Friday, November 21, 2003

Lessig: mp3.com, we hardly knew you (II). Andy Orlowski has a wonderfully argued but sad piece about the sale of mp3.com to CNET. As he reports, the archive of music that was mp3.com will be destroyed. As Andy writes, "Not since the Great Leap Forward has there been such a destruction of the commons. Back then, for political reasons, millions of books were burned. Now, for very sensible commercial reasons that we must not question, millions of MP3s will be lost to the commons. You have precisely seventeen days to grab the good stuff (and, Steb Sly - we hope you have a backup) ... CNET will follow Wal-Mart, Real Inc. and Apple Computer into the DRM business, infecting as many computers as they can with restrictive software controls that close what for a brief period has been an open computer platform. They all hope that this tentative business model, the terms of which are set by the entertainment "industry", will somehow turn them a profit. Or at least give the illusion of doing so, until a better idea comes along. One of those better ideas that he discusses is the "compulsory license" -- which he rightly says had a stupidly "Stalinist name" but not quite rightly says the EFF has "thrown its weight behind." Some of us within EFF push the idea of a "statutory license" (the sort that the music industry was built on, see this), but EFF is just pushing the idea of alternatives.) I've been lamenting the fast slide of mp3.com for sometime now. Now there's nothing more to lament. CNET's got a great domain name. And beyond that, Michael Robertson's vision of a new industry is over. [Lessig Blog] 8:30:43 PM    comment []

News.Com: SBC challenges RIAA over subpoenas. Critics of the DMCA say SBC's case may have a better chance of success than Verizon's, since the subpoenas have now been issued thousands of times, and the burdens on courts and the threats of exposing people's private information are no longer theoretical. [Tomalak's Realm] 8:00:32 PM    comment []

Four from Benton News CONGRESS APPEARS SET TO REVERSE FCC On Wednesday, House and Senate negotiators agreed to block the FCC's decision to increase the media ownership cap from 35 percent to 45 percent. The rebuff to the commission was added to a $285 billion omnibus spending bill intended to keep large portions of the federal government operating through next year. The White House has re-iterated threats to veto any bill that turns back the commission's plan to ease media ownership limits. But some supporters of the limits do not take the veto threat seriously, as President Bush has yet to veto a single piece of legislation and is considered unlikely to block a broad spending bill that keeps the government operating. Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said he anticipated a potential reproof from the White House but not a veto. "Obviously, the administration completely misjudged the reaction of the American people to this move," added Senator Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND). The conference agreement does not affect the FCC's new rules to relax limits on how many stations a broadcaster could own in a single market and to allow a broadcaster to own a dominant daily newspaper in the same local market. SOURCE: New York Times; AUTHOR: David Firestone http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/21/business/media/21media.html MAKING A MOCKERY OF MEDIA CONCENTRATION RULES [Commentary] It appears that the decision on new media ownership rules will make little difference to markets such as Wichita Falls, Texas, where media companies have already found ways to bypass ownership limits, writes Floyd Norris. Wichita Falls is classified as a small market, where dual ownership is barred and would remain prohibited. But in reality, the same company runs three of its five television stations. Mission Broadcasting owns a low-power station (which the FCC does not count), as well as the local Fox station. The NBC affiliate is owned by Nexstar Broadcasting, which also runs both Mission stations. The FCC treats Mission and Nexstar as separate companies, though operate as one. The FCC rules, some of them set by case law, seem to have created a maze that media lawyers know how to navigate. Give a company nominal control over programming --even if it does not exercise it -- and two TV stations can become "independent," even though they are operated jointly. This strategy allows Nexstar to run two stations in 11 different markets, and three stations in two. It seems the FCC may not be doing a very good job of enforcing even the porous rules it has, Norris concludes. SOURCE: New York Times; AUTHOR: Floyd Norris http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/21/business/21norris.html GOVERNMENTS 'PLAY KEY ROLE' IN REDUCING DIGITAL DIVIDE A study released on Wednesday by the United Nations' International Telecommunication Union (ITU) reveals that Nordic countries rank top on the Internet access list, the result of progressive shifts in public policy there. The survey of 178 economies found that highly developed economies like those of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway are leading the world in terms of Internet access, while agrarian-based economies like those in most African countries are trailing behind, dominating the bottom 30 ranks of the list. The announcement of the results of the Digital Access Index (DAI) motivated the ITU to praise government-sponsored initiatives to bridge the digital divide. Economies in the upper tier of the index have benefited from "government policies (that) helped them reach an impressive level of (information and communication technology) access", the ITU report said. "This includes major ICT projects such as the Dubai Internet City in the United Arab Emirates, the highest ranked Arab nation in the DAI; the Multimedia Super Corridor in Malaysia, the highest ranked developing Asian nation; and the Cyber City in Mauritius along with Seychelles, the highest ranked African nation." SOURCE: ZDNet UK; AUTHOR: Paul Festa, CNET News.com http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,39020369,39118043,00.htm CHANDIGARH JOURNAL: SLEEPY CITY HAS HIGH HOPES, DREAMING OF HIGH TECH A cadre of ambitious government officials, pricey consultants and local high technology entrepreneurs are trying to transform Chandigarh, a relatively sleepy Indian state capital, into the technology hub of northern India. This city is one of many in India competing to house American and Indian company call centers and software parks. But small cities like Chandigarh offer even lower labor cost than some of India's "first tier" technology hubs. Cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad and Bombay are running short of available skilled labor, says Manisha Grover, a Bangalore-based consultant hired by Chandigarh to aid its marketing efforts. Investing in cities like Chandigarh almost cut costs by 50 percent, local businessmen say. Whether Chandigarh can persuade companies to open call centers may depend on whether the readily available 50,000 local college students can be employed as skilled labor. "We expect 5,000 new jobs in the next six months to one year," says Vivek Atray, 36-year-old electrical engineer who is the city's new director of information technology. "We are not known as a hub yet, but with the knowledge revolution picking up, our capacity to evolve looks optimistic." SOURCE: New York Times; AUTHOR: DAVID ROHDE http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/20/international/asia/20INDI.html 2:44:35 PM    comment []

