Will ISP's and campuses become fronts for the RIAA?

Verizon, RIAA in copyright showdown. Attorneys for Verizon and the music industry spar in court over whether to disclose the identity of a Kazaa subscriber who allegedly shared copies of more than 600 recordings. [CNET News.com]

Our campuses get many requests from RIAA, Medi-force, and the BSA (not the boy scouts) for such information.  The crux of this case is whether the procedures for subpoenas found under the DMCA should apply.  We should watch this ruling, even though it is in district court at the moment.

3:22:56 PM    

So, can political networks operate the same way?

The Economist: What does the Internet look like? Any effort to map the Internet is necessarily incomplete and out of date the moment it appears. Instead, Albert-Laslo Barabasi and his colleagues at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana, treat the net as though it were a natural phenomenon. [Tomalak's Realm]

The study says that treating all points against a virus has relatively little effect on the whole net as it is "scale free".  Treating a few important hubs, on the other hand, can impact the spread of a virus.

So, if you look at political networks, can you infer that affecting the important "hubs" will have the greatest impact on the behavior of the whole network?  If this is true, is tv advertising similar to innoculating PC's against a virus?

2:18:17 PM    

A Straw Man Exposes the Emperor?

Bill: Copyright Power to People. Another digital copyright bill debuts in Congress, this time seeking to expand consumer freedom to copy digital works for their own and others' not-for-profit use. Michael Grebb reports from Washington, D.C. [Wired News]

Given that this bill has no chance of seeing action this term, it does serve as a straw man to focus the differences between the consumers and producers on the important issue of copyright.  Too bad it won't receive adequate attention in this election cycle.

1:21:13 PM