Arstechnica has a good article about the overstatement of P2P as a threat to the music industry. In short, other issues such as simple borrowed, ripped, and burned CDs may eat into profits even more. That phenomenon is difficult to curtail though it is one that the music industry faced before with audio cassettes. In [...]

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The Net moves fast and LiveJournal has now posted an apology for taking down a broad swath of its journals because their content violated its policies. The explanation states that journals were “suspended” not deleted. The last paragraph sums up the Catch-22 in which LiveJournal perceives itself to be:
We have always been strong supporters of [...]

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William Patry reports on an unusual copyright case from Arizona, in which Jesus and God tried to sue Arizona State University. The district court dismissed the case before it was served on the grounds that the allegations were “fanciful” and “factually frivolous.”
Here’s the detail that caught my eye:  The named plaintiff is “Jesus J. [...]

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LiveJournal which claims to host more than 13 million journals has deleted several hundred accounts after Warriors for Innocence, an activist group that polices the Web for pedophilia sites, identified several journals as problems. The Web is a wonderful place. One can write what one wants, share it, and begin to find others with similar [...]

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Major League Baseball is working on a strategy to deal with Slingbox, which networks your DVR’d content.  Slingbox’s record-here-watch-anywhere functionality interferes with geographic exclusivity provisions built into MLB’s existing broadcast rights model.

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CNET reports that the EMI/iTunes deal to offer DRM free music is now live. Of course one must pay more for the music. DRM-free songs cost $1.29; DRM encoded music is still $0.99. So ten songs have gone from $9.90 to $12.90 or every ten songs costs three dollars more. Let the market debates [...]

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In today’s Yahoo!: “Man clad in underwear pins leopard.” The story may not be quite as sensational as the headline, but it’s still pretty unusual. Apparently a leopard hopped through the window of a home in Israel’s Negev desert, and the occupant, “clad only in underwear and a T-shirt,” prevailed. Tarzan [...]

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CBS reports that the Alabama Department of Homeland Security had a Web site that listed groups it believed to be possible terrorists. The list included “hate groups, anti-government groups and anarchists” and it listed so-called “single issue extremists” such as:
* Environmentalists
* Anti-Genetics (those opposed to genetically-altered crops)
* Animal Rights
* Anti-Abortion
* Anti-Nuclear
* Anti-War
* Pro-Gay Right
CBS’s article [...]

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Today’s Boston Globe featured a story about a no confidence vote by the U. Massachusetts faculty against the U. Mass. President and Board of Trustees. The story mentions strong statements by faculty members to the President, who attended the meeting.
This story reminds me of the value of tenure, an institution under criticism within the [...]

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The dispute between the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Act (Mass MoCA) and Swiss artist Christoph Büchel sounds like an “only in the art world” tale of artistic presumption, temperament, and public funding.  But there’s more (after the jump).

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Recently the NJ Turnpike has filed a suit to prevent the airing of a 42-second video of a car crash:
“Because the videos of the car accident were recorded using the NJTA’s cameras and support equipment, the videos are original creations of the NJTA and constitute the copyrighted property of the NJTA,” Turnpike Authority attorney Donald [...]

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Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails on the recording industry, in an interview with the Herald Sun, an Australian paper:
It must be an odd time then to have a new album, Year Zero, out?
It’s a very odd time to be a musician on a major label, because there’s so much resentment towards the record industry [...]

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I’ve just caught up with the tail end of William Birdthistle’s soccer-and-law guest stint at The Volokh Conspiracy, and I give him major points for prescience.  As the subject of his suggested rules-and-standards examination of the laws of the game, he offers the handball rule — or, precisely in the terms in which FIFA addresses [...]

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Apparently several internet taxes proposals are coming our way and possibly soon. According to CNET, bills to levy new or end bans on Internet related taxes are in play including one for an Internet Sales Tax (sponsored by Senator Enzi, Republican Wyoming) and several that address access tax bans. Senator John Sununu (Republican, New Hampshire) [...]

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I want to juxtapose briefly a recent post by Ed Felten and one by Randy Picker, both of whom are commenting about why and what information technologies threaten.  To be clear, neither is addressing the other.  Still, they frame the basic debate, and it is impressive (and perhaps a little unsettling) that the terms of the [...]

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Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the release of the original Star Wars, and in celebration Lucasfilm is releasing clips of all six Star Wars films to be mashed and remixed.  Of course, once Lucasfilm blesses the remixing, a couple of things happen.  One, the resulting remixes aren’t necessarily examples of “fair use”; so long [...]

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Public.Resource.Org has decided that the Smithsonian Images Web site goes too far in its copyright and contract language such that public domain material is restricted and that use of the material would be chilled. As part of Public.Resource.Org’s efforts to evaluate the Smithsonian’s approach, the group claims they showed the National Air and Space Museum copyright [...]

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AP reports that Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette fame is no longer part of the Washingtonienne law suit. Cox argued that blogs should not be liable for the material they reprint. The court did not address that argument. Instead because the statute of limitations required adding her within one year and she was added [...]

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Frank’s post at Concurring Opinions about remixing and the nature of creation reminded me of a Fresh Air interview with Mos Def from December 22, 2004. In the interview Gross acknowledges Def’s talents including playing instruments (time sig. approx 27th min.) and then suggests that some think that rap’s sampling roots erodes young people’s playing [...]

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Copyright owners in the US are busy getting universities to do their handiwork.  In the UK, they’re relying on a different sort of cultural institution — stereotypes: 
As part of a multi-million pound, cross-media initiative, the Industry Trust for IP Awareness will hope to transform consumer attitudes by attaching a social stigma to copyright theft.The message [...]

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