The consensus machine
Technology & Sociology
6/12/2000; 1:02:39 PM "In fact, cyberspace is highly organised and even regulated, and not just for technical standards. What is unique about the Internet is not that it is ungoverned; it is that its regulation has emerged from the bottom up and not the top down."

Napster use survey takes heat off college students
Music & MP3
6/12/2000; 10:09:57 AM "In spite of the recording-industry hype decrying the legions of spoilt college students rapaciously downloading MP3 content and thereby contriving to take food from the mouths of starving artists like Metallica and Dr. Dre, a recent survey funded by the Pew Charitable Trust finds that the majority of those illegally downloading music are actually males between the ages of thirty and forty-nine." ...

"Interestingly, a sizeable portion of these 'freeloaders' were found to go out later and buy the music they had sampled on line, putting the lie to MPAA claims that piracy is about to bring civilisation to its knees. The RIAA is obsessed to the point of comedy with the frustration of having its rules broken, without considering whether such rules might be standing in the way of increased revenues."

Do 'Dissed' Teachers Have Case? Free Speech6/12/2000; 10:06:47 AM Teacher Review gathers feedback from college students about professors and allows other students to read it, providing a forum for student communication.Looking at reviews like this, one can well imagine that the teachers are trying to sue the people writing these reviews.Mostly I 'blog this because this shouldn't be an issue in Wired. This is just a forum for students to talk. Some of them are probably being libelous. We have laws for that. Underground 'zines have been doing this for decades. The professors are going to have to adjust to the fact that their students can and will communicate with each other.Such organized criticism from the students may be long overdue and just may solve the long-standing problem of professors who coast after aquiring that all-importent tenure. Barring libel, which is already illegal anyhow, professors have only their own performance to truly be afraid of.

Dan Gillmor: Technology creates threat to economy General IP Issues6/12/2000; 8:08:20 AM "`If we can't figure out how musicians and movie creators can make money in an era of widespread, unlimited copying, how will we prevent our entire economic system from collapsing when there's molecular manufacturing and even physical objects can be copied cheaply and widely?' says John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation."It pays to remember the endgame."The potential exists, then, for a world where the blueprints for everything -- maybe including your descendants -- are owned by other people. In that world, it will be illegal to own a molecular assembler, because it might be used to make physical goods based on a patented design for which you haven't paid. That's an extreme notion, but it's not as far-fetched as it sounds if current legal trends continue."

iCraveTV to re-launch in Fall Boundary Breakers6/12/2000; 7:39:27 AM (see previous stories on ICraveTV)"Internet broadcaster William Craig says some channels will still be offered free of charge, but the main focus of the service will be specialty channels like YTV, MuchMusic and ESPN... Viewers would pay $8 or $9 a month for packages of specialty channels."They'll also make more certain you're coming from Canada, where it is legal to re-broadcast public television signals.While I'd still like to see them challenged on the grounds that they are modifying the public television channels by adding advertisements to them, the subscription channels know what they are getting into when they provide this service and thus one must assume they are OK with it. So, while I'd still say their actions are a little shady, it's a significant improvement over their previous way of doing business.

Richard Stallman -- The Anatomy of a Trivial Patent Patents6/12/2000; 7:33:43 AM I missed this story while I was gone, but I think this article is vital for a non-technical person to understand why the techies get all upset about how obvious ideas are being patented. Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation and highly respected spokesperson for the Free Software movement (a subset of the Open Source movement that concentrates on freedom and not just free-in-price).Just to clarify, when you see something in the article like this:

using a computer, a computer display and a telecommunications link between the remote user's computer and the network web site,
This says they are using a server on a network.Please take my word for it when I say that what Richard Stallman says is no more and no less then what the patent says. He's not summarizing the claims, he's re-phrasing them.

X-Ray & Defenestration
LinkBack
6/12/2000; 7:28:39 AM My apologies to X-Ray Net for not being more prompt on the announcement, but it now has a page on the LinkBack system, and Defenstration Corner just joined and got a page today.

Cool 'blogs!

WWW Creater Slams Common Ad Practice
Content Integrity
6/11/2000; 3:54:13 PM Speaking at the International Advertising Association in London, [Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web] also slammed the practice of designing ads to look as if they are computer system messages. And he was positively scathing about the practice of attaching ads to email sent by users of Microsoft-owned Hotmail. "This either perverts or distorts the message", The Guardian reports him saying. Emphasis mine.

Parenting: Is Aol Worse Than TV? Technology & Sociology6/8/2000; 2:35:01 PM "As innocuous as [the accidental Instant Message] