo act getting competition

San Jose Mercury News: Apple's iTunes solo act is getting competition. Excerpt:

Windows users have always faced a huge barrier to exit; they'd have to buy new computers and software to say goodbye to Microsoft.

Apple is now creating a similar kind of tollbooth.

If you buy music or video clips from iTunes, they will only work on one portable player: the iPod. Once you've purchased several dozen albums from iTunes, it's not likely you'll switch away from the iPod.

If you buy an iPod, it will only play music and video purchased online from one store: iTunes. You can't try music downloads from rival services such as those offered by America Online, Napster, Rhapsody and Yahoo.

Why the Web's democratic ethic may be about to end

Important essay in Sunday's New York Times by Adam Cohen on the subject of net neutrality, so I'll post it here.

Editorial Observer: Why the Democratic Ethic of the World Wide Web May Be About to End.

The World Wide Web is the most democratic mass medium there has ever been. Freedom of the press, as the saying goes, belongs only to those who own one. Radio and television are controlled by those rich enough to buy a broadcast license. But anyone with an Internet-connected computer can reach out to a potential audience of billions.

This democratic Web did not just happen. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist who invented the Web in 1989, envisioned a platform on which everyone in the world could communicate on an equal basis. But his vision is being threatened by telecommunications and cable companies, and other Internet service providers, that want to impose a new system of fees that could create a hierarchy of Web sites. Major corporate sites would be able to pay the new fees, while little-guy sites could be shut out.

Sir Tim, who keeps a low profile, has begun speaking out in favor of "net neutrality," rules requiring that all Web sites remain equal on the Web. Corporations that stand to make billions if they can push tiered pricing through have put together a slick lobbying and marketing campaign. But Sir Tim and other supporters of net neutrality are inspiring growing support from Internet users across the political spectrum who are demanding that Congress preserve the Web in its current form.

The Web, which Sir Tim invented as a scientist at CERN, the European nuclear physics institute, is often confused with the Internet. But like e-mail, the Web runs over the system of interconnected computer networks known as the Internet. Sir Tim created the Web in a decentralized way that allowed anyone with a computer to connect to it and begin receiving and sending information.

That open architecture is what has allowed for the extraordinary growth of Internet commerce and communication. Pierre Omidyar, a small-time programmer working out of his home office, was able to set up an online auction site that anyone in the world could reach — which became eBay. The blogging phenomenon is possible because individuals can create Web sites with the World Wide Web prefix, www, that can be seen by anyone with Internet access.

Last year, the chief executive of what is now AT&T sent shock waves through cyberspace when he asked why Web sites should be able to "use my pipes free." Internet service providers would like to be able to charge Web sites for access to their customers. Web sites that could not pay the new fees would be accessible at a slower speed, or perhaps not be accessible at all.

A tiered Internet poses a threat at many levels. Service providers could, for example, shut out Web sites whose politics they dislike. Even if they did not discriminate on the basis of content, access fees would automatically marginalize smaller, poorer Web sites.

Consider online video, which depends on the availability of higher-speed connections. Internet users can now watch channels, like BBC World, that are not available on their own cable systems, and they have access to video blogs and Web sites like YouTube.com, where people upload videos of their own creation. Under tiered pricing, Internet users might be able to get videos only from major corporate channels.

Sir Tim expects that there are great Internet innovations yet to come, many involving video. He believes people at the scene of an accident — or a political protest — will one day be able to take pictures with their cellphones that could be pieced together to create a three-dimensional image of what happened. That sort of innovation could be blocked by fees for the high-speed connections required to relay video images.

The companies fighting net neutrality have been waging a misleading campaign, with the slogan "hands off the Internet," that tries to look like a grass-roots effort to protect the Internet in its current form. What they actually favor is stopping the government from protecting the Internet, so they can get their own hands on it.

But the other side of the debate has some large corporate backers, too, like Google and Microsoft, which could be hit by access fees since they depend on the Internet service providers to put their sites on the Web. It also has support from political groups of all persuasions. The president of the Christian Coalition, which is allied with Moveon.org on this issue, recently asked, "What if a cable company with a pro-choice board of directors decides that it doesn't like a pro-life organization using its high-speed network to encourage pro-life activities?"

Forces favoring a no-fee Web have been gaining strength. One group, Savetheinternet.com, says it has collected more than 700,000 signatures on a petition. Last week, a bipartisan bill favoring net neutrality, sponsored by James Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, and John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, won a surprisingly lopsided vote in the House Judiciary Committee.

Sir Tim argues that service providers may be hurting themselves by pushing for tiered pricing. The Internet's extraordinary growth has been fueled by the limitless vistas the Web offers surfers, bloggers and downloaders. Customers who are used to the robust, democratic Web may not pay for one that is restricted to wealthy corporate content providers.

"That's not what we call Internet at all," says Sir Tim. "That's what we call cable TV."

