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| Sunday, April 13, 2003 |
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IALTBAL 
| | I Am Learning To Be A Lawyer. The easy way, in fact. The post below has elicited two enlightening replies, from Professors Lessig (AL) and Winer (NAL), both respectively and respectfully. Nice. |
| | Here's an excerpt from Larry's first response: |
| | Doc has an interesting post about CC licenses and the public domain. As he rightly notes, we have no direct license that you can link to so as to place your material in the public domain. This is not because we wouldn¹t like to offer such a license. It is instead because the law does not make such simplicity possible. While for most of our history, there were a thousand ways to move creative material into the public domain, most lawyers today are puzzled about whether there is any way to move work into the public domain. |
| | He goes on to explain the constructive path CC has built in that direction. That was the path I followed when I acquired the public domain dedication that has graced this blog (see the bumper sticker down there in the right column) over the past few months. |
| | I think it is useful and important to distinguish between DRM and DRE ‹ digital rights management vs. digital rights expression. DRE is a technology simply (1) to express rights. The ³management² in DRM implies a technology — code — both (1) to express rights and (2) to enforce it. |
| | But for all of the reasons that the DMCA debate has made clear, there are lots of problems with DRM systems precisely because code is used to enforce copyright rights. Code can never accurately map fair use, it can never reserve a right to criticize the existing expanse of control, etc. |
| | DRE is therefore DRM minus the management. A DRE system simply enables an efficient way for people to say what freedoms they are enabling. In a world where the default is ³all rights reserved,² CC DRE enables a simple way for people to say ³My content is free in the following ways.² |
| | This goes part way toward something I had suspected, but hadn't clearly known: that DRM is still, for most (if not all) intents and purposes, the concern of industrial-grade suppliers of "content." Larry takes it the rest of the way with this: |
| | Finally, one technical point: Our CC licenses expressly state that you can¹t use our technology with a DRM system that does not adequately protect ³fair use.² As I¹ve not seen a DRM system that adequately protects ³fair use² yet, imho, that means you are not allowed to use a CC licenses with a DRM system yet. At least that is so if you take seriously the commitments the CC license imposes. |
| | There's something of a gauntlet here. Who's going to make a working Venn diagram of DRE, DRM and FU? That's the challenge, it seems to me. |
| | [Later...] Much of yesterday, paragraphs of this post were scrambled. Apologies. I think they're in order now. |
Nothing, compounded. Or something.
| | I'm still trying (though not very hard) to figure this out. |
The Whatever License
| | A while back I decided that I didn't want to reserve any rights with this blog, allowing all of it to fall into the public domain like snow on the water. (In fact I'm amazed that more of us don't do that, but, whatever.) This means its license is a Public Domain Dedication. |
| | So I see by Dave this morning that I can set up my Manila blog to make my license part of the blog's RSS feed. This strikes me as an extremely cool thing, and an excellent model for all kinds of published work that is subject to syndication. |
| | I believe what Userland and the Creative Commons people have made here is, literally, a DRM — digital rights management — system, in the best possible sense of the acronym. It's also one put together by our people, rather than by the lawyers and lobbyists of Hollywood and the BigPubs. It also seems very intelligent and workable to me. |
| | So I think we need to make public domain dedicaton a choice within the system as well — and an obvious one, too. |
| | It's not enough to say unmanaged rights are not the concern of a rights management system. You've got to say when that content isn't managed at all, and doesn't need to be, by anybody, ever. |
| | In a free society, the choice not to restrict must be at least as important as with the choice to restrict. That's why I believe we need to build our DRM systems with at least one setting that leaves all the valves open. |
Perspective
| | if you can read this, you're doing better than the people in Iraq. |
| | Good piece, with lots of sane points at a time when it's good to have a few of those around. |
View from the Edge East
| | The world has a new sheriff who does not hesitate to use his pistol, with or without partners, with or without sanction, with or without justification. The rules have changed. What are the new rules? Well, this question reminds me of the first time I rented a car. I started to look over the leasing contract. "Let me save you the time," the clerk said. "We're always right and you're always wrong."... |
