From Dotnaught via slashdot:

“The Computer and Communications Industry Association — a trade group representing Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, among others — has issued a report (PDF) that finds fair use exceptions add more than $4.5 trillion in revenue to the U.S. economy and add more value to the U.S. economy than copyright industries contribute. “Recent studies indicate that the value added to the U.S. economy by copyright industries amounts to $1.3 trillion.”, said CCIA President and CEO Ed Black. The value added to the U.S. economy by the fair use amounts to $2.2 trillion.”

It’s the sort of report that: a) shows that economics is to the right of statistics in the chain that begins with “lies, damn lies…” b) I choose to believe. (Note: I recognize I lack competency to actually evaluate the report.) [Tags: fair_use copyright ]

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From TechPresident’s indispensible Daily Digest, compiled by Joshua Levy:

…Wired’s ever-diligent Sarah Lai Stirland reports that “Yahoo has decided not to support citizen remixing of the footage — reducing the once-bold experiment to little more than a fancy online version of an on-demand cable television offering.” Yahoo had originally planned to upload the raw footage from the debate to its Jumpcut service for citizens to use in their mashups. But now a spokesman told Stirland that Yahoo will only let participants choose what candidates they want to hear from, without the ability to mashup actual footage. “Bloggers will be able to embed the video into their sites, YouTube-style, but will have no easy way to repurpose it,” writes Stirland. Those who want to create mashups won’t be able to use the simple Jumpcut service, and will instead be forced to download individual videos and use desktop video-editing software. Not nearly as fun.

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Doc and I don’t always see eye to eye on questions of implementing the privacy goals we share, but his pushback on FaceBook’s change of policy is on the nose, in my book. I’d have no problem with FB exposing its members (so to speak) if that was part of the original deal. But as a change in policy, it stinks. FB has become too important to too many people to make it easy to leave — important because of what we users brought to FB: our friends, relationships, and time. danah, to no one’s surprise, also has a terrific post on this.

FB could make this right with about two lines of code: Make exposing your FB info to search engines a matter of checking a box. What part of “opt in” does FB not understand? [Tags: facebook doc_searls danah_boydprivacy ]

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Matt Stoller has YouTubed Michael “the good FCC Commissioner” Copps connecting AT&T’s censoring of Pearl Jam with the need for Net neutrality. (At another level of the stack, so to speak, David Isenberg shows the disconnection. They’re both right.)

Matt has a second YouTube in which Commissioner Copps explains how the reclassification of Internet carriers in 2005 meant the loss of the Net neutrality that used to be the law of the land. [Tags: net_neutrality fcc michael_copps david_isenberg at&t pearl_jam ]

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In what sounds like a promising move, the commonwealth has appointed Anne Margulies as our Chief Information Officer. Margulies is currently the executive director of MIT’s inspiring OpenCourseWare project. She’s the fourth CIO in two years, so let’s hope she’s there long enough to do some good. (Here’s a podcast of a session at the Berkman Center she led.)

A predecessor, Peter Quinn, resigned after false charges were leveled against him, suspiciously after he championed requiring the commonwealth to use only software that supports open standards, i.e., not Microsoft. David Berlind has the full story on that requirement.

So, Margulies is not entering a humdrum environment. Her commitment to openCourseWare is a good sign.

[Tags: massachusetts cio anne_margulies open_courseware mit open_standards ]

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John Palfrey and Jonathan Zittrain, of the Berkman Center, have an article at C-NET on the ethical difficulties of doing business in tyrannical countries.

The more promising route is for one or more groups of industry members to come up with a common, voluntary code of conduct to guide the activities of individual firms in regimes that carry out online censorship and surveillance. Such a process has begun. Google, Microsoft, Vodafone, Yahoo and TeliaSonera are actively working together on a code. This process includes nongovernment organizations (NGOs)&mdashincluding Business for Social Responsibility and the Center for Democracy and Technology…

As JP and Jonathan say, “The development of a code of conduct itself solves only a small part of the problem.” But it’s a key part. I’m proud to say that the Berkman Center is one of the NGOs working on this project. [Tags: berkman john_palfrey jonathan_zittrain corporate_responsibility ethics google microsoft yahoo ]

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Andy Carvin has a good post at the PBS Teachers site touting One Web Day, which is coming up on Sept. 22. It’s a day to celebrate the Web, the way EarthDay is a day to celebrate the Earth.

