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Monday, August 02, 2004 |
Beijing Manifesto. The Chinese love the monumental ambition. They hate the monumental price tag -- and the 'foreign' design. A portfolio of the grand ideas and grim realities behind the contentious new vision for China Central Television. By Rem Koolhaas from Wired magazine. [Wired News]
Saw a model for and some info about this project at the "Tall Buildings" exhibit at MOMAQns last month. It's really something else. 
7:10:57 AM 
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Canada Music Biz Bites Dentists. Dentists in Canada discover they have to pay fees to Canadian music publishers for the right to play copyright music in their offices. U.S. dentists may be surprised to find out that similar rules apply in their country. By Katie Dean. [Wired News]
7:05:59 AM
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Sunday, August 01, 2004 |
The Copyright Gap. Here's the hypothesis: Today's telecom and copyright laws often regulate similar subjects, but with a big difference. The telecom laws slightly favor market entrants, while the copyright laws favor the incumbent disseminators. The result is a "copyright gap" that grows larger every day.... [Lessig Blog]
6:48:39 PM
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Dance-mobbing the Publicans.
John Perry Barlow proposes dancing smart mobs in the streets of Manhattan during the Republican National Convention. I think it's brilliant theater, brilliant politics, and, most of all, it brings some FUN to this grim, divided, portentous election season. [Smart Mobs]
7:36:05 AM
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Mad About Music. Host Gilbert Kaplan presents this summer special exploring the power of music in the lives of four award-winning actors and directors as we revisit earlier appearances of Mike Nichols, William Friedkin, Alec Baldwin and Alan Alda... [WNYC New York Public Radio]
Check it out
7:35:57 AM
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Dave:
I just noticed something really cool. WNYC, New York's public radio station, is using enclosures in its RSS feed.
7:31:36 AM
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Saturday, July 31, 2004 |
King Kaufman:
Incidentally, if you ever wondered what a top-recruit's official visit is like, read Manny Navarro's amazing account of how the Hurricanes courted hometown hero Williams in the Miami Herald.
9:31:01 AM
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All Consuming Cellphone.
The lowly cellphone is becoming the all-consuming glutton of gadget functions, to the increasing consternation of the electronics industry.
"...The handset is rapidly consuming every other aspect of mobile consumer electronics: PDAs, cameras, GPS receivers, MP3 players, DVD players and game consoles. In the process, the SoC companies and intellectual-property (IP) providers that had planned to make a living in each of those areas will be drawn in — for the most part, to their doom..." EETimes
Via Slashdot [Smart Mobs]
9:19:36 AM
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Google's IPO bidding site is live. Does that mean the IPO process has started? [Scripting News]
Process? Perhaps -- depends what you mean. According to the news story I read this morning, they have not announced a date, but speculation is August 9.
9:19:29 AM
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Friday, July 30, 2004 |
Early Modern Philosophy texts.... ...
...on-line, courtesy of the distinguished philosopher Jonathan Bennett. Very nice.
UPDATE: Philosopher Matt Davidson points out something I should have noted more clearly initially: "One thing you might want to note is that he has 'cleaned up' the English in Locke, Hume, and Berkeley to try to make the texts more readable by beginning undergraduates. I make no evaluative claims here as to the merits of this particular project (though few are better candidates to do this sort of thing than JB). But it might be worth pointing out in case a reader sees your link and thinks, 'These texts already are all over the web. Why do I need to see another website with them?' The answer is that Bennett is doing something very different with his attempts to make Modern texts 'accessible.'"
[The Leiter Reports: Editorials, News, Updates]
5:55:56 PM
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MSFT buys spam company, sues the competition, silences political activists
My cow-orker Annalee Newitz has posted a great editorial on the latest court battles over spam, pointing out the weird, anticompetitive and anti-speech aspects of the spam fight.
Microsoft is developing what it calls Bonded Sender, a program that would supposedly separate "legitimate" Internet marketers and bulk mailers from spammers. Working with a California company called IronPort, Microsoft will create a white list of Internet marketers who have paid a fee and demonstrated that they have no record of spamming. Companies participating in the Bonded Sender program will be allowed to send their email ads to HotMail and MSN users.
Given Microsoft's investment in the Bonded Sender program, it seems they may soon be in the business of serving as middlemen between emailer marketers and their webmail users. In other words, it sounds like the software megacorp is about to start competing with Richter. Of course, Microsoft could always call off its suit if Richter claims to have been rehabilitated -- and he pays his Bonded Sender fees!
In the spam wars, sometimes it's hard to tell the spammers from the antispammers.
