Decius wrote:
] I think there is some substance to the sweat of the brow
] argument, but the devil is in the details.
]
] But of course, thats not going to happen, because thats not
] really what these people are interested in.

In the same way that Metallica is concerned with the album format, this is all about protecting the ability to control the presentation of collections of facts. People get upset when they see someone else remixing their facts to paint a picture they did not themselves intend to present.

There seems to be this perception present in certain people, that when your work is remixed, something is destroyed in the process.

It can be seen as information control jealousy, but that leaves out much. There is massive value present in collections of disparate facts based on some yet non-existant measure of how hard it was to collect the facts and their scarcity.

RE: Wired News: Hands Off! That Fact Is Mine

] Tuesday, February 24 will be a day of coordinated civil
] disobedience: websites will post Danger Mouse's Grey
] Album on their site for 24 hours in protest of EMI's
] attempts to censor this work.

Well, not exactly, but lots of people are turning their web pages grey.

I didn't find this until just this morning and I don't have time to tweak up the site code. However, if you re-recommend this meme others are more likely to read it.

Grey Tuesday

] iTunes fans have "hacked" a high-profile Pepsi promotion
] aimed at giving away 100 million songs through special
] codes marked on the underside of bottle caps. The codes
] can be entered on the iTunes site to download a single
] for free. One in three bottles is a winner, but it turns
] out that the markings can be read without removing the
] cap.
]
] CNET News.com confirmed that it is not only possible to
] pick out winning bottles in advance; careful scrutiny can
] reveal the full 10-digit redemption code, meaning no
] purchase is required to get a free iTunes single courtesy
] of Pepsi.

So that qualifies as stealing music, right?

Low-tech 'hack' takes fizz out of Pepsi-iTunes promo | CNET News.com

] mozCC is an extension for Mozilla-based browsers,
] including Mozilla Firebird, Mozilla and Netscape, which
] provides a convenient way to examine Creative Commons
] licenses embedded in web pages. It's at least twice as
] good as View Source.
]
] When license RDF is detected, mozCC does two things.
] First, it scans for license information pertaining to
] the current web page and places relevant icons on the
] status bar. Second, it enables a button on the toolbar
] which allows you to explore the parsed licensing
] metadata.

Browsers that understand content licensing are on the way. This type of licensing is great, but I fear the day my browser tells me I can't copy text from a page because I'm not permitted by its license. I have a feeling it will be Microsoft that brings me that nightmare.

mozCC - Mozilla Creative Commons Extension

] Snocap has been working on ways to identify songs, as
] they are traded through a file-swapping network,
] including using a technique called "audio
] fingerprinting," which monitors the sonic characteristics
] of music files.
]
] That fingerprinting tool could be integrated into the
] file-swapping software itself in several different ways,
] sources said. When a file is being downloaded, the
] software could check its "fingerprint" and then compare
] it against a database Snocap operates, for example.

Watch this closely. Microsoft was very aggressively going after patents in that area. If I'm correct, they could attack at will. This a perfect example of something that existed in 2000, could have been brought into the game then, and these guys are about to get screwed again.. Either that, or there is already a dialog between these guys and who already owns the technology. Somehow, I doubt that.

Sounds like they are looking for PRO like model for a survey based handling of decentralized p2p downloads. Survey based leeching licensing? I've thought about this often, but never came to any conclusions.

Napster's Fanning has Snocap-ped vision | CNET News.com

] Thus, at least according to this court, the more uncommon
] (and provocative) the context of the remixing, the less
] likely it is legal. Of course, this raises the question
] of how new contexts can ever become legal. Presumably, at
] some point in history, no one framed art. Then the first
] person came along and put a painting in a frame. Under
] the theories in Mirage and Munoz, that person would have
] been historically guilty of copyright infringement
] because the context of their remix was uncommon at the
] time.

This article is interesting and also deeply troubling. Apparently recontextualization of someone else's artistic work is a copyright infringement EVEN IF YOU PAID for the copy that you are recontextualizing unless there is a specific fair use exception. This is copyright law preventing artistic expression for no financial reason, but strictly to prevent expression.

LawGeek: We fought the Kuleshov effect and The Law won?

File sharing executive: "... we're dealing with a bunch of idiots."

Memo to Santa: these two need to find copies of "How To Win Friends ..." in their stockings.

Allow me to cite one of Powell's Rules: Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

Participants' Distrust Exposed in Piracy Battle

] If King remains a one-dimensional grainy black-and-white
] figure who utters the same sunny sound bite year after
] year until it's a cliche, it's because news networks
] won't pay for more, and researchers have been kept from
] delving deep into his papers to tell us something new
] about the Martin Luther King the man, not the statuette.
]
] And his family wants it that way.

And once again we are promoting science and the useful arts by creating economic incentives for people to engage in historical events by preventing people from talking about them.

You need a license to quote Martin Luther King Jr. (phillyBurbs.com)

] "Piracy is like terrorism today and it exists everywhere
] and it is a very dangerous phenomenon."

Coming soon: "Trademark dilution is the greatest threat that faces mankind today."

Intellectual property piracy is form of terrorism: WIPO chief

Jon Johansen (of DeCSS fame) has released code that strips DRM from Apple ACC audio format.

Mac Rumors has the straight dope:

] The application clearly piggybacks off of Apple's
] Quicktime player and patches the "quicktimempeg4.qtx"
] file of Windows' Quicktime. It then outputs this "raw AAC
] data" to a file while the original AAC file plays under
] Quicktime. The proposed theory is that the application
] intercepts the Decrypted AAC data from Quicktime after
] authorization has taken place, and saves out the
] resultant decrypted (de-DRM'd) AAC data.
]
] Based on limited testing from one user with Quicktime 6.4
] under Windows... the application does create DRM-free
] ".aac" files when Protected AAC files are played through
] Quicktime. These output files, however, are unplayable in
] their raw form in most players. The reason for this is
] that these files represents the true "raw" AAC data that
] has been passed through to Quicktime to play. All header
] information has been removed. To create playable files, a
] further packaging of the files is required to add the
] appropriate MPEG headers. But the application does work
] as suggested -- stripping DRM from your protected AAC
] files (though is not of any practical use in its current
] form).

"QTFairUse" .. Great name. Very to the point.

Umm.. I think this is where I say "here we go again.." ??

It will be interesting to see how Apple reacts.. Between this and the current iPod dirty secrets thing, they have a fair amount of pressure on them. I hope they don't do something stupid.

They should have been expecting this to happen at some point.. They likely have a strategy thought out already for dealing with this.

Mac Rumors: QTFairUse - iTunes Digital Rights Management (DRM) Circumvented?