joegratz.net

In each of the new Light Rail stations opening in the next few months in Minneapolis, there will be four multimedia art-delivery kiosks featuring audio and video content submitted by Minnesota artists via this call for submissions. They’re having Janet Zweig (a multimedia installation artist) do the conceptual design, ParallelDevelopment do the industrial design and Scharff Weisberg do the electronics.

All of the art will be on the topics of “Minnesota nice” or the weather. I’m thinking about putting together an audio piece. If anyone reading this needs audio engineering help with a submission, email me.

Robin Pogrebin reports in today’s New York Times about a new company purporting to sell two-inch segments of the “master tape” from Elvis Presley’s Sun Sessions for $500 each.

They’ve said nothing about provenance, but they do have a pretty good excuse for cutting it up. They claim that the tape is no longer playable because of its age and because of water damage, and that it was played once, digitally recorded, and can now safely be sliced up and sold off. Tapes from the 1950s (and later) do routinely disintegrate; usually, the adhesive that binds the oxide to the tape backing gets gummy and keeps the tape from running through the machine smoothly. By “baking” the tape in a low-temperature oven for a few hours, you can get everything to stick together and un-gum just enough to play the tape smoothly. Once. After that, it’s often a goner.

Nice excuse for cutting it up, but there are a number of very good reasons not to believe them:

• They claim this is the original session tape. But if you look at the order of the songs on the tape, they’re not even in chronological order. They apparently want us to believe that they recorded “I’ll Never Let You Go” at the end of the tape in September, 1954, then recorded “I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone” the following April, before it on the tape. I’m sure they were frugal with recording tape back then, but there’s no way they could have known precisely how much tape later sessions would take up, such that they could start recording way into the reel and not record over anything.
• The tape that Bongiovi is holding up in the Times photo appears to be in perfect condition. If the condition were as bad as they claim, the tape wouldn’t look brand new. A bunch of the oxide would be missing, and you’d be able to see it in the picture. Especially if there was water damage, as they claim.
• Taking off my audio geek hat and putting on my law geek hat, take a look at the “Certificate of Authenticity”. Note that it doesn’t actually certify the authenticity of the tape. Instead, it states the opinion of Tony Bongiovi (who appears to be a business partner in this venture) that the tape is authentic. If it turns out to be a fake (and I believe it will), his liability, at least, is limited.
• Here’s the best part. Let’s say I buy one of these snippets, then start thinking the tape is a fake and sue Master Tape Collection. My case would depend on being able to prove the tape is fake. Where’s the evidence of the tape’s authenticity? Spread all over the world in two-inch segments. The opinion of the company’s tape authenticators will stand as the only opinion ever about the tape’s authenticity, because nobody else will ever be able to inspect the whole thing.

What’s really shameless is that the Elvis estate issued them a license to use his name and likeness. I mean, I have nothing against them making all the money they can, but being seen as impliedly authenticating a fake tape is not good for an organization’s image.

There’s a new email virus making the rounds very quickly. If you receive a message saying, in effect, “The text is improperly encoded”, don’t click the attachment. Please.

Infected machines participate in a denial-of-service attack on www.sco.com, the company many geeks now loathe more than any other for these reasons. Pretty dumb; what do they think they’re going to accomplish? Darl’s all of a sudden going to back off? I can’t imagine this will help the good guys, and I expect SCO will put out a press release headlined something like, “Linux Developers Release Virus; Infringes SCO’s Methods And Concepts”.

Update: Symantec has extracted a list of keywords (scroll down a bit) that, if found in an email address, will cause the worm not to send the virus to that address. I don’t like the looks of this. Random script kiddies or bad guys in second-world virus labs generally don’t specifically include code making sure the RFC editor doesn’t get the worm, or that it doesn’t get sent to isi.edu. This looks like the work of a first-world Slashdot reader, probably in the United States, judging from the keywords. It’s sad to see one of one’s own go bad . . .

By September 1st, every Best Western in the country will have free high-speed Internet access, both Ethernet in the rooms and wireless in the lobby.

Smart move. As I’ve mentioned before, providing free wireless Internet access is a cheap amenity that creates a lot of customer value. Perhaps this move will spur other hotel chains to deploy free wireless.

This is likely to be revolutionary for my Dad, a labor arbitrator who often has hearings in small-town Wisconsin. Not every little town has an Internet cafe, but every little town has a Best Western.

Via BoingBoing.

Tomorrow’s New York Times Magazine has this piece on the current battles over copyright and their implications for the future of our culture.