The situation gets even more complicated when you consider the fact that Microsoft will do more than pick and choose winners in the junk email business. Bonded Sender will punish most the people who aren't even sending advertisements -- groups like Internet activists MoveOn.org, who send out millions of emails to alert their members to upcoming political events and issues. If these groups don't pay their Bonded Sender fees, HotMail simply won't deliver their email -- regardless of whether users have specifically opted in to receive it.
Link
(thanks, Cory]
5:54:43 PM
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Maybe the best way to get your iPod on your car radio..
This thing, the Belkin TuneCast II Mobile FM Transmitter, rocks. Highly recommended, mostly because it broadcasts on any FM channel (not just 4 or 7), shuts itself off automatically in the absence of audio, and comes with a power adapter for a car lighter. The trick to overcoming its naturally short range is to extend the length of the pigtail audio cable with one that's male at one end and female at the other. That works because it uses the cable as the antenna (the ideal length is about 30", but few cable extenders are that short, and a long one works fine). Trust me: it'll work a lot better. [The Doc Searls Weblog]
5:52:47 PM
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Rogers Cadenhead: "Weblogs represent a mass consumer revolt against the giant electronic media and the bottom-line fixated, risk-averse, synergy-loving infotainment cesspool that it has become." [Scripting News]
5:50:16 PM
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The Digital Dirt Bike.
The Digital Dirt Bike won the Bronze medal in the "Business & Industrial Products" section of the IDEA 2004 contest.
Digital Dirt Bike is a solar-powered information and communication center on wheels designed to answer the lack of reliable infrastructure for Internet, phones, or power in developping world villages.
A local technician drives from village to village to deliver treatments for common plant, animal and human diseases; weather forecasts; supplemental school lessons; and information for farming and industry. The unit contains a notebook computer, printer, camera, satellite phone, a portable tent for impromptu meetings in open fields. The double lid has two solar panels, used to power and recharge the equipment.
Digital Dirt Bike is now successfully in use throughout Andra Pradesh, India. [Smart Mobs]
7:46:08 AM
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"ACMD" (reverse DMCA) in Apple vs. Real Networks.
The copyfight Daily Memo today is about the DMCA legal posturing between Real Networks and Apple over interoperability. Yadda, yadda, naughty-naughty, potkettleblack.
Me too.
I'm amusingly reminded of the SF story "Narapoia", where a character has a feeling that he's following someone, combined with a "strange feeling that people are plotting to do me good". Apple is upset that a rival *encrypts* files to Apple's proprietary format. That is, usually companies complain when people *decrypt* their proprietary format, making files formerly encrypted now free. But here, Apple doesn't want files being put into their proprietary format.
I don't see this as a DMCA violation. Apple wants an "ACMD" (reverse-DMCA). Nobody shall encrypt a file, without the authority of the DRM systems owner ... [Infothought]
6:49:18 AM
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The Lost Boys. Online gaming all night: Cool. Hour after hour downloading MP3s and porn: No problem. Thirty seconds so you can try to sell me something? Outta here. How the 18-to-34-year-old male is reinventing advertising. By Frank Rose from Wired magazine. [Wired News]
6:46:04 AM
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HOWTO legally sell downloads of cover-songs
CDBaby, a wonderful indie music publisher, has put up a howto for legally selling downloads of cover songs.
If you record a cover version of a song, (meaning your performance of a song that has been released in the U.S. with consent of the copyright owner), you are entitled by law to release your recording commercially, and the owner of the copyright to the song cannot prevent you from doing so.
The Copyright Act provides for what is called a "Compulsory License", which means that if you follow the steps set forth by statute, you can distribute your recording of that song on a CD or over the internet.
The following details the procedure for individuals to obtain a compulsory license to digitally distribute cover songs over the Internet to end users in the United States.
Link (Thanks, John!)
(thanks, Cory!)
6:38:34 AM
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(I forget who pointed me at this.)
6:29:34 AM
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South Korea leads the way.
By John Borland and Michael Kanellos, CNET News.com.
Matt Renck is spoiled.
Ever since moving here to teach English two years ago, Renck has had a
high-speed Internet connection of 8 megabits per second--only about average
for a South Korean apartment, but nearly eight times the typical broadband
speed in U.S. households. He watches TV shows over this connection, creates
multimedia projects for his class, and regularly updates a Weblog.
None of what he does is revolutionary; it just happens far faster than it
would in America. And that's a little revolutionary all by itself.
I didn't realize how much the Web had to offer until I got to Korea,
said Renck, a programmer by training. I couldn't appreciate it until I
got here and saw what true high-speed access does to change your perception
of how fast information truly moves.
