Tragedy Haunts Film on Afghan Diaspora. Sometimes it seems to Jawed Wassel's Afghan-American friends in New York that his ghost hovers over his unfinished film, "FireDancer." By Dinitia Smith. [New York Times: Movies]

It May Sound Like Faust, but the Body Is the Lure. By the end, after an hour and a half of wondering just what this strenuously unconventional movie is supposed to be, you discover that the answer is as conventional as can be. By A. O. Scott. [New York Times: Movies]

Supreme Court Hears Copyright Challenge

No member of the Supreme Court had a good word to say today for the 1998 law that added 20 years to all existing copyrights. But that did not make the job any easier for Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford Law School, who faced an uphill battle to persuade the justices that the extension, which Congress adopted at the behest of the Walt Disney Company and other powerful corporate copyright holders, was not only bad policy but unconstitutional.

Hadn't Congress granted copyright extensions numerous times since the country's earliest years, the Justices wanted to know. Didn't this challenge to the latest extension necessarily call into question the validity of the major rewriting of federal copyright law in 1976? Wouldn't the result of accepting Professor Lessig's theory mean "chaos" in the world of intellectual property, Justice Stephen G. Breyer asked.

That was possible, Professor Lessig conceded

[New York Times: Technology]

I have a new column up in the Online Journalism Review. It's about personal storytelling, and it profiles the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley. [JD's New Media Musings]

According to a recent report, consumers believe not enough online content takes advantage of speedy Internet access to make the monthly fee worthwhile. As a longtime dial-up user who often waits for bandwidth-heavy pages to load, I beg to differ. [osOpinion via The All Electric Media Weblog]

SEC Probing AOL-Oxygen Deal... [The All Electric Media Weblog]

Editors of the Lawmeme blog who attended the Supreme Court Eldred hearing this morning have already blogged their first impressions of the arguments.

Justice Breyer was particularly hard on the government's position. He brought in a number of economic arguments. Basically, he made the point that the expected value of the extended copyright was so small as to be virtually zero. He also asked whether the governmen could re-copyright Ben Johnson. The government did not say "no." Justice Stevens appeared skeptical of the government's arguments. The government made much of the inequities of not providing retroactive and prospective extension together. Scalia questioned whether the inequities argument could be turned around. J. Breyer, in essence, answered "yes" by claiming that existing copyright owners get all the benefit and, inequitably, prospective copyright owners get very little benefit. . . .

I'm told that people started lining up for tickets to the Eldred hearing yesterday at suppertime; only 60 non-ticketed members of the public were admitted. Maybe they should move the Supreme Court to a football stadium. [Donna Via Boing Boing Blog]

Fencing Off the Public Domain. It's the place where great ideas go to rest until somebody figures out a new way to use them. But strict copyright laws are making it harder for works to enter the public domain. By Brad King. [Wired News] [The All Electric Media Weblog]

Congressman James Sensenbrenner was interviewed for NPR's story on the Eldred case, which is being argued in the US Supreme Court today. He explained one reason for Congress' extensive support for the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension law was a desire to make the term of United States copyright the same as European terms.

Sorry, but I'm not buying that. . . . even if the Bono act was passed to make the US laws "similar to European laws" it misses the constitutional point. Our Constitution says Congress can pass laws related to copyrights and patents to "promote the useful arts and sciences" but only for "limited terms." European countries, I gather, are not similarly constrained. …

[Ernie the Attorney]

Regulators Poised to Block EchoStar's Purchase of Hughes [DirectTV]: FCC Chairman Michael Powell is among those opposing the deal, these people said. [Chris Van Buskirk's ITV Weblog]