Wednesday, June 08, 2005

The legacy of Jack Valenti (JD Lasica). I've been holding back publishing the interviews I conducted with key figures in the copyright wars until now for a number of reasons, but chiefly because it presents a much clearer prism to see the arguments on each side lined up against each other contemporaneously. Today, as a very small gift to Copyfight, I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, a full text interview with the legend himself: Jack Valenti. Now, our friend Jack stepped down as head of the MPAA last September, but his influence lives on and, more importantly, the way he framed the public debate on these issues remains intact. His successor, Dan Glickman, is now finding his voice, but he has yet to engage the public's imagination as fully as Valenti did. In short, Valenti's views still matter. You've read accounts of Valenti's Congressional testimony over the years, and his one-on-one with Derek Slater for the Harvard Political Review in 2002 (tho I can't find the link!). Copyfighters like Derek and Ernie Miller (who earlier deconstructed an abbreviated version of my interview with ol' Jack) have pointed out the inconsistencies between Valenti's arguments and the realities of the digital world. It's a world view that needs to be challenged at every opportunity, because the underlying assumptions have been internalized by the powers that be on Capitol Hill. Valenti paints this as a battle between those who believe in copyright and those who believe in thievery, when of course that's not the case at all. He argues that the problem can be solved through technological innovation, when what the MPAA is really after is a form of trusted computing that rewires the next generation of personal computers to enshrine a form of copy protection into the machines so that they obey Hollywood, not the computer's owner. His view of fair use -- that it doesn't exist except as a legal defense -- is perhaps the most dangerous, for it threatens to cramp our visual culture and stifle an entire generation of grassroots media. The deeper we understand what animates the entertainment powers, the more effectively we can form an uplifting counter-view of the new digital landscape. [Copyfight] 10:04:24 PM    comment []

Cory points at a "Savage, brilliant essay on DRM": Don Marti's posted a scorching, brilliant essay on DRM and why it won't work and why it doesn't work and why we should stop trying to make it work. This is one of the best pieces on the subject I've ever read, and I'm something of a connoisseur: In this crazy business of ours, every once in a while, companies go into a frenzy to sell technology that doesn't work to customers who don't want it. In the 1990s, did customers want overpriced UNIX from bickering vendors or stable-any-day-we-promise Windows NT? Sorry, neither one works for us. Support Linux, please. Or on-line services. AOL or Compuserve? We'll take the Internet, thanks. The other hyped-up use for DRM is at the office. Deploy DRM and you can keep employees from forwarding embarrassing e-mail to the media. That sounds like the answer to network-illiterate managers' prayers, but if it's juicy enough to leak, it's juicy enough to write down and retype. Bill Gates of Microsoft, in an interview with gizmodo.com, tried to pitch DRM using the example of an HIV test result, which is literally one bit of information. If you hired someone untrustworthy enough to leak that but unable to remember it, you don't need DRM, you need to fix your hiring process. Link (Thanks, Seth!) [bOing bOing] 9:58:03 PM    comment []

Google overtakes TW as most valuable media co.. The most valuable media company in the world doesn't make movies, doesn't broadcast TV shows and doesn't print CDs or DVDs. Google now has a market cap of $80 billion, surpassing Time Warner's cap by $2 billion. It has only been 10 months since Google's IPO. Is this another bubble waiting to burst, or the real deal? Via Lost Remote [unmediated] 9:56:23 PM    comment []

Is It Time to Upgrade?. For shoppers, it can be a difficult decision: whether to buy sale products that have last year's technology, or to get the latest even if it means paying more. A guide to when to upgrade your TV, audio system or cellphone. By SEÁN CAPTAIN. Making a Network Members-Only. Is there a way to set up my wireless network so that only my family's computers - and nobody else's - can join it? By J.D. BIERSDORFER. [NYT > Technology] 9:51:39 PM    comment []

Man faces extradition on hacking charges, by Peter Griffiths (Reuters). A British man accused by the United States of hacking into scores of military computers and disrupting operations was arrested in London on Tuesday to face an extradition hearing, police said. Unemployed programmer Gary McKinnon, 39, is accused of gaining illegal access to 53 computers owned by the Pentagon, NASA and the U.S. army and navy between February 2001 and March 2002. 3:43:39 PM    comment []

No mystery about these authors' goals, by Jessica Brilliant Keene, Boston Globe. More than 250 authors have joined the group, International Thriller Writers, Inc., founded last October, and there's no shortage of chills among them: Total worldwide book sales of ITW authors exceeds 1.5 billion books, and 80 percent of the members have had titles on The New York Times bestseller lists, according to ITW cofounder and co-president Gayle Lynds, whose fifth thriller, ''The Coil," has just come out in paperback. . . . . . . . Also coming this summer, the Thriller Book Club, formed in conjunction with DearReader.com, will let readers sample, by e-mail, the opening chapters of ITW authors' books. Each weekday, club members will receive a quick read of the week's selection. By the end of the week, readers who are hooked can order the book online. ''It's interesting and strange that there hasn't been a professional group for thriller writers, because it's a separate category from mystery," says Joseph Finder, a Boston-based writer whose latest corporate intrigue, ''Company Man," hit The New York Times bestseller list in May. Finder is among 30 authors who've agreed to donate an unpublished short story to an anthology of ITW authors that will be published next year to raise money for the organization. What distinguishes a thriller from a mystery? ''Mysteries focus on who done it. Thrillers focus on how done it," Finder says. ''In a thriller, it's the process and how it affects the characters that are emphasized." In ''Company Man," Finder departs from the usual fare of bad-guy CEO and makes his executive protagonist a sympathetic, decent man, the object of death threats, and the target of a conspiracy involving his colleagues. There's also The Official Website of International Thriller Writers, Inc. 2:43:30 PM    comment []

FBI, Santa Fe police probe attack on Los Alamos employee, by David McGlinchey, govexec.com. Tommy Hook, an auditor at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was assaulted and severely beaten in the parking lot of Cheeks, a Santa Fe strip club, at about 2 a.m. Sunday. Susan Hook, the victim's wife, Bob Rothstein, his attorney, and Chuck Montano, a fellow Los Alamos whistleblower, said Monday that Hook was at the club to meet with another employee who claimed to have information that would support charges of wrongdoing. Tommy Hook and Montano were scheduled to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, according to the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group. Susan Hook and Montano alleged Monday that the assault was related to Tommy Hook's impending testimony. They did not provide the name of the person that Hook was allegedly in contact with. "When they were beating him up, they were telling him ... 'If you know what is good for you, you will keep your mouth shut,' " said Susan Hook. Tommy Hook suffered a fractured jaw and a herniated disk and is being treated at St. Vincent Regional Medical Center. He was not made available to the media. Declan adds: And here's congressional testimony from March 2005: http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/Hearings/03182005hearing1457/ Brian.pdf Retaliation remains the norm, not the exception, as can be seen in the case of Tommy Hook and Chuck Montano, who have both worked at Los Alamos for decades. After the Committee’s three hearings on financial fraud at Los Alamos, the University of California was telling the public that all was resolved, while at the same time retaliating against these two men who knew otherwise. Hook and Montano were responsible for providing audit support for UC and uncovered ongoing irregularities and outright misconduct amounting to millions of taxpayer dollars. 11:43:02 AM    comment []

Via BNA News: 430,000 SITES REGISTER IN CHINA UNDER THREAT OF SHUT DOWN A Chinese government threat to close down unregistered Web sites has convinced just 430,000 to make themselves known at the Information Ministry. The move suggests that most of the country's estimated 4 million web loggers, or bloggers, are choosing to stay out in the cold. 7:42:23 AM    comment []