Deep. "Note worthy news links from around the internet."
Mini. "A byte-sized companion to Deep Links."

In the interest of choice, I'm hoping they do a demi. You know those marketing guys say that when you offer small, medium and large, by far the biggest seller is medium. Demi-link. How 'bout it? The tagline could read: "Like two espressos after lunch, with grappa. An EFF-correcto."

Anyway, I'm thrilled the EFF has brought active blogging back to its site and I really enjoy reading Fred Von Lohmann, who I haven't seen blog before, write about Wicked Player Pianos and such. It's only occasionally we hear from him on Pho. Though I must say that as I got to the end, I noticed what turned out to be a link to their "File Sharing" category (it's to the left of the Permalink which is to the left of the Technorati cosmos link. For a split second, I thought he was going to share a piano file with me. But oh well... I am discombobulated a little (you have no idea the kind of day I have had, what with 2 hours traveling 1 mile in the hot sun on the bay bridge because some guy decided to jump off).

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Fred is joined by Jason Schultz (of Copyfight and Geeklaw) and Donna Wentworth (Founder and uber-bloggerati member of Copyfight) on the sized "deep" blog, and Ren Bucholz who's doing the miniLink blog.

Also, I've switched the blogroll at the right, to reflect these great blog additions.

Well, everybody including Mark Cuban (the owner of the Dallas Mavericks who just started blogging) is talking about music and copyright somewhere, it seems. Cuban has suddenly become very active on Pho talking about the Leahy-Hatch bill proposing to make file sharing criminal. (Side Note: Mark mentioned a company he started selling powered milk as an example toward the entrepreneurial spirit he thinks the music business and RIAA should consider, instead of fighting file sharing with lawsuits and lobbying their congress-buddies for extra big sticks to crack on the file sharers. Other Phosters are arguing back. Online discourse is fun, isn't it? And Ernie Miller notes how this puts Hatch on the side of porn companies. Oh the wicked webs we weave....)

Folks have also been talkin about the UNC Harvard study on music downloading:

Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates. Moreover, these estimates are of moderate economic significance and are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the recent decline in music sales.

Oh my. Anywho. UC Berkeley has been notified that of the 532 lawsuits filed last week, there are a few "yet-to-be-named" students. Holy-Batman, Robin! File-sharing in Berkeley! Apparently, students aren't fazed (title of the article next to the headline in yesterday's Daily Cal about the suits).

I love the quote in the c|net article:

"It's important for everyone to understand that no one is immune from the consequences of illegally 'sharing' music files on (peer to peer) networks," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a statement.

God forbid that anyone might get immunity! Does this mean the negotiations for immunity are over? Dang. I though we were offering two Donovan albums and a lifetime subscription to the (semi)winning Bears home football games in exchange for immunity. You go out for a cappuccino and come back to find they've totally rejected that offer. Last time I take a coffee break.

"Lawsuits are an important part of the larger strategy to educate file sharers about the law, protect the rights of copyright owners, and encourage music fans to turn to these legitimate services."

Well, get ready to be educated folks. You know the kind! Where the law says that if you shoplift a CD from a store, you can max at up to a $1000 fine verses the $150,000 per song statutory limit for file-sharing. Woo-hoo, is that edifying. And to think they only raised our tuition 40% this year, and 30% last. Gosh, Shatzie should get on the stick with Cary Sherman cause he's missin the boat (doncha love those mixed metaphors when discussing the two of them? Sticks. Boat. I love it.)!

Anyhow, they're going for the big bucks this time says My-Thuan Tran.

"Obviously, college students are a big part of the problem, and therefore it was only a question of time before university users would be named defendants," Sherman said. ... The association has settled more than 400 cases so far, with an average settlement of $3,000 each. "This is not a revenue-generating exercise," Sherman said.

I repeat. Not a revenue-generating exercise. Right now the suits are in the John Doe Phase, so they're being sent to Berkeley who will then identify the students, after which the students will be served. Better move quickly, though, cause school is over in 6 weeks, and then all those students from all over the world will fly to all manner of places, making service a nightmare (or fun summer vacation for those adventurous process servicers!)

One thing, in the paper version of the Daily Cal, there was a cute little yellow and red chart, detailing legal verses illegal. Not online though. But here's what it said:

Legal vs. Illegal

Legal: Copying a CD onto your computer, an analog or digital tape, or special audio CD-R's for personal use.

Oaky doaky. And the CD-R doesn't have to be special either. Just recordable.

Illegal: Sharing those copyrighted files through peer-to-peer networks, instant messaging service or private local networks. Giving or lending burned CD's to others is also illegal.

Wait a minute. That last part. Yeah. What's that? No, don't think so. That is legal, and just because it's digital verses the analog tape mentioned above as legal, doesn't make the digital illegal. As long as it's non-commercial, it's okay to make a cd, or burn your iTunes or whatever, to share with a (real) friend as part of your fair use rights. Even iTunes says so with their 3 copy policy.

Illegal: Uploading AND Downloading copyrighted music on peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa.

Yes, this is illegal under the current law. So don't be trading on P2P networks unless the content is legally sharable, lest you want an expensive Cary Sherman education.

What's the impact of the internet on your work. If you are a musician or songwriter, fill it out! Very important considering the "spate" of lawsuits that keep "flooding" consumers (sorry, just had to make fun of those words that those reporters overuse...). Jason Schultz does the math though, figuring that each filesharer would need to set aside $0.01483 cents per month average in order to cover settlements across all filesharers. But then Jason points out that even if every suit got the RIAA a cool million, that figure would jump to just under five bucks. Well, that is similar to the EFF's plan. But I still think we need to hear from musicians and songwriters, and more than just those who make the big bucks and therefore get their viewpoints into the media. Just do it!

Thanks to Frank for the links.

Sean Savage says:

I know, you're not quite so sure about Garamond. But you -know- you're into Bob Dylan. So give it a chance.

Indulging my fantasies about moveable typefaces. Course, the Zepplin/Times NR is pretty hot, though BigG/Baskerville has really nice letters. But the Beatle's Dear Prudence/Book Antiqua has to be my fav. Now that's art.

His notes are here. Read all about who gets it, who doesn't and who ought to rethink their conception of physical media in the digital age.... Almost like being there.

where he just announced that Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom, his first novel, is available, as of today, under a Creative Commons No Right's Reserved license. His new book, Eastern Standard Tribe is now available for download under a Creative Commons Some Rights Reserved license.

Cool. I love No Rights Reserved.

Update 021404: here's a txt file of Cory's eTech talk yesterday. Also, the talk is No Right's Reserved, but the Down and Out Novel is actually ALMOST no rights reserved (yesterday I thought he said it was the novel, not the talk itself, that was under a CC, NNR). The novel it is actually available with this license:

the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, which explicitly allows anyone in the world to make any non-commercial adaptation of my book s/he can think of: translations, radio plays, movies, sequels, fanfic, slashfic...you get the picture

Here.

I for one find Frank to be invaluable, as a content manager for these issues, as a pointer to what's important to him and the copyfight. I have seen the conversation amongst the bloggers a little slow. Maybe it's the end of the year, beginning of the new year or finals or maybe it's the economy bubbling and keeping people busy. But these issues are key, and I'm planning more bloggers for bIPlog. Read Frank's words. They speak for themselves.

Well. A lot. Okay, here's the deal. BIPlog is moving from the Journalism School servers to the Boalt.org servers. Why? Well, I'm the only poster from the original class (you remember the one: the one that was going to be the Altamont of blogging) and I'd like more posters, because I want to focus more on Napsterization, though I will keep posting on it some. Also, the blog can live on as more Law and other students join Boalt.org (the student organization at Boalt Law School) to keep it sustainable and alive. So the last two weeks we've been working on the stuff to get that done (some technical, with a huge thanks to Scot Hacker, and some procedural) and will let everyone know when to change the RSS and linking information, though old original links will continue to work, because I hate broken links to posts and so will not do this to those who've linked to bIPlog.

