Friday, December 16, 2005

Music, Movies, and Someday Text: You're Just Renting It. Michael Hiltzik (LA Times): Who Owns Your CD/DVD Collection? Perhaps the least salutary development in the digitization of entertainment is that the big companies have begun to see themselves as selling not works such as music, movies, or TV shows, but objects: CDs, DVDs, downloadable episodes, even texts. Determined to sell as many of these totemic things as they can, they're moving aggressively to control what we buyers can do with them. This column is valuable in several ways. It explains the landscape in clear language, for one thing. But the most important aspect of the piece is where it appears: in the Los Angeles Times. The newspaper has tended in recent years to be more a mouthpiece for Hollywood and the entertainment cartel -- and not sufficiently a skeptical observer of all sides of the issues -- when it comes to coverage of this vital topic. Hollywood believes we have no rights apart from those it grants to us. Using increasingly harsh technological measures, it's even trying to curb fundamental fair use, which includes the right to quote from other works without permission. Creative works are always built on the works of others. In a world where we must get permission or pay, creativity and innovation will suffer. Hollywood either gets this and doesn't care, or is oblivious. I think the movie moguls and their music-industry counterparts -- and, sadly, an increasing number of publishers -- do get it, and would trade away what helped them rise in order to keep their untenable positions. Are they short-sighted? You bet. But their paranoia is understandable. This will be long battle. It's great to have people like Hiltzik on our side. [Dan Gillmor's blog] 10:46:55 PM    comment []

DNA mutation accounts for white skin. Penn State University scientists claim to have discovered a genetic mutation responsible for the emergence of white skin between 20,000 and 50,000 years ago. From the Washington Post: The work suggests that the skin-whitening mutation occurred by chance in a single individual after the first human exodus from Africa, when all people were brown-skinned. That person's offspring apparently thrived as humans moved northward into what is now Europe, helping to give rise to the lightest of the world's races. Leaders of the study, at Penn State University, warned against interpreting the finding as a discovery of "the race gene." Race is a vaguely defined biological, social and political concept, they noted, and skin color is only part of what race is -- and is not. In fact, several scientists said, the new work shows just how small a biological difference is reflected by skin color. The newly found mutation involves a change of just one letter of DNA code out of the 3.1 billion letters in the human genome -- the complete instructions for making a human being. "It's a major finding in a very sensitive area," said Stephen Oppenheimer, an expert in anthropological genetics at Oxford University, who was not involved in the work. "Almost all the differences used to differentiate populations from around the world really are skin deep." Link (Thanks, Vann Hall!) [Boing Boing] 10:46:40 PM    comment []

Remix Champions [unmediated] 6:21:52 AM    comment []

Hold the Photons!. A research breakthrough duplicates the security benefits of quantum cryptography using conventional electronics and copper wires. Making it practical is another matter. Commentary by Bruce Schneier. [Wired News] 6:21:30 AM    comment []

Being irate at Iran, but wisely. One leader's wrongheaded remarks on Israel must be countered by firmer diplomacy. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories] 6:21:24 AM    comment []

Maybe Virginia Woolf Was Right: A nonacademic job had seemed the best way to find money and a room of her own. Now a Ph.D. in comparative literature has doubts. [CHE] 6:13:04 AM    comment []

Old-school X-Windows hacker Jim Gettys is actually working on the MIT $100 laptop and blogging it. [Hack the Planet] 6:09:42 AM    comment []

"Freedom": No documents found. America's most popular Internet companies are helping China crack down on free speech. [Salon] 6:09:17 AM    comment []

Stem Cells Faked, Doctor Claims. The co-author of a research paper hailed as a breakthrough in stem cell research now says the data was faked. Meanwhile, Hwang Woo-suk, the project's controversial leader, remains hospitalized for treatment of stress. [Wired News] 6:08:35 AM    comment []

Peru's bio-piracy gestapo terrorizes the West. Peru and other developing nations are using the WTO to complain about biotech imperialism. [Salon - How the World Works] 6:08:14 AM    comment []

Warner/Chappell Music apologizes to PearLyrics. Two days ago, the EFF distributed an open letter by Fred Von Lohmann that slammed Warner/Chappell Music for bullying PearLyrics into shutdown. The helpful little app acts like a specialized web browser. When you're playing a song in iTunes, PearLyrics automatically scours the internet for lyrics, then adds that text to the song file's metadata (and as every digital music fan knows: mo data, mo betta). Today, W/C chairman Richard Blackstone and Jane Dyball, who handles the label's legal affairs in Europe, apologized to the Austrian programmer who created PearLyrics. Snip from Billboard analysis: W/C’s apology was the right move, but may have come as a result of a publicly posted argument from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Not only was [Walter] Ritter’s application probably legal in the United States, reasoned the EFF, but such threats against U.S. developers could open Warner Music Group to federal liability. The music industry might want to think these actions through more thoroughly, and not just to avoid legal strife. Dyball’s letter to PearLyrics was copied to Kevin Saul, an Apple Computer lawyer, and links to similar applications quickly disappeared from the Apple Web site. This was two opportunities lost. For one, by taking the text from illegal lyrics sites, applications such as Ritter’s—which seek no revenue and are, at least arguably, legal—were taking eyeballs away from, and thus diminishing the ad revenue of the very illegal, very revenue-seeking sites that archive and distribute unlicensed lyrics. Major rights holders confronted with these grass-roots software developments might also consider embracing them as possible new business models as aggressively as they have been in recent years about shutting them down. How many casual music fans currently pay for lyrics? Link Previously: Warner Music attacks specialized web-browser PearLyrics shutown: EFF's open letter to Warner Music Update: Walter Ritter has posted the joint announcement on his website, along with his thoughts on the debacle, and his thanks to the EFF. Link. And incidentally, Friday is Mr. Ritter's birthday. [Boing Boing] 6:08:07 AM    comment []