Here‘s a PDF of a report that argues that:

The presence of this single, dominant operating system in the hands of nearly all end users is inherently dangerous. The increased migration of that same operating system into the server world increases the danger even more.

Dan Gillmor cites a Washington Post story that one of the contributors to the story was sacked and that CIO Magazine refused to rent its subscriber list to the group that sponsored the report once the magazine saw the contents, which the magazine deemed “too one-sided.” This feels like the implicit power of Big Advertisers at work. [Disclosure: I’m a columnist for Darwin, a “companion site” of CIO.com.]

Anyway, the report is worth skimming/reading.

Meanwhile, at Darwin, Jonathan Zittrain has a superb article on what’s wrong with copyright law. Here’s a bit of it:

For example, bars and restaurants that measure no more than 3,750 square feet (not including the parking lot, so long as the parking lot is used exclusively for parking purposes) can contain no more than four TVs of no more than 55 inches diagonally for their patrons to watch, so long as there is only one TV per room. The radio can be played through no more than six loudspeakers, with a limit of four per room. That is, unless the restaurant in question is run by “a governmental body or a nonprofit agricultural or horticultural organization, in the course of an annual agricultural or horticultural fair or exhibition conducted by such body or organization.” Then it’s OK to use more speakers.

and

We are in the midst of a cultural war over copyright, in which the salvos show the complete disconnect between the colliding copyright regimes of statute and practicality, law and life. A formal report by a commission chartered by the British Patent and Trademark Office suggests, without a trace of self-consciousness, that we encourage schoolchildren to include the (c) symbol on all their homework. The Business Software Alliance, a commercial software industry group, just unveiled playitcybersafe.com, a website for kids to inculcate the values of Title 17 over those of consumer praxis. There a kid can play Piracy Deepfreeze, becoming a crusading, well, ferret. “Stop the pirates from freezing the city! Throw your ball into the pirates and their stolen software before they hit the ground.”

and

The cost of making no change at all must also be soberly assessed, all the more so because the Internet heralds such a staggering potential for the rapid transformation and evolution of ideas. This is not about the crass ripping-off of CD tracks but about a possible Jazz Age of creation enabled by technology.

IMO, it’s a must read.

Categories: Uncategorized dw