I listened to the first hour of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs hearing yesterday. From this panel: Mitch Bainwol, head of the RIAA, Jack Valenti head of the MPA, LL Cool J and Mike Negra, President of Mikes Video, Inc., State College, Pennsylvania, one noteworthy impression: they seemed to lack understanding of the difference between client-server systems (Napster) and P2P models (KaZaa, Grokster). Considering that Napster was ruled to be illegal, because it used a centralized server to make connections which the company could control, and the other P2P models are still here because they are dispersed without centralized control, I would think they would want to understand the distinction. Because of this lack of distinction, they appeared yesterday to want to deploy solutions that are tailored more to a centralized model, like popup messages warning users (who are not connected to a centralized server) about unauthorized file sharing. Here is the Katie Dean/Wired article on this, although it focuses mostly on the different artists' perspectives from Chuck D and LL Cool J.

In other news, Madonna is being sued for copyright infringement by the son of Guy Bourdin over her videos for "Hollywood." Apparently, the videos copy many of the images he made for Vogue in the 50's. Do a compare and contrast for yourself. Note that Madonna was the one who planted files on P2P networks a few months ago with recordings of her voice where she asked "what the f*ck do you think you're doing," which then led to a series of remix contests of the files.