While the American copyright system was designed to encourage innovation, it is now, they contend, being used to squelch it. They see themselves as fighting for a traditional understanding of intellectual property in the face of a radical effort to turn copyright law into a tool for hoarding ideas. ”The notion that intellectual property rights should never expire, and works never enter the public domain — this is the truly fanatical and unconstitutional position,” says Jonathan Zittrain, a co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the intellectual hub of the Copy Left.

I especially like Professor Boyle’s analogy at the end of the article:

The future of the Copy Left’s efforts is still an open question. James Boyle has likened the movement’s efforts to establish a cultural commons to those of the environmental movement in its infancy. Like Rachel Carson in the years before Earth Day, the Copy Left today is trying to raise awareness of the intellectual ”land” to which they believe we ought to feel entitled and to propose policies and laws that will preserve it. Just as the idea of environmentalism became viable in the wake of the last century’s advances in industrial production, the growth of this century’s information technologies, Boyle argues, will force the country to address the erosion of the cultural commons. ”The environmentalists helped us to see the world differently,” he writes, ”to see that there was such a thing as ‘the environment’ rather than just my pond, your forest, his canal. We need to do the same thing in the information environment. We have to ‘invent’ the public domain before we can save it.”

Is The Future of Ideas our Silent Spring?

The RIAA has filed John Doe lawsuits against 532 alleged file-swapppers. Because they can no longer subpoena subscriber information indiscriminately, they have to file suit against “the guy with IP x.x.x.x” instead, then get their hands on the person’s real name later on.

UPDATE: The RIAA has posted a sample complaint here. There’s nothing terribly surprising or interesting in the complaint, or any assertions that are facially false. One shaky bit, in the Venue paragraph, is the assertion that, “Although the true identity of each Defendant is unknown to Plaintiffs at this time, on information and belief, each Defendant may be found in this District and/or a substantial part of the acts of infringement complained of herein occurred in this District.” I don’t think they have much basis for this claim. The defendants’ ISPs’ headquarters are in the District in which the suit was filed, but that doesn’t mean any of the infringing acts took place there. This is far from fatal to the suit (venue problems are not going to get these thrown out with prejudice, especially when the identities of the defendants are unknown), but it’s certainly a bit curious.

The other interesting bit is that the RIAA is requesting rather broad injunctive relief in addition to statutory damages. I suppose, were I the RIAA, I would “ask for the world” in my complaint, too, whether or not it trampled fair use rights or ran the risk of sending people to jail for making a mix CD for their friends.

If this strategy turns up the true names of the defendants (and there’s no reason to believe it won’t), here’s hoping they ended up suing someone they shouldn’t have, like Norm Coleman or Fred von Lohmann or some well-funded, trigger-happy trial lawyer with a lot of time on his hands. It would be difficult to put that cat back in the bag.

. . . this time, in state court!

SCO filed yet another lawsuit today, this time against Novell, claiming common law slander of title. In Utah, “[t]o prove slander of title, a claimant must prove that (1) there was a publication of a slanderous statement disparaging claimant’s title, (2) the statement was false, (3) the statement was made with malice, and (4) the statement caused actual or special damages.” First Sec. Bank of Utah, N.A. v. Banberry Crossing, 780 P.2d 1253 (Utah 1989).

So they’re going to have to prove not only that they own the UNIX System V copyrights free of any claim by Novell (which is currently a hotly contested issue, turning on a few ambiguous phrases in a contract), but also that Novell’s statements were made with malice. This is not a winner. But, it’ll provide an amusing sideshow.

I’m amusing myself with Googlefight. If you have 5 minutes to kill, I recommend it highly. Some of the outcomes are expected, some aren’t.

Mike Rowe is a 17-year-old high schooler from Canada who likes to program. He’s posted some of his programs on his web site, mikerowesoft.com. So Microsoft is getting ready to sue or UDRP him to take away his domain name. Fine. Microsoft is their trademark, and there are a dozen cases (at least in the U.S.) holding that there is a likelihood of confusion between sound-alikes and the real trademark. (E.g., if I call my soft drink Khokha Kholla, that’s confusingly similar to Coca-Cola.) They’ll sue or UDRP, he’ll raise the defense that it’s his own name forchrissakes, and the tribunal will decide one way or the other.

The real travesty here is that some key news outlets on intellectual property issues — Slashdot and the Register — haven’t mastered the rudimentary distinction between copyright law and trademark law. The Slashdot headline is “Microsoft to sue Mike Rowe for Copyrights”; The Register states that “The Beast of Redmond however reckons that the phonetic domain infringes its copyright and insists Mike hand it over or face the consequences.”

For those snoozing in the back: Trademarks are names or other signifiers used to indicate the origin of goods or services. Copyrights protect original works of authorship, and the copyright office has ruled that titles, company names, and short phrases are not eligible for copyright protection. Yes, there’s some overlap — companies can hold a copyright in their logo, for example, over which they also have trademark protection. But you can’t copyright your name (despite what some criminals with too much time on their hands think), and you can’t trademark the text of your novel.

The copyright industries’ “reeducation campaigns” are occasionally scary (e.g., encouraging kindergarteners to put a little (c) on their drawings). But I think even basic understanding of how IP laws work is too rare, and should be taught somewhere along the line. Maybe it can be part of the media literacy curriculum.

On this day in 1984, the United States Supreme Court ruled that manufacturers of devices with substantial noninfringing uses would not be liable for consumers’ use of the devices to infringe copyrights. The Guardian has a good piece on the anniversary.

Brian Ulrich of the Dean Nation blog has asked me to explain why the Dean campaign’s “Principles for an Internet Policy” make sense. The Dean Internet policy is similar to that held by many of the leading writers on Internet structure and governance — not surprising, since many of them are advising the Dean camp. While there are certainly differences of opinion, the principles outlined here are commonly held among the EFF / Berkman Center set.

On to the principles:

1. No one owns the Internet
The Internet does not exist for the unique benefit of any group or economic interest. It is ours as citizens of this country and as inhabitants of this planet.

The Internet is not a “thing”. You can’t own the Internet. You can’t control the Internet. As I explained to a lot of people around 1996 or so, you can’t sue the Internet, and the Internet has no CEO. (Everybody seems to get this concept, at least in some vague way, these days.) The Internet exists only as a set of agreements. Everybody’s decided to use the same set of protocols. To connect to the network, you have to enter into an agreement with someone who’s already connected to everyone else. The network has no center. It’s made up of hundreds of thousands of little individual agreements between parties to swap data.

Some parties have entered into many, many agreements. They might have especially good connectivity to a given part of the world, so everyone wants to swap traffic with them. (This is known as “peering”.) Though no one party can exert control over the whole network, a number of the largest “peers” could, working together, change some things about the way the Internet works. For instance, if Time Warner decided to block traffic from P2P file sharing programs like Kazaa on its network, it would have a significant effect on the ability of that application to work. In a way, they would be trying to exert ownership over the Internet by making their portion of the network work in some proprietary, non-standard way.

Private parties own the “pipes” that make up the Internet, but by joining the network they’ve agreed not to try and appropriate it for themselves by making their segment of the network work in nonstandard ways. This policy principle stands for the proposition that such appropriation is inappropriate and should be discouraged.

2. Everyone should be connected
The social, economic, and educational advantages of being on the Internet are real. Universal Internet access regardless of economic or geographic position should be a federal goal.

This one is pretty uncontroversial, dealing with the “digital divide” that keeps the poor from taking advantage of the benefits of the Internet. People unable to use the Internet to search for jobs or housing or to communicate with employers, friends, and relatives are at a disadvantage in a society where such connectivity is expected. The FCC is already dealing with this problem pretty well with the E-Rate program, which helps schools and libraries connect to the Internet, but more needs to be done.

The Internet can also provide economic stimulus for disadvantages populations directly. I know members of the “working poor” who are beginning to supplement their income selling handicrafts on eBay. And just yesterday, I saw one Somali immigrant teaching two others the basics of web design on a laptop borrowed from a community center, using a free wireless connection at the Hard Times Cafe. The benefits of Internet connectivity for disadvantaged populations are significant, and this policy principle commits Dean to extending these benefits to all Americans.

3. The Internet’s value comes from its openness
The Internet provides a new possibility of global access to an unprecedented sum of human knowledge. It is the responsibility of this generation to make sure that knowledge is available for innovation in business and culture.

4. The Internet’s openness should be promoted
The Internet was initially designed as a way of moving bits without preferring some bits to others. Network architects call this principle “end-to-end” networking. That way, anyone with a good idea - or a bad one - can build it and see if it works. This openness is essential to the Internet’s value as a marketplace of innovation and a public square for ideas.

This is the most important Internet policy issue, and connects directly with the “ownership” issue discussed above. The Internet works because the Internet is non-proprietary. You don’t have to pay some central body to get access, or to make software that communicates over the Internet; you just connect to the nearest node, and you’re connected to everyone else.

