Friday, June 24, 2005

The Register wants reform. According to Cathy Kirkman of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich and Rosati, the Register of Coyprights has decided to propose abolishing the compulsory right granted by section 115 of the Copyright Act. This is the provision that gives recording artists the right to record "covers," so long as they pay a specified fee. Remember this quote from a 1967 House Judiciary Report, considering a modification to the law as it existed then: [T]he record producers argued vigorously that the compulsory license system must be retained. They asserted that the record industry is a half-billion-dollar business of great economic importance in the United States and throughout the world; records today are the principal means of disseminating music, and this creates special problems, since performers need unhampered access to musical material on nondiscriminatory terms. Historically, the record producers pointed out, there were no recording rights before 1909 and the 1909 statute adopted the compulsory license as a deliberate anti-monopoly condition on the grant of these rights. They argue that the result has been an outpouring of recorded music, with the public being given lower prices, improved quality, and a greater choice. Copyright Law Revision, Committee on the Judiciary, 90th Cong. 1st, Sess., Rep. No. 83 66 (March 8, 1967). Apparently the Registrer believes performers no longer "need unhampered access to musical material on nondiscriminatory terms." What progress. [Lessig Blog] 10:21:39 PM    comment []

Federal Government RSS feeds. Paul Vogelzang, from the U.S. Treasury, pointed to this list of RSS feeds offered by federal government agencies, in his presentation at Gnomedex. [rexblog: Rex Hammock's Weblog] 10:15:55 PM    comment []

Four from BNA News: NEARLY ALL U.S. LIBRARIES OFFER FREE INTERNET ACCESS A new study from the American Library Association has found that nearly all U.S. libraries offer free public Internet access. The study, which was conducted by researchers at Florida State University, found that 98.9 percent of libraries offer free public Internet access, up from 21 percent in 1994 and 95 percent in 2002. It also found that 18 percent of libraries have wireless Internet access and 21 percent plan to get it within the next year. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/national/24library.html STUDY FINDS ONLINE BANKING USE WIDESPREAD According to a Yahoo-commissioned study, a majority of adults are comfortable monitoring their finances and paying bills over the Internet, while older people remain more cautious. In an online survey of 2,687 people, 64 percent said they check their bank account balances primarily online and 56 percent said they use the Internet as their primary way to check their investment portfolios. http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5759890.html SENATE COMMITTEE AVOIDS BROADCAST FLAG OPTION A key US Senate panel has decided not to intervene in a long-simmering dispute over broadcast flags, a form of copy prevention technology for digital TV broadcasts. At a meeting reserved for voting on spending bills, not one member of the Senate Appropriations Committee proposed an amendment authorizing federal regulators to mandate the broadcast flag. http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5759807.html FTC RELEASES STUDY ON EFFECTS OF P2P The FTC has released a report on peer-to-peer file-sharing technology, finding that it offers both benefits and risks. In comparison with overall Internet use, however, the FTC concluded that "workshop participants submitted little empirical evidence concerning whether the risks arising from P2P file sharing are greater than, equal to, or less than these risks from other Internet-related activities." Report at http://www.ftc.gov/reports/p2p05/050623p2prpt.pdf Coverage at 8:42:52 AM    comment []

What else could war dollars buy? Six billion dollars a month can pay for a lot of stuff, and we've got the T-shirts, tickers and widgets to prove it. Tim Grieve, in Salon. 8:42:48 AM    comment []

AT&T plans CNN-style security channel, by Stephen Lawson & Robert McMillan, IDG News Service. The service, which currently goes by the codename Internet Security News Network, (ISN) is under development at AT&T Labs, but it will be offered as an additional service to the company's customers within the next nine to 12 months, according to Hossein Eslambolchi, president of AT&T's Global Networking Technology Services and AT&T Labs ISN will look very much like Time Warner's Cable News Network, except that it will be broadcast exclusively over the Internet, Eslambolchi said. "It's like CNN," he said. "When a new attack is spotted, we'll be able to offer constant updates, monitoring, and advice." The online video channel will feature interviews with AT&T security professionals, as well as experts from a variety of different organizations like network hardware vendors and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT). All the while, news on the latest security vulnerabilities will stream across the bottom of the screen, much like the ticker symbols used by TV news networks, Eslambolchi said. "You will see... what viruses exist and where they came from," he said. AT&T also plans to provide its own analysis of Internet security threats, culled from probes of AT&T's massive TCP/IP networks that can be used to help predict where and when attackers will strike with new exploits. "We extract intelligence and knowledge from the network and we do data analysis, data mining, and we do artificial intelligence on the network," Eslambolchi said. "We use that to create a cybersecurity index to see where these worm and viruses and phishing and pharming attacks are coming from." 8:42:35 AM    comment []