] To link directly to some newspapers' content, Danish
] search firm Newsbooster now must use the sort of
] decentralized subterfuge utilized by companies that
] distribute file-sharing applications.

I said in one of the essays on this site that the reason news companies don't have the trouble with the net that music companies do is because news companies offer their consumers the ability to access and manipulate their content without copying it. If that practice ends, their troubles will begin...

Wired News: This Is Your Deep Link on P2P

] 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

] 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...)

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

] Lobbyists for some of the nation's largest technology
] companies will argue under the new agreement against
] efforts in Congress to amend U.S. laws to broaden the
] rights of consumers, such as explicitly permitting
] viewers to make backup copies of DVDs for personal use or
] copy songs onto handheld listening devices.

More information is starting to leak out about this mornings deal between the RIAA and the tech industry. According to the AP, the RIAA agrees to drop support for the (unworkable and extremely unpopular) Fritz Chip legislation, and in exchange the technology industry agrees to lobby AGAINST consumer fair use rights. I certaily don't wish to take the AP's analysis as the word of god, but they are spinning this as a positive compromise. It sounds to me like the RIAA got a hell of a lot more then they gave.

RIAA, Technology Industry deal looking dirty...

] A REPORT IN TODAY'S Wall Street Journal claims that the
] Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) will
] join forces with the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and
] the Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP) to oppose a US
] bill that would introduce technology to prevent the
] copying of digital content.

It appears that the computer industry has managed to get the RIAA to back off on the Hollings bill. This is an interesting development, but it essentially means that Pallidium/TCPA will do everything the RIAA wants.

RIAA joins Intel, others to oppose Hollywood copyright proposals

] "First came the fuss over double compensation for the
] radio-commercial actors. Then the flap over royalties for
] recording artists. Now the slap-happy Internet radio
] business is reeling from another hit, this time from the
] nation's most popular network of online stations."

DMCA royalties kill Clear Channel. Never thought you'd hear that one, did you?

Wired News: Radio Ditches Webcasts En Masse

] ""The RIAA honestly has no idea what they're up against.
] They will be toast the first time they try to shut down a
] P2P network being used by any serious black hats,"
] Ferrell said."

This article is making the rounds. Its totally wrong but the quotes are funny anyway. I imagine the RIAA gets quite a lot of political milage out of their security problems.

Wired News: Why RIAA Keeps Getting Hacked

] "The Commission was set up by the British government to
] look at how intellectual property rights might work
] better for poor people and developing countries."

This is covered in the new issue of Technology Review. A view on the IP problem that is not absolutist.

Commission on Intellectual Property Rights

] "I'll be putting up a movie every day this week: Lawrence
] Lessig, John Perry Barlow and Jack Valenti today, DJ
] Spooky Tomorrow, Brewster Khale and (mini-brewster),
] Craig Newmark, Aaron Swartz and Vicki Bennett as the week
] goes on..."

At this point the Intellectual Property problem is almost a dead horse. People talk and talk and talk and talk about WHAT the problem is, and usually they don't say anything that Mitch Kapor didn't say in 1990, or that wasn't obvious then GNU started in the early 80s. But they still have to explain it over and over and over because it continues to be a problem or because they are fund raising.

Someday someone is going to actually have something NEW to say about it. I any event, if these people were getting together to speak on any other issue I might be quite interested in it. Right now I'm half sure. I haven't heard any of it yet. There are certainly some smart folks here, and otherwise it would likely cost thousands to hear them all speak at the same show...

On Lisa Rein's Radar: Lessig, Barlow, Valenti at Creative Commons Launch