What are you going to on One Web Day to make the Web just a little bit better?

[Tags: onewebday andy_carvin susan_crawford earthday]

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Pamela Samuelson, who has taught this stuff for 25 years, has written a brilliant article [pdf] that kickstarts a commonsense rewrite of US copyright law.

She provides an outline of what topics ought to be covered by a copyright law, plugs in the current US law, and then suggests a set of plugins that are simpler, clearer, better suited for the digital age, and that better balance the rights of creators and the public. Now she hopes we’ll talk amongst ourselves and come up with a model law that might make it easier for Congress to make the change.

Pam writes: “A model copyright law should also be written in plain English so ordinary people, and not just the high priests of copyright, can understand what it means and the normative reason that it should be part and parcel of the basic statutory framework.” Appropriately, the paper itself — about ten pages, when you subtract the footnotes — while designed for lawyers, is clear and compelling. (Thanks to BoingBoing for the link.) [Tags: copyright pam_samuelson ]

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I know nothing about patent reform. But Jim Moore knows a whole lot, and has lit Britt Blaser‘s torch. They claim that the Bush administration’s patent reform would skew in favor of large companies screwing small innovators (who may nevertheless have big ideas, of course).

All of this is over my head and beyond my ken, but when Jim and Britt sound an alarm, I believe there’s a fire. [Tags: patent jim_moore britt_blaser ]

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I was confused about the anonymous bidding process chosen by the FCC as it auctions off our hope the 700mH spectrum. So, I asked Harold Feld, who kindly wrote back with the following explanation (used with permish, of course):

Anonymous bidding: Until now, the FCC has published at the end of each
round who bid what for every license. This is called an “open”
auction format. When the FCC created this format, it was thought that
maximizing the information available to bidders would maximize
efficiency of the auction and thus maximize revenue.

After more than ten years of FCC auctions, it has become obvious that
the theory is completely, utterly and horribly wrong. What open
bidding does is allow parties to signal each other and to target new
entrants for attack. Through open bidding, the largest incumbents
exclude new entrants and divide the licenses among themselves cheaply.
The smaller players go along, because they survive by avoiding
direct conflict with the bigger players and also like to exclude new
entrants.

Under anonymous bidding, the FCC only provides the amount of the
highest bid on each license at the end of the round. Thus, everyone
can see what bid they must beat, but they do not know who has bid on
the license. Nor can they see other bids besides the winning bids,
which can be used for signaling. This makes it much more difficult
for incumbents to rig the auction in their favor because they cannot
coordinate attacks on new entrants and they cannot enjoy the benefits
of a reputation for retaliation.

Greg Rose has done two important studies on anonymous bidding. The
first was a ten year longitudinal study of FCC auctions for the Center
for American Progress (with Mark Lloyd). The other was two studies on
last summer’s AWS auction for New America Foundation.

Here are links to the studies:
Initial post on anonymous bidding
Post with link to CAP study
Post with links to AWS studies

Combinatorial bidding, which the FCC approved for the 6 REAG licenses
in the “C” Block, is a way to minimize the “exposure risk” and
encourage people to bid more aggressively. Here’s the theory.
Suppose I want to build a national footprint, but I’m afraid I won’t
win all the licenses necessary. I am therefore afraid to bid at all,
because I may get stuck with licenses I don’t want and have to sell
them at a serious loss.

With combinatorial (or “package”) bidding, I am only required to pay
for the licenses if I win the entire package. If I don’t win the
whole package, all my winning bids are rendered null and void. So I
can now bid agressively without fear and am encouraged to enter the
auction and try for a national footprint.

The big potential new entrants, like Google and the DBS companies,
wanted package bidding. So did AT&T and Verizon. We at PISC
supported it because it encourages a national new entrant and doesn’t
make it that much easier for the incumbents, who are likely to win
anyway.

I rely on Harold’s blog, as well as his other writings, for help understanding the complexities of this stuff… [Tags: fcc harold_feld 700mh wifi ]

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