There’s a PDF of a “briefing book” for the conference with articles about fair use, sampling, fan fiction, and more.

John Palfrey is blogging the conference, too. [Technorati tag: s2n]

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The second Signal to Noise conference begins to the sound of “Sexy Jesus” beating through the Ames Courtroom in Austin Hall at Harvard Law. The conference — sponsored by Berkman, Journal of Law and Technology, the Harvard Committee on Sports and Entertainment Law and Gartner G2 — has something to do with remix culture. About a hundred of us are sitting in an auditorium, facing forward, which seems at odds with the aims of the get-together.

Charlie Nesson begins by saying the aim of law is to create a culture in which we can have freedom and creativity in peace. He talks about copyright’s original balance being continuously upset by Congress’s one-side expansion of the length of copyright’s protection. He points to the expansion of copyright across space as well, beginning with Reagan linking copyright to trade expansion.

Eric Hellweg interviews Mike Doughty . Mike says he learned how to write songs by learning the 4-5 basic rock riffs. He quickly goes through a half dozen songs that use the basis C-F-G structure: Louie Louie, Wild Thing, Good Lovin’, etc. He talks about how what he listens to affects the songs he writes. E.g., his new single simplifies the chord structure Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast” — “just enough to get past the lawyers,” but for aesthetic not legal reasons. (He points out that it’s actually basically the same as “Oh When the Saints Go Marching In.”)

He says one band listed literally every sample, including a single snare drum hit, that would have been $1.2M in clearances. As a result, they never put out an album. Implicit advice: Don’t declare it unless you can get caught. Mike says that when he was the frontman for Soul Coughing, they did an album in ’93 that heavily sampled lots of tracks. “There are samples on our first album that we didn’t declare that it blows my mind we haven’t been caught on.”

He points out that the labels don’t care how many samples a band uses because the money for rights comes out of the artists’ pockets.

Mike recorded an acoustic album in the mid-90s that was rejected by his label, Warner. Years later, he was at a concert where people were singing songs from the album because it had been Napterized. “The thing about the file-sharing era is that it’s a great time to be me,” because he was already in a position to build a touring career. The file sharing helps build that. But he worries about new artists. “Autotune is going to get so good in the next five years that you won’t even have to be able to sing as well as Jennifer Lopez.” (AutoTune transforms your warbles into in-tune melodies.) These “artists” won’t be able to support themselves singing live. [I somehow don’t have a lot of concern about the ability of bad singers to make a living as singers.]

He says that on his blog, he has an “amnesty for file sharers” link that takes you to Musician’s Assistance Program.

Eric points us to Paul’s Boutique, a site that tries to decode all the samples in the work of Paul of the Beastie Boys. [So, Beastie Boys and “Sexy Jesus” both mentioned in a single JOHO blog entry.]

[This session was a terrific reminder that remixing, in one for or another, is a prerequisite for the existence of culture. Also, a really enjoyable conversation.] [Technorati tags: s2n Doughty remix]

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Kurzweil Educational Systems, which makes scan-to-speech systems for the blind and dyslexic, has been purchased by Cambium Learning, a company serving “at-risk” students.

In 1976, Ray Kurzweil invented a system that would read a page out loud. At that point it cost $100,000 and was the size of a major kitchen appliance. Kurzweil Computer Products became Xerox Imaging Systems in 1980. In 1996, KES was officially launched on its own. In 1998 it was purchased by Lernout & Hauspie. When the founders of L&H were led away in manacles because they were despicable con artists who should rot in hell, the company bought itself back, completing the transaction in November, 2001. Since then the company has continued to innovate and has been making a profit by doing something good. [The facts in this paragraph came from here.]

I know some of the folks at KES well. One of them is, in fact, my cousin-in-law. These are folks who have been working for years with intense and heartfelt focus on helping people with disabilities integrate further into the world. The company has become a living member of the communities it serves. It’s been through tough times. I hope and assume that this new acquisition means KES will be around for a long, long time. [Technorati tags: kes kurzweil blind dyslexic lernout cambium]

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Betsy explains quite clearly why the Dutch use of bicycles make them happier than we are. It’s almost enough to make me get back onto my damn bike. [Technorati tag: bicycle]

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I have been pulled aside for special searches four out of the previous four times I’ve flown. Yesterday I asked the supervisor at the US Air desk at Logan Airport about it. He said that if you test positive for any two of the following three tests, the computer marks you for searching: A one way ticket, a ticket purchased in the past 24 hours, or paying by cash. On this particular trip, I met the first two criteria. Thus, I am a likely terrorist.

So, here’s a word of advice to today’s would-be terrorist: Splurge on the round-trip. Sure, it’s going to cost an extra couple of hundred, but at the end of the trip, you’re not going to care. Also, try to plan your murderous attack well in advance.

Sigh.

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Apparently hackers have turned Sony’s latest portable game player, the PSP handheld, into a device for online chat, Web browsing, and a venue for movies and music.

Leave it to hackers who managed to add an online chat function by hijacking a Web browser built into a racing game called “Wipeout Pure.” Once the hackers are able to change the PSP’s network settings, they can point the browser to a Web portal. There’s also a way for hackers to transfer TV programs recorded on the TiVo service to the PSP player, a program for reading e-books, and a viewer for comic books downloaded from the Web.

That’s from the email version of Tobi Elkin’s Online Minute at MediaPost. (These paragraphs are not on the online version.) So, how many minutes exactly did it take?

Should we assume that Sony will do everything it can to crush this egregious addition of value to its device? Or for once should I not be so cynical? [Technorati tags: sony psp drm]

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Please be aware that the submission date for Proposal Abstracts for NineSigma RFP 50113-1, ” Technologies to Enable Rapid Cooling of a Steam Iron ” is this Friday, April 8, 2005. The RFP and associated documents can be accessed online at http://www.ninesigma.com/mx/50113-1 …

Sincerely,
Kevin C. Stark, Ph.D.

How the hell did I get on this particular mailing list? Talk about things I don’t care about…

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This morning during the “fellows hour,” we hear from Tuan Nguyen who founded Vietnam Net (English version) in 1997, an ISP and content provider. He began in 1995 by putting together computers, installing linux, etc. In 1997, the government officially permitted people to connnect to the Internet. The site now has 1.5M viewers/day. (Vietnam’s population is 85M. About 5M people in Vietnam are on the Internet. About 6M have mobile phones.) The site has a newspaper license which enables its reporters to go anywhere and talk with anyone. The leaders of the party provide “guidelines” rather than ruling particular stories in or out. Mr. Nguyen also talks about some ways in which these talks and his site’s actions have affected government policy.

He says that the Internet is good for democracy in Vietnam, and has caused the mainstream media to become more open. The media in general have been a force for democracy, including in the fight against corruption. He points to the comments section of the site and to the ability of readers to post articles and comments — they receive about 1,000 submissions per day. They select and edit them, and post about 700/day. (His ISP services connects to a gateway that censors about .001% of web sites, mainly foreign ones critical of the government, based on the Ministry of Security’s directives.)

The site has a staff of 280. He is excited that his company advances people based on merit, including women. The company is profitable because of its mobile phone business; it loses money on its Internet operations. He invested in providing content to mobile phones. About 1M SMS messages go through his system every day. (It’s $0.20 for a ringtone.)

He concludes be expressing his excitement about how the Net is improving democracy in Vietnam, and what an exciting time this is.

(Take a look at Vietnam.net’s photo essay on “seeing off the Kitchen Gods.” More photo galleries here, including: Boat festival, Tet, first Valentine festival.)

[Technorati tags: vietnam blogs] [Technorati tags: vietnam blogs globalvoices]

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This one looks different — Fan fiction, dance, machinima, deviant art, remixing, mashups, On Friday. Open to all ($20 admission fee) but you need to register ahead of time because the space is not infinite. [Technorati tags: berkman s2n]

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Go to Google Maps. Select an address. Have it plot directions to another address. Click on “Satellite.” Omigod.

I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but how about displaying street names on the satellite image? C’mon, Google, let’s get on the ball! :)
[Technorati tags: google maps]

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