For Americans, almost none of whom have access to speeds that Renck and
many South Koreans take for granted, this difference is jarring. The United
States considers itself the center of technological innovation, yet South
Korea has gone considerably further in making a mainstream reality out of
the futuristic promises of bygone dot-com days.
Many U.S. executives and policy makers are quick to dismiss the disparity,
noting correctly that South Korea's densely populated areas have made it
easier for telecommunications companies to offer extremely fast service to
large numbers of people. But even with such geographic and demographic
differences, the United States can learn some valuable lessons from South
Korea's experience in jump- starting a broadband powerhouse.
I think there are a quite a few lessons, said Taylor Reynolds, an
International Telecommunications Union analyst who recently completed a
survey of Internet and mobile services in South Korea. Most of the
growth is tied to effective competition, which you don't see in a lot of
places in the United States.
. . .
The vision of a broadband society is already here in Korea, said
Eric Kim, executive vice president of global marketing operations at
Samsung Electronics. We are two to three years ahead in wireless
broadband, and people are using it, too.
The country's achievements are even more impressive considering its
starting point in technology. In 1995, fewer than 1 percent of South Korean
residents used the Internet, though a larger number subscribed to
proprietary Korean-language networks that were somewhat like the closed
CompuServe and America Online networks of the late 1980s. By 2004, more
than 71 percent of South Korean households subscribed to broadband Net
services, according to local estimates.
The decision to focus on broadband began in the mid-1990s and intensified
after South Korea's economy was crippled by the collapse of the Asian
financial markets in 1997, when policy makers targeted technology as a key
sector for restoring the country's economic health.
Korean regulators set out a clear path for the network industry with
well-publicized national goals. All big office and apartment buildings
would be given a fiber connection by 1997. By 2000, 30 percent of
households would have broadband access through DSL or cable lines. By 2005,
more than 80 percent of households would have access to fast connections of
20mbps or more--about the rate needed for high-definition television.
. . .
The usage model is critical, said M.C. Kim, general manager for
Intel Korea. Online gaming is one of the killer apps.
In many ways, the most important question answered in the country's grand
broadband experiment has been one of demand. Broadband progress has long
been delayed in the United States and other countries as a result of
uncertainty about how much interest consumers would have in paying for the
expensive infrastructure needed for high-bandwidth services.
As a result, entire industries have been paralyzed for years by a classic
Catch-22, as content companies and network carriers waited for one another
to make the first move before investing in broadband products.
Telecommunications start-ups tried to break that stalemate in the 1990s by
investing large sums to offer rival high-speed connections to customers,
only to be gutted in the dot-com bust.
What South Korea showed is that, if you build it, they will definitely come.
The crazy fans are really crazy, said Guilliame Patry, a Canadian
national who moved to Seoul in 1999 after he became the world champion in
"StarCraft," a real- time strategy game. He's now a well-known figure in
South Korea, where as many as 30,000 people typically attend game tournaments.
Such cultural phenomena can be traced directly to the government's emphasis
on the importance of broadband for the advancement of society in South
Korea, as well as for its economic health. Part of that campaign involved
Internet training for the portion of the population deemed likely to be
left behind in the digital age.
About 10 million people fell into this category in the first round of the
government's initiative, including stay-at- home wives, military personnel,
disabled citizens, and even prison inmates. That program was ultimately
expanded to practically anyone who wanted it.
4:36:06 AM
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Thursday, July 29, 2004 |
Popularity online.
Eric Smalley and Kimberly Patch have written an article for M.I.T's Technology Research News that reports on the work of researchers from Cornell University and the Internet Archive.The researchers "have devised a way to measure users' reactions to an item description: a batting average of the number of users who go on to download the item divided by the number of users who read the description. This mirrors the traditional baseball batting average of the ratio of a player's hits to at bats.The item description batting average is different from just tracking the output of a hit counter, which measures the raw number of item visits or downloads, said Jon Kleinberg, an associate professor of computer science at Cornell University. "The batting average addresses the more subtle notion of users' reactions to the item description as it appears in the fraction of users who go on to download the item."A users' batting average reveals something about the nature of on-line popularity, can make users explicitly aware of shifts in popularity, and allows administrators of large sites to quickly identify sudden and potentially significant effects on the popularity of particular items and prepare accordingly".Further they report that "the researchers found that abrupt shifts corresponded closely to real-world events that drove what was often a new mix of users to view an item's description".