Secondly, I've had the most stressful week of my grad school era this past week, which thankfully has ended, as well as, in my voluminous spare time, a friend's wedding the past two days. Why two days? Well, in a past life, I used to do flowers for events to earn spare dollars as an undergrad. Now, occasionally I do them for friends as a gift for the wedding. Involves a 4am trip to the flower market, some advance planning, and then two solid days of work. My body aches everywhere. I think I'm going into retirement on this one. Though it is fun to spend $1500 on wholesale flowers and do a really high end job (retail, that would cost ten grand). But at this point, my time is more valuable than it used to be, and I just can't do this too often. Did one last summer, and while it's such a great gift, and sumptuous and beautiful to get to work with such great media, it's too much. So, I have one more bar mitzvah, and then I'm out of the biz. At least for a few years. Hopefully.

It was this week with school and the wedding that really put me behind in my technical work, blogging, school, etc. However, once bIPlog is transferred and one other project is over, I resolve to get back to my regular schedule. Please forgive me the interruptions, but I actually have some things I've been wanting to do here. Stay tuned.

The RIAA has sued another 532 file sharers (uploaders they say averaged 800 or so songs) in either NY or Washington (according to Ted Bridis/AP). They now have to sue John Doe, and then subpoena personal information of users they believe file share, under court review, after losing last month the right to subpoena without oversight, directly from the ISP.

Ed Lee, Lawrence Solum and Ernie Miller comment on the success these suits bring (or don't).

Meanwhile, other business models that consider people's digital media desires are bubbling, including Diesel's Mix CD service photos here and here (via Joe and Ernie).

Brian Hindo/Business Week asks, Did Big Music Really Sink the Pirates? regarding lawsuits against file sharers. Hindo says that the PEW and comScore Media Metrix survey showing a decrease in KaZaA, Grokster, BearShare, and WinMX traffic show a narrow view of what's happening with filesharing. He says they don't consider that there are actually more files available on the networks for download, as well as a migration of users from those networks listed above to hipper systems like eDonkey and Bit Torrent which weren't measured. Also, PEW's methods of calling people may not get results because people may not now want to admit to filesharing. Also noted, according to:

Nielsen SoundScan, in 2003 CD album sales slipped 2% -- a less dramatic drop than the 9% slide the previous year. Also, fourth-quarter 2003 sales picked up 5.6% over 2002.

An interesting statistic, which could be interpreted to mean that the recession had an effect on music sales over the last three years, and now that the recession seems to be ending, people are spending more on music again. Seems like a conclusion in sync with the rest of the economy and sales figures for goods.

The major issue Hindo left out was that private file sharing networks may also be having an effect, causing users of KaZaa, etc. to move to networks that are private, small friend networks, encrypted and not detectable. Right now, we have no way of knowing what happens on those kinds of networks. Though his conclusion is what we've been saying for a long time:

What's clear, though, is that until the music industry gets fully behind online music sales, file-swappers will flock to next-generation sites like eDonkey -- which has seen 150% growth in the past year, according to independent tallies by both BayTSP and BigChampagne.

"This stuff is not going to go away," Gartner's (Michael) McGuire says. "The industry needs to provide a compelling legal alternative." Until that happens, pirates will continue to rule the online music seas.

Derek notes Coke's new service:

If I got my conversions right, you can stream any song for 20 cents and buy songs and albums for as low as $1.4 and 11.4, respectively.

Not quite cheap enough to be compelling, especially since $1.40 is 41 cents more than iTunes.

Yesterday, Frank Field pointed to this:

Music Industry Puts Troops in the Streets: Quasi-legal squads raid street vendors

Though no guns were brandished, the bust from a distance looked like classic LAPD, DEA or FBI work, right down to the black "raid" vests the unit members wore. The fact that their yellow stenciled lettering read "RIAA" instead of something from an official law-enforcement agency was lost on 55-year-old parking-lot attendant Ceasar Borrayo.

The Recording Industry Association of America is taking it to the streets.

Even as it suffers setbacks in the courtroom, the RIAA has over the last 18 months built up a national staff of ex-cops to crack down on people making and selling illegal CDs in the hood.

This is the RIAA, going after intellectual property. Like a drug raid. And we know how well the drug policy has been working the past 50 years. Success all over the place. It's not the drugs or IP that this is about, it's about policy and tactics, those people in the underground economy, and all the societal problems that come with it. Do we really want to go down this path with IP, or figure out a business model that works with digital distribution, not against it?

Update: Jason Schultz in the comments corrects his misquote in the LA Weekly article. On his blog, he says what he meant was,

...that sending out squads of investigators to collect evidence against counterfeiters is traditionally what trade enforcement organizations like the RIAA are good at. They find the pirates, collect the evidence, and then turn it over to real cops for enforcement.

...and that he had no idea the reporter was calling about the RIAA doing literal raids. Abe Burmeister responds to the distinction between file sharing and CD trading:

But really what is the difference between the two? One is structural, P2P file sharing involves a computer and broadband connection while alternative CD networks involve physical goods, that are copied not stolen. The other difference between the two is socioeconomic. P2P is a middle class act, requiring expensive equipment and connections. The extralegal CD distribution networks operate in far less privileged spaces. And they represent a valid attempt by these communities to route around the restrictions the RIAA is attempting to impose. But since it doesn't involve extensive computer use the EFF can't be bothered to defend.

He makes a very good point, and one that parallels what happens with drug prosecution and enforcement, when drugs like crack are punishable with far more restrictive sentences than cocaine, essentially reflecting who uses them and their socio-economic status. Course, the poor-folk get the short end of the stick. Though I would argue that there are also major organizations devoted to piracy, not just the small time folks noted in the article. I would disagree that EFF can't be bothered to defend CD distribution of copied music. I think instead EFF has drawn a legal line between these two types of music sharing, and in fact, before the first lawsuits against file sharers, they suggested that the RIAA should sue them. But I think a position they would have the most integrity with is that suing or raiding is untenable, that society would benefit overall from decriminalizing this behavior in favor of a business model that supports file sharing, makes artists money, no matter who does the distribution and by what method. Pushing more people, especially poor people with little resources, further into the criminal justice system, further into the underground economy, is a mistake those people can never recover from. There is no growth or advancement for a person in the underground economy, there is almost no chance to educate or buy a house or make a stake in society for themselves, their children or improve their neighborhoods. It's bad public policy and should not be supported at all.

Cell phone ringtones sales globally over the last year are up by 40% to more than $3.5 billion (via Wired). But I'm wondering, do we even need a song translated into a ringtone, if we can just play one or another MP3's on our phones, when a call or text message comes in? I mean, my phone plays music, why not just set up the music to play, or even a bit of the music, that I've already paid for, to ring me? Why does my ring tone have to be an electronic tone-quality to signify a ring? Why not just make my own, out of what I've already bought?

On a somewhat related note, Ernie Miller has a hilarious take on the double copyright issue brewing where two formats of the same music are contained on a single CD:

Ah, the wonders and intricacies of copyright law. Many of the new "copy-protected" CDs on the market are so-called "double session" CDs that have two copies of a recording on the CD. One copy is in the traditional CD format so that it will play back on traditional CD players, the other copy is generally in a proprietary format for DRM restricted copying onto PCs and other devices.

So the music publishers want two copyright fees, even though the users are getting one song. Seems to me that the DRM and related hardware divides up where the song can be played, and so the CD maker is adapting to the fair use desires of customers who see that they are buying a song, and want it to play wherever they have a CD player. Just because there are multiple digital formats and hardwares that can play a song, doesn't I think, warrant the compensating of the copyright holder multiple times for the same song on the same CD. How very greedy of them.

Just a quick note, as I'm working on something else at the moment, but good news!

From Reuters: Court Says Net Music Subpoenas Not Authorized

The RIAA has been using DMCA subpoenas to get subscriber's identities in order to sue the ISP's customers for copyright infringement because of file sharing. However, the subpoena process is heavily flawed under the DMCA, where there is no court oversight required for the subpoena, like there would be in a regular action. The District Court in Washington, DC has agreed with Verizon (see the opinion) that existing copyright law doesn't give the RIAA the right to get ISP customer information in the manner they have been under the DMCA.

"In sum, we agree with Verizon that (the law) does not by its terms authorize the subpoenas issued here," Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote.

And from Wendy Selzer: "Internet users are the winners...." See Derek Slater for more in-depth analysis of the case and what this means. Derek suggests there is likely to be an appeal, but for now, this may cause Congress to step in to reevaluate copyright issues.

