] Those 5, he said, save their activism for issues they
] think important. They apply their principle to causes
] they think important. Protecting states is a cause they
] think important. Protecting the public domain is not.

In arguing that the Supreme Court does not make policy decisions, the Supreme Court made a policy decision.

Lawrence Lessig rants on the Eldred decision

] Apple issued a 'Notice of Breach and Termination of
] License' to iCommune, who have since pulled the download.
] Something tells me that they won't be putting it back up
] anytime soon. Every time I forget about Mac OS X being
] proprietary, Apple does something to remind me.

Yes, Virginia, Apple is Evil. What is most amazing to me is how their "fan base" scrambles to their defense when they do something like this. This is using the law to trample on innovation, and they ought to get burned for it.

Slashdot | Apple Smacks Down iCommune

] "Arnold Kling, in his article, Content is Crap, writes,
] 'While there are many Net-heads who share Dan Gillmor's
] [and Larry Lessig's] enthusiasm for Creative Commons, I
] do not. It has little or no significance, because it is
] based on a strikingly naive 60's-retro ideological view
] of how content intermediaries function.'

I recommend this for two reasons. First, and a minor observation, here Slashdot attempts to assemble a thread between a number of bloggers. If all of these people were using MemeStreams, the thread would already be organized and would be much easier to follow. :)

Second, Kling is wrong for all the right reasons. He argues that the Creative Commons License is useless because its simply a way to end run around the publishing industry, and the publishing industry is very important as a filter for the the mass of information available to us. However, and it is probably well understood by the readers of this site, the publishing industry is not a very good filter. They don't find the content we really want, because its too risky or too expensive or because it threatens them in some fundamental way.

We need to put the power to filter in the hands of the people, as we have put the power to elect a government in the hands of the people, and for exactly the same reasons.

And with the power to filter in the hands of the people there is a need, a requirement, for looser copyright restrictions. Artificial Scarcity, in this environment, it what prevents people from getting a hold of your ideas, not the thing that incents you to make those ideas available. And for this reason I think systems like Creative Commons may be quite important.

You're not selling artifically scarce "copy" for cash. You are giving copy away for reputation. Reputation is attention, and you can turn attention in cash.

Slashdot | Carping Over Creative Commons

] Wi-Fi radio and Indian sovereignty make for a potent mix
] -- even without antsy venture capitalists mucking things
] up.

Liberation spectrum - Another Doctorow short story online

] The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision was also 7-2. It galvanized
] conservative activists in much the same way today's
] decision outrages members of this ragtag movement of
] geeks, librarians, and Internet publishers. Whatever your
] views on abortion, recognize that from the perspective of
] the activists of the 1970s, Roe violated their values and
] had government crossing a line that it ought not to have
] crossed. The aftershocks continue today, with President
] Bush's faith-based initiative plans as the latest.

Declan McCullagh's comments on the defeat.

politechbot.com: What Larry Did Get (just this once, mind you...)

] Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., is planning to introduce a
] bill on Thursday to halt the Pentagon's Total Information
] Awareness program.

Pentagon database plan hits snag on Hill - Tech News - CNET.com

Obviously I'm unhappy with this decision. The court argues that the Congressional record shows no intent to violate the Constitution, while conveniently ignoring several comments, mentioned in one of the dissents, made OFF the record which indicate as much. The act is, in fact, NAMED after a man who argued in favor of perpetual copyright. Congress is obviously not going to state its intent to violate the law ON RECORD knowing how that information is used by the courts. Duh.

The Court argues that the intent of this law is simply to bring us "into compliance" with European law. I might remind the reader that the DMCA and several other copyright extremeist laws have come at us via Europe because they failed to gain steam in the U.S. standing alone. The legislators felt when they were originally presented that they wouldn't hold constitutional muster.

This is a CRIME against the public good. The people who have perpetrated it do so knowing exactly what they are doing. IF the court doesn't have the guts to do something about it, well....

The thing is that our generation has grasped onto appropriation and recontextualization to provide cultural anchors to works of art and to create emotional context, for much the same reasons that an ancient generation invented the metaphore. It is already the case in certain artistic circles that if no one samples you, you don't matter. And this is not just a fad, but rather a clear trend in the last 20 years...

Art that has the will to exist outside of this copyright system today paves the road for art that will have the need to exist outside of it tomorrow. And as these trends progress the significance of art you can't manipulate approaches zero. And herein lies the ultimate defeat of the copyright extremeists. By the time they realise the sort of mistake they've made, it will already be too late.

We lost Eldred: Majority Opinion

] To some extent, journalists have felt obliged to tone
] down criticisms because of the sense of shared national
] purpose after September 11. Even that cannot explain how
] the papers cravenly ignored the Trent Lott story. Lott,
] the veteran senator from Mississippi, made his pro-
] segregation statement on a Thursday, in full earshot of
] the Washington press corps. The Times and Post both
] failed to mention it. Indeed, it was almost totally
] ignored until the following Tuesday, kept alive until
] then only by a handful of bloggers. If there is a
] Watergate scandal lurking in this administration, it is
] unlikely to be Woodward or his colleagues who will tell
] us about it. If it emerges, it will probably come out on
] the web. That is a devastating indictment of the state of
] American newspapers.

While the Guardian is certainly not to be known as a bastion of objectivity, this screed on the state of American journalism feels honest and sensible. The implications segway directly into some of the commentary I've offered here about the relationship between weblogs and the press.

MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | Bushwhacked

] A man demonstrates to prospective buyers the new video
] game, called 'Bin Laden versus USA,' which shows the
] faces of the prime terrorist suspect and U.S. President
] George W. Bush at a street stall in Baguio, northern
] Philippines, Sunday, Jan. 12, 2003. The China-made
] version of the current craze Game Boy's gameplan is
] for the player to defend the twin towers from being
] bombed by Bin Laden's suicide bombers by using American
] anti-terrorist weapons. It sells for 250 pesos (US$5).

AP Photo - Bin Laden vs. USA video game

] A poster depicting missiles hitting the U.S. Capitol
] building hangs on a wall of a shoe factory in Sinuiju,
] North Korea, in this Sept. 25, 2002 file photo. The
] isolated regime's bellicose rhetoric reached a new
] pitch in the past week, when North Korea escalated
] its nuclear standoff with Washington, warning of a
] 'Third World War,' 'a sea of fire' and a 'holy war'
] against the United States.

Wow, file this one right up there with the British Tube System's "Secure beneath the watchful eyes" poster under forgien propaganda items I wish I could get a copy of!

AP Photo - North Korea bombing US Capitol