IPcentral Weblog: May 2005 Archives

May 2005 Archives

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05.31.2005

Cruising with Crews

The Competitive Enterprise Institute just published Cybersecurity Finger-pointing: Regulation vs. Markets for Software Liability, Information Security, and Insurance, by Clyde Wayne Crews.

I have not yet read it, but I follow a heuristic that anything Wayne writes is well worth reading.

posted by James DeLong @ 11:51 AM | Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation

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Google It

The American Association of University Presses has some serious reservations about Google's Digital Library plan, announced last December, to digitize 15 million books contained in various university libraries, without consultation with the publishers. The story played big last week in sources as diverse as C|Net News, the Register, and the Harvard Crimson.

To begin with, the project appears to violate copyright law. As AAUP puts it, using a favorite lawyers' device of the rhetorical question:

Continue reading Google It . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 10:52 AM | Books

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05.27.2005

Can't He Use Magic?

The WallStreetJournal Online says that the new Harry Potter book, like its predecessors, will not be available for audio downloading.

J. K. Rowling is still fuming over unauthorized downloads of earlier books, and her website warns that sites offering such works “may infect your computer with viruses, leave you vulnerable to the dangers of hacking and/or credit card fraud, and may also contain content that has nothing to do with Harry Potter, to say the least.”

WSJO says:

Continue reading Can't He Use Magic? . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 8:41 AM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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05.26.2005

Addendum to Is Copyright Dead?

Patrick quoted the G&M columnist as assuming that file sharers are correct in their view that no technical theft has occurred if the owner still has the original property.

'Tain't so -- the concept of Theft of Service is well-known to the law, and its application to digital materials is analyzed here. Excerpt on the reasons for such laws:

Continue reading Addendum to Is Copyright Dead? . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 11:11 AM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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Elite Torrent Raid

The news media are full of the story that FBI and Customs agents yesterday shut down the Elite Torrents website and arrested a bunch of people for making thousands of copies of pirated movies and software programs available. It was, say the Feds, "the first criminal enforcement action targeting individuals committing copyright infringement on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks using cutting edge file-sharing technology known as BitTorrent."

Continue reading Elite Torrent Raid . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 10:53 AM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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05.25.2005

Is Copyright Dead?

I certainly don't think so, and in that respect I vehemently disagree with Peter Dejager and his Globe & Mail column. I agree with him on most everything else in his piece, however; he's just more pessimistic about where we are in the digital age than I am.

He wants a micropayment system, which I'd embrace if the money went directly to creators, and not through some government welfare agency. But he describes the existing intellectual impasse well. An example:

Continue reading Is Copyright Dead? . . .

posted by Patrick Ross @ 3:39 PM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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"Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree"

Another win for human knowledge, which is The Ultimate Resource:

The American chestnut, prized for its timber and its crop of glossy dark nuts, once dominated Eastern forests from Maine to Georgia. The graceful trees were virtually wiped out by blight starting at the turn of the 20th century. . . . . Now, after years of breeding, cloning and crossbreeding, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is ready to reintroduce disease-resistant chestnuts to Eastern forests next year.

President Bush just planted a 16-foot chestnut tree on the White House Grounds.

Continue reading "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree" . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 11:09 AM | Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation

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Upcoming IP Conference

Jim has asked me to let our blog readers know of an upcoming conference. The University of Maryland's Center for Intellectual Property is having its 5th annual Symposium on Intellectual Property June 16-17. The conference boasts some big names, like NBC Universal's Alec French, MoFo's Jonathan Band (who is starting his own practice), PK's Gigi Sohn and more. I'm speaking on a June 16 panel at 1:15 with RIAA's Linda Zirkelbach, Penn State U. professor Matt Jackson and Harvard U. undergrad Matthew Gline. GWU professor Bob Brauneis will moderate. The panel is titled "P2P File Sharing: Pirates or Revolutionaries?"

I don't know if they're still taking reservations to attend in person, but the entire 2-day conference will be webcast. One can sign up here.

Because this is a scholarly conference they're publishing a lot of works, some old and some new. A couple that may be published include this one and this one from the IPcentral site. I also plan to submit a paper; we'll see if I carry through with that threat.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 10:57 AM | General

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05.24.2005

More on Scholarly Journals

To follow up on yesterday's discussion -- Patent Baristas discusses The High Cost of Research Journals and the Open Source Revolt:

For publishers, the process of selecting and editing journals is expensive but is a necessary filter to help sort out the wheat from the vast amounts of research chafe. The nonprofit publisher of the prestigious Science magazine makes content available free after 12 months. Other publishers note that with a combination of free abstracts, free distribution to the developing world and public-library subscriptions, much of the globe already has access to what they produce.
Continue reading More on Scholarly Journals . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 1:19 PM | Free Culture Movement

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More BitTorrent

More comments on developments in BitTorrent are in Wired. Professor Mark Lemley's comments on the legality issues are particularly interesting.

See also the comments at techdirt. (Link from Batelle Media.)

My own view is that, in the long run, content owners must be allowed substantial rights of self-help to interfere with pirated content moving across the Internet. When Representative Harold Berman raised this idea a couple of years ago it aroused a storm, and at the moment it is not a topic of respectable discussion.

Luckily, respectability is not highly-valued here at PFF, so I can think about it. The alternatives are to impose heavy policing burdens on ISPs and communications companies. Or, we could let our system of market-based IP collapse in a heap of rubble, and turn the whole thing into a government-run socialized system. The first option would be complicated and would certainly provoke the squawks of the burdened. The second is truly unthinkable; creative endeavor would become a hybrid of the European health care system and Mexico's Pemex, with the U.S. Universal Service Program mixed in.

So self help it will be.

posted by James DeLong @ 12:55 PM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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05.24.2005

Excerpt: Ronald J. Mann

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 8:25 AM | Patents , Software

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