] The Sampling licenses let artists and authors invite other
] people to use a part of their work and make it new.

] * Sampling
] People can take and transform pieces of your work for any
] purpose other than advertising, which is prohibited.
] Copying and distribution of the entire work is also
] prohibited.
]
] * Sampling Plus
] People can take and transform pieces of your work for any
] purpose other than advertising, which is prohibited.
] Noncommercial copying and distribution (like
] file-sharing) of the entire work are also allowed. Hence,
] "plus".
]
] * Noncommercial Sampling Plus
] People can take and transform pieces of your work for
] noncommercial purposes only. Noncommercial copying and
] distribution (like file-sharing) of the entire work are
] also allowed.

Creative Commons - Sampling Licenses

] The ASCAP license is only the tip of the iceberg: there
] are also comparable licenses for BMI and SESAC, two other
] performing rights organizations; mechanical rights from
] the Harry Fox Agency, _and_ a "master use license" to be
] negotiated with the record labels for each track. The
] latter can be under any terms the label chooses, and they
] can refuse you outright.

ASCAP only has the right to license public performance of non-dramatic works. This is outside the scope of PROs. It is not a performance in the manor a "stream" is viewed, but a mechanical copy. Someone equated the "cast" part of podcast with streaming. The more knowledgeable techies know that even a stream is technically a copy of bits, but the copy prevention (legally protected from tampering via DMCA) changes the way its viewed.

Podcasts are not broadcasts, or more specificly, not public performance. If you played a podcast for a group of people in a situation outside a normal gathering of friends/family at a location such as your house (like a bar, coffee house, restaurant, hold music, a ra stream, etc), you would need a license from the respective PRO to play the podcast, regardless of how the mechanical licensing angle is resolved. However, a PRO is not able to license the mechanical copy. If a podcast was actually a "stream", it would be different. Its a different right. (Assuming your podcast contained protected works...)

Depending on the usage of the work within the podcast, it may be fair use.

Boing Boing: Wil Wheaton: So, ASCAP to *license* podcasts? Readers respond.

] The BitTorrent hub LokiTorrent has been shut down by a
] lawsuit from the Motion Picture Association of America
] (MPAA), with the eight-hour outage earlier today turning
] out to be the prelude to a closure. The site came back
] online briefly with BitTorrent-related content, but
] within hours that had been replaced by a notice from the
] MPAA.

They had collected $25,000 in user donations prior to the lawsuit. Apparently they had also been soliciting offers for their domain on auction site Sedo at the same time. Shady.

The MPAA now has their server logs and user information.

Netcraft: LokiTorrent Shuttered by MPAA Lawsuit

] In the first case of its kind, a California video game
] maker is suing an entire community of software tinkerers
] for reverse engineering and modifying Xbox games that
] they legally purchased.

] The harm isn't just to the wholesome values of Dead or
] Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, hinted Tecmo spokesperson
] Melody Pfeiffer. There's a principle at stake. "Hackers,
] if they're allowed to do this kind of thing, will be
] allowed to hack into any game, anywhere," Pfeiffer warns.
] "We spent millions of dollars to develop these games, and
] people are coming in and changing the code to their
] liking, and that's illegal."

Ok, so let me make sure I have this straight... Because a very small segment of the user market is making and using game modifications that modify characters, we gotta make a trip to the fair use rights grinder. This has been going on for over a decade, going back to the dawn of computer games. How is an after-market for video game mods is such a threat? Unless people are selling the mods, they can only attract more people to buying the game.

If the characters being inserted into the game were in violation of someone's trademark, I could see it as being a reasonable thing to get in a huff over. Otherwise, this is trivial and an undue attempt to restrict users' rights and privileges.

] A message on ninjahacker.net reports the site was taken
] down on January 25th, a few days after the lawsuit was
] filed. Greiling did not return a phone message Wednesday.
] In a telephone interview, Glynn said he hosted
] ninjahacker.net as a favor to Greiling, but that he had
] no other interaction with the site or its users.
] "Basically, I was hosting this website," Glynn says. "I
] don't own an Xbox and I wasn't into modding or skinning
] things."

And your bonus chilling effect of the day is the loss of another online community, and a reminder to anyone who runs one, that we are the bitch of anyone with a team of lawyers and large cash flow.

Hackers sued for tinkering with Xbox games

This is written like its for children, not educated and skilled engineers.

] As an engineer like you, Dilbert was trained to think
] through the consequences of an action. He grasps the
] connection between protection of intellectual property
] and the motivation to innovate and create. Engineers,
] like software developers, want their work product to be
] respected, not copied.
] Yet, a recent poll conducted among professional engineers
] revealed that more than 69 percent believe unlicensed
] commercial software is used in their profession.
] Thirty-two percent believe copyright violations happen in
] their own workplaces. Dilbert understands that this is
] bad for innovation and is just bad business. Support
] innovation and download the free software audit tools,
] the Guide to Software Management, and other helpful
] resources from this site.

Be like Dilbert; be a well licensed tool.

Engineers get it. Ask Dilbert.

] Defense contractors are shaking down model airplane and
] tank makers for punishing royalties on their model kits.
] One result is that kit makers are switching to WWI models
] and to models of enemy armaments. Nice going, defense
] contractors, you took our tax dollars and used them to
] rid the market of all military toys except Nazi tanks and
] planes.

[ Nice. Don't miss, further down on the bb main page, this story :
"The Eiffel Tower's likeness had long since been part of the public domain, when in 2003, it was abruptly repossessed by the city of Paris. That's the year that the SNTE, the company charged with maintaining the tower, adorned it with a distinctive lighting display, copyrighted the design, and in one feel swoop, reclaimed the nighttime image and likeness of the most popular monument on earth. In short: they changed the actual likeness of the tower, and then copyrighted that."

Super. -k]

Boing Boing: Defense contractors demand royalties on model plane and tank kits

] "If you could not patent software algorithms or ideas,
] how much of the money spent on writing software would go
] away? How much innovation would disappear? How much
] investment in that innovation would disappear? I don't
] think any would disappear," Behlendorf said.

Open-source honchos trash software patents | CNET News.com

] When faced with two choices -- selling a company's
] patents as part of its overall assets or selling the
] patents alone -- the court (and the market) chose the
] latter. This means that in the eyes of the legal system
] and the marketplace, the Commerce One patents were more
] valuable to independent licensing firms as legal threats
] than they were to an actual company that makes a Web
] services product.
]
] This is not what the patent system was intended to
] promote. The idea behind patents is that inventors and
] manufacturers of new products should have some protection
] against free riders in the marketplace that would
] otherwise copy their innovations. If competitors are able
] to simply copy the innovations of those first to market,
] few will have incentives to release their products to the
] public. In this instance, however, we see the opposite
] result.

Who needs patents as marketplace protections when they are more effectively used as marketplace weapons?

Salon.com Technology | When dot-com patents go bad

Apple, Ebay, you, and the numeral two continue to do that thing that they do.

] "I don't see anything and if (Negativland) is not making
] a stink about it, then there's no problem," Hervey said.
] Negativland could presumably complain that its pictures
] are being used without permission.
]
] "We always have to be careful when people invoke
] intellectual-property rights in order to stop things that
] have nothing to do with IP," said Fred von Lohmann,
] senior IP attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
] "I'm a little surprised that Apple would complain but I'm
] doubly surprised that eBay would remove the auction."

Wired News: EBay Negative on Negativland IPod

The parallels are unavoidable.

This op-ed by Larry Lessig was published in Wednesday's Washington Post.

Bytes and Bullets