Monday, May 19, 2003

Site in Spain to reign in MP3 playin'?. A new all-you-can-eat music download service that claims to take advantage of a loophole in Spanish copyright law will launch Tuesday and has teamed with Grokster for distribution. [CNET News.com] 10:42:44 PM    comment []

Also on the Jessica Lynch story noted here last week: BBC correspondent defends Lynch documentary. On [NewsIsFree: Popular Items] 10:39:03 PM    comment []

Regarding the Jessica Lynch story noted here last week: Pentagon attacks BBC's Lynch allegations. On [NewsIsFree: Popular Items] 10:37:49 PM    comment []

SBC plans public Wi-Fi network. The telecommunications company is shopping for wireless networking equipment to create public hot spots. [CNET News.com] 10:32:04 PM    comment []

Living One Disaster After Another, and Then Sharing the Experience. Dr. Lee Clarke, a sociologist and an author, is an expert on calamities, those occurring naturally and those created by people. By Claudia Dreifus. [New York Times: Science] 10:30:31 PM    comment []

The Girls' Guide to Plumbing and Fixing: Why the latest women's lit will also appeal to men. By Stephanie Mencimer, in Washington Monthly. Usually homeowners defend their employment of these contractors by pointing to time constraints. The truth is, though, despite their smarty-pants exteriors, most members of the office park set don't know the first thing about ground wires. That's why they are also unlikely authors of a DIY guide. The women who do write books on home improvement tend to come from the lady-of-leisure category. Martha Stewart occasionally wields power tools, but always for ornamental projects, such as, "How to turn a cedar planter into a fetching blanket chest." It's doubtful that Martha fixes her own toilets; she certainly never instructs the rest of us on how to do so. All of which makes Glakas-Tenet and Sussman an interesting demographic. As CIA wives, they are part of Washington's elite brainiac sector. But because many of Washington's most powerful government jobs don't actually come with high salaries, the women write in their introduction that they often couldn't afford to pay someone else to get rid of that annoying, if not life-threatening, leak in the sink. And naturally, George Tenet had better things to do. As a result, the two women got their know-how on the job, and the projects in the book are the most practical of repairs--things women, and men, actually might need to do. Recently, I beta-tested the book just to see how well it holds up to real life. 2:12:30 PM    comment []

Economics , Psychology, and Sociology of Security, by Andrew Odlyzko (pdf). 11:11:42 AM    comment []

Lessig on competition and a point mentioned here yesterday. Doc is writing about a meme we have got to get right early on. One (not the only) general way to describe what's important about the Net we knew is competition. The end-to-end Internet is a platform for fostering and supporting competition. One general kind of competition that this platform will enable is competition between commercial and noncommercial content and innovation. A richer public domain, and more in the creative commons will mean more to choose among when creating or sharing or criticizing culture. Competitors hate competition. They will always work to increase barriers to entry. And they will use a string of silly excuses to increase the barriers to the free. We should resist these excuses. We should be fighting to preserve this competition. "How can you compete with free?" Jack Valenti asks, again and again? By making stuff better, again and again. But the important point is this: It is wrong wrong wrong to bias the rules against the free. Free societies make closed societies harder to sustain. The same should be true of culture. If you find it hard to be closed and important, then either accept irrelevance or accept the Internet. [Lessig Blog] 7:28:55 AM    comment []

The Genre Is Scorned, but TV Networks Still Rely on Reality. The sudden cooling of the ardor for reality would seem to fly in the face of the genre's impressive ratings record. By Bill Carter. [New York Times: Business] 7:25:38 AM    comment []

Getting Inside Einstein's Head. How does one begin to understand the mind of the man who came up with the theory of relativity? A new website peers into the world and the work of Albert Einstein with a collection of personal correspondence, notes and scientific papers. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News] 7:25:14 AM    comment []

Threat Is Seen to Heirloom Software. The personal computer industry began less than three decades ago, but already some of the early software programs that defined the era are an endangered species, the potential victims of "bit rot," according to a prominent digital archivist. By John Markoff. [New York Times: Business] 7:24:29 AM    comment []

Spy Plan Faces Critical Deadline. Architects of the federal government's controversial Total Information Awareness project must turn in a report to Congress on Tuesday outlining their goals. Without lawmakers' approval, the program could be toast. By Ryan Singel. [Wired News] 7:23:59 AM    comment []

Deal May Raise Napster From Online Ashes. Napster, the online music service that unleashed an era of music piracy, may be about to make a legitimate comeback. By Amy Harmon. [New York Times: Technology] Short story: Roxio (the CD-burner-software maker) bought Napster's assets last year, and is said (no source on record) to be on the verge of buying Pressplay from Sony and Universal. Roxio also has Shawn Fanning on board as an advisor. The deal would give Roxio the premiere burning software, the best name brand in online music distribution, and a catalog of 300,000 tunes. No clues offered what happens to the ''piracy restrictions'' now in place on Pressplay. 7:23:24 AM    comment []

A President Tries to Settle the Controversy Over File Sharing: Penn State's Graham Spanier wants to make a deal with the music industry. By Scott Carlson, CHE. 5:10:44 AM    comment []