Tuesday, November 19, 2002

welcome to bIPlog! New Intellectual Property Blog. Check out bIPlog, a new intellectual property weblog from students at UC-Berkeley. [Inter Alia] Bloggers talking about intellectual property is like everyone else talking about the weather. The weather affects us all, whether we like it or not. Intellectual property is our air - which we breathe in and breathe out. Take it away from us by enforcing anti-linking policies or restrictive DRM and we/society will suffocate in this "knowledge economy". The difference is that although the weather can be nasty and destructive at times, one generally doesn't think that it has a malevolent intelligence - e.g. the weather deciding it wanted to put lesser mortals back into their place by brewing up a nasty ice storm. Unfortunately, things are different in the IP atmosphere. The Content Cartel is playing a risky game. If it relies too much on its celebrity mystique - as it does sometimes on the "bankability" of certain stars - it will tarnish itself to a wider section of the population. If they try to be too restrictive, we may decide to just ignore them and embrace whatever else will fill the inevitable void. But now I'm daydreaming happy idealistic thoughts. 9:17:10 PM     Starwars producer falls to to the Dark Side Terrorism and Copyright Piracy The Same?. Star Wars producer Rick McCallum is quoted in the Australian IT News as saying that copyright protection needs to be "as concentrated an international event as the war on terrorism." Funny, but I thought threats to personal safety took a higher priority than those to copyright protected works. He also claimed that 50% of music industry revenue had been lost to illegal file sharing, and the same would happen to the movie industry if they... [bIPlog] When I first read this post I feeling sceptical & charitable - surely Hollywood wasn't that over-weening and self-important. So I did what a good librarian should, and verified the source. I found the story as reported in Australian IT. Barring the remote chance that he's been misquoted by that publication, it looks like this Big Blockbuster Producer really is that self-deluded and is truly on the Dark Side of this debate. 8:42:18 PM     skywatching On the roof. If I am to believe weblogs, many people must have spent last night on the roof or in the desert to watch the Leonid meteor showers, apparently a once-in-a-century experience. Anyway, the sky in Vienna was so overcast you couldn't even see the moon. I went to bed early and had a good night's sleep. Yes, I was disappointed and frustrated like hell. [links via Scott Rosenberg] [The Aardvark Speaks] Luckily for me, Minnesota had fairly clear skies last night. I managed to drag myself out of bed and went for a little drive, away from the lights of the Twin Cities, east over the St. Croix to Willow River state park in Wisconsin. It was a profound experience to see so many meteors flicker in silence punctuated by the hooting of an owl and the barking of a lonely farm dog. It was cold out there and I recalled the winter of 1986 when I first got interested in sky-watching to view Halley's comet (which wasn't so much of a dud for southern hemisphere viewers). Since then my interest in this hobby has waned and last night was the first time I'd paid much attention to the northern skies since living in the US. It was strange to see constellations such as Orion the right way up. And I felt homesick for the Southern Cross and the Pointers. 6:56:17 PM

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