"Representatives Jay Inslee (D-WA), George Nethercutt (R-WA) and Rick Boucher (D-VA) have stepped up to protect small businesses from being unfairly forced out of business by the performance copyright royalties recently affirmed by the Librarian of Congress. They have introduced a bill in the US House of Representatives (HR 5285) that would SAVE INTERNET RADIO."

HR 5285 will save Internet Radio

"Most parents would be horrified if they walked into a child's room and found 100 stolen CDs...However, these same parents think nothing of having their children spend time online downloading hundreds of songs without paying a dime."

John Malcolm, deputy assistant attorney general, is yet another government official who lacks the mental dexterity needed to understand the difference between the theft of a physical object and the copying of information. As long as the legal analogies bear no relationship to the physical realities, consumers and the media interests will continue to talk past eachother on matters like this.

Information is not a scarce resource. Stealing a CD is NOT the same as copying a file. If you have a CD and I take it from you, you no longer have that CD. Your wealth is diminished. I have HURT you. If you have a file and I copy that file, you still have the file. Your wealth is NOT diminished. I have not hurt you. You might argue that I should have paid you for it, and therefore I have reduced your POTENTIAL wealth, but to equate the two is to over-simplify things in a way that is not constructive to understanding. It is a typical move by those who wish to impose the value system of the industrial age upon the information age with no consideration for the new realities the information age presents.

DOJ to swappers: Law's not on your side - Tech News - CNET.com

"If you believe the buzz, you'll conclude that programmers, academics and engineers should be scared witless about being sued under the DMCA. In effect for nearly two years, the law sets protections for the codes that are wrapped around certain copyrighted content such as DVDs and electronic books. "

I think McCullagh is simply trying to rile people up here. If he is really trying to tell researchers not to over-react to the DMCA, News.com isn't really the best place to reach them.

Furthermore, everyone seems to forget that the RIAA fired the first shot in the Felton case. YES, you are unlikely to be prosecuted if you are a research scientist; not because of the law, but because you are a research scientist. You have the resources to defend yourself and you look good in court. If you are an independent security researcher living off peanuts and posting to bugtraq, the exact same research could have very different implications. Again, not because of the law, but because the law offers a pretense to prosecute, and even if such a prosecution is not going to be successful, it will still punish you financially beyond your means.

This discrepancy should not be presented in a positive light. "Don't worry about the DMCA, it only applies to the little people."

Debunking DMCA myths - Tech News - CNET.com

Lawrence Lessig presentation at OSCON. He is totally incredulous at this point. He just can't beleive how messed up things are. The problem is he is still raising money for the EFF. This is a problem that requires organized voting and not well funding lawyering.

free_culture

"The Librarian's decision was based on a misguided reading of the record. Not only was improper weight given to the testimony of Yahoo! but some 140 separate licensing deals were thrown out by the Librarian. The end result significantly undervalued the music used by Internet radio companies."

Hundreds of stations offline, thousands more on the way, and the RIAA says it wants more.

RIAA / News / RIAA Announces Intent To Appeal Internet Radio Royalty Rates

The spread of anti-deep linking policies. The reason that most large corporations are such awful places to work is that according to most attorneys and (worse) ill informed human resources compliance people, being risk adverse is the same thing as being *life* adverse. Corporations pay lawyers to spend hours spewing contract nonsense that is designed to limit any liability and maximize any privilege for the person who is paying for the spewage. The fact is that over time this stuff is bending society in the most sinister ways. Ways we'd never legislate. Ways we'd never agree to collectively. But by the time you realize it, you're already fucked. The reason your culture is dying is that you didn't bother to look at the fine print.

"OK, this one is really stupid. Easy Booking Service says not to link to its home page; instead, it wants you to read the linking instructions on this page, which sends you to this page, which contains a form to fill out, and you'll supposedly receive the URL by e-mail. "

Don't Link to Us!

"While I suspect many of your readers will be aware of the concept, some may not so let me remind them, when they go to parties or meet other people who are concerned about privacy, to simply trade their grocery affinity cards."

This gives everyone the discounts while diffusing the data across the community to the point where its no longer useful.

politechbot.com: Grocery Card Parties

"We can say emphatically that HP will not use the DMCA to stifle research or impede the flow of information that would benefit our customers and improve their system security. "

politechbot.com: HP pledges not to use DMCA (8/1/2002)

... Let's get real. In the scheme of things, the amount of money involved here is kind of piddling. A lot of people that talk about this think a million dollars is a big deal.

I'm going to venture a guess that ICANN feels that the elections had too high a percentage of "hackers" participating, and this lead to the election of "hackers" to their board, whom they don't feel represent the real user community. They probably have no idea how to get the people they feel are the user community interested enough to participate, so they have concluded that elections don't work.

Its interesting that Dyson is trying to distance herself from ICANN, while still supporting it. Playing both sides? Or maybe she feels that the end may come, and doesn't want to be swept away with ICANN when it happens.

Salon.com Technology | Esther Dyson defends ICANN

"Legal experts believe that if the ruling is upheld, it could easily become a firm legal precedent across the European Union, drastically limiting the information that many European search engines are allowed to provide to their users.
"The situation is very dangerous for the whole Internet," said NewsClub founder Christian Kohlschütter. "It's absolutely insane." "

The European courts are unravelling the Internet, mostly through ignorance rather then malice, but who do you fear more: An idiot with a gun, or an evil genius with a gun?

The train wreck between the first amendment and intellectual property that I predicted in 1996 is well under way, if you haven't noticed.

Deep Linking Takes Another Blow