Via Donna (doesn't this sound like a lovely drink, something citrusy and ice-cold, that you might enjoy on a warm roof top at sunset in Rome while watching the glow fade across the tops of the Vatican and monuments like Vittorio Emanuel? Donna is like that, only better: smart, lovely, refreshing, and you feel so fortunate to know her!)

Someone has emailed the tags from an automated warning sent from Universal Studios about downloading copyrighted material. The email has been tagged with a bit of XML:

?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
Infringement xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://mpto.unistudios.com/xml/Infringement_schema.xsd">
Case>
ID>2750178/ID>
Status>New/Status>
/Case>
Complainant>
Entity>Universal Studios/Entity>
Contact>Aaron Markham/Contact>
Address>100 Universal City Plaza (1280/6)/Address>
Phone>818-777-3111/Phone>
Email>antipiracy1@unistudios.com/Email>
/Complainant>
Service_Provider>
Entity>NYC BRIDGED CIRCUITS/Entity>
Contact>/Contact>
Address>25 Broadway/Address>
Email>abuse@speakeasy.net/Email>
/Service_Provider>
Source>
TimeStamp>2003-25-10T01:39:48Z/TimeStamp>
IP_Address>[CENSORED]/IP_Address>
DNS_Name[CENSORED]/DNS_Name>
Type>BitTorrent/Type>
UserName>None/UserName>
Number_Files>1/Number_Files>
Deja_Vu>No/Deja_Vu>
/Source>
Content>
Item>
Title>Day Of The Jackal/Title>
FileName>The Day of the Jackal (1973).avi/FileName>
FileSize>1400961024/FileSize>
URL>x.x.x.x:6883/The Day of the Jackal (1973).avi/URL>
Type>Video/Type>
Item>
Content>
Infringement>

They even have their own schema:
http://mpto.unistudios.com/xml/Infringement_schema

Check out Clay Shirky's latest: The RIAA Succeeds Where the Cypherpunks Failed

It may be time to dust off that old issue of Wired, because the RIAA is succeeding where 10 years of hectoring by the Cypherpunks failed. When shutting down Napster turned out to have all the containing effects of stomping on a tube of toothpaste, the RIAA switched to suing users directly. This strategy has worked much better than shutting down Napster did, convincing many users to stop using public file sharing systems, and to delete MP3s from their hard drives. However, to sue users, they had to serve a subpoena, and to do that, they had to get their identities from the user's internet service providers.

Identifying those users has had a second effect, and that's to create a real-world version of the scenario that drove the invention of user-controlled encryption in the first place. Whitfield Diffie, inventor of public key encryption, the trategy that underlies most of today's cryptographic products, saw the problem as a version of "Who will guard the guardians?"

In any system where a user's identity is in the hands of a third party, that third party cannot be trusted. No matter who the third party is, there will be at least hypothetical situations where the user does not want his or her identity revealed, but the third party chooses or is forced to disclose it anyway....

In other words, the third parties are our ISPs, and with the DMCA subpoena problem, our identity is vulnerable to the likes of the RIAA or anyone else who grunts "copyright infringement," no matter how stupid or not true.

The RIAA's successful extraction of user identity from internet service providers makes it vividly clear that the veil of privacy enjoyed by the average internet user is diaphanous at best, and that the obstacles to piercing that veil are much much lower than for, say, allowing the police to search your home or read your (physical) mail. Diffie's hypothetical problem is today's reality. As a result, after years of apathy, his proposed solution is being adopted as well.

Which brings us to the Darknet, which we've written about quite a bit before. So now we all have Waste accounts and trade secretly, and the resulting loosely bundled groups of people, using encryption.

Frankly, I believe that sharing copyrighted materials amongst *real* friends (you know, like taping a TV show and lending it to a friend) is legal fair use, and so small networks of friends that know each other, and recommend stuff, share it, falls into this category for me. That is not to say that sharing copyrighted works with all 60 million of your best pals on KaZaa is right, as I think that IS copyright infringement.

Last night, Creative Commons marked their first year anniversary with a party where Larry Lessig, Glenn Otis Brown and Chris Lydon among others talked about the many, many accomplishments over the past year, and played a wonderful flash animation about CC or here, particularly emphasizing the export of CC worldwide. One thing they mentioned was that all content online from the radio show, Tech Nation, will now be under a CC license, and they have had more than a million uses of the licenses over the past year.

The party was a great time to meet up with Stanford and Berkeley folks, artists and geeks, and those who support having balance between copyright and the public domain. I got to meet Joi Ito, whose sister I met at a conference last spring, and since she spoke about him in such a sweet way, I have wanted to meet him ever since. So that was fun. Also, the videoblog goddess (and otherwise all around goddess), Lisa Rein was there, taping, and presumably will have the video up on her blog soon.

Also, considering donating to Creative Commons here.

Update 121903: Check out Christopher Lydon's interview with Larry Lessig done just after the event (you can hear the last of us in the background of the audio interview). I gave Chris a ride back to Berkeley and he said he said he would get it up quickly, though he's been traveling, and he did!

Teresa Riordan/NYTimes has this on the recent purchase (for $700k) of the Six Degrees patent, by Marc Pincus of Tribe and Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn. They say they purchased the friend of a friend (FOAF) patent because they didn't want anyone else buying it to use it against them, but they are also trying to negotiate with Friendster to become a partner/owner of the patent, though Friendster hasn't jumped in yet. Conversely, Visible Path is treating their processes for understanding people's network and connection habits as a trade secret, so that unlike patents where the process must be disclosed, Visible Path won't share how they do things ("We think that is a higher form of protection.") Visible Path says they operate differently than the Six Degrees patented method, because they evaluate the quality of FOAF connections verses the degrees between connections. At the end of the article, there is this prediction: "This industry [FOAF] is going to go in a thousand different directions," Mr. [Antony] Brydon said. "I think we're going to find that many of the things being protected today are completely irrelevant a year from now."

Somewhat related to that notion is this PC World article asking: will consumers change ip? Granted the examples given are the more commonly known ones such as the Verizon, et al cases with user's privacy in the balance over music sharing, but the question extends far further when you think about the ways we take technology, alter it or its intended uses or blend things never before blendable. Steve Lohr/NYTimes talks about this with Markets Shaped by Consumers where he discusses the ways consumers take technologies, find uses not intended by their creators, or cobble together solutions to problems in innovative ways. Among other things, he mentions the mountain bike, camera phones and text messaging, bluejacking, and FOAF networks like LinkedIn and Friendster.

The ways users shape IP via fair use, either directly by choice or because of the limitations through the architecture of the system they are using, and the issues surrounding consumer generated information, especially about themselves, raises questions of fair use and ownership of personal data and networks in a new way with FOAF networks. Note that this morning on NPR, Choicepoint was quoted as saying that in their system, users own their own data, not Choicepoint. And yet recently, Friendster changed its user policy to state:

Friendster owns and retains all proprietary rights in the Web site and the Service. The Web site contains the copyrighted material, trademarks, and other proprietary information of Friendster, and its licensors. Except for that information which is in the public domain or for which you have been given written permission, you may not copy, modify, publish, transmit, distribute, perform, display, or sell any such proprietary information.

I take this to mean they believe they own the collective data, and without clear personal data ownership laws, I suppose we are subject to this, unless there is a case or new law that changes this arrangment.

Danah Boyd of SIMS was in last Thursday's Circuits section (by Michael Erard), and Peter Lyman is quoted, too. The article discusses the social issues and analog metaphors Danah studies about FOAF networks. While our analog FOAF networks are subject to social norms we can see, touch and control in different ways than those online, there are interesting issues in connecting one person's data and network to the next. Collapsing the analog social norms causes problems, when people from one network you belong to can suddenly see another digitally, but there is also an issue which will probably arise more in the future, where the blending of many user's information, both personal and created, or personal networks, creates something new. It is digital media in the most personal of ways.

As mentioned before, how do you do the IP when "It's the collective I.Q. of the Internet coming to your aid," [said James C. Spohrer, director for services research at Almaden].

