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 Monday, January 13, 2003
Valdis Krebs always has interesting things to discover using social networks and databases. The fact that people who read political books tend to fall into 2 camps is not too unusual but the abolute separation is pretty surprising. It would appear that the 'right' side has fewer books in the cluster than the 'left' side. Wonder what that means, if anything? 11:12:09 PM 
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Boucher: DMCA-Fixing Bill "Will Win". The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is "one of the biggest barriers to innovation" ever adopted, says Representative Rick Boucher. To tear down those barriers, he has introduced a bill to decriminalize fair use copying. Richard Koman talks to the congressman. [O'Reilly Network Articles]
This is one of the more hopeful developments. Maybe they will get it and fix a bad bill. Stranger things have happened. Read the article. I love it when Congressmen actually sound articulate and discuss well-reasoned arguments. Most of them are capable of these things but you very seldom see them exercised. 10:57:11 PM
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Apple responds to proposed Microsoft settlement [MacCentral]
MS NEVER does a deal that actually hurts it and this one looks to help it. Only 25% of settlements involving vouchers ever get claimed. Look at the CD Cartels settlement. Judges should throw out settlements based on vouchers. They do not settle anything. But look at the details of the MS settlement. 1/3 of the oncliamed amount reverts to MS, 2/3rds goes to the schools. Sounds great until you see that of that 2/3rds, 1/3rd must be spent on MS products. So in this settlement, 2/3rds of the unclaimed amount benefits MS. How does this help the comsumer or anyone else but the lawyers? Isn't justice sweet? 10:51:35 PM
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A Patent On P2P Spoofing?. Bringing together two of our favorite issues, bad patents and P2P networks, it seems that Overpeer, one of the popular companies for Hollywood to hire to "protect" their content online has filed a patent for spoofing content on P2P networks. I guess it's no surprise that a company focused on stopping the sharing of intellectual property would file a series of patents for its own use.
[Techdirt]
Right. Get a patent for the idea of misleading people about the contents of a file. How does this pass the novelty aspect? It also seems kind of obvious. But what do I know. The Patent Office has been getting to be a joke when it comes to high tech patents and intellectual property. 10:43:44 PM
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Should We Be Scared Of RFID Chips?. As with just about any technology, there are both good and bad ways that it can be used. Last week we ran a story about stores starting to experiment with RFID chips to monitor products within the store. Now, Declan McCullough worries what happens when the chips are widespread and continue to work outside the store. Picture the thief with an RFID scanner who can stroll down the block taking inventory of what's in your house. Or, what happens when RFID tag logs are subpoenaed to track your whereabouts? There are plenty of questions to be raised that need to be considered early on. I agree with Declan that the technology can be very useful, and we shouldn't run away in fear - but it is important to consider the implications of how it can be used beforehand, to determine ways to combat questionable uses. The trick here is finding the fine line between figuring out how to make sure the technology is responsibly used without blaming the technology or requiring all sorts of draconian and backwards lawmaking that we've seen with other technologies. For example, a potential solution would be to make scanners easily available to consumers that let them have control to turn off any RFID tag once it's left a store. This is a simple solution that solves many of the problems, while giving the decision-making power to the consumer.
[Techdirt]
I'd like scanners that turn them off. Will the government allow that, seeing as how they would be so useful in the fight against crime? If you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear, right? Of course, these devices would be available to criminals so really only honest people will be at a disadvantage. 10:38:26 PM
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The End of 'The End of Free'. You may have read that "the end of free is near" for content on the web. There is even a high profile blog devoted to it. But I beg to differ. Consider this: The number of amateur sites and blogs far outweighs the number of heavyweights and big media content providers. In fact the amount of quality content since the wide-spread emergence of blogs is so great and continues to grow, that the actual content provided by the big players is negligible by comparison. But the story goes, that these higher quality writers still need to make a living. Sure, I'm not arguing that, but there are just as many high quality writers who have their own blogs who make money doing something else for their primary income.
And when you take the advent of smart news aggretators like Amphetadesk, it only makes the task of getting the news you need that much easier. When a site starts charging for content, the Net effect will treat such charged content as censorship and route around it. So what is my prediction? I'm predicting the opposite of other more prominent techno-pundits: 2003 will be the year of the end of "the end of free". Instead we are going to see a massive proliferation of amateur writing permeate the net in unprecendented ways. And with increasingly sophisticated filtering and search tools, we will be able to keep up with the best of the best based on our own web-of-trust and customized reputation systems. I also expect that the best writers will be able to get payed for their work through pay-pal and other voluntary tipping mechanisms. I know of several writers who have managed to get some money from the very kind and loyal readers. [infoAnarchy]
The comments to the piece are also interesting. 2003 is pretty early for this though. [Seb's Open Research]
It would be a whole lot better to be able to make a living without having to pass the hat but a lot of other entertainers exist by doing just that. 10:18:57 PM
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The EFF has released version 2 of its report, Unin .... The EFF has released version 2 of its report, Unintended Consequences: Four Years under the DMCA. Excerpt: "In practice, the anti-circumvention provisions have been used to stifle a wide array of legitimate activities, rather than to stop copyright piracy. As a result, the DMCA has developed into a serious threat to three important public policy priorities: Section 1201 chills free expression and scientific research...[it] jeopardizes fair use...[and it] impedes competition and innovation." [FOS News]
One of the things I would really like to see happen is for COngress to amend some of these faults in the DMCA. It will be interesting to see which politicians are paid off or not. 10:03:41 PM
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The Institute of Physics has digitized the past is .... The Institute of Physics has digitized the past issues of all its journals, back to 1874, and put them online in searchable, interlinked PDF files. This comes to more than 500 volume-years of journals and over 100,000 articles, including some of the early works of Schrödinger and Boltzmann. Subscribers to the historical archive have access to full-text. Non-subscribers can run searches and read abstracts. Copies of the archive are also for sale. For more information, see the press release, visit the archive, or run a search. [FOS News]
Very nice idea but the pricing scheme seems out of whack. I can get access to an article from 1951 for $30. Otherwise I need to get a subscription but the publisher has very efw available for personal subscription. The institutional rate is something like $3000 a year. I think that scientists will not want to publish in journals that only very rich institutions can afford. Journals charging such huge amounts will be overwhelmed by journals with better models that allow greater access to the works. Authors of scientific works want as many people to read them as possible. They will go where people can read. Many scientific journals are moving to personal subscriptions under $100 with free access to everyone else for anything over 6 months old or so. This is the model that will be much more successful. 9:56:48 PM
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