Friend and Business partner John Stathas emailed some links from the iLaw conference at Harvard:
Barry Ritholtz published Bob Lefsetz’s comments on the state of the music industry:
“We’re being duped. The RIAA keeps saying it’s saving the MUSIC when really all its label members are interested in is saving THEMSELVES!
It’s out of control. Irrelevant of the Grokster decision. These billion dollar companies with their high-priced lobbyists have infected the media and the minds of the public to the detriment of ART! What’s worse, they’ve convinced the musicians signed to their labels of the validity of their position, which is equivalent to slaves standing up for plantation owners.
I don’t know about you, but I believe in MUSIC, not LABELS!
Cory Doctorow urges us to contact Senator Kohl, along with others and urge him to stop Hollywood’s special interests from inserting the broadcast flag requirement into a Senate appropriations bill today. The broadcast flag is yet another reduction in our fair use rights.
This is a classic dead of night, end of game maneuver. The Wisconsin Senator has voted against our interests recently, including the National ID bill, the bankruptcy bill (more) and large corporate giveaways. I hope he does the right thing today. Call his office: (202) 224-5653 or send an email. I cannot see any benefit to Wisconsin residents of Kohl’s recent efforts. More on the Senator’s votes here. The EFF has more. Roger Simon correctly points out that Hollywood’s real problem lies with their declining product quality.
Watch the conversation via Technorati
The U.S. Department of Justice is quietly shopping around the explosive idea of requiring Internet service providers to retain records of their customers’ online activities.
Data retention rules could permit police to obtain records of e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity months after Internet providers ordinarily would have deleted the logs–that is, if logs were ever kept in the first place. No U.S. law currently mandates that such logs be kept.
In theory, at least, data retention could permit successful criminal and terrorism prosecutions that otherwise would have failed because of insufficient evidence. But privacy worries and questions about the practicality of assembling massive databases of customer behavior have caused a similar proposal to stall in Europe and could engender stiff opposition domestically.
Cory Doctorow and Mark Cuban question inane Digital Restriction Management (DRM) tools that Hollywood is using to restrict our fair use rights. Support the EFF.
BBC:
Weblog entries on some parts of Microsoft’s MSN site in China using words such as “freedom”, “democracy” and “demonstration” are being blocked.
Chinese bloggers already face strict controls and must register their online journal with Chinese authorities.
Microsoft said the company abided by the laws, regulations and norms of each country in which it operates.
Rebecca MacKinnon has more
I’ve already written about what a bad idea trusted traveler programs are. The basic security intuition is that when you create two paths through security — an easy path and a hard path — you invite the bad guys to take the easy path. So the security of the sort process must make up for the security lost in the sorting. Trusted traveler fails this test; there are so many ways for the terrorists to get trusted traveler cards that the system makes it too easy for them to avoid the hard path through security.
Ernest Miller on Apple & Microsoft DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) Lock-in:
Look at it from Microsoft’s point of view. Every song you purchase from iTunes with Apple’s proprietary, DMCA-protected DRM is one more bit of lock-in to Apple. When you’ve got a hundred or two hundred or more of your favorite (let’s face it, you buy your favorites first) songs in iTunes format, you’ve got some significant lock-in in the form of very high switching costs. Just the way Steve Jobs likes it.
And that lock-in is growing at a rate of millions of songs every month.
Very useful post, Ernie!
US Senators Russ Feingold and John Sununu introduced a bill requiring federal agencies to report to Congress on data-mining programs they are developing or using. Ironic, given that our Senator Feingold voted for the National ID Act which will create a juicy data mining target….
So here is the question which you should be asking yourself. If you released full digital copies of all of the Star Wars films — with no DRM — allowing anyone to duplicate and distribute to their hearts contents… would sales in the toys, video games, and publishing categories increase by enough to offset the loss in sales from video and DVD?