Darknet

Gains for net neutrality

SavetheInternet.com: Supporters of Internet freedom took to the pavement in 25 cities nationwide on Wednesday and Thursday, delivering thousands of SavetheInternet.com petitions to their senators and urging them to oppose attempts by big phone and cable companies to eliminate Net Neutrality. Meantime, four senators -- Schumer, Harkin, Jeffords and Dayton -- came out this week in suppor of net neutrality.

IP in a divided digital world

When I was in New York earlier this month I stopped by the nonprofit Acord insurance association's offices and sat down for an interview with CEO Gregory Maciag and fielded a phone call from London from British author Paul May. Here's the video of our conversation.

Downloadable films don't come easy

Friday's NY Times: Films That Come Over the Net Don’t Come Easy.

The latest CinemaNow feature [offers] movies you can burn to a disc that will play on any DVD player. Intended to solve the “last 10 feet” problem, the burn-to-DVD service is still in preview or “beta” mode, but it already has a selection of over 100 titles, including “Center of the World” by Wayne Wang, the Al Pacino movie “Scent of a Woman,” and concert videos by artists like Johnny Cash and the Doors.

It took me an hour to download the $12.99 offbeat thriller “Panic.” But when it came time to burn the DVD, which CinemaNow’s software does automatically, the recording failed after 30 minutes, wasting one blank DVD. A second attempt, which took about 30 minutes, was successful. ...

Free downloads of books at Google

AP:

Google Inc. on Wednesday plans to begin letting consumers download and print free of charge classic novels and many other, more obscure books that are in the public domain.

Using Google's Book Search service, Web surfers hunting titles like Dante's "Inferno" and Aesop's "Fables" will be able to download PDF files of the books for later reading, to run keyword searches or to print them on paper. Up to now, the service only allowed people to read the out-of-copyright books online.

Challenge to iTunes

NY Times: Universal Music Group and an Online Site Plan a Joint Venture to Challenge iTunes.

A new online music company said yesterday that it would make a huge catalog of songs from the world’s largest record company, the Universal Music Group, available for consumers to download free.

The company, called SpiralFrog, said its intention was to wean music fans, especially young people, away from illegal downloads and pirate music sites by offering a legitimate source, supported by advertising instead of download fees.

SpiralFrog is the latest to offer a challenge to Apple Computer’s hugely successful iTunes service ...

P2P steps into the Darknet

Linux Pipeline: P2P Steps Into The Darknet.

Valenti praises 'Darknet'

Jack Valenti, who headed up the Motion Picture Association of America for nearly 39 years, praises the book "Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation," suggesting that entertainment executives could learn a thing or two about it. Valenti is profiled in the book. (Ourmedia page | watch video)

Note: Audio glitch in earlier version of this video has been fixed. Thanks, John.

EFF sues Barney the dinosaur

EFF Sues Barney the Dinosaur to Defend Online Free Speech.

Creative Commons for news?

Amy Gahran at E-Media Tibits:

At this year's LinuxWorld conference, Stanford Univ. law professor Lawrence Lessig (one of the founders of Creative Commons) gave a keynote speech where he discussed one of his favorite themes: "free culture."

You can download or stream the audio of Lessig's talk from PodTech. Also, his book Free Culture is available for free online.

Lessig discusses the difference between "read-only" and "read/write" culture, where anyone can take images, words, and sounds from the culture around us and remix them to create new, unique, authentic expression.

"This is the literacy of the 21st century," Lessig declared. He also claims that read/write culture can peacefully coexist alongside read-only culture (as controlled by copyright law). Neither approach need displace the other. ...

I wonder: is there some way that news organizations might beneficially leverage tools such as Creative Commons licensing to allow and encourage derivative works from news content?

'Digital Prohibition' inhibits YouTube culture

Newsfactor: 'Digital Prohibition' Inhibits YouTube Culture. Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig said that we are living in an "age of prohibition" and called upon open-source developers to create technologies that challenge the notions around copyright. They have demonstrated an ability to challenge conventions before when they defeated the Windows monopoly, he argued.

