Monday, December 16, 2002

RIAA's Statistics Don't Add Up to Piracy, By George Ziemann, analyzes the RIAA's claims in light of the RIAA's own market data, and proposes action. (thanks, Cory!) 9:35:50 PM    comment []

The music industry owes you $20 -- and you can collect [bOing bOing] 7:53:10 PM    comment []

U.S. court says no to Web libel lawsuit. In the wake of an Australian ruling suggesting that Web publishers are fair game for libel suits anywhere their content appears, a U.S. federal court veers in the opposite direction. [CNET News.com] 7:51:47 PM    comment []

Casey Kasem or Freedom? By Jackson Diehl, Washington Post. Every day, student leaders would call by cell phone from the roiling campuses to the radio's headquarters in Prague and narrate the latest developments live. Each night the radio would broadcast a roundtable discussion, patching together students and journalists in Tehran with exiled opposition leaders to discuss where the reform movement was going. . . . Two weeks ago, Radio Freedom abruptly disappeared from the air. Iranians were no longer able to hear firsthand reports of the protests or the nightly think tanks about their country's future. Instead, after two weeks of virtual silence, the broadcasts are being replaced this week with tunes from Jennifer Lopez, Whitney Houston and other soft-rockers. How did the mullahs pull off this well-timed lobotomy? They didn't: The U.S. government, in the form of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, did it. In an act that mixes Hollywood arrogance with astounding ignorance of Iranian reality, the board has silenced the most effective opposition radio station in Iran at a time of unprecedented ferment. In its place, at three times the expense, the United States now will supply Iran's revolutionary students with a diet of pop music -- on the theory that this better advances U.S. interests. Even the name of the station has been sanitized. Instead of "Freedom" -- regarded as too political by the programmers -- the radio will be called "Farda," meaning "tomorrow." . . . . . . . We made extraordinary inroads, says [Stephen] Fairbanks [former director of Radio Freedom]. Everyone started to see us as a forum. Each day there were students who would report live to us from their mobile phones. It's a measure of how bold they have become that they would do that. Or did. For those following along at home, '''farda'' means ''tomorrow'' sort of the way ''manana'' does in Mexico -- ''tomorrow, if then, but definitely not now.'' So, even the name change is dumb, let alone depriving Iranians of a real information channel. 5:22:00 PM    comment []

Keeping Track of John Poindexter. Online pranksters have turned the tables on the man behind the government's controversial Total Information Awareness effort. They are posting his personal information on hundreds of sites. By Paul Boutin. [Wired News] 7:50:40 AM    comment []

Transforming Rural Alaska Through Wireless Technology in the Schools and Community, by Martin Cary, in Community Technolgy Review. Great piece on what Net access means for rural Alaskans -- and on what ''remote'' is in that context! 3:30:11 AM    comment []

Harry Potter and the Prisoners of the DTV Transition: An Adventure in Digital Television Policy (With apologies to J.K. Rowling), By Mike Godwin, Senior Technology Counsel, Public Knowledge. (spoilers possible for those who haven't read Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban) Taken together, the problems look as unbeatable as any multitude of scary monsters, but making things worse is the fact that many stakeholder factions are at war with each other over issues such as technology mandates, copyright protection, fair use, and so on. But what if we could somehow look back from the future to today's troubled present debate, wave our own wands, and come up with the spell that magically defeats the problems that bedevil the DTV transition? Such magic, of course, is beyond the abilities of mere "muggles" like us, but it is possible to look back from the future we have long been imagining -- one in which various consumer-electronics and information technologies have converged, and in which the broadband Internet reaches every home -- and come up with our own version of a magical solution. 2:29:52 AM    comment []