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Friday, July 19, 2002
Aw fuck... 
| | KPIG's live stream is off the Web. I didn't believe it at first because the stream was still playing piggy music. But it's just a series of live broadcasts that don't fall under the new copyright regime. Nice that they're keeping something up. But shit. |
| | KPIG was the best thing on the Web, period. Sorry if that offends the ample sources of all the other great stuff here; but, to me at least, that's just a fact. |
| | KPIG was the soul of Internet radio, and the essence of what radio on the Net was all about. The real deal. The heart of hearts. |
What are the side deals?
| | Steve Marks of the RIAA makes a couple of statements in letters to Salon that make me wonder. Here's one: |
| | ...we've already worked out a separate deal with NPR to cover all CPB-funded radio stations. What is that deal, exactly? |
| | During the last three years after the DMCA took effect, we sought to engage webcasters and encourage them to sit down with us to resolve these issues. Many did -- we signed more than 25 deals with individual webcasters. |
| | What 25 deals? Anybody know? Do those deals exempt those stations from the fees? |
| | If so, it sounds to me like the CARP process only served to punish the stations that didn't cut deals with the RIAA. Am I wrong here? |
| | Hmm... does the Final Rule now burned into copyright law specifically exclude the stations and networks Marks says the RIAA cut deals with? Nowhere in that long document do I find CPB-funded stations specifically mentioned. Only this: "non-CPB, Non-Commercial...", which refers to "broadcasters," "stations" and "entitites." It defines one of these as "a Public Broadcasting Entity... that is not qualified to receive funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting." |
| | Anyway, if anyody knows anything, I'd like to hear it. |
Ogg on!
| | Ogg Vorbis 1.0 is out, and it's looking pretty good. Best of all, it has no legal or $cost overhead. All the arguments against it are technical (hair-split stuff, it looks like to me) or practical (the world is thick with .rm, .mp3, wma, and other files). But it's the only codec today that qualifies as pure infrastructure, and that's it's long-run advantage. The Net itself is something nobody owns, everybody can use and anybody can improve. On all three counts, only Ogg Vorbis qualifies. |
| | Basically, it's the best answer to the "ask what you can do for the Net" question. |
There's leadership for ya
| | There's a long story on AOL and its troubles in the Wall Street Journal today. Steve Case's name isn't menitoned once. You gotta wonder. |
| | Just noticed that The New York Times is wondering the same thing. Read it. All the quotes make it clear that the guy has no new ideas: rebuilding the service... privileged membership... a broadband service people can't live without... Good luck, dude. |
| | And thanks to Dave for the link. |
Unintended Consequence Theater
| | How long do you think it will take Jack Valenti, Hillary Rosen or Michael Eisner to sue somebody's ass for infringing on digital rights under the just-passed Cyber Secuiry Enhancement Act of 2002? |
| | Your ass is at risk if you are someone who... |
| | ...knowlingly causes the transmissoin of a program, information, code or command, and as, a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization to a protected computer... |
| | the term "protected computer" means a computer...which is used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication; |
| | the term "mamage means any impariment to the integrity or availability of data, a program a system or information that — causes loss aggregating to at least $5000 in value during any 1-year period to one or more individuals. |
| | Gee, I'm feeling more secure already. |
| | [Later...] Kevin says I got his point backwards, and clarifies his own. If I were Sony Records I'd be nervous, he says. Thinking about it again, it looks to me like it works both ways. |
No, it's just being mugged
Sucktraining in France
| | He goes on to ask if such a sentence is possible in the U.S. The answer is no: the sentence would be in dollars. |
| | I'm just amazed that any company, anywhere, would be suicidal enough to sue and bankrupt its own customers. |
Here we go again
Shades of Windows?
| | I suppose the Software Ecosystem does have its food chain, because clearly it's unwise for developers to write new software in categories Apple may want to gobble into OS X. This wisdom has been proved with MP3 players, where iTunes has supplanted Macast and SoundJam (whose old team now works at Apple, that last link says), with mail (where Eudora and Mailsmith are still holding on), and now with search apps. Karelia's Watson, which Apple still calls a 'gem,' appears to be in the path of Sherlock 3 — at least according to this Watson FAQ. |
| | To be fair here, there are plenty of categories, such as calendars and contact managers, where there had been nothing good on the Mac for years. And with products like iTunes, iPod and iMovie, Apple is doing stuff nobody else was even thinking about doing, or stuff nobody else seems able to do nearly as well. |
| | But still, ya gotta wince for the guys with the footprints on their backs. |
Anybody no?
| | Lou Josephs thinks that Live365 may have a separate deal with the RIAA. That's a very interesting assertion, and I'd be curious to know if anybody has the facts on that. (Broadcasters who use Live365 do in deed pay for the privilege.) |
| | This piece in Salon seems to suggest that there isn't a deal, but doesn't exclude the possibility. |
Sausage story
| | The workshop included 23 panelists, with representatives from the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, Disney, two record companies, Microsoft, and AOL Time Warner. Only one panelist, Graham Spencer of digitalconsumer.org, represented typical customers of digital content, and he didn't say much. Another panelist, from the Home Recording Rights Coalition, represented a small, atypical consumer group. The meeting room, with about 80 unassigned chairs, was packed and more than a dozen audience members stood the entire three hours or sat on the floor. |
| | Robin Gross, intellectual property lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said her organization was disappointed that it wasn't invited to be part of the digital rights management workshop. She later said the EFF was invited to comment in writing. |
| | Asked later why she didn't try to speak, Gross answered: "I'd be happy to give my opinion to anyone who'll listen, but they're not listening. We were told our position was not welcome at this table." |
Going postal
| | This piece from the San Francisco Chronicle, about the Postal Service's experiments with the Segway in San Francisco, leads me to think that what the Seg needs is a sport. You can't just race the things outright. What you need is something more like an obstacle course, perferably on a hill: a Segway Slalom. On, say, Lombard Street. |
Porch life
| | While not busy launching their new company, she and Craig are currently hunkered down on their porch, waiting to shoot the neighborhood sparrow hawks as well. Out here on the far left coast, we see a lot of red-tailed hawks, better known to farmers as "chicken hawks." |
| | Our little boy's favorite song right now is T"he Lord'll Provide," by Mike Cross, who is an institution back in North Carolina, where I lived for many years. The song tells the funny story of a chicken hawk, a buzzard and a farmer, and the kid can't get enough of it. |
| | Mike has declined to share an audio sampling that song on his Best of the Funny Stuff page, but he does include Uncle Josh, which is one of the wisest songs ever written. Can't find the lyrics for that (or The Lord'll Provide), but a number of sites feature the lyrics for Mike's most widely performed work, The Scotsman. The song is in the standard renaissance fair repertoire, and often regarded as an ancient traditional song, even though Mike wrote it in 1979. |
Shopping story
| | I've been through a pile of Sony WM-D3 recording walkmen. More than I can count. I don't think Sony makes them anymore, but there seem to be a lot on the market. |
| | The last time I got one, it was a refurb from the Yahoo store. It fell apart instantly. I don't think it was refubed at all. More likely just cleaned up and sent out again. |
| | But when I search for the unit on Google, the top link for a store is Yahoo's. And I think, Shit, I need this immediately. Maybe I should forget the problems last time, order it today and have it fedexed overnight for delivery tomorrow. |
| | One problem: there's no way to order it. There's a little form window where you can "Enter your order number" and a button that says "Track your order." What order number? Track what? |
| | Well, I've wasted half an hour trying to find one. No luck. |
| | Okay, I'm giving up and going to bed. |
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