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Tuesday, March 29, 2005 |
Ed Felten:
"Recently I met a promising young computer scientist, whose name I will withhold for reasons that will soon be evident. He has developed a very interesting network software system that would be useful for a great many legitimate applications. The problem, he told me, is that if too many people find out what he has done and realize its value, some of them may start using it for illegal purposes. He doesn't want that kind of trouble, so he is avoiding bringing his work to the attention of the broader public, publishing it in research venues where a small community of experts will see it, but avoiding any further disclosure." From my perspective, that's indistinguishable from the legions of grad students who simply don't ship. (Granted, shipping is not their job.) But what's the point of doing research if you're going to be risk-averse to the point of paranoia? Speaking of Bram Cohen, maybe this guy should talk to him; I know Bram isn't losing any sleep over potential lawsuits.
[Hack the Planet]
10:51:55 PM 
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I don't generally do recipes here at A blog doesn't need a clever name, knowing, for one, that Julie did the food thing better than I could hope to touch. But tonight I got around to making a recipe from the NYT last week, and it made me sit down to blink it:
DINING & WINE | March 23, 2005
Recipe: Seafood Giambot
Y.u.m.
7:30:27 PM
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Supreme Court justices question P-to-P lawsuits. WASHINGTON -- Technology companies may shy away from inventing new products that could be used to violate copyright laws if the U.S. entertainment industry can sue the distributors of the Grokster and Morpheus P-to-P (peer-to-peer) software packages for their users' actions, some U.S. Supreme Court justices argued Tuesday. [InfoWorld: Top News]
4:07:47 PM
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The Long Tale.
Steve Gillmor: Waiting for Attention... Or Something like it.
Background: Waiting For The Electrician Or Someone Like Him, by Firesign Theatre, with which Steve was once associated.
It's a nice long post about attention.xml, a new spec Steve is driving. The gist:
What does matter is a pool of attention metadata owned by the users. This open cloud of reputational presence and authority can be mined by each group of constituents. Users can barter their attention in return for access to full content, membership priviliges, and incentives for strategic content. Vendors can build on top of that cloud of data with their own special saucethe newbie crowd of MyYahoo, the pacesetter early adopters of Diller/Ask/Bloglines, the social attention farm of RoJo, and Google¹s emerging Office service components orchestrated by the core GMail inforouter. And the media, which now includes publishers, analysts, researches, rating services, advertisers, sponsors, and underwriters, can use the data as a giant inference engine for leveraging the fat middle of the long tail.
With so much going for it, how and where is attention vulnerable? It¹s vulnerable to being pigeonholed as an automated artificially intelligent approach to personalization. In my view (remembering that this is my idea, and the problem I wanted to solve) attention metadata is useful in service of the reputational filter of the people and ideas I and the people I track are interested in. This is not about merely reorganizing my feed data based on my patterns of acquisition, but the cumulative weighting of the minds and interests represented by those feeds and items.
I love it when journalists take the lead in solving, and not just reporting on, problems. Steve is a great model here. In fact, I'm trying to follow his lead on the subject of Identity. (One sample.) [The Doc Searls Weblog]
4:07:38 PM
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John Palfrey: "Not too long from now, this blog should have a first-hand account of the Grokster oral argument from the Supreme Court." [Scripting News]
1:31:59 PM
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EFF staffers blogging this morning's Grokster hearing
Justices Ask the Right Questions in MGM v. Grokster, Grokster: From the Courthouse Steps, EFF Goes to Washington (Thanks, Donna!)
Also:
EFF attorney versus former solicitor general on CSPAN
Here's some great video of my cow-orker Fred von Lohmann, EFF's senior IP attorney, schooling former Solcitor General Theodore Olson on the Grokster case. Fred wipes up the floor with this dude. Link (Thanks, Copyleft Fan!)
And:
Several bloggers -- include EFF Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer -- are in DC today for the Supreme Court hearing on Grokster, where the movie studios are asking the court to criminalize any technology where the designers have failed to anticipate the ways in which it could be used to infringe and designed to block it (e.g., email, photocopiers, the Internet). They're blogging it and posting pictures, too. Wendy Seltzer Link, Machination.org Link, Photos (Thanks, Cyrus!)
Update: More Groksterblogging: SCOTUSBlog (Thanks, Donna), Nickdiscredit's Livejournal (Thanks, Justin!)
[bOing bOing]
1:31:52 PM
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Dave is ready to Break with EFF.
The issue appears to be copyright, and it appears that the EFF believes there should be no copyright. My position is that copyright changes with the development of worldwide networking, and all creative people must have some right to the work they create, or else, truly, the incentive to create will disappear.