So, my father's FOAF network (analog, of course) is extensive. He keeps in touch, even in retirement, with thousands of people, via written correspondence through email and letters, and for 42 years, has maintained a handwritten spreadsheet organizing the 3-4k handwritten xmas cards he sends out to his friends each year (there are more in his network but they don't necessarily receive these cards, and also, my parents visit with many of these people regularly, scattered around the world, for various reasons that are now mostly social). I don't know that Friendster or LinkedIn, etc., clunky as they are now, could accomodate or make sense of the multiple reasons and associated meanings of his relationships, or what is possible between his connections through muliple networks. But I'm sure he's never thought about who owns his data and networks, and the shifts over time these networks have experienced, and the information linking they accomodate. I'm sure he would find it bizarre but also interesting to contemplate that using a FOAF network might require this, where using one might release control over his life's work as one of the most networked people I know.

Dave Weinberger on FOAFs, the privacy aspects, and funny ways we use these online networks: putting the shill into social or Leveraging Mere Acquaintanceships for Business Success since 2003.

For, you know, right after you get the gsm version of the Treo 600 in the mail (just out! ..and why did they make us wait so long after the cdma version has been out a month???). Course, you'll be lucky to find another bluetooth phone in the county to do it (we barely even have any in the US; see how standards issues really cramp your otherwise goovy style?). But hey, "I like your tie... it's soooo blue."

Last night in Tribeca there was a dance party for "Tim Davis, a young NYC artist who got sued by the RIAA for downloading. He had a remarkably small number of songs at issue, yet because he also teaches ONE photography class at the college level as an adjunct "he should have known better." As such, Tim's being held more accountable than other defendants." -Jay Flemma/Pho List.

Good party, at the art studio he shares with four other artists. Great music. Funk. Real old fashioned Technics 1200 turntables with real old-fashioned 45s. The highlight was the terrific dance party DJ'd by Bambouche of the Vanguard Squad. About 7 of us went, and it was really fun. Great dancing. Interesting mix of people. Tim's cool, and if people can, send him a donation. His "Free Timmy" T-Shirts (black, with hot pink writing) are well worth the $25, which he sold last night to raise money, and can probably be had via email at info at davistim.com.

UPDATE 11/10/03: Tim's website has information for making donations. He's had to pay $10,000 to the RIAA for 300 songs, much more per song than the rest of the people settling for more like $2-3k, for over a 1000 songs, and he doesn't have a lot of money.

Updated 12/5/03. Jay Flemma writes that the payment was less, (the 10k is what Tim says he's "in the hole for") "call it around 7K and 'well under 800 songs...'." Still, Tim's had a tough time and it would be nice if folks wanted to buy a t-shirt or donate to his fund.

This issue has been addressed here, and elsewhere, before, regarding compulsory licensing, in a theoretical way, because we don't have compulsory licensing currently. But those who are forced to pay under a compulsory licensing might object, as these students have to the new Penn State system:

PENN STATE STUDENTS SNUB NAPSTER DEAL
Some Penn State University students are protesting their college's new deal with the Napster music service, saying the deal is not an appropriate use of funds they are required to pay. The new service was announced yesterday with considerable fanfare, touted by university officials and the company as a way to provide students with a legal alternative to downloading music illegally from Kazaa or other file-swapping networks.

From John Borland/C|Net. Although he does point out that the $160 per semester fee for technology services, already in place, will cover this new service with no increase in fees. But students are complaining because some part of that fee will go to Napster and they don't want to participate. It's what had been predicted with compulsory licensing, and now that this form of CL is in the works, we need to think carefully about these objections and other aspects of CLs for the full Internet populace. This might be a very interesting test case as to what would happen if CL's were adopted across the Internet.

Also, check out Derek Slater's More Crummy Reporting on Penn State's Music Service, What Price is Wrong and My Letter to Pho on PSU/Napster. Frank Field notes the /. discussion on this issue, where it was pointed out that Barry Robinson, Senior Counsel for Corporate Affairs for the Recording Industry Association of America, Inc., is on the PSU board.

Napster PR here. The system as defined by them:

* Students living in residence halls at a dozen Penn State campuses will be able to participate initially.

* Unlimited streaming of music files will be available from Napster's inventory of more than 500,000 songs.

* Tethered downloading is included at no additional charge. This means a student can download and keep the music files on up to three personal computers. These songs can be burned to CDs or transferred to portable devices if purchased for 99 cents each.

Looks interesting. Apparently, they are also looking at deals with other schools. I'm swamped today and so can't really get into this or the patent issues with schools streaming content. But I'll try later.

EFF and the Center for Internet and Society Cyberlaw Clinic at Stanford Law School are seeking a court order against Diebold. Diebold, the maker of an eVoting system that many a Registrar have purchased, including our own Alameda County, has, as noted here before, lost control of some internal memos (someone hacked into get them). Diebold has been serving C&D's (Swarthmore, as well as one here at Berkeley, and Derek Slater/Harvard received one) to ISP's of hosters of the memos, and students have been protesting, because they, we, believe Diebold is in the wrong in trying to suppress information about security flaws in the eVoting system. The memos are all over now, and on file sharing networks. Diebold has even claimed DMCA copyright violations for those linking to the memos. And finally, after two+ weeks, big media is paying attention.

John Schwartz/NYTimes front page today: File Sharing Pits Copyright Against Free Speech.
Steven Levy/MSNBC and Newsweek: Black Box Voting Blues.

/.ing, and Donna Wentworth has all the links.

Update: Declan McCullagh/C|Net: Students buck DMCA threat. Also, Parker Thompson has started blogging with Minfesto. He's one of the students posting Diebold memos, and has this: Brittney Spears Don't Vote. Parker also writes that California is reconsidering Diebold's touch screen system. In particular, check out this CA Task Force Report (pdf) on the systems. Glad to have you in the blogosphere, PT!

Update 110403: Siva Vaidhyanathan has this on Diebold: voting problems in Houston, and a write up on Brian Lehrer's public radio story. He says that the story was poorly done, with a National Journal reporter as the expert interviewed. I just read the CNN/AP article: California delays certification of some electronic voting machines, and found it missed the context of the past few weeks, where students at various schools have been mirroring the Diebold memos and keeping this issue out front, at some personal risk, which I think has helped push questions of Diebold's security. When media point out that younger readers don't read papers anymore, and then I see this, I think, why should younger readers read the paper, when their involvement it totally left out, or when it is included it's often dismissive in tone of those covered (I do know why they should read papers, but still, you get my point). This is not always true, and certainly Declan's article is not written this way. But really, if you want readers of a certain demographic, think about including them, because they are apart of the story!

Chris Nelson/NYTimes have a piece on the RIAA's recent reliance on boomers as continued customers, because they do not do much online downloading of music, and do more traditional (read: retail store purchases) buying of music (read: more expensive CDs of artists over 40). So retailers and the record companies are catering to these interests. Though it does make me think that retail music selling is becoming a niche market for those less technically adept, and less hip, maybe, compared to the 18-24 market. The music industry sees the boomer group as underserved, and they probably are. But this is also a way to hold onto a business model that is slipping into the past, along with the industrial era, like the horse and buggy market did with the offering of the horseless carriage. It'll work for a while, but at a certain point, it's going to be very, very niche.

And in the meantime, will the recording industry get hip to the fact that they may no longer be in the music unit biz (a single or a cd), but rather are in the biz of selling an audio information experience over as many distribution mechanisms as exist, catering to multiple age groups with a wild range of interests, with greater expectations for flexibility, quality and breadth of selection? We've gotten a taste of the heavenly jukebox, and no matter how retro they go, we're not gonna forget it.

The RIAA has filed 80 more lawsuits against those who share (for others to download) files. This time, though, the RIAA started by notifiying 204 people first, and then 124 decided to settle out of court. The remaining 80 were then sued.

Also, MIT had to "temporarily" shut down the innovative new analog music via cable system announced last Monday. The makers of the system, called LAMP for Library Access to Music, had negotiated licenses through Loudeye, but the Harry Fox agency who was part of the negotiated licenses said the agreement wasn't complete, so MIT closed it down until they figure out the licensing situation.

Later 11/02/03: Frank Field points here:

While the Slashdot discussion is the usual combination of interesting thought interspersed with uninformed drivel, this comment speaks to the real problem I see at MIT:

to this /. comment:

forget the loopholes (Score:5, Interesting) by bonds (701580) on Saturday November 01, @07:31PM (#7368653)

We don't need newer and more creative ways to sidestep our poorly conceived IP laws, we need new laws.

