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| Wednesday, January 15, 2003 |
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Compare & Contrast 
Perspective
| | Not that we're talking about a hazard here. Just a great show. |
| | The bad news for Earth comes in about 500 million years, it says here. |
A motivational email
| | Just to see what we're up against, read this. |
| | And if you're looking for a lucid rundown of what Eldred was all about, read this. |
A little inspiration
| | Thinking about what we face in our renewed battle against Business as Usual, I recall some of the quotes from Martin Luther King, inscribed in glass at his Yerba Buena Gardens memorial, which stands behind a waterfall beside the grassy roof of Moscone North in San Francisco. Each brings to mind a different leader in our movement: |
| | For Larry: The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. |
| | For Dave: Through our scientific genius, we have made this world a neighborhood; now through our moral and spiritual development we must make of it a brotherhood. In a real sense, we must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools. |
| | For Richard: There is nothing in all the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; it is worth going to jail for. I would rather die in abject poverty with my convictions than live in inordinate riches with lack of self-respect. |
| | For all of us (and especially David): We must rapidly begin to shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered. |
| | Yes, I know they don't all agree about everything. That doesn't matter. |
Welcome to The Long Run
| | David Gossett at the law firm of Mayer Brown wrote Declan, "Larry lost Eldred, 7-2." Yes, no matter what is said, that is how I will always view this case. The constitutional question is not even close. To have failed to get the Court to see it is my failing. |
| | No disrespect to Gossett, or Larry, but fuck that. The Supreme Court is no less deeply steeped in producerist mentality than Congress — to which, with this decision, the Court has granted fully unbalanced power to extend, in space and time, to the verge of the absolute, the oxymoron of "intellectual property." |
| | We don't turn around a pervasive mentality, anchored in conceptual metaphors older than most oaks, in one court calendar, one congressional term, or perhaps even one decade. |
| | But we will. In the long run, the absurd will not stand. |
| | As struggles go, this is one for the ages. Its models are the movements that outlawed slavery, enfranchised women and secured civil rights. |
| | It's a long road, but we are a powerful and growing group. Here's Larry again: |
| | But if there is any good that might come from my loss, let it be the anger and passion that now gets to swell against the unchecked power that the Supreme Court has said Congress has. When the Free Software Foundation, Intel, Phillis Schlafly, Milton Friedman, Ronald Coase, Kenneth Arrow, Brewster Kahle, and hundreds of creators and innovators all stand on one side saying, "this makes no sense," then it makes no sense. Let that be enough to move people to do something about it. Our courts will not. |
| | In any statement with a "but" in the middle, what matters is what comes after it. |
| | Larry's done a helluva job leading this thing. Now more than ever, the rest of us are still behind him. |
Realms of the coin
Flying wide
Bagging Explorer
| | eWeek likes Safari. So do I. It's now the default browser on my OS X laptop. A brief wish list: |
| | - Tabbed browsing
- Editable (not just purgeable) History
- Autocomplete form-filling
- One-click selection of the URL in the location bar (progressively coloring the location window as the page loads — making it a progress bar— is a clever touch, but it misleads the user into thinking the text there is highlighted when it's not... and when the user would like it to be)
- Image icon generation for images dragged to directories
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| | The same list, of course, extends to Mozilla, Konqueror and every other browser that lacks any or all of those features. |
| | [Later...] Oops. Two of those wishes are already apparently fulfilled. Specifically, #s 2 and 4. |
Two views of CES
| | One: From Broadband Reports, pointers to the keynote by Sony COO Kunitake Ando, calling for a "global open standard" for that EETimes says would be based on an advanced Linux platform under development by Sony that will "smash barriers" between industries, technologies and applications. (This is presumably the same platform Sony is co-developing with Matshushita.) Thanks to Marc for the pointer. |
| | While the big cheeses of the consumer electronics industry make obeisance to Big Hollywood over the issue of customer control of PCs and entertainment devices, the mood at the Consumer Electronics show seems to call out for a move the other way, toward badly-needed reform for the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The Home Recording Rights Coalition (HRRC) was out in the lobby to support Virginia Rep. Rick Boucher's Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, which would reform the DMCA to allow circumvention of copy-restriction schemes for purposes other than copyright infringement. |
| | In the four-year history of the DMCA, the anti-circumvention provision of the law has been used only against developers of new technology, never against actual copyright infringers. |
Blogging the academy
| | Give every faculty member, graduate student, undergraduate, and employee at the university a blog . |
| | If I had a million dollars to give to the university, I'd split it into $10,000 chunks and I'd make them available as grants to the 100 people that posted the most interesting, useful blogs during the school year.Make it a contest. |
| | I think it's a fabulous idea. |
Demand be damned
| | Eleven initials — RIAA, CSPP and BSA — have conspired to produce a "groundbreaking agreement on an approach to digital content issues" that this press release by the RIAA says "promotes cross-industry coordination to elevate consumer awareness of piracy issues, a unified consensus on how content creators should be able to use technology to protect their property, and an agreement between the industries that government technical mandates are not the best way to serve the long term interests of consumers, record companies and the technology industry." It mumbles on... |
| | Specifically, the BSA, CSPP and RIAA have agreed on seven principles to govern their activities for the 108th Congress. The associations call for the private sector to be able to continue driving digital distribution. In addition to focusing on areas of agreement rather than divisive matters relating to government-dictated technology mandates, the associations stated that, ³how companies satisfy consumer expectations is a business decision that should be driven by the dynamics of the marketplace, and should not be legislated or regulated.² |
| | To combat piracy, the industries will promote privately funded public awareness efforts, as well as approach Congress regarding any federal role. Both industries stated their support for private and federal enforcement against copyright infringers as well as unilateral technical protection measures and they agreed that legislation should not limit the effectiveness of such measures. The industries also expressed support for actions by rights holders that could limit the illegal distribution of copyrighted works in ways that are not destructive to networks or products, or that violate consumers¹ privacy. |
| | The industries said they would continue to work together on technical measures that protect content, in addition to pursuing common ground in policy debates. |
| | The associations will begin implementing the shared principles immediately. |
| | That's eleven initials versus millions of customers, which is what those "consumers" really are, dudes. |
| | Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em, huh? So why listen to 'em, hm? |
| | As Dan Sickles says, The RIAAs pro-consumer spin is transparent. They found technology partners that are as scared of customers as they are. |
| | Thanks to Dan for the link, too. |
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