In general, inventions that are “smart” are thought to be better than inventions that are “stupid”. If your car was “smart” enough to keep from colliding with the car in front of you, that would be better; if your toaster were “smart” enough to keep from burning your bagel, that would be better. This can be taken too far (e.g., “It looks like you’re writing a letter!”), but in general, devices that can figure out what you want them to do are better than ones that just carry out one task without trying to improve the user experience.

Right now, the Internet is a “stupid” network. The routers that move the bits around don’t stop to peer inside each packet to see what data is being transmitted. They just look to see what address the packet is going to and give the packet a shove in the right direction. After enough of these shoves, the packet ends up at its destination. The routers don’t care what’s in the packet; it could be an email, or an MP3, or a web page, or an instant message, or anything. All packets are handled the same way, and the network itself remains completely ignorant of what’s inside. This is “end-to-end” networking because the network just moves things from one endpoint to another, and the endpoints do all the work of interpreting the data. The ends are “smart”; the network is “stupid”.

Wouldn’t this all work better if we made the network “smart” too? Why shouldn’t routers filter out illegal content, or prevent copyright infringement, or keep kids from harassing each other over IM? Why should the Internet backbones be clogged with spam, when routers could just discard packets that contain it?

No. The Internet must be kept “stupid”. Stupid networks are much, much better than smart networks, for a number of reasons. The biggest is innovation. If the network doesn’t care what’s in the packets, we don’t have to do anything to the network when a new technology comes along. It just works. If the network were “smart”, each new technology would have to be approved before it could be used on the Internet (or on certain segments of the Internet). That would stifle innovation. A fuller explanation of the reasons why stupid networks are important can be found at World of Ends. This policy principle means that Howard Dean will work to keep the Internet “stupid” so that innovation can flourish and nobody can appropriate all the benefits of the Internet for themselves.

5. The Internet is a democracy of voices, not primarily a broadcast medium

Although the Internet certainly can be used to broadcast messages and programs from one spot to hundreds of millions of others, its most important effect socially and economically is its transformation of the broadcast model. Rather than “freedom of the press belonging to those who own one,” everyone now can reach everyone else. The Internet is encouraging people to speak up, in their own voice, about what matters to them. This empowerment of human voice and conversation is profoundly in line with the ideals of American democracy.

The document says it pretty well. If regulators think of the Internet as anlogous to TV or radio, they’re likely to make bad decisions. Everyone has a voice, and Dean himself has seen the power of the blogging phenomenon at work. This is one more reason end-to-end is important; if some ends are privileged over others, the architecture of the Internet begins to resemble the “one-to-many” topology of broadcasting rather than the “many-to-many” topology of “stupid” networks. This policy principle means that Dean will make sure that the Internet remains a many-to-many medium.

6. The Internet is not perfectible
The Internet is not perfect and it never will be. It is a global network providing possibility of connecting to geniuses and pickpockets and worse. We need to work to root out illegal and malicious uses of the Internet and the exploitation of children and other vulnerable members of our society.

There is an urge to take any measures necessary to rid the Internet of shady dealers. Spammers, scammers, and con men have learned to leverage the power of the Internet, applying old games to new media. Thieves always adapt to new technology; their use of the railroads for con games in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is legendary. But just as the presence of con men didn’t mean the railroads should be shut down or modified to eliminate the possibility of scamming, so the presence of unsavory elements on the Internet doesn’t mean we need to shut it down or fundamentally change the way it works in order to “perfect” it. The cure is likely to be worse than the disease, because by eliminating the channels through which criminals deal, we’ll also be eliminating the channels through which legitimate communication and innovation occurs. This principle means that Dean will vigorously pursue the people who commit crimes on the Internet, but that the network itself won’t be blamed for the crimes that are committed using it.

7. The Internet is just at the beginning

Although the Internet has connected 700,000,000 people worldwide, it is just at its beginning. We need to recognize that no one yet knows the true potential of the Internet. And we need to support the political and technological policies that will help the Internet grow to its true capacity as a force for democracy world-wide.

This policy princple means that we must not assume that the way the Internet is used today is the way the Internet will be used in 10, or 15, or 100 years. Decisions we make today radically effect the future of the network. This makes it all the more important that the full democratizing force of the Internet is allowed to be realized, untrammeled by attempts at appropriation by coporations or bureaucrats.

In the latest TechKnowledge Newsletter, Adam Thierer of the Cato Institute attacks the “collectivist” position on Internet regulation. It’s a pretty good piece. I disagree vehemently with every conclusion Thierer comes to, but I don’t think he misstates the “Dean/Copps/Lessig” position that badly; he just makes it sound vaguely pinko, which it’s not.