I for one would be grateful if places with clout, like MIT, would spend their resources advocating for better policy rather than engaging in legal contortions. If MIT, Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Princeton, Yale, NYU, etc. threw *serious* support behind good policy (like the Eldred act [eldred.cc], IMHO), the RIAA would find it much harder to have their way with congress. Admittedly, uniting these institutions of intellectual debate is much easier said than done, but they are uniquely equipped to put forth balanced proposals that address a broader social agenda than would ever emerge from an industry lobby. We could really use someone with the clout, resources, intelligence and neutrality of MIT to help write (and right) the rules of the game that are fair to *all* the stakeholders, not just the RIAA. [emphasis added]

What we are finding is that leaving the fox (the RIAA) to guard the hen-house (IP policy) is great for the fox and bad for everyone else.

Frank again:

Amen to that -- but I'm afraid that MIT's competition up the river at the Berkman Center are putting far more into this than MIT ever will. See, for example, this announcement and the accompanying Harvard press release.

Frank says in this post that he is leaning toward believing the RIAA had something to do with the MIT suspension of LAMP. But we don't really know at this point what the combination of factors was, beyond the licensing dispute. My hope is they manage to get this analog system back up and running. But the /.-er is correct: the real issue is IP policy tilting so far in favor of the incumbent copyright owners. More balanced options between the extremes of stealing by users and total ubiquitous control by copyright holders are needed. And, his idea that universities are the ones to push back for reform of the copyright regime is terrific. The schools involved are credible, reasonable institutions that could band together to demand a more equitable and fair copyright policy between all the parties involved.

See David Pogue/NYTimes on Paying the Piper, Round 2: The Repertory Grows about the last year of music industry attempts to sell online, and efforts going forward. Same issues as always: price, convenience in user interface as well as with the product once you buy it (read: DRM restrictions) and selection.

Oh, and catch Ed Felten's look at a Washington Post article that talks about SunnComm and a copy-protected Anthony Hamilton CD which an Amazon reviewer noted had annoying DRM, and the reporter had trouble accurately describing:

And how can the reporter let pass the statement by Jacobs implying that only "determined hackers" would be able to thwart the technology? We're talking about pressing the shift key, which is hardly beyond the capabilities of casual users.

Neil Strauss/NYTimes: Online Music Business, Neither Quick Nor Sure..
In the last month the music-downloading landscape online has shifted once more with five major events, not all of them good.

¶Apple Computer made its iTunes player and music store available to PC users.
¶A legal version of Napster emerged. [today, in fact.]
¶A new download store called Audio Lunchbox announced that it would open on Halloween.
¶Musicmatch added an online store to its music player.
¶EMusic added restrictive rules to its music subscription service.

In a striking lack of originality, every new service above is in some way a designer imposter of iTunes, which sells songs for 99 cents each and albums for $9.99.

He also talks about Rhapsody, although I have to say that since my last post on that service ($9.95, all you can eat of what they offer), I've become less enamored. The selection is limited. But it's still a nice interface and they do have a lot of stuff.

John Schwartz/NYTimes report that With Cable TV at M.I.T., Who Needs Napster? Josh Mandel and Keith Winstein have created a new way to share music. On NPR early this morning, they interviewed a student who said that the system didn't have that much music, but still, it's innovative. It has to be, the get around all the crazy aspects of the copyright regime. The Libraries Access to Music Project was funded by a grant from Microsoft and allows students to listen to analog versions of 3,500 CD's worth of music, in 80 minute blocks on a single channel, which a student will then program. Apparently, the quality is better than FM radio, but not as good as CDs.

John Schwartz/NYTimes are reporting that the music industry has decided to warn the next 204 lawsuit targets:

Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, said "we want to go the extra mile and offer illegal file sharers an additional chance to work this out short of legal action." This new policy was announced at last month's Senate hearing. Senator Norm Coleman (MN) said he wished it hadn't taken hearings to bring this sort of consideration about. Now how about considering judicial review for all subpoena's for user information for those they intend to sue?

In the meantime, Epeus Epigone talks about Steve Jobs' comment about iTunes "editing tactics": At the iTunes Music launch, Jobs said something very wrong - that record labels should be the arbiters of taste - that they edit for our own good, and that unsigned bands need not apply.

The key point of digital media is that we can all edit, so I edited him: video file.

It's interesting, because we all know, time and again, that attempts to control or limit the network result in loss of business. And then you leave yourself wide open for disruption. Biz 101. It's not like the Internet offers huge barriers to entry for offering interesting music over a website. And considering Microsoft's Q&A (and other media offerings) on iTunes (I'm shocked to hear MS is down on iTunes - kinda snarky, even) after they've added Windows support, (link from Ernie Miller), Apple could remain more competitive by embracing the rip, mix, burn philosophy once again, allowing any music into iTunes, regardless of whether it was produced by an RIAA affiliate. What would it cost them? Very little. It seems anticompetitive as well. Is this the result of some exclusionary agreement between Apple and record companies in exchange for industry music? It would be interesting to find out if Steve's spin on "editing" out the smaller music is actually about appeasing the music industry. Hey Steve, innovation is cool and it leads to more cool stuff, like the Motorola C350, where you can mix your own dance tracks anywhere for Groov'n On The Move.

Ernie also points to an open source audio media player/ripper. Good stuff.

File Sharing Goes Social

This month's essay concerns the way the RIAA is creating environmental pressures that alter the design of file sharing networks, and how the current attacks on Kazaa et al are moving file sharing into socially bounded cells. -clay

The basic idea is that we've gone from efficient, centralized systems like Napster, to less efficient, decentralized systems like KaZaa and Gnutella, to the next generation of networking tools similar to those used for secure corporate collaboration. The Darknet perhaps? This would be the Darknet that is about private restricted file sharing networks where there is a reduced amount of content, but users are friends and family who know each other and share and recommend within that closed network, where social norms dictate the sharing protocols.

Interesting to note though is the idea that the most popular songs exist on the most harddrives, while more obscure (and interesting) works are hard to find. Small private networks will probably make this more true. So maybe a few small networks will specialize, and people may have a couple of different private networks that reflect different tastes and genres, but it may be that most networks have only the most popular stuff. The question is, will the RIAA go after these small networks? Will we have infiltrators at parties trying to get an invitation into our Waste networks? Do we become like East Berlin in the 80's, where everyone suspected everyone else as being a spy? Husbands and wives, each working for different operatives and never telling each other, maybe because one specializes in early country, and the other in hip-hop? Oh my!

Tonight I went to a dinner party at some friend's house, and in between the cold dry sake and an obscene amount of yellow tail hamachi, there was more music than we knew what to do with. These are friends that until six months ago, had been sampling all sorts of free stuff on P2P networks. Not all of it was good or complete, but they buy a lot of CD's and wanted to try stuff out first, and they wanted the convenience of mixing up thousands of songs for days of play, or a few seconds as the case may be.

Anyway, tonight, we played around with Rhapsody which was totally great and lots of fun. And my friends are proving my point that if you make it easy, cool, give decent information about the music and make it cheap, people will abandon the free stuff for something much more professional. Sorting by artist, title, genre, album, play lists we made up, we streamed Thievery Corp, Gotan and Ladytron through the first course, and then went from cool jazz, to Chopin and Mozart for the second, and then we veered into Bah-bra and Barry Gibb, the GoGo's (who can resist skidmarks on my heart!), Supertramp, Artie Shaw, Radiohead, Elton John, Frank, Ben Folds Five (Kate!), Jon Cutler, the Replacements, for about three hours of dancing, everybody was in on it, clicking and sampling. There is also stuff you can't search for or directly stream, like the Beatles, on their "radio stations."

So one of them nailed it, when we turned it off to go out for dessert: "..so the question for America today is how will America get its music? I mean how will you get your ya-yas? You know, like go the good stuff to rock out to?" Okay, he was kinda baked, so it's overstated, but you get the point. He's not an IP junkie, he is a former musician and now at a BIG corporation, but he wants the stuff easily and he wants to pay something reasonable. So this is his question. And for him, $9.95 for Rhasody's content is almost there, so although he said they have a lot of cool old stuff, there's not as much new, he thinks it could be a lot better. But he was excited to try out new music they do have to see about buying it, or downloading, and he'd hooked it up wirelessly to all the other rooms from his main computer (every room has its own remote for that set of speakers, so it works well...).

