Red Herring Trend #2 - IP General IP Issues 11/1/2000; 1:00:11 PM 'In the year 2001 the debate over intellectual property and what constitutes fair use will intensify. Copyright owners on many levels -- from artists to multinational corporations -- will continue to aggressively protect their intellectual property by suing pirates, while consumers will find swapping illegal files so easy as to be irresistible. 'The programmers creating these file-swapping programs have no qualms about what they're unleashing.

Clinton, GOP Compromise On Net Filtering Free Speech 11/1/2000; 12:52:35 PM 'Although the government spending bill carrying a clause requiring Internet filtering on school and library computers that are federally funded is wrapped up in partisan melees, the White House and Republican lawmakers appear to have reached common ground on the filtering question.' Turns out the Administration's objections centered on exactly which Federal dollars are to be spent on software to prevent children from seeing Bad Things.

People Won't Pay For Privacy Privacy from Companies 11/1/2000; 12:45:57 PM 'Zero Knowledge Systems seems to have finally realized a harsh truth: Internet users don't like to pay extra to protect their privacy. 'The Montreal-based firm won acclaim for its sophisticated identity-cloaking techniques, but very few people appear to have paid the $49.95 a year to cloak their online activities from prying eyes.' Americans talk the talk, but they won't walk the walk of caring about privacy.

BMG-Napster Deal Details Music & MP3 11/1/2000; 12:31:56 PM OK, so we're getting some more details on the BMG-Napster deal... 'The settlement calls for Bertelsmann's e-commerce group (BECG) to develop a paid membership service that would be separate from Napster's free 38 million member-strong free online swapping service. Presumably, Napster users will be able to purchase titles from Bertelsmann Music Group's (BMG's) entire catalog of music, while also being allowed to freely swap other titles on another area of the Web site.

Suit Turns the Tables on Patent Critic Patents 11/1/2000; 9:59:30 AM 'An outspoken critic of the patent system, Aharonian regularly blasts software patents that he views as overly broad. One such patent holder has struck back. 'TechSearch -- a Chicago-based company that obtains ownership of patents and then seeks to enforce them -- filed a patent infringement suit against Aharonian in July. The company claims he is infringing its so-called "

The Healthiest Addiction Personal Commentary 10/31/2000; 3:34:41 PM I've been reading Expanded Universe by Robert Heinlein, notable mostly for the commentary he includes between the stories that talk about when and why they were written.  I was reading a passage that has lept out at me before, but this time I wanted to take the time to share it. He's talking about a time early in his career. I'm chopping a lot out to conform with fair use, please read the book (on page 92) to see the full quote.

Government Property Patents 10/31/2000; 2:41:56 PM 'Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington devoted the Oct. 14 Republican radio address to a question that has been strangely absent from the current presidential campaign – how best to keep innovation alive in the technology sector. Most of the senator's address was devoted to defending his home-state innovator, Microsoft (MSFT) . But in the course of his defense of the software giant, Gorton articulated a principle that is far more fundamental – and absolutely correct.

Are you paranoid enough? Surveillance and Privacy from Government 10/31/2000; 1:20:32 PM 'This brings me to the whole point of this: you are not being paranoid enough.  The FBI managed to get a search warrant based on logs from a firewall, that showed my IP only connecting, not even logging in, hours after news of the cracking had appeared on news sites.  If they can get a search warrant this easily, your data is not safe, sitting on your hard drive.

Bertelsmann, Napster to Develop Music Service Music & MP3 10/31/2000; 12:48:57 PM 'Entertainment giant Bertelsmann AG (BTGGga.D) and controversial song-swap company Napster (news - web sites) Inc. said on Tuesday they formed an alliance to develop a new secure file-sharing music service.' Also see an e-mail posted onto the Napster Weblog from the Bertelsmann Chairman: 'We have entered into a strategic alliance with the Internet-based music exchange Napster. Under the terms of the deal, Bertelsmann will support Napster financially in the establishment of a legal business model.

Intel Moving to Block IA-64 Cloning via Patents Patents10/30/2000; 1:03:03 PM ...'Rather than submit garden-variety claims to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Intel is trying to patent the functions carried out by specific instructions.'This is great for my essay; I've been writing about how software patents should be banned for trying to patent speech... now here's a company trying the root concepts of a language. (Technically, they aren't trying to patent the "