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Saturday, May 18, 2002 |
How Copyright Became Controversial (PDF)
"How did copyright become controversial? In a phrase, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Although many of legal controversies that have swirled since its October 1998 passage trace their roots to other elements of copyright law, the DMCA created a new feature in copyright law that has crystallized why so many academics, librarians, computer users, and technology entrepreneurs object to what they regard as the overreaching nature of copyright law....
By linking the concept of anti-circumvention to copyright infringement, the DMCA starkly raises new questions about the nature of copyright law. Originally designed to prevent copying, it now also constrains access, including access to materials that one has purchased, like a DVD or a computer. While examining the justification for doing this as a form of contract law is beyond the scope of this essay, I do suggest this fundamental change in copyright law forces a reevaluation of its grounding."
I'm not sure how I missed this one before, but it's an excellent overview of the current controversy. Definite handout material.
I found this paper through the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog, a wonderful site that I often forget to visit since it's not in my news aggregator.
Side note: check out Charles' Dublin Core meta tags at the top of the source code! Excellent! I plan to use DC-Dot to generate mine.
8:38:52 PM Permanent link here
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Hey, Andy B. - check out XML Cooktop, "a free development environment for XML, DTD, and XSLT documents." Interesting, yes?
8:24:16 PM Permanent link here
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Good idea - Adam Wendt is using his Radio Outliner to maintain his What I'm Rreading list. If I had more than two categories in mine (read and someday-I'll-get-around-to-reading-these), I would do this, too. I am envious of his reading time!
"Tis is a perfect example of what you can do with the outliner. Once I read something a few key presses will move it to a new list of stuff read and I can add links to my review. Once something gets delivered from Amazon a few keys will categorize it in the reading list. I'm really starting to like the outliner."
I'm still trying to figure out uses for my outliner....
Addendum: Rick Klau has documented Managing Your Links List in Radio using the Radio Outliner, which is another great idea!
7:49:41 PM Permanent link here
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"Over on one of the MUDs I hang out on someone yesterday mentioned a cool site called Lost in Translation. It shows the effect of sending text through numerous translationors and what you get from them." [life - listed chronologically]
Well, that description was just too intriguing, so I had to try this site for myself. Here's my test:
"Papa don't preach, I'm in trouble deep
Papa don't preach, I've been losing sleep
But I made up my mind, I'm keeping my baby, oh
I'm gonna keep my baby, mmm"
became
"_ papa not to anticipate, papa of the difficulty of est, to that not to anticipate deeply, exists the dream of i est Schlusser, but I t the average alcohol, prend of I t my boy, oh -, of that my boy of the squeeze, mmm"
How did it know I was thinking of this song in the context of Kelly Osbourne?! Spooky....
2:46:35 PM Permanent link here
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Rob's Amazing Poetry Generator
" It lets you put in a url and will generate poetry from it." [via jenett.radio, via life - listed chronologically]
In order to stay hip and on the bandwagon, here's TSL in poetry:
"The greatest symbol of
the pictures on your Knees
and CD.... With the most unusual detective
agency
CIA , or transferred onto Soribada, according
to do not
necessarily
to
gauge their own
merit, just like it
from Alan A.
winner If a music but did you
could have to TSL! Archives Posts
more These are or
137 million people, who are doing, this. is critical. Using inexpensive
and listen to circulate local history within eyesight
to
take
a while everyone that
libraries Audit commission report
The top
of
viral media Of EtherPEG, its way
the latest
business people use
an attack on computers The
box, with accompanying headache,
only which way
onto Soribada, according
to do find themselves
out to invert
the libraries Photocopy Research department
of downloading
music CD Released on the next who
Becomes a great information about
him but then I would,
wake for the Slashdot
via
Steven] Actually, many
conferences but then
added with a GPS Homer
LibraryWork:SLSSLS
Calendar Oracle Projects:VIC! IllinoisMy Past Life:
Cybrary,including Tim sat down with the
field of a tale of EtherPEG, its
hard drive...."
2:34:20 PM Permanent link here
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Paul Hardwick makes my day by noting that TechNetCast will be posting the MP3 downloads of the keynote sessions from last week's O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. Four of them are already available, including Tim O'Reilly's The Shape of Things to Come. This is fantastic, especially since you can save the MP3s and listen to them any time, anywhere!
Side note: I find myself posting a lot less about privacy issues than I thought I would, mainly because of Paul's Privacy Digest site. He does an incredible job of tracking articles and information about all aspects of privacy - personal, corporate, government, digital... even the kitchen sink's privacy. In fact, his collection is so comprehensive that I was quite surprised to learn that he's working off a dial-up connection! If you're at all interested in this topic, I highly recommend tracking his site.
Second side note: Since I've been reading Paul's site in my news aggregator, I hadn't noticed the link to Bloghop until today. What a fun site! I'm having to tear myself away from the site in order to get anything else done today!
"Your friendly neighborhood blog portal. Bloghop was made with one thing in mind -- to help readers find good blogs. It's all about the readers, man. If you find a blog you like, rate it, and it'll float to the top for the next reader."
12:54:23 PM Permanent link here
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"A September 1999 report, "The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?" written for the National Intelligence Council (CIA.gov/nic) by Library of Congress' Federal Research Division (FRD) analyst Rex A. Hudson, predicted that "suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House," and pointed out that "Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters."