So Rhapsody is almost there.

Now, if we could only make playlists and share them with others across our network within Rhapsody, mix things and send them to people, make our heavenly jukebox an expression of ourselves for others....

Earlier today I mentioned Alex Halderman and his paper (pdf) on the CD protection scheme developed by SunnComm, which can be cracked! yes cracked, by holding down the shift key while putting the disk into your computer. Well, Donna writes that SunnComm is taking legal action against Halderman because he has based his paper on "erroneous assumptions" and because he has violated the DMCA.

"No matter what their credentials or rationale, it is wrong to use one's knowledge and the cover of academia to facilitate piracy and theft of digital property, said SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs. "SunnComm is taking a stand here because we believe that those who own property, whether physical or digital, have the ultimate authority over how their property is used."

Really? How about the copyright balance, where things like fair use (and the right of first sale) are involved? We are talking about a copy protection that will be sold on lawfully purchased CDs, that users might want to play on their computer CD players. Is it fair use to space shift? While this question has not yet been definitely answered by legislatures and courts, a private company is effectively answering that for us.

More From Donna/Copyfight:
Later: Fred von Lohmann: "In America today, scientists shouldn't have to fear legal action for publishing the truth. Based on the apparent weakness of its technology, perhaps SunnComm should be hiring more Princeton computer scientists, instead of threatening to sue them."

Later #2: Ernie Miller @ LawMeme: "I do not know what 'device' Halderman could possibly have been trafficking in, unless they plan to go after him solely under section 1201(a) for actually circumventing such a device (a first as far as I know)."

Later #3: Dan Gillmor: "Plainly, [SunnComm's] aim is to silence any debate over the apparent lameness of its technology. This shouldn't be allowed to stand. I hope the EFF and other organizations will raise a defense fund; I'll contribute."

I decided to call SunnComm directly and complain about their abuse of the First Amendment and academic research: 602-267-7500. While they have the DMCA on their side, does not mean is it right for them to stifle academic freedom or the right to publish. The law is wrong here, as are SunnComm's actions. Where does this leave us if research is squashed, and information such as this just ends up being passed around, from user to user, with no research or writing done on these DRM systems. Where does that leave cryptography research? I am not advocating the mass breaking of laws, as researchers need to be sensitive and professional in their work, but there is something very wrong with the DMCA when this kind of thing happens.

/. discusses. And Alex gets interviewed.

New Scientist has a piece on Fade, a new protection system for games developed by Codemasters. Fade forces the copy of a game to slowly deteriorate, so that while the game is in play, the player slowly loses control over character, or weapons or cars, whatever the player is doing in the game. The idea is that pirated copies allow users to play for a while, but once the person is "addicted," the game stops working, forcing the person to go out and buy or rent the game lawfully.

The idea intrigues Alistair Kelman, an independent lawyer who specializes in copyright: "Fade is entirely in keeping with the spirit and great traditions of copyright." He points out that books tend to deteriorate with use and this prevents the secondhand market from competing with the market for new books. Why not the same for software?

The difference is that the book is still readable, even in used form, all the way to the end. If Fade is used just to affect pirated copies of games (they plan to release a DVD version next year), fine, but if it begins to be used on lawfully purchased games, DVD's, music, whatever, I think people will not like it. DRM often conflicts with people's ideas of what they can do with their purchases. Example, restrictive DRM that does not allow them to make fair use of the work has infuriated people, causing lots of frustration, bad press and in some cases, damage to PC's (from some CD protection devices sold recently).

On the other hand, if Fade works like SunnComm's CD copy-protection technology, which can be disabled by holding down the shift key, as reported earlier this week by Alex Halderman (a student of Ed Felten's), it may not be worth anything.

Hiawatha Bray/Boston Globe has SunnComm's response: ''There's nothing in his report that's surprising,'' said SunnComm president Bill Whitmore. ''There's nothing in the report that I'm concerned about.'' Whitmore said his company's system is simply supposed to give honest music lovers a legal way to make copies for personal use, not to stop large-scale piracy.

As Ed Felten notes, if the goal is to do as Whitmore says, all that's needed is to give people ordinary, unmodified CD's. The same may be true for Fade games, because the really big pirates that put a dent in the biz, will figure out a way around it. They are pirating the games after all, so anti-circumvention laws don't really have much effect if they can get around the software protection scheme. And then all you succeed in doing is frustrating the less technically adept, regular paying customers.

So the record companies are finally going with the flow, trying out some new tactics, Trying to Sell CD's by Adding Extras according to Chris Nelson/NYTimes.

Bundling an album with a raft of value-added extras - while charging just a dollar more than the standard price for a CD - may sound like a costly move for P.O.D.'s label, Atlantic Records, part of AOL Time Warner. But it is a testament to just how desperate music companies are to stoke consumer interest and reverse a three-year sales slump by pulling fans away from making free downloads of music from Internet file-trading sites.

While the P.O.D. album, scheduled for release Nov. 4, is unusual in the amount of extra material it will carry, it is just one album in a flood of new CD's promising extras. Recent discs from artists representing a broad cross section of genres - from R.& B. diva Mary J. Blige to singer-songwriter Elvis Costello to punk band Pennywise - have come with extra material.

The newfound zeal to include extras on music CD's might just be working. On the latest weekly Billboard 200 album chart, the top six spots are held by albums making their first appearance on the chart. All of those artists - OutKast, Dave Matthews, Limp Bizkit, R. Kelly, Obie Trice and Nickelback - include some type of bonus with their albums: an EP of extra songs, access to online content, a chance to meet the musician or two CD's for the price of one.

Others like Vivendi are doing it, as some retailers are trying new things (like customer service - how 'bout that) with knowledgeable sales people and places to hang out and listen to music before buying, seeing as the merchants have little control over the merchandise itself.

Enticing customers is even more difficult when the music industry's main physical product, the CD, has become increasingly unimportant, particularly to young people who have grown up with music as digital computer files. "My 17-year-old daughter loses the jewel boxes as fast as she can," said John Esposito, president of WEA, AOL Time Warner's music distribution arm, referring to the plastic cases that hold CD's.

Go figure. Seems like they have a ways to go before they get that CD is a losing medium. Maybe Esposito should try usability testing his kids. People want flexibility, portability, ease. CDs are awful, they scratch, they peel, and you can't mix up 200 songs and play them in random order on the cheap the way you can with electronic media. I ripped all my CDs years ago and I would never go back. It's so much more fun this way. And yet, given the extras, I'd buy a CD verses buying downloads, and then rip it for playing with all the other stuff I've already ripped.

We've been slashdotted (out of date info) on the RIAA subpoenas. This post. I'm updating it now, but if anyone has more up to date info on the current number of subpoenas, please let me know. Thanks.

Daniel Akst/NYTimes: Where Nobody Knows You're a Music Thief, on the internet:

If it's a place where nobody knows you're a dog, as a New Yorker cartoon once said, then it's also a place where nobody knows you're a crook, either. Even you may not know. Anonymity allows honest people to sustain a higher level of dishonesty without guilt...

After which he goes on to say that people rationalize stealing copyright protected works because they are not offered online for sale, the record companies charge too much, and are otherwise evil, and this is no excuse for stealing. He is right. However, those same companies are the ones who've lobbied Congress to make copyright law slant in their favor. That is the real issue, and in need of some major redoing (think the subpoena process under the DMCA as just one example of the ridiculous situation we currently have.)

He goes on:
The absurd Robin Hood narrative that has sprung up around music sharing only obscures what is happening: that a large group of mainly middle-class individuals are not just breaking the law, but also attacking the legal concept that is essential to freedom and prosperity in the information age.

Yes, and the whole copyright agreement (we give you the monopoly, you must deal responsibly with it, is out of balance...) needs work. Stealing is not okay. But neither is the current copyright regime. That regime needs to change or it will kill the freedom and prosperity of the information age because it locks information property (that word is really not right for this discussion, but until I find a better one...) down so tightly that fair use, scientific research, innovation and competition get run over.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, what's the fairest thing of all? The answer is probably authentication. Sooner or later we will need to know who everyone on the Internet is, and who confirmed their identities. Internet access providers who admit unauthenticated users will have to be shut out, even if that means shutting out whole countries.

