Steven Levy has a column about what could make the Zune better. He’s not nearly as negative as Andy Uhnatko (whose article I blogged about here), but he certainly seems underwhelmed. Steven focuses on how Microsoft could put the Zune’s wifiability to good use.

As is acknowledged under the column, Steven is the author of a book about the iPod called The Perfect Thing, which gives you sense of where he stands on the iPod. (Not that you’d want to stand on your iPod.) I’ve been greatly enjoying the book even though I don’t own an iPod, because (a) it’s about the iPod as a cultural phenomenon; (b) it’s about how something creative and elegant comes out of a commercial enterprise; (c) Steve writes real good. (I have a Creative Zen Nomad. It works.) [Tags: ipod zune drm ]

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Lessig explains and weighs YouTube’s cease-and-desist message to TechCrunch that inists that TechCrunch take down some code that lets you save a YouTube video to your machine. John Palfrey adds another layer of explanation.

Notes Lessig:

For a company that was built upon the unauthorized spread of other peoples’ copyrighted work to threaten legal action against someone simply enabling people to save that work to his machine deserves at least special mention in a book by Alan Dershowitz.

To save you the mousing, the book is Chutzpah! [Tags: drm copyright lessig youtube techcrunch ]

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Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, responds to the op-ed written by Cary Sherman, CEO of the Recording Industry of America, in response to the CEA’s Digital Freedom campaign.

Personally, I think the RIAA’s op-ed is probably correct that the right to do what you want with a recording that you’ve obtained legally—including freely moving it around your digital devices—should not be pegged onto Fair Use. But, I am not a lawyer, so maybe I’m wrong about that.

That takes care of the part where I agree with the RIAA.

I don’t see much in the Digital Freedom campaign about Fair Use, other than a passing reference by former Berkman fellow Derek Slater in a blog report. The RIAA’s Sherman goes after Fair Use because he has a better defense against that. The real issue is: We want to be able to use what we’ve bought the way we want to use it, we want to be able to share music at least as freely digitally as we do in the real world, and we absolutely do not want the government mandating technology be crippled to prop up an industry that can’t keep up with the demands of the free market.

The urgent issue is the RIAA’s current push for a lame duck “Audio Flag” bill that will mandate that technology have built into it the inability to record radio signals without the permission of the broadcaster. This would mean that you just can’t save music off the air for personal use. It would also kill TiVo for radio, an option that becomes really interesting if you’re an XM or Sirius subscriber (as I am not).

[Tags: drm riaa cea digital_freedom audio_flag eff ]

Matt McKenzie has an excellent article in Computerworld explaining how Windows Vista turns your machine into a player owned and controlled by Big Content. He doesn’t quite put it like that, but it’s hard to draw another conclusion. [Tags: vista]

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Fsk has created a Flash toy that’s more fun than it would seem if I described it. (Thanks to egopoly for the link.) [Tags: flash toys fun]

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Wendy Seltzer is leading a lunchtime discussion at the Berkman Center about how copyright works not just as law but as technology policy. Copyright tech has been shaping law and culture, she says. [As always, I’m paraphrasing, missing big chunks, making the elegant clunky, etc.]

She looked recently at the 1995 federal policy statement on the “national information infrastructure” (= da Net). It reads as if the Clinton administration wanted to promote the Internet by protecting “intellectual property.” But it turns out that the Internet has even more value by letting us communicate with one another. Yet, the copyrighted content has been wagging the dog, restricting what and how we can communicate. E.g., the DMCA (which encourages ISPs to take material down), restrictions on fair use, the anti-circumvention laws (including the Broadcast Flag). Laws that give an incentive to create can then become a barrier to communication and access, Wendy says. “So far this limited monopoly is the best way we’ve found to give artists and authors an incentive to create.” We don’t want to return on patronage, she says. The market seems to be the best mechanism. “But this market has its own inefficiencies.” E.g., every computer makes copies (just by visiting a page), so tightening copyright laws can inhibit us unnecessarily, not to mention preventing remixes and mashups that make political points.

While the Internet makes infringements easier, the laws passed in response have given copyright holders new tools to go after infringers, swinging the balance against users. E.g., section 512 of the DMCA says that ISPs should “expeditiously” take down material that someone—anyone—claims infringes. So, ISPs don’t have to examine every piece posted to their system, but the incentive is to err on the side of removing materials.

Q: I’ve heard that YouTube is only taking down potentially infringing clips longer than five minutes. [A quick search on YouTube for “daily show” clips supports this—weak evidence.]

Q: What’s going on with the counter-notice provisions of the DMCA (section 512g) which lets someone whose material was taken down complain.
A: It’s rarely used. Many of the infringement notifications are invalid, and still few people counter-notify. Out of a thousand notices, there were only two counter-notices.

Q: How should the industry respond to the real threat?
A: The data suggest that encrypting songs on iTunes doesn’t stop them from being available unencrypted on filesharing networks immediately, but it does stop people from building their own music players and integrating them. E.g., because DVDs are locked, there’s been no new technology that lets you do more with your DVDs.

Q: The music industry doesn’t care about secure DRM any more. Will that happen to other industries?
Wendy: That’s encouraging.

Wendy hopes artists will insist on having more open licenses of their material.

Q: What should, say, Sony do?
A: Reinvent themselves. They still provide “taste” services. But it’s not the high margin business it used to be. They should pare down to the services they provide that have value.

Q: Isn’t the ease of ripping an argument for stronger IP, so Tower Records can stay in business?
A: Copyright is about protecting the artists, not Tower Records. If the market no longer needs Tower Records…

Q: How about AllofMP3.com?
A: the business model seems to be: “We’re in Russia and will ignore everyone else’s copyright law.”

She says that she thinks the successful sites will be differentiated not by their content but by their navigability, guarantee of quality, etc.

Q: Protecting artists is a good ting. Art is a public good. You mentioned patronage. But in Europe, arts get funded through grants.
A: It’s great to have government support for the arts, but artists shouldn’t be solely dependent on that.

Q: How can the communication side make a claim against the entertainment industry?
A: If citizens demanded it…

Wendy likes subscription models that don’t track the data too closely (for privacy reasons) and that allocate revenues to the artists.

Q: If we were negotiating copyrights with individual artists, what would the DMCA look like?
A: I’m not convinced artists want the DMCA.

Q: But when I listen, the artist would get ten cents…
A: (someone) That’s what Rhapsody does now.

Wendy: That’s what DMX does. Would artists give their rights over to bulk licensing agencies? Do what you will with the music and we’ll figure out who to give the money to? If the agency was transparent enough…

[Tags: copyright drm digital_rights wendy_seltzer music itunes ipod berkman]

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From PRX, the public radio exchange:

[Tags: prx halloween]

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Given my difficulties with space, Portal (from Valve) sounds like exactly the sort of game that will leave me like a hound trying to untangle his leash. But, the web site vaguely associated with it is hilarious.

It’s like an Easter egg, but not hidden inside the application (which means it’s mainly not like an Easter egg). PCGamer ran instructions for entering it:

Go to www.aperturescience.com. Type “login” at the prompt. Enter any user name. Type “portal” as the password.
Type “dir” to get a listing. Type “Apply”

I actually chuckled out loud at some of it… [Tags: humor games portal]

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Sonific lets you provide background music for your page, choosing from the site’s copyright-cleared selection. It’s free, but even so, I am so far out of the demographic that I ‘d rather have Sonific-earmuffs that auto-mute any site that installs it. Don’t get me wrong: Sonific may catch on, and for those who like that sort of thing, it may be just what the dj ordered. The fact that it’s not for me is probably a good sign for Sonific – we can only assume that Sonific’s target market isn’t crotchety old men.

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[Note: I know the following is dangerously close to self-parody. But I do think the Snakes on a Plane phenomenon is interesting.]

1. Remember how we all made Mahir, the Kiss man, famous? Some people spread the link out of a mean sense of superiority. (Mahir used his moment of celebrity to try to engage people across cultures, so now who’s the foolish one, eh?) But we also spread it because we could. We — all of us, each of us, none of us famous — could make an unknown human famous. It changed our relationship to celebrity, the continued existence of Paris Hilton not to the contrary.

With Snakes on a Plane, we’re flexing our muscles in a new way. We’re not insisting that JarJar be killed in the sequel, although we did write the movie’s most quotable line. But that’s cool only because it means with SoaP we’re messing with the audience’s relationship to the movie, and not just – as with Rocky Horror – during the time when the movie unspools in the theater. Rather, with SoaP the audience has taken over the meaning of the movie. This is very different from being asked to design Indiana Jones’ new outfit or write witticisms for the next James Bond movie. We, without being asked, have insisted on what this movie means to us.

What does it mean to us? Well, we’re refusing to let the movie be marketed to us as B movies — think Anaconda — are, as if we’re idiots who really think such movies are anything more than a retelling of the same plot over and over and over. With SoaP we’re saying that we know exactly what sort of movie it is, and we’re capable of enjoying it for the very qualities that make it a B movie. Don’t think we’re really surprised when a snake bites the guy on the nuts, as I assume happens, even if we jump because of the clever editing. We all knew someone would get bitten in the crotch, and we’ve always been conspirators in the success of B movies. Now we’re making that clear by reveling in our power, just as we did with Mahir.

I don’t think this is a turning point in how movies are made. The SoaP phenomenon has gotten much of its juice from the fact that this is the first time. Hollywood I’m sure is already trying to figure out how to repeat the success. But that’s like Hollywood plotting to find the next Mahir. Nah, Hollywood will continue, and we’ll find the next project we want to commandeer because, after all…[cue portentious music] aren’t we all the snakes on the plane?

2. Samuel L. Jackson. [Tags: snakes_on_a_plane SoaP movies pretentious_writing]

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I first saw this 3 minute animated music clip a few years ago when it came bundled with whatever graphics card I’d just bought. In fact, in that version, you could control your viewing angle. Even viewing it in pure playback modeat pretty low resolution, it’s an awesome piece of work. [Tags: music video animation]

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