"Foreign correspondent Robert D. Kaplan talks about his days among the mujahideen, the killing of Abdul Haq, and why the U.S. must not be afraid to be brutal"

The View From Inside: interview in The Atlantic Monthly

This special publication, which we have called the Thanksgiving 2001 issue, consists of nine essays and an extended conversation about the problems and choices before us. We make no claim to cover every aspect of those present circumstances that occupy our thoughts, only to touch on some of the most immediate questions and to offer a few particularly time-sensitive analyses about the initial theater of war and near Afghanistan.

Read excerpts from the issue online, and pick up the print edition in stores this week.

The National Interest, Thanksgiving 2001 Special Issue

"In Copyrights and Copywrongs, Siva Vaidhyanathan tracks the history of American copyright law through the 20th century, from Mark Twain's vehement exhortations for "thick" copyright protection, to recent lawsuits regarding sampling in rap music and the "digital moment," exemplified by the rise of Napster and MP3 technology. He argues persuasively that in its current punitive, highly restrictive form, American copyright law hinders cultural production, thereby contributing to the poverty of civic culture."

Two chapters and the epilogue from this book are freely available at the author's web site. Larry Lessig calls it "a rich and compelling account of the bending of American copyright law, and a promise of the balance that we could once again make the law become."

Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity

"We propose some simple models of the growth of social networks, based on three general principles: (1) meetings take place between pairs of individuals at a rate which is high if a pair has one or more mutual friends and low otherwise; (2) acquaintances between pairs of individuals who rarely meet decay over time; (3) there is an upper limit on the number of friendships an individual can maintain. Using computer simulations, we find that models that incorporate all of these features reproduce many of the features of real social networks, including high levels of clustering or network transitivity and strong community structure in which individuals have more links to others within their community than to individuals from other communities."

The Structure of Growing Social Networks

In one hand the Qur'vn, in the other a wineglass,
Sometimes keeping the rules, sometimes breaking them.
Here we are in this world, unripe and raw,
Not outright heathens, not quite Muslims.
--Mujir (12th century)

Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew Poems

Watts's novel approach is relevant to many problems that deal with network connectivity and complex systems' behaviour in general [...] This fascinating exploration will be fruitful in a remarkable variety of fields, including physics and mathematics, as well as sociology, economics, and biology."

Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks between Order and Randomness

"Intellectual property protection has always been a contentious field of study, but one largely left to ivory tower elites and industry insiders. With the rise of the Internet, however, IP disputes have become a matter of widespread public interest and concern. Controversial issues and questions abound: What rights do artists and inventors have in their intellectual creations? Now that "Napsterization" of copyrighted works is upon us, do we need to rework incentives for promoting the "useful arts"? Should newer works receive the same copyright protection as the existing body of copyrighted material? Or can existing laws along with market solutions, such as digital rights management, protect copyrights? Is there still a role for compulsory licensing, or has digitization taken away the market failure arguments that supported it in the past? Is the anti-circumvention provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act unconstitutional? And when does "fair use" become an illegal circumvention? On the patent front, are new forms of "business method patents" a break from the past, or are they simply a logical evolution of existing standards? Those issues and many others will be explored in this one-day Cato conference."

Speakers include John Perry Barlow, Mike Godwin, Declan McCullagh, Patrick Leahy, Robin Gross, Mitch Glazier, Rick Boucher, and Peter Wayner.

The Future of Intellectual Property in the Information Age

Articles are available on the following topics, among others:
* Commonspace: Beyond Virtual Community
* Balancing Mission and Money: Building Sustainable Electronic Networks for Civil Society

From the back cover of the book, _Commonspace_:

Commonspace is the collective mind of the Internet, a synergy built from the space between the bits and fuelled entirely by people power. As the Internet grows, commonspace is changing the way we live, think, play and do business. [The authors] provide a detailed cognitive map of the emerging virtual landscape, and a set of tools that will help readers draw on the power of the collective.

The Commons Group

A 26-page report, issued November 9.

Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovernmental Relations, Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives

* continuing pervasive weaknesses in federal information security
* serious risks that these weaknesses pose at selected individual agencies
* major common weaknesses that agencies need to address
* the importance of establishing a strong agencywide security management program in each agency

Excerpts: at least 20 countries are targeting infowar against the United States; significant weaknesses were found at every federal agency studied; IRS electronic filing systems are vulnerable; agencies lack necessary expertise and the funds needed to acquire and retain it.

Computer Security: Improvements Needed to Reduce Risk to Critical Federal Operations and Assets [PDF]

"The present patent system was developed on the basis of the Paris Convention, which established the fundamental layer of the patent systems all over the world almost 120 years ago when the international exhibition was held in Paris. It is now time to review the paradigm and architecture. WIPO has spent the last decade looking at ways to improve the system, looking specifically at ways to make it easier for users to obtain patents in a variety of countries. Recently, WIPO's Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) has been spotlighted as a very effective means to seek patent protection all over the world in the era of globalization. But there is still concern about the accessibility to users in developing countries of the current patent system because in order to participate in a globalized economy, the developing world must find ways to work within the current patent system."

Tradition, modernity clash as debate on IPR imminent