| | It's just that Israel is not really needed. Israel's great strategic weight stemmed from its ability to act - or to constitute a potential threat - in a region in which the United States did not want to intervene directly. Israel was a regional mini-power through which it was possible to threaten the Soviet bloc and its satellites, or the Arab world. Israel preserved American interests.... |
| | What will be the significance of the structural reduction in Israel's status? It will mean that American readiness to go on paying so as to extricate us from the morass in which we are mired will be diminished. It is unlikely that the United States will exert increasing pressure on Israel in order to achieve durable political solutions. The United States will make do with bad solutions, based on the long-standing American principle of forging poor settlements the consequences of which will be paid by others in the future... |
| | What conclusion should Israel draw from the war? That it should hurry on its own to achieve a good settlement that will make it possible to rehabilitate the economy and start rehabilitating the society and the state of democracy in the country. In the new world, Israel's major asset is not military might but genuine membership in the club of the advanced countries. |
| | I think Kleinberg makes some unwarrnted assumptions about U.S. impunity and freedom to act. Bush may be the new sheriff in the Middle East, but that doesn't mean he's brought law and order. We've got a long way to go before Operation Iraqi Freedom can be regarded a complete success. |
| | But I think he's right about Israel. My guess that Bush is quietly telling both sides of that conflict to get serious about reaching a settlement. Of course he's probably been doing that for some time, but circumstances are different now. Again, it seems possible, for reasons I don't want to credit entirely to the war, to imagine best possible scenarios here. |
| | But then, I'm a natural optimist. I might be completely fulla shit. |
DMCA vs. Free Speech, cont'd
| | I just heard from folks at the InterZOne conference in Atlanta, where, apparently, conference organizers and two scheduled speakers have been served with cease-and-desist requests. At issue are the "intellectual property rights" of Blackboard Inc. Here's an excerpt from Blackboard's attorney's letter: |
| | It recently has come to Blackboard's attention that Billy Hoffman and Virgil Griffith are intending to speak as co-panelists in your upcoming InterzOne II conference on April 11, 2003. The website located at www.yak.net/acidus, Mr. Hoffman's website, states that, "The signals to and from several Blackboard readers have been captured, as well as how data is stored on the cards. Using this knowledge Virgil and I have created a drop-in compatible reader, that will work with an existing RS-485 network. Computer code to emulate any reader made as well as hardware specs to wire the readers and control circuits will be launched." Explaining, Mr. Hoffman's website states that "This will show not only did we hack the system, but we hacked it so far we could build functional readers from scratch." The website states that he intends at this conference to "release code to make a computer emulate any Blackboard reader, as well as the hardware designs ... to make a drop in replacement for any Blackboard reader." The website also threatens that, because "Blackboard wouldn't make their system more secure, or tell people how to secure it, I'll simply make compatible ones myself and give them away." |
| | Please be advised that the actions described on Mr. Hoffman's website, including the hacking of Blackboard's system, are illegal, and that any effort by either Mr. Hoffman or Mr. Griffith to convey to others at your Conference any information gleaned in whole or in part from such actions, particularly in an effort to cause Blackboard economic harm, would be improper. Please be advised of our view that it would be actionable for you or your conference to facilitate Mr. Hoffman's and Mr. Griffith's announced plans for, among other things, the disclosure of signals captured, the releasing of code, the description of development of functional readers, and the hardware specs to wire the readers and/or control circuits. Please be advised further that the www.yak.net/acidus website's use of the Blackboard name and the Blackboard logo is unauthorized and far exceeds the parameters of any nominative fair use, constituting a false designation of origin in violation of the federal Lanham Act, and we caution that we have not authorized Blackboard's name or logo to be used in any seminar or conference materials or in any presentation. We are also examining whether the actions of Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Griffin may have violated other federal laws, including (among others) the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the Economic Espionage Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Wiretap Act, and the Consumer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as Georgia's Computer Systems Protection Act. |
| | My correspondent writes, We're trying to get the word out as fast as possible because this is most definitely not cool. |
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