Music industry targets ... guitarists

NY Times: Now the Music Industry Wants Guitarists to Stop Sharing.

The Internet put the music industry and many of its listeners at odds thanks to the popularity of services like Napster and Grokster. Now the industry is squaring off against a surprising new opponent: musicians.

In the last few months, trade groups representing music publishers have used the threat of copyright lawsuits to shut down guitar tablature sites, where users exchange tips on how to play songs like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “Highway to Hell” and thousands of others.

The battle shares many similarities with the war between Napster and the music recording industry, but this time it involves free sites like Olga.net, GuitarTabs.com and MyGuitarTabs.com and even discussion boards on the Google Groups service like alt.guitar.tab and rec.music.makers.guitar.tablature, where amateur musicians trade “tabs” — music notation especially for guitar — for songs they have figured out or have copied from music books. ...

Art and marketing all mashed up

Washington Post, from earlier this month: Art and Marketing All Mashed Up. Video Edits Gain Popularity Online, and Firms Are Noticing.

Bound by law?

A 72 page comic book devoted to copyright issues from Duke Law School: Tales from the Public Domain: Bound by Law?

Who needs the record labels?

Fortune magazine: Big musicians flex their muscle with record labels. Talent agency The Firm encourages its musicians to cut out the middle man, make more money for themselves.

Weblogs Inc: Who needs the record labels?

How copyright restrictions hamper education

The Berkman Center has issued a comprehensive whitepaper, The Digital Learning Challenge: Obstacles to Educational Uses of Copyrighted Material in the Digital Age, available in html or as a PDF.

The study explores whether innovative educational uses of digital technology - everything from DVDs in the classroom to digital music libraries to online resources such as Wikipedia -- are hampered by copyright restrictions. We found that provisions of copyright law concerning the educational use of copyrighted material, as well as the business and institutional structures shaped by that law, are among the most important obstacles to realizing the potential of digital technology in education.

Anonymity on the Net

The Swedish Pirate Party have announced a commercial venture aimed at providing anonymous filesharing using a darknet, allowing users access to a VPN giving them a claimed untraceable Swedish IP address.

Microsoft democratizes the Xbox

San Jose Mercury News: Microsoft hopes to recruit future video game developers by making it possible for just about anybody, working from their home PC, to create games for the Xbox 360 video game console.

'We Are Not Alone'

video mashup: ben nisetar
home: they-live.com
spoken word: david icke
music: martin noakes

We Are Not Alone, a new photo/video mashup (in Flash) by Benn Nisetar, using onetruemedia’s online montage tool. Terrific!

Cross-posted to New Media Musings.

Microsoft hands copyright control over to publishers

Information World Review: Microsoft hands copyright control over to publishers. Software giant begins book digitisation, but side-steps copyright problems.

How did they know I downloaded ‘Meet the Fockers’ on BitTorrent?

Slate: CSI: BitTorrent. How’d They Know I Downloaded ‘Meet the Fockers’? MP3 podcast here. Daniel Engber explains how corporate snoops often employ outside contractors — and even hackers — to do the work. They use software to determine the Internet protocol address of the users downloading (and often simultaneously uploading) movies and music. They also “seed” file-sharing networks with material to trap users into downloading it and then catch them (NY Times synopsis).

Excerpt from the Slate piece:

Some file-sharers claim that media-security firms also seed networks with dummy torrents to trick potential pirates into revealing themselves. (One file-sharing company says the MPAA hired a hacker to steal its trade secrets.) A couple of years ago, a pair of young hackers started circulating their own fake downloads that displayed a "Bad Pirate!" message and broadcast your IP address when you opened them up. ...

LucasFilm and YouTube

Here's some unusual (and good) news: LucasFilm Online reports that they've asked YouTube to restore all the Star Wars spoofs that the site removed because of copyright infringement, LucasFilm said the videos were taken down due to a misunderstanding and they contacted YouTube to insist they be restored.