One of the terrific things about the internet is our ability to be anonymous. Regarding our consumption of intellectual materials, this is critical. The idea that all need be revealed just so that copyright holders can count every unit is ridiculous, corrosive to the democracy and totally unnecessary. He is suggesting we lurch into the totalitarian.

In such a world, there would be no doubt about who was violating copyright laws or otherwise misusing the electronic commons. It's sad, I know. The ability to shed one's identity online seemed a dream for a while, but as the poet Delmore Schwartz reminds us, "in dreams begin responsibilities."

There are other possibilities, as the recently evolving discussion on compulsory licensing and other methods for paying artists for their works proves, and I wish Akst would have considered this before reiterating the fallacy that it's either privacy or ... {security, copyright, whatever}. We can pay artists, make an honest system, do the right thing for a healthy internet, and keep our privacy. The discussions around these issues are worth the effort, to find something better than what we have now, that doesn't hurt the public and the commons even more so than the current copyright regime has.

Chris Gaither/The Boston Globe report in tomorrow's paper that the Recording industry withdraws suit because of mistaken identity.

The recording industry has withdrawn a lawsuit against a Newbury woman because it falsely accused her of illegally sharing music -- possibly the first case of mistaken identity in the battle against Internet file-traders.

The lawsuit claimed that Ward had illegally shared more than 2,000 songs through Kazaa and threatened to hold her liable for up to $150,000 for each song. The plaintiffs were Sony Music, BMG, Virgin, Interscope, Atlantic, Warner Brothers, and Arista.

Among the songs she was accused of sharing: ''I'm a Thug,'' by the rapper Trick Daddy.

But Ward, 66, is a ''computer neophyte'' who never installed file-sharing software, let alone downloaded hard-core rap about baggy jeans and gold teeth, according to letters sent to the recording industry's agents by her lawyer, Jeffrey Beeler.

She also has no kids. And she uses a Mac, but KaZaa only runs on Windows.

Beeler complained to the RIAA, demanding an apology and ''dismissal with prejudice'' of the lawsuit, which would prohibit future lawsuits against her. Foley Hoag, the Boston firm representing the record labels, on Friday dropped the case, but without prejudice.

''Please note, however, that we will continue our review of the issues you raised and we reserve the right to refile the complaint against Mrs. Ward if and when circumstances warrant,'' Colin J. Zick, the Foley Hoag lawyer, wrote to Beeler.

Jonathan Zittrain, an associate professor of Internet law at Harvard Law School, said the dismissal shows that the record companies may find it tough to prevail if their lawsuits go to court. Their legal strategy assumes that most defendants will settle rather than fight, and the lawsuits are so damaging to their public image that they cannot afford protracted legal battles with alleged file-swappers, he added.

''This is a very high-stakes strategy for the record companies,'' he said. ''It's either going to work in the short term, or they're going to have to pull the plug on it.''

UPDATE: 9/24/03 /. discusses.

UPDATE: 9/25/03 NYTimes on this case.

Late this afternoon, Fred Von Lohmann of EFF told a Boalt Hall group that tomorrow there will be an article on the front page of the Boston Globe about the RIAA suing someone who did not pirate music, and that person went to the press with it. (This is one of the original 261.) I couldn't attend, but one of my classmates called me to report this at the finish of the talk.

When it shows up on the BG site, I'll post it.

Update 9/29/03: Brian Carver attended boty events, and posts on Fred's second talk which I missed.

Fred Von Lohmann of EFF gave a talk at Berkeley this afternoon on file sharing, both the practical realities and the ways EFF and the RIAA view the issues. He said EFF is a membership organization and he "...works for tips and gives all his intellectual property away for free...". Major points of interest:
• People on networks don't understand that those targeted are "file sharers" and this means that they have "file sharing" turned on (turn it off in the preferences, or take the files out of your shared files folder!).
• "Avril Levine" appears the be the worst file the have, at least in looking at the lawsuits files and what file sharers have on their harddrives, for provoking a suit.
• There isn't right now a good way to find downloaders, who don't fileshare, because they way people are typically found is through a search of a name, word, topic, and their shared files come up.
• The RIAA is typically copying the file list of a sharer, but also testing the download of 10 - 20 files, to make sure they are the work as titled (people could change the title to promote their own work to get more airplay - in other words, your local garage band could try to get play by renaming their songs, Avril Levine).
• Lawsuit settlements so far are typically $2-5 k, depending on their sympathy with the media and how many files they share.
• Many people seem to be moving into the Darknet, private file sharing networks, password protected and much harder for the RIAA to find you, unless they get a person to narc you out.
• UCBerkeley seems to be controlling sharing by having a bandwidth limit, as are many other schools.
• The Answer is not to sue, but to find a solution, like the webcasting solution, which pays artists and uses this great new technology. "File sharing kicks ass over FM radio. KALX excepted."
• Every download is not a lost sale. The CD and music industry are doing badly because of the recession, the end of the CD replacement of vinyl boom, less releases of new titles than in past years, many more entertainment options with limited dollars to chase, but filesharing is involved in the downturn in profits. Unclear how much. Also, don't really know how many file sharers buy more, or less, CDs.
• Answer is to end lawsuits, end ban on new technologies, get artists compensated, and let people listed to music in this new great way.

His second talk is today at 4:45pm at Boalt 115. A bit more lawyerly, but if you want to listen to what he has to say, you should go!

UPDATE: The one disappointing thing Fred said today, which I didn't have time to address earlier, was that any, ANY, file sharing of unauthorized work is illegal. I disagree. If I make a friend a mixed cd of my tracks from lawfully purchased CDs, I consider that fair use and legal. Fred, as I recall, (but I may be mistaken), used to have that broader opinion. But even if he didn't have that opinion in the past, he didn't so forcefully state the no-unauthorized-filesharing position then. So I was a little taken aback by the forcefulness of it today. But I suppose in order to have one consistent view point coming from EFF, and get people to take them seriously on their proposed solutions, they probably have to go that route now.

Bummer, because they concede a kind of fair use that I think is our right and is a really nice social aspect of sharing culture in our society. It's too bad things have gotten to this very rigid position.

Update 9/29/03: Brian Carver attended boty events, and posts on Fred's second talk which I missed.

Anita Hamilton/Time has this: Playing in the Darknet.

But darknets are not just for digital music files. Carving out a bit of privacy online has wide appeal; students, community groups and even political dissidents can use these hidden networks to share projects, papers and information. One part of the allure is anonymity; the other is exclusivity. Since participation is limited, file searches don't turn up a lot of junk or pornography. Darknets offer the convenience of the Web without a lot of the bad stuff.

The Darknet as she refers to it here is about private file sharing networks, although some researchers wrote about it last year and included any kind of file sharing as part of their definition. However, I first heard about the Darknet in a lecture at SIMS about two years ago, where it was used to refer to anything that was not listed with search engines like Google, because it was somewhat hidden. But my sense is in recent discussions and in media reports, the Darknet now means private file sharing networks.

The Amy Harmon and John Schwartz/NYTimes report that people are continuing to file share on P2P networks, despite the threat of lawsuits.

"Law, technology and ethics are not in sync right now," said Senator Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican who has called a hearing on the subject for later this month. "I presume these lawsuits are having some impact, but they're not solving the problem."

Soli Shin of Manhattan is not waiting for lawmakers to act. She gave some thought to the ethics of file sharing after hearing of the lawsuits and took her own library of 1,094 songs offline, because she knew they were aimed at people who "share" their music files with others. But she saw no reason to stop getting new music for herself.

"It's really a great convenience," Ms. Shin, 13, said. "If I like what I download maybe I'll buy it."

According to The Times/CBS News poll, adults under 30 are more inclined to consider music sharing over the Internet to be acceptable: 29 percent of them say the practice is acceptable at all times, compared with 9 percent of people older than that.

Note the example of the "adult" under 30 who is choosing to sample music to see she if she wants to buy it or not, and is deciding after some thought to remove her shared files while still maintaining her downloading habits. I would say she is a perfect candidate for the Darknet, and is very much in sync with many of her compatriots who are using P2P networks. Remember, it won't be very long until she is voting in elections, but right now she's voting with her dollars for a new .