Grocery Workers' Strike. Safeway's effort to leapfrog Wal-Mart in the race to the bottom of the wage and benefit barrel has made it the prime source of the Southern California grocery workers' strike. Instead of using its profitable market position to maintain the work force that created the profits, Safeway decided to squander millions of dollars and untold amounts of customer good will in the street fight over health care benefits. [New York Times: Opinion] 9:59:19 AM    comment []

Record Producer Phil Spector Is Charged in Death of Actress. Phil Spector, who helped create some of the biggest pop hits of the 1960's, was charged with murder in the shooting death of an actress at his hilltop home last February. By Andrew Pollack. [New York Times: Business] backstory 7:33:52 AM    comment []

Overuse of copyright is its downfall. That's Cory's gloss of an article in Legal Times, Too Quick to Copyright: Companies cheat the law and the public by claiming ownership over too much stuff (PDF) by Jason Mazzone. [P]ublishers routinely require their own authors who want to use reproductions of old diaries, maps, photographs, or other images long out of copyright to obtain a license from a library, museum, or other owner of a physical copy. While a picture may be worth a thousand words, many authors find this requirement too much trouble and just omit the image. ...many academic authors have faced the uphill battle of persuading their own publisher to let them include excerpts from the copyrighted works of others. Fair use is meant to allow and encourage such conversations among authors. However, publishers routinely edit out fairly used materials and require their authors to indemnify them against any claims for infringement. Important points. I'll pass this along the fair use guidelines working group on campus. 7:32:19 AM    comment []

The Key to Genius. Autistic savants are born with miswired neurons -- and extraordinary gifts. Now researchers are using breakthrough science to expand our understanding of the brain. By Wired magazine's Steve Silberman. [Wired News] 7:25:46 AM    comment []