Forces gather to oppose net neutrality

San Jose Merc: Superhighway toll booths have an ally. A front-page story about Cisco Systems and other networking companies that stand to profit immensely if Congress fails to enact net neutrality.

Loading the iPod with egalitarianism

I just got back from a business trip to France, and this is very much on the mind of the tech-savvy French. Washington Post: Loading the iPod With Egalitarianism. Excerpt:

PARIS -- All is not well in the French world of digital music, as Nicolas Paitre, a salesman at one of Paris's largest electronics stores, hears from customers every day.

Filing into Surcouf, a glitzy French electronics chain where Paitre specializes in digital music gadgets, they have the same bewildered looks and exasperated queries:

I can download digital songs from one company, but I can't play them on another company's machine?

My hard drive with all my music files crashed, and I can't transfer the songs from my handheld into a new computer?

Oui and oui again. The legal and technical issues of protecting music copyrights are so complex, Paitre said, that many music lovers "feel stuck in the middle" and eventually are forced into the business of trying to foil the protections on their own.

Now comes France's National Assembly to the rescue, or so claim lawmakers who have crafted legislation to force compatibility between digital songs and the different machines that play them. Under the proposed law, Apple Computer Inc., Sony Corp., Dell Inc. and other companies could have to reveal trade secrets of their software so that their songs can play on competitors' devices. ...

In the midst of the debate, the French Senate passed a version of the bill with changes that consumer advocates say would gut it. According to Loic Dachary, vice president of the Free Software Foundation France, the Senate bill would leave computer companies with too much control over hardware and software.

"From a citizen's point of view, it's like having a policeman in your machine who has all the power," he said. "If Apple is allowed to keep its secrets, then no other programs can interact with their programs. This is not competition, this is software totalitarianism."

Both versions would decriminalize piracy and make it equivalent to a traffic infraction, with fines that computer companies say are so small they would offer no deterrence. Software companies complain that the law could hold them accountable for piracy that occurs with use of their products, even if that is not the purpose of the software.

The debate pits French egalitarianism and its tilt toward consumers and regulation against American capitalism and its tilt toward business and markets. Also in the mix is a dose of French nationalism and concern about the U.S. dominance of cyberspace. ...

The Pirate Bay: Here to stay?

I missed this story a while back, from Wired News: The Pirate Bay: Here to Stay?

To international observers, The Pirate Bay's defiant immunity from copyright lawyers is somewhat baffling. But in Sweden, the site is more than just an electronic speak-easy: It's the flagship of a national file-sharing movement that's generating an intense national debate, and has even spawned a pro-piracy political party making a credible bid for seats in the Swedish parliament.

Lawsuits won't win digital music war

Mark Glaser at PBS's Media Shift blog: Lawsuits Will Not Win Digital Music War.

Warner Bros. to embrace file sharing

LA Times via San Jose Merc: Warner Bros. to embrace file sharing through an agreement with BitTorrent.

A sharecropper's vision of creativity

Part 3 of 4 in AlwaysOn's dialogue with Creative Commons chairman Lawrence Lessig: A Sharecropper Vision of Creativity. That's how Prof. Lessig describes the limited vision of artists who allow others to remix their work but retain ownership of all versions.

Corporations mull how to disable your remote control

Randall Stross in the Sunday New York Times: Someone Has to Pay for TV. But Who? And How?

THEY will take my remote control away only when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.

This thought followed my first reading of a patent application for a new kind of television set and digital video recorder recently filed by a unit of Royal Philips Electronics at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The design appears to threaten the inalienable right to channel-surf during commercials or fast-forward through ads in programs you've taped.

A second, calmer reading of the patent application revealed that the proposed design would uphold the right to avoid commercials, but only for those who paid a fee. Those disinclined to pay would be prevented from changing channels during commercials. If the viewer tried to circumvent the system by recording the program and skipping the ads during playback, the new, improved recorder would detect when a commercial segment was being displayed and disable the fast-forward button for the duration.

As a business proposition, the concept appears dead on arrival: what consumer would voluntarily buy a television designed to charge fees for using it? When I spoke last week with Ruud Peters, the executive in charge of intellectual property at Philips, to learn how it would be pitched to consumers, he explained that the patent application had no connection to any Philips products in the pipeline. And, he explained, the notion of temporarily crippling the remote control to protect advertising is already out there and did not originate with his company.

But limiting remote controls is a possibility that could be realized in a new technical standard — M.H.P., for multimedia home standard — that the television industry is contemplating for the future. Neither broadcasters nor television manufacturers, whose joint cooperation would be necessary, have yet to adopt the standard. If the television industry embraced M.H.P., broadcasters could insert special signals to immobilize the remote control during commercials. If this came to pass, Mr. Peters said the Philips technology would "give consumers the freedom of choice" — "freedom" defined as exercising the option to pay a fee in order to regain the use of the remote control. ...

BearShare P2P service sold

CNET News.com: BearShare P2P service sold following settlement.