[Scripting News]
I don't get it. Dave's regularly a pretty clueful guy, so I find myself seriously puzzled that he can't distinguish between opposing the copyright cartel's effort to expand copyright and seeking the abolition of copyright.
For examples, consider attempts to strike down the Betamax decision, extend copyright terms, impose constraints on technologists not to design wares that could have infringing uses, and the list goes on. Surely, one can believe in the institution of copyright without committing to the cartel's extremism.
I benefit, modestly, from the institution of copyright. A check should arrive this week with royalties for my book. I make a tiny amount of money, and the publisher makes significantly more. That's okay; I knew that was part of the deal. I stand to collect for a number of years, and then the copyright expires. That's okay with me, too; I knew that was part of the deal. I don't expect my great grandchildren to collect royalties on the thing. I'm happy that people can quote it and otherwise repurpose small portions of it within the bounds of the law. I'm happy that libraries have purchased it and can lend it to patrons, even though my publisher and I don't collect any revenue from the loans.
Those are all part of the balancing act deep within the institution of copyright, in which the interests of creative individuals (and publishers who bankroll distribution of their works) and the interest of the public, of the common good, are mutually addressed.
This isn't new stuff. Dave has written about this sort of thing from time to time in the past. He's usually been into the nuances and quite sensible. I think the EFF is representing both users and creators (both content creators and technologists) in these battles. What's overtaken Dave that he doesn't, or what am I missing?
8:34:12 AM
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Company backs off bounty for Mac OS X virus. A company that offered $25,000 for the first virus that automatically spreads among Apple computers running the OS X operating system cancelled the virus writing contest and retracted the offer of cash, citing concerns about legal liability. [InfoWorld: Top News]
8:33:08 AM
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A-listers on the Copyfight (Donna Wentworth).
Via Cory comes the news that a few "A-list" political bloggers are (finally) discussing the need for balance in intellectual property law and policy. Check 'em out:
- Atrios @ Eschaton: "Once upon a time it seems we had a better understanding of what the purpose of IP laws were. Their primary purpose is to encourage innovation and creativity, and not to create and preserve asset titles for corporations and individuals. Now, I'm all for innovators and artists being able to profit from their works, but the ability to do so is a means to an end, not the end itself. The end itself is supposed to be a benefit to consumers in the form of more new gadgets and more and better chick lit. If the IP system stifles innovation and creativity, rather than fostering it, then it's time for a change."
- Matthew Yglesias: "[The] rule that the petitioners [in Grokster] want to create will have a stifling impact on innovation in a broad sphere of activities, including software development, consumer electronics, and the provision of internet services. The public's interest in creating strong financial incentives for the creation of new works of film and music is real, but it's not so overwhelmingly real that we should sacrifice everything else on the table in an effort to minimize infringing uses."
[Copyfight]
But, see also above.
8:31:02 AM
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THE WORD MADE REAL.
Bringing Cory Doctorow back in-world-- and bringing his new book with him. What began as an online book club has evolved into a kind of virtual Gutenberg project. Somewhere between early and mid July, famed Boing Boing blogger and award-winning science fiction writer Cory Doctorow will be re-appearing in Second Life in avatar form, to discuss his new novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. Cory did Second Life's first in-world Book Club almost two years ago, and it was a massive success, with some 120 Residents jammed into the auditorium. This time, Cory very generously offered to...
[New World Notes]
8:30:05 AM
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U.S Secret Service's distributed computing project.
This article reports on the U.S Secret Service's distributed computing project for decoding encrypted evidence.It says the Secret Service has linked 4,000 of its employees' computers into the "Distributed Networking Attack" program."Taking a cue from scientists searching for signs of extraterrestrial life and mathematicians trying to identify very large prime numbers,the agency best known for protecting presidents and other high officials is tying together its employees' desktop computers in a network designed to crack passwords that alleged criminals have used to scramble evidence of their crimes -- everything from lists of stolen credit card numbers and Social Security numbers to records of bank transfers and e-mail communications with victims and accomplices".
DNA Key to Decoding Human Factor
[Smart Mobs]
8:26:56 AM
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The $500 Coursepack.
Students at Harvard other universities are battling coursepacks that cost almost $500, due to copyright insanity. Pissed off, they're photocopying articles from the coursepack on their own, which this editorial from the Harvard Crimson calls illegal. I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure it's actually fine to photocopy articles for personal use, particularly for educational purposes. What's NOT okay is for a commercial outlet such as Kinko's to sell coursepacks without getting copyright clearances.
(Via Sivacracy)
[Stay Free! Daily]
8:06:04 AM
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Secure Flight Faces Uphill Battle. The third incarnation of the government's airline passenger pre-screening system still fails to meet nine of 10 criteria, according to a new report, even though the government plans to roll out the system in August. By Kim Zetter. [Wired News]
8:04:04 AM
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