... instead of significantly damping enthusiasm for file sharing, the record industry's lawsuits appear to be spurring increasingly sharp debates about how the balance between the rights of copyright holders and those of copyright users should be redefined for a digital age.

I keep hearing these debates all over campus, at every gathering, over a wide political spectrum of friends and colleagues who are everything from Fox news conservative to radical liberals. The music industry really needs to address these fundamental issues over copyright, and their need to control every single unit of content, verses just suing kids for their life savings. The more they sue, the more people question. The RIAA seems to be awaking a beast they don't really want to contend with for the sake of their old business model, that's dead and gone anyway.

This chart on file sharing shows 45% of the people believe sharing content between friends and family is okay:

Just in case you missed it, from John Schwartz/NYTimes, Lorrie Cranor/ATT's study on how most movies pirated are an inside job from Hollywood. Oh my!

Our conclusion is that the distributors really need to take a hard look at their own internal processes and look at how they can stop the insider leaks of their movies" before taking measures that might hamstring consumers' technologies and rights, said Lorrie Cranor, a researcher at AT&T Labs and lead author of the study.

Course, Saul Hansell/NYTimes report that the Crackdown May Send Music Traders Into Software Underground. You know, like the Darknet, where instead of finding a legal answer to sharing files, and instead of working on our faulty copyright system that is tilted too much in favor of big copyright companies, the problem in essence disappears because we can't find it in the dark.

and SBC says it won't name names in file sharing cases (Seth Schiesel/NYTimes). "We are opposing these subpoenas because under the R.I.A.A.'s interpretation, they are a threat to consumer privacy and safety." (from SBC spokesman, Selim Bingol) They are the only provider holding out.

"We are going to challenge every single one of these that they file until we are told that our position is wrong as a matter of law," James D. Ellis, general counsel for SBC, said yesterday in a telephone interview.

Good for them. The subpoena process is a big problem as specified under the DMCA.

Ed Felten is going to be testifying tomorrow morning in a Senate Commerce Committee Hearing about both the subpoena process, as well as the impact of requiring the building of anti-copy protections into technology.

Catch the webcast of the hearings at 10am Wednesday!

Update 9/17/03: CDT has their hearing testimony up about the subpoenas....

Here's a thought, what if because of the way the internet works, and file sharing of content, the music industry morphs into something that essentially becomes a loss-leader, an advertising and marketing machine, into something that instead of recording bands, finds bands with already recorded materials on their home recording computer systems, and so the industry simply acts as a promoter, giving away low-res recorded teaser mp3 music? And maybe those giveaways come from sites that sell advertising, or maybe low fees ($.25 an mp3) get listeners out of having to submit to the ads? What if the real money to be made was from concert tickets ($175), tShirts ($30), cd's with music videos and ephemera ($10)? Artists don't see royalties from record companies anyway, and so what if, in getting artists paid, the audience just keeps paying them for the stuff they actually do make money on, and the rest of the dinosaur music company business has to change to accommodate the disruptive nature of the internet?

What if the new "record companies" essentially become the PR/Ad/promotion guys who, instead of paying bands and recording them, get "hired" and paid by the bands to market them by giving away and placing their music in the right spots? What if the copy, cut and paste, and synthesizing steam engine of the internet just kept on amplyfing the ways people use media and how they want to understand and consume it in the new Internet Regime?

It means the record companies don't get to control every unit and the business in general, but frankly, I think they've lost control anyway.

Of course, this idea disregards the old business models music companies employ, where they sign acts in exchange for rights to all the musician's work, the radio and webcasting agreements and business models, the current copyright regime, etc., as well as other business media models for movies, literature, cable and TV. I'm throwing this out not because I think, realistically, the laws will change to support these ideas anytime soon, but because I think the reality of the internet, and the way people use it, reflects aspects of this new model right now. And so if record companies want to survive, they'd better think about this. It may be that the first one to the new PR/Ad/Music Distribution punch is the one that wins.

Speaking of forward thinking acts, Ed Felten mentions that more RIAA lawsuits are on the way.

The NYTimes has four articles today on filesharing, music and the state of the internet:

John Leland on Beyond File-Sharing, a Nation of Copiers.

In fact, for many people, that shift has already come. Like file-sharing -- which 60 million Americans have tried -- cutting and pasting from the Internet is just one part of a broader shift toward all copying, all the time.

Consider a night out in the wireless city: Throw on a faux-vintage sports jersey, grab a bootleg Prada bag and head to the Cineplex for the sequel to a movie based on a television show. Afterward, log on to KaZaA and download the movie's title song, based on a digital sample. While you're online, visit a blog with links to published movie gossip and use your pirated e-mail program to send tidbits to your hundred closest friends. Curl up with a best seller by Stephen E. Ambrose or Doris Kearns Goodwin, who last year admitted to slipping materials from other texts into their books.

"I don't think they think of it as copying music," said Joe Levy, deputy managing editor of Rolling Stone. "It's a very individual experience for them. They want the songs they want in the order they want. Then it becomes not the new Mary J. Blige album, but their own mix. It's a much more individual package of music. Kids view it as an interactive and creative act."

But then, get this:

"...But the process still had some hurdles to get over", Mr. Bernoff admitted. Recently he was discussing his research with an executive at a media organization that has been very aggressive about trying to discourage file-sharing. When Mr. Bernoff asked the executive how he had gotten the report, which Forrester sells for $895, the man hesitated.

"They got a copy from one of the studios," Mr. Bernoff said. "Here is an organization that's saying that stealing hurts the little people, and they took our intellectual property and they shuttled it around like a text file..."

This sort of reminds me of when Orrin Hatch's office was using unlicensed software on their website. It's a cut and paste world, for sure.

/. on the Leland article.

Adam Liptak with The Music Industry Reveals Its Carrots and Sticks:

MOST lawsuits have concrete and focused goals. They usually want money, from particular people in particular disputes. But the 261 suits launched by the record industry last Monday, against people who made the music files on their computers available to others, seek something else entirely: to instill fear.

There is little question the industry can win the individual suits. Whether it can achieve its real goal is dicier all around -- from the youth of so many of those named as offenders, to the very idea of using a relatively small number of lawsuits to deter tens of millions of people.

Steve Lohr on Whatever Will Be Will Be Free on the Internet:

The Net's free-range design, combined with the global proliferation of personal computing and low-cost communications networks, laid the foundation for the surge of innovation and new uses that became so evident by the late 1990's. The World Wide Web is the overarching example, but others include instant messaging, online gaming and peer-to-peer file sharing. And while companies are free to build proprietary products and services in cyberspace, the basic software and communications technology of the Internet lies in the public domain -- open for all to use.

And from the front page: Neill Strauss' piece on File-Sharing Battle Leaves Musicians Caught in Middle.

"It would be nice if record companies would include artists on these decisions," said Deborah Harry of Blondie, adding that when a grandfather is sued because, unbeknownst to him, his grandchildren are downloading songs on his computer, "it's embarrassing."

Even the Backstreet Boys, one of the best-selling acts of the 1990's, did not appear to have received any CD royalties, their management said.

"I don't have sympathy for the record companies," said Mickey Melchiondo of the rock duo Ween. "They haven't been paying me royalties anyway."

Musicians tend to make more money from sales of concert tickets and merchandise than from CD sales. In fact, many musicians offer free downloads of their songs on their Web sites to market themselves.

TechTV taped The Music Wars yesterday afternoon in SF with Ted Cohen of EMI, Jeremy Welt of Maverick Records and John Perry Barlow of EFF starting things off. After some discussion, a musician on each side of the issue was added (Chuck D - pro file sharing and Ira Dean of Trick Pony - anti file sharing). Things were nice, but contentious. Nobody threw chairs, but they joked about it. Their positions were far apart, but everyone there could agree that musicians need to get paid, and the Internet has disrupted the music industry to such an extent, that the resulting problems are difficult and complex.

The unfortunate thing about TV discussions like this is that people get 30 seconds to lay out complex issues, and then they start throwing sound bites. We will never get to a reasoned, deeper solution, and good discussion with this kind of banter. But if people who know nothing tune in and start with this, and then look further, it can be useful.

I watched the show from the audience, which included people like