Strip out the slanted language (”They want to water down IP rights and greatly expand fair use rights and the public domain.”), and this piece makes a great argument for why the Slashdot crowd should vote for Dean.

Typically, record companies have to pay songwriters about 8 cents for each copy of a song that they sell. That rate is set by law. So, if you sell 20 copies of a CD that includes 4 songs I wrote, you owe me about $6.40.

Some of the recent copy protection schemes look like normal CDs to CD players, but when put in a computer, they block access to the normal CD data and instead allow users to play restricted copies of the songs, which have been encoded into Windows Media format on part of the disc that normal CD players skip over.

Record companies have been using this copy protection scheme, but only paying songwriters for one copy of each song per disc, even though there are really two copies on the disc. Whoops. So now, songwriters want a few million dollars in back royalties. Why didn’t someone think of this earlier?

Somebody found the frequency at which Burger King drive-through order-taking radios operate and set a 2-way radio to the frequency. Then he started posing as the guy at the window saying things like, “You don’t need a couple of Whoppers. You are too fat. Pull ahead.”

So, what would you say to drive-through customers? A few suggestions:

• “Welcome to McDonalds, may I take your order?”
• “Bonjour, monsieur. Bienvenue à chez roi de l’amburger. Je crache sur vous.”
• “Would you like BSE-free for an additional 29 cents?”

(Incidentally, the article mentions that the restaurant management is going to change the frequency of the radios to get rid of the problem. Fat chance. It’d take 5 minutes with a scanner and maybe another 5 adjusting the radio to be back on track.)

So I’m downloading a file from MusicRebellion (which, BTW, has $0.10 major-label downloads available, with an EasyEverything-like demand-based pricing scheme), and it presents me with this huge, honking license agreement. The licenses for several of the majors are reasonable and clear — they say what you can and can’t do with the download, how many times you can burn it to CD, etc. (The EMI license is especially short and clear — thank you Ted Cohen!) In the Universal Music group section (applicable, since I’m downloading an MCA release) is the following:

You acknowledge that a Download is copyrighted material. The Download is for Your personal, non-commercial use only. Any use of a Download that would constitute a copyright infringement is prohibited and may subject You to civil liability and criminal penalties.

There is no other affirmative grant of rights in the license. It says “use … that … would constitute a copyright infringement is prohibited” (emphasis added). This is pretty unclear. The actual grant of license is buried in a restriction (”for personal, non-commercial use only”), such that it might not be a license at all. What they seem to mean is, “Any personal, non-commercial use allowed by our DRM is fine, and we already said you can’t muck about with our DRM.” What they say could just as easily mean, “You may not make public or commercial use of the Download, and furthermore, all of the standard default rules of copyright law are incorporated by reference into this contract, so we get a state law cause of action for breach of contract as well as a section 501 cause of action for copyright infringement if you violate any of our exclusive rights, even if it seems like we’re letting you do so. So, burn CDs at your peril, vanquished consumer! Bwahaha!”.

Furthermore, all four of the major label license agreements say substantially the same thing: “Make whatever personal use you want, just don’t circumvent the DRM.” Why couldn’t these be rolled into one (which would look just like the EMI license)?

Minneapolis Girl Scouts are getting hard-sell training in preparation for the annual cookie push.

Our own Twin Cities cybersquatting anti-abortion nutcase, Bill Purdy, has lost again. This time, he decided to register a bunch of domain names related to Minneapolis law firm Faegre & Benson (e.g. faegre.biz, faegre-benson.com, etc.). These all pointed to pages which copied the graphics and layout of the real Faegre site, but replaced the content of the page with anti-abortion graphics and invective. (Is this sounding like a Trademarks exam hypo yet? We’ve got infringement of a federally registered mark, cybersquatting, trade dress infringement, and state-law unfair competition [not to mention copyright infringement, but we’ll stick with the trademark claims].) He presumably targeted Faegre because they were the attorneys for the Minneapolis Star Tribune in its successful attempt to force Purdy to stop using names like startribunes.com and startribunesays.com, also pointing to anti-abortion rhetoric.

Anyway, he defended the suit pro se (without an attorney), and failed to appear at the preliminary injunction hearing, though he claims he was not given adequate notice of the hearing. So Faegre’s request for a preliminary injunction was granted, in an order that reads like it was copied straight out of the plaintiffs’ brief. I don’t get it — did he think he’d be able to single-handedly out-lawyer the law firm he’d angered? Or did he think his position was so self-evidently correct, despite having lost untold numbers of similar battles in the past few years, that he would prevail?

Via Politech.