Online popularity tracked [Smart Mobs]
7:45:40 PM
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NIST says DES encryption 'inadequate'. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is proposing that the Data Encryption Standard (DES), a popular encryption algorithm, lose its certification for use in software products sold to the government. [InfoWorld: Top News]
5:24:43 PM
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Hacking Netflix.
Hacking Netflix is an independent Web site and has no affiliation or association with Netflix, Inc. Netflix is registered trademark of Netflix, Inc. HackingNetflix will not teach you how to lie, cheat or steal from Netflix. Hacking is the desire to fully understand something, and we want to learn as much as we can about this company and share this information.
[Learning The Lessons of Nixon]
8:35:24 AM
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Secret of Cyber Defence Exercise 2004
By Doug Mohney.
A WEEK before the 2004 Cyber Defense Exercise (CDX) kicked off in
April, the National Security Agency abruptly asked the participating
military service academies close off the event to the public and the
media for "operational concerns." What did "operational concerns"
mean? NSA's public affairs office failed to respond via e-mail. Of
course, NSA had problems sending e-mail to my primary e-mail account
in the first place, so I'm not sure if the response went into a
top-secret black hole or I was just ignored.
Each academy ultimately made their own call, with Army's West Point
and little-heralded United States Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA)
choosing to keep their doors open. Perhaps unsurprisingly, USMMA and
West Point placed one and two in the CDX contest. The NSA's request
was an about-face for an event that had been open and widely promoted
by West Point over the last two years. Since the exercise was designed
to be unclassified from the ground up, "Red Team" attackers from the
NSA and the Air Force's 92nd Aggressor Squadron were only permitted
publicly known security exploits and not use any classified "Zero-Day"
techniques.
CDX is designed to be a defense exercise, the most realistic scenario
a military IT officer is going to face in the real world. Each
participating team is tasked with setting up and operating a core set
of services, keeping them operational in the face of Red Team attacks.
The underdog winners at USMMA setup and operated a combination of
Windows 2000, XP, and Linux Mandrake machines to resist the best
unclassified attacks the U.S. cyberwarfare establishment could dish
out. After all, the Red Team - or people just like them - were the
folks that wrought havoc on Saddam Hussein's networks, monitoring
communications and pulling such tricks as sending e-mail to senior
Iraq military commanders asking them to surrender. Maybe sanctions had
kept Saddam's people from getting the latest Microsoft security
patches, but nobody's saying.
USMMA's team used Windows 2000 Advanced Server with service pack 4 to
run active directory, primary domain controller, e-mail (Exchange
Server 2000 w/ SP3), mail relay, LRA (Local Registration Authority
used to issue DoD public key encryption certificates), and web
services with IIS 5.0. Workstations ran Windows 2000 Professional with
SP1. A video conferencing station used Windows XP because the web
camera being used was more stable under that OS. Finally, the heavy
network lifting was done with Linux Mandrake 10.0, including the
primary firewall and router, backup firewall, external DNS, and IDS.
Needless to say, all the latest security patches were loaded and
applied.
However, USMMA Midshipman Allen Hsiao admits they tweaked things a
little within the rules of the guidelines. Workstations were locked
down to the point where end-users could only run Outlook, Internet
Explorer, and NotePad, with options further tightened down in each of
the programs. End users could not save files to any storage medium
except for a floppy disk or a USB drive. In a normal, real world
network, end users normally require much more functionality from their
workstation, said Hsiao.
8:32:50 AM
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first glance at Opera 7.50. Opera 7.50 has recently been released. For the first time, Opera for Mac is no longer a version behind the Windows version. Opera 7.50 is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Of course, Mac users upgrading from Opera 6 will... [explodedlibrary.info]
8:26:11 AM
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Gossip and reputation.
Professor Ronald S. Burt is the Hobart W. Williams Professor of Sociology and Strategy at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.This presentation of his comes from a Management Conference,held at the University on May 14 2004.These slides come from handouts for the Chicago GSB Executive MBA course, Strategic Leadership.This from the presentation. "Appendix I:Why Don't People Discount Gossip?In other words,why does casual conversation have such a powerful impact?Cognition (mental defect) — We have a preference for information consistent with our predispositions; i.e., people are likely to believe stories about you that are consistent with their preconceptions of you (e.g.,Klayman, 1995, on confirmation bias).Sociability (naiveté) — Gossip is the verbal analogue to grooming among primates. Its purpose is to create and maintain relations, so information obtained is a by-product that feels unintentional, and so unbiased
(Gambetta, 1994; Dunbar, 1996).Identity (psychological need) — People define who they are in part with negative stereotypes of people on the social boundary of their group.Insiders believe stories about you that are consistent with stories they know about people like you (e.g., Durkheim, 1893; Elias and Scotson,
1965; Erikson, 1966).Social Construction/Contagion (no absolute truth against which one can discount gossip) — When confronted with an ambiguous decision, we tend to imitate the opinions and behaviors of peers. People in groups who
don't know you and have to deal with you will discuss you among themselves, create an image of you, then deal with the image as if it were you (e.g., Festinger, Schachter & Back, 1950; Pfeffer, Salancik & Leblebici,
1976; Zucker, 1977; Burt, 1987; Rogers, 1995)".And this on the peril of "groupthink".
"...Irving Janis coined the term "groupthink" in 1971 when he used
research on conformity within cohesive groups to explain prominent policy failures (1971 "Groupthink" Psychology Today Magazine, 1972 book "Victims of Groupthink"Houghton Mifflin, expanded edition in 1982). The research from which he drew showed that pressure on individuals to conform to group opinion
increased with group cohesion(strong ties inside, weak ties outside, as we
discussed with respect to high-performance teams)...."
How Gossip Defines Your Reputation and How to Work It workshop on the social capital of trust, information,and gossip in markets and organizations
[Smart Mobs]
8:26:02 AM
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Cellphone directory gets hoots, hollers: Privacy advocates cry foul,
but are they
overreacting?
By Paul Davidson, USA Today.
The days of searching in vain for someone's cellphone number
are almost over. Starting early next year, you'll be able to call directory
assistance to get a mobile number.
Not every number will be listed in the directory being compiled by the
Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, the trade group that
represents wireless carriers. Cellphone customers must give permission, or
opt in, to be added.
And you'll have to call 411 to get a number: There won't be a directory in
print or online.
Still, the service is drawing criticism from consumer advocates who say it
encroaches on a rare bastion of privacy.
These devices are considered much more personal than landline
(phones), says Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information
Center. People tend to carry them everywhere and answer them when they
ring.
What's more, cellphone subscribers pay for incoming calls, even unwanted ones.
Such concerns prompted Verizon Wireless, the No. 1 wireless company, to
keep its 40 million subscribers out of the directory.
We believe customers come to us with the expectation of privacy, and
it's too early in the process to understand what releasing customer numbers
to a database will mean, says Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Brenda
Raney.
4:30:06 AM
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Wednesday, July 28, 2004 |
Wry Hoaxes Enliven the World of Web Diarists. The time-honored tradition of literary hoaxes has taken on a new form: the Web log. By By DANIEL TERDIMAN.
 VERYONE seems to be writing a Web log these days, and those without day jobs have a decided advantage. So perhaps it did not seem unusual to see Bill Clinton joining the ranks.
There were, for example, the jottings about a stay in San Francisco while promoting his memoir, "My Life," including a night out in which he and Robin Williams ultimately regaled their wives with a song and dance while playing a Mariah Carey CD.
"We did this whole dance routine as Mariah Carey sang 'Oh, when you walk by every night, Talking sweet and looking fine, I get kinda hectic inside,' " the June 28 entry recounted. "We must've looked like two drunken sailors. Oh God, what was I thinking? That's the kind of influence Robin has on me and all his friends."
To some who remember Mr. Clinton playing the saxophone on "The Arsenio Hall Show," such high jinks may have seemed plausible, if a bit odd. Likewise his ruminations on his travels, his marriage and Senator John Kerry's presidential candidacy. Delve more deeply into the postings at billclintondailydiary.blogspot.com - at once thoughtful, educated and down home - and only one conclusion can be drawn: it's a hoax.
. . .
A variety of hoaxes have spiced up the so-called blogosphere. Among them are Andy Kaufman Returns (andykaufmanreturns .blogspot.com), in which an unidentified writer purports to be the eccentric comedian, reappearing 20 years after his death; Rance (captainhoof.tripod.com/blog), the musings of an anonymous Hollywood star; and Jane's Blog (jane.blogs.com), the daily diary of a starry-eyed, oversexed young woman in Los Angeles who turns out to be a fictional character on the Oxygen TV sitcom "Good Girls Don't."
. . .
In the case of Jane's Blog, those who arrived at the site after clicking on a link from the official "Good Girls Don't'' site had specifically been told that the blog was fiction. But as happens so often in the blogosphere, the blog's Web address was widely circulated with no context. Visitors often failed to realize that they were reading fiction.
Betsy Finston, vice president for interactive services at Oxygen Media, which developed "Good Girls Don't," said of the blog, "We try to write it in a very immediate way, and if people respond to it, that's good."
[The New York Times > Technology]
8:45:07 PM
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A Benton Headline:
MONTGOMERY SETS RULES FOR CABLE MODEM
The Montgomery County (MD) Council yesterday approved new customer service
standards for cable companies that provide Internet access, a measure
experts say is among the first of its kind in the nation. Under the new
law, cable companies must answer the phone within 30 seconds, complete
repairs within 36 hours, and refund customers for Internet service
interruptions. Officials at Comcast, the dominant cable Internet access
provider in the county, said the measure is discriminatory because it does
not affect DSL, the other type of high-speed Internet service, which comes
into homes through telephone lines. Consumer advocates say the measure is
necessary because of complaints against Comcast and Starpower, the county's
smaller cable provider.
[SOURCE:
Washington Post, AUTHOR: Amit Paley]
(requires registration)
10:41:39 AM
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Google and Supreme Court argument revisited.
Walt Crawford has released yet another edition of his library 'zine (not blog) "Cites & Insights", for August 2004. He kindly mentions me, for Google and censorware discussion. I may write more later, but one quick note is apropos today regarding Google. In discussing my examination about the Google silliness of the Free Porn, err, Justice, Department "evidence" in the "COPA" Internet censorware law Supreme Court case, he notes:
These arguments took place in early March 2004. Solicitor General Theodore Olsen, arguing to overturn the injunction, used a web search (probably Google) to illustrate the extremity of "online smut." Type in the words "free porn" and you get a list of 6,230,000 websites, he said: "I didn't have time to go all the way through those sites."
The oral argument transcript confirmed that it definitely was Google being used:
I did the same, this again is outside the record, but I did this, anyone can do this, the same experiment over the weekend. I went to Google and I typed in disable filter and you push the button and you will get a screen full of programs that will tell you step by step how to dismantle the computer so your parents won't know about it. It is that easy, and you can put it back on.
Amusingly - or maybe not - Solicitor General Olsen is also wrong again here. While you can find instruction pages, they're way out of date, and so not exactly good evidence for anything. Don't believe everything you Google on the Web. Even if you're making an argument before the Supreme Court. [Infothought]
7:49:12 AM
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Group Warns DVRs Endangered. A digital-rights organization is distributing instructions to build a PC-based TiVo-like recorder. It hopes to get people hooked on DVRs -- and stoke a backlash against an impending FCC rule that could cripple the machines. By Katie Dean. [Wired News]
7:48:58 AM
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Free soul. The best -- (nearly) legal -- MP3 blogs out there. Plus: An exclusive free download of an "eccentric soul" song from the '70s you've probably never heard of -- but should definitely have! [Salon.com]
7:45:44 AM
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Lessig, on the meaning of "parody".
Everyone's seen the brilliant JibJab Flash of Bush/Kerry. The piece claims to be a "parody" of Woody Guthrie's "This Land." As any copyright lawyer recognizes, it is not a "parody" in the sense that "fair use" ordinarily recognizes it. A "fair use" "parody" is a work that uses a work to make fun of the author. JibJab is using Guthrie's work not to make fun of Guthrie, but of the candidates. (For the now classic case on this, see Dr. Suess v. Penguin Press, where a "parody" of O.J. Simpson using The Cat in the Hat was not "fair use.") Guthrie's publisher's lawyers too recognize this. As CNN's Allen Wastler reports, Guthrie's publisher is now threatening JibJab. What's great about this story, of course, is the levels of hypocrisy. Guthrie was not much for property rights himself. It's said that there is a not-often-sung verse:
As I went walking, I saw a sign there; And on the sign there, It said, 'NO TRESPASSING.' But on the other side, It didn't say nothing. That side was made for you and me!
But whether Guthrie believed in property rights or not, the key thing this story should do is force us to ask generally: Does a law that makes a political parody such as Jibjab illegal (even if it is not a "parody" in the copyright view of the world) make sense? (Note to citizens: We're permitted to change the law.)
[Lessig Blog]
7:42:44 AM
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Brian's Decision Theory Syllabus:
I haven’t been doing much blogging because I’ve been doing important things like writing the syllabus for my decision theory course. Here it is. Not all the links are active yet, and it’s subject to revision, but I hope it’s at least ready for public view. [Thoughts Arguments and Rants]
7:41:54 AM
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Tuesday, July 27, 2004 |
Google - Yahoo market battle threatens freedom of expression.
Reporters Without Borders is denouncing the "irresponsible" policies of Yahoo ! and Google which, in their efforts to conquer the Chinese market, are "making compromises that directly threaten freedom of expression".
"The US government is supposed to be at the cutting-edge of the fight for online freedom, especially since the Global Internet Freedom Act was voted," Reporters Without Borders underlined in letters to two top US officials. "Yet it places no restrictions on private-sector activity even when firms work with some of the world's most repressive regimes. We condemn this hypocrisy and demand that companies such as Yahoo ! and Google drop their irresponsible policies and pledge to respect freedom of information, including abroad."
The organisation is calling for a code of conduct to be imposed that would also concern other companies, such as Cisco Systems that has sold several thousand routers to enable the regime to build an online spying system and the firm's engineers have helped set it to spot "subversive" key-words in messages. The system also enables police to know who has looked at banned sites or sent "dangerous" e-mails.
From RSF, via Noticiasdot.
[Smart Mobs]
Loads of background at A blog doesn't need a clever name. I'll add that the discussion around this was one of the most interesting things at CFP this year. See my post, Technology Transfer, Technology Dumping from the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy blog experiment.
8:51:35 PM
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Top Research Universities by Number of "Highly Cited Researchers".
The Institute for Scientific Information compiles detailed data on citations to faculty research in the natural and social sciences, including medicine and law, but not in any of the humanistic fields. Citation counts are always problematic proxies for quality, but across whole universities their limitations presumably even out (presumably, e.g., each major university has its share of highly cited productive drudges, and the like). The primary limitation of this data is that it does not include humanistic fields, so universities with strong research profiles in the humanities will underperform in this study. The data also gives a slight preference to larger schools, though it is doubtful that there are any large major research universities that consist of, e.g., two dozen highly cited researchers superimposed on thousands of non-researching mediocrities.
In addition, because medicine turns out to be a high-citation field, any university with a good medical school will often have a quarter to half its highly cited researchers located there. I've marked below with an * schools that do not have a medical school, noting how many researchers would be added to their count if the nearest medical school in that university system were included.
[The Leiter Reports: Editorials, News, Updates]
8:34:26 PM
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Live from the distributed Peanut Gallery.
The Bush Administration reacted to 9/11 by taking the country to war against "terrorism," and defined that term in an extremely simple way. We're fighting evil. And You're with us or against us. In the context of the attacks of 9/11, the Bush Case makes deep and clear sense.
The whole context, however, is much more complex. We had history, however unintentional, behind the 9/11 attacks. We supported Osama, Saddam, the Taliban and various other bad guys in the past. In many ways, our war against terrorism (especially in Iraq) has amounted to fighting fire with gasoline. Carter is right that we squandered massive quantities of good will and sympathy after 9/11. We held the high moral ground at that time; then we decided to act as if the only high ground that mattered was military force.
Which was exactly why we got our asses kicked in Vietnam.
Right now I'm reading John Robb's Global Guerillas while Jimmy Carter is being interviewed on TV. John is far more compelling, in his specifics:
To al-Moqrin and Islamic global guerrillas in general, all companies providing "outsourced" support services to the Saudi and American governments fall under the "Halliburton" label.
A focus on "Halliburton" is in line with global guerrilla strategy. The market for outsourced services provided by western and associated companies are critical to the reconstruction of Iraq, the logistics of the US military, and the operation of critical infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. It's our "soft underbelly." Because these services form a market network, global guerrillas can use the dynamics of the marketplace to amplify the impact of their attacks.
How these attacks work
The endless series of hostage dramas and assaults on contractors in Iraq form a pattern. They are aimed at the fault lines in the "outsourced services" market. This pattern is quickly being copied via stigmergic learning by a rapidly proliferating number of groups. Global guerrillas are using the following methods to disrupt this market:
- Companies. Assaults on employees in Saudi Arabia forced the engineering company ABB to withdraw their employees. Within Iraq: Siemens, Tekhnopromexport, GE, etc. have withdrawn employees due to direct pressure. Focused attacks on specific employers can create pressures within boardrooms and among employees/families back home to withdraw.
- Nations. An indirect method of coercing companies is to target employees of specific nationalities. Attacks on South Korean, Chinese, and Russian employees have resulted in government pressured evacuations of workers of those nationalities from Iraq. The attacks in Saudi Arabia targeting Americans, has caused the US government to urge that all Americans leave the country. This strategy will increasingly widen to include nations outside the US coalition (Egypt, Kenya, China, and Russia have already been targeted). Nations will increasingly tire of the crisis management and domestic political fallout caused by these attacks.
- Individuals. Beheadings and seemingly random assassinations, in particular, have created a climate of fear among employees of outsourced service companies. This fear has driven thousands of Americans and Europeans working for companies in Saudi Arabia and Iraq back home.
The impact of this disruption
The ongoing attacks against these companies and their employees are increasingly undermining the operation of the market for outsourced services. In large part this is due to the reaction of the marketplace to these systemic insults. These reactions include:
- Higher transaction costs. The need to protect employees has driven up costs across the board. Approximately 25% (although recent reports indicate that this may have risen to as high as 50%) of all reconstruction expenditures are now for private security services to protect employees (an impact that will be measured in billions of dollars). Lengthy security procedures severely limit the workday (by up to 1/3) for domestic employees of "Halliburton" companies. Companies are also being forced to offer substantial bonus pay (often exceeding 100% of pay) as a risk-premium to entice expatriate employees to work in these areas. Additionally, insurance costs have skyrocketed.
- Systemic chaos. Many of these attacks have been focused on workers involved in corporate logistics/transportation. This disruption has had a systemic impact on all work being done in Iraq. Critical parts, military supplies, food, etc have been interdicted. The loss of key engineers, through departures or injury/death due to attacks, have left critical projects in Iraq's electiricity reconstruction in piles of parts on the floor.
- Stalled decision making. These attacks have increased uncertainty to the level necessary to impair the allocation of investments and the contracting process. The recent disclosures that the vast majority of Iraq's reconstruction funds are still uncommitted, demonstrate this problem. This uncertainty makes it difficult to: entice companies to participate in reconstruction work, to determine metrics of success (profit/loss), to secure insurance, etc. (basically, everything necessary to build plans for the future). The end result, is that business decisions are put off into the future in the expectation that eventually, the security situation will improve and uncertainty will be reduced.
What this means
Global guerrilla attacks and abductions will continue. However, the bazaar of violence in the country will continue to reward innovation and its networked participant organizations will quickly implement these advances. The result will be an acceleration of the outsourcing market's current distress. While many new methods will be tried, the innovations that will gain the most traction are the following (although they will require participation of al Qaeda or al Tawhid for international operations during the initial phases)
"We aided terrorists by harboring an uncontrollable desire to go to war with Iraq," was the point Carter just made to the News Hour panel on PBS (which I'm watching because it has no ads). Carter wants us to bring France, Germany and Russia in on the real war that's still going on, against a strengthened enemy. [The Doc Searls Weblog]
7:43:09 AM
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Techies Reshape 9/11 History. The 9/11 Commission Report was a best seller the moment it was released, but Internet users find several ways to make it more accessible and useful. By Staci D. Kramer.
PDF versions of the report (PDF) and an executive summary were published online simultaneously July 22 at 11:30 a.m. EST by the commission and the Government Printing Office. At the same time, printed versions published by W.W. Norton and the GPO went on sale. The book quickly became a bestseller.
Blogger and Web designer Jason Kottke used a free conversion tool to translate the executive summary into HTML. . . . .
Michele Catalano remembers trying to read the Starr Report online in 1998 and giving up in frustration. This time she went in a different direction, getting help to produce a text version about one-sixth the size of the 7.5-MB PDF report and posting it on her blog, A Small Victory. . . . .
"I hate PDF," said Catalano. "You can't refer someone to the exact part. Ideally, the best thing would be to have the entire thing in HTML and searchable." She praised the commission for getting the information out fast. "I think that's a hallmark of democracy, making all of this information public immediately," Catalano said.
Now she wants government to take another big step by recognizing the different ways people use technology, and by publishing versions of important documents in multiple formats, such as text and HTML.
. . . . Search company Vivisimo, which specializes in making information searchable at the paragraph level, indexed the report and organized it into groups or clusters according to topic. Clusters are then labeled, for example, "Saudi" or "Taliban." Users can also create their own clusters. More than 20,000 searches took place in the first three days, according to a spokesman. The most frequent "non-canned queries" were "Berger Clinton Iraq Bush Iran."
. . .
It takes more effort to create an HTML edition, Steward said, but integrating a large PDF document with a website using an HTML portal is another "baby step that goes a long way to encourage folks to dive in." Steward believes government information should be made available in HTML editions, citing a law that mandates eliminating barriers in information technology.
Blogger Andrew Grumet used Steward's version to extract the commission's recommendations and to provide contextual links. He also produced an XML version of his list.
It took a little longer to deliver a spoken-word version. Audible.com quickly farmed out sections of the report to a half-dozen voiceover artists, making the audio version of the 31-page executive summary available last Friday free with registration. The full version is still in production, with plans to publish by Wednesday, and will be sold as an audio book for $10.
[Wired News]
7:37:28 AM
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