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Sunday, June 26, 2005 |
Wes:
DRM Blog: DRM Laundering. The idea of trade-ins on music files is a little wacky, but interesting. If songs are identified based on the tags, you wouldn't even need "dirty" files to start with; you could simply create silent M4Ps with the right tags and trade them in.
1:22:53 PM 
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Lessig: Wow -- I said that?.
So I posted a notice about the Register's testimony about section 115. I'm in the middle of the cc-iCommons-Summit, so I didn't have much time to say anything of substance. My post simply points again to the 1967 testimony about compulsory licenses, and it highlights the point about nondiscrimination. From this, two highly respected (by me and many) commentators have offered a critique of my comment. Ernie and Joe Gratz both praise aspects of the Register's proposal. They translate that praise into criticism of my comment. I too would praise much in the Register's proposal. She is right to identify the debilitating effects of the transaction costs in the existing system. And she should be praised for looking for new, creative ways to avoid those costs. But my criticism was quite local and specific, and not really addressed by either Joe or Ernie. My criticism was about the potential for discrimination. The Register is almost exactly right to say "But in determining public policy and legislative change, it is the author - and not the middlemen - whose interests should be protected." Almost exactly right, because in my view, we should be determining not just "the author" but "the authors" -- the ecology of creativity enabled by copyright's rules. The wonderful and powerful claim in the 1967 testimony is that granting fewer derivative rights to composers than we grant to, say, book authors, produces a wider range of music creativity. I find this argument to be compelling. So I am concerned with the fact that "[n]othing" in the proposal "obligates a copyright owner to utilize a MRO, but the increased efficiency of that structure provides an incentive for them to do so, just as they have all utilized performing rights organizations." For I'm not convinced that the decision to include rights within a MRO is solely a function of transaction costs. That will of course invite the question -- "why should composers have fewer rights than authors"? (Joe criticizes the "massive and ongoing wealth transfer from song writers to record companies.") My answer -- which I've blathered on about elsewhere -- is that this has it backwards. The restriction on speech -- which every derivative right is -- should have to justify itself. And that "justification for private rights," as libertarian law professor Richard Epstein puts it, "has to be social." The particular difficult justification presented by this extremely odd "private right" is framed well by Professor Rubenfeld. That work, and of course the work of many others, should lead us to ask again and always: how broadly should the law secure "derivative rights" — remembering again that copyright was born with no derivative rights. So yes, I too praise Ernie's proposal to eliminate the "copy" right within copyright. I too agree with Ernie and Joe and the Register that we need a more efficient way license
1:19:40 PM
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Roland's Sunday Smart Trends #64.
Before starting my usual weekly selection, I want to mention "Lessons from Silicon Valley." Peter Bay, from the BBC, talked with Joe Kraus, one of the founders of Excite in 1996, now with application-wiki company JotSpot. Noting that 60% of Amazon's revenue comes from the "long tail" -- or books you will never find at your local bookstore, Joe Kraus gave a very smartmobbing explanation.
"The 20th Century mass production world was about dozens of markets of millions of people. The 21st Century is all about millions of markets of dozens of people," observes Mr Kraus.
After this "quote of the century," here is my weekly selection of articles that were not mentioned here -- except if I missed them.
Wiki Inventor Pitches Openness to Content Managers
Allowing employees to work on sensitive documents without a series of strict controls isn't as dangerous as corporate knowledge managers think, according to Jimmy Wales [, the quy behind Wikipedia.]
Source: Edward Cone, CIO Insight, June 5, 2005
Human-tracking Goes Mainstream
Once viewed as a futuristic nightmare, human-tracking is now affordable and available without restriction. For $200 plus a monthly service fee of $20, anyone can purchase an electronic device that puts George Orwell's 1984 surveillance technology to shame. They're marketed as "kid-tracking" devices, though some ads also mention pets and senior citizens. In vivid shades of doublespeak, one company offers service plans named "Liberty, Independence, and Freedom," but surveillance and control are their purpose.
Source: Jerry Dobson, for Directions Magazine, June 23, 2005
[Smart Mobs]
(Edited down to two, but many worthy items there.)
1:17:53 PM
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