While only two sentences in a 100+ page graylit report trying to second guess terrorist's methods, it sharply contradicted National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's statement Thursday that, 'I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.' " [LISNews.com]
12:14:02 PM Permanent link here
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"The PaceBook's unique design allows the seemingly regular notebook to be turned into a LCD PC or a Tablet PC in a second. This means that while you are on the road you do not need to forsake the benefits of a desktop; a separate keyboard, proper keyboard-monitor distance, and a correct viewing angle for the screen....
The PaceBook is the first Tablet Notebook computer. It is a notebook computer that can also be used as an LCD PC and as a Tablet computer while walking." [via Slashdot]
Check out the gee-whiz pictures, one of which shows a tiny little digital camera that fits on the top of the tablet. It's cute, but it looks like something I'd accidentally break off in a matter of minutes. It does Firewire and Ethernet out of the box, with a touchscreen, wireless keyboard, and DVD drive, all for just over $2000 for a home user. I don't see any pricing off-hand for government entities, which is what I assume libraries would be considered as.
In a first for computer advertising that I have seen, renewed life is also highlighted as a benefit because "even when the PaceBook is old, it is still useful, as a kitchen TV , in-car DVD player, Internet Appliance or eBook." Curiously, though, there are no connections on the device for turning it into a TV. Go figure.
The PaceBlade site touts the following potential uses:
- Traveling business people - this could definitely work given how we already use laptops and PDAs, but I don't know any businessperson that would use it in the way shown in the picture (thereby allowing anyone within eyesight to read what's on the screen)
- Health care organizations - based on Lori Bell's presentation at SLS last week, I think this is a very viable market
- Insurance, Realty, and Education - nothing groundbreaking here that a laptop can't do, but it could certainly make the process easier
You can read more about the Pacebook in an extensive AnandTech review. Unfortunately, Slashdot readers note some big problems. For starters, it "ships with no handwriting recognition software, making text input when in tablet PC mode excruciating." Integration of the Windows XP for Tablets operating system is on the horizon to solve this problem, which is good, but the PaceBook runs on Windows software only, which is bad. And that's just for starters, so read the Slashdot comments for more criticism.
Still, I'm intrigued by the potential for this device. On the one hand, the PaceBook seems like overkill for the technology I would need to circulate local history within the community, but on the other hand its 600Mhz processor is definitely underkill. The second generation of this product might be useful for gathering local history if they fix some of the problems noted above. At that point, it might also become useful for mobile reference librarians, especially since the AnandTech review notes that "future accessories may include IrDA adapters and bar code scanners." I'll have to keep an eye on this one.
11:33:17 AM Permanent link here
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Communicating Clothes
"France Telecom has invented a flexible fiber optic screen that can be embedded in clothes, allowing static or animated graphics to be displayed....
The research department of the French telecom operator has designed a prototype for a flexible screen made of woven optical fibers capable of downloading and displaying static or animated graphics (such as logos, texts, patterns, scanned images etc) directly on clothes.
Clothes utilizing the new technology can now act as a graphical communication interface, displaying visual information in real time, and offering an interface to telecom services such as the Internet, m-commerce and 3G mobile phones. France Telecom sees the technology also finding its way into other spaces such as public safety (firemen fighting large fires), advertising, the automotive industry, interior decoration (furniture and wall fitting applications), fashion (development of fiber optic fabrics), leisure activities (personalized signing on roller blades at night) and more.
The screen is like a simple fabric, onto which users can download all kinds of visuals from Internet and fixed desktop (computer) or mobile terminals (PDAs, laptops). The development of the prototype includes a suite of software with which users can create and publish their own illustrations, drawings and texts online via a dedicated server. A flexible remote-control hidden in a lapel can trigger the display of visuals stored on the garment and will enable new visuals to be selected from a server over the Internet. It also handles effects such as scrolling, intensity or brightness, and interaction with sounds and gestures....
According to the Gartner Group, 60% of the population in developed countries are likely to own a communicating garment by 2010, so don't be too surprised if in a matter of years, the mobile phone logo craze is dead as a dodo while everyone will be downloading the latest graphics for their always-online jacket." [infoSync]
At first I couldn't imagine this technology becoming mainstream in the way the pictures on the infoSync site suggest, but then I started thinking about our six-year old, Brent. Right now he loves Pokemon t-shirts, and he would probably love a shirt that could change which character it's displaying whenever his mood changes. Stupid, sure, but then so are those neon light tubes you see on the cars of teenagers, and I'm starting to see more and more of those. Who knows what silly uses will take hold of our imaginations.
This also puts a new spin on the term wearable computing if the video screen and the keyboard are both embedded in your clothing!
10:11:43 AM Permanent link here
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In other news, I owe apologies to Andrew Ducker for mis-spelling his name, to Hugh Madison for changing his gender, and to Ernest for failing spectacularly to include him in my original list of legal eagles. All in one day, too! However, corrections have been made, and hopefully regular sleep will prevent future mistakes!
9:55:29 AM Permanent link here
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Back to posting after a rough day yesterday. I was worried I was coming down with a cold, but I think it was exhaustion tinged with an overall feeling of sadness. Last night I went to a wake for the son of a co-worker. He was only 26, and he had been accepted to law school for the fall. I've never met him, but I felt like I had because of the way his proud mom talked about him at work.
What keeps running through my mind is that parents should never outlive their children. My heart goes out to the family.
9:47:58 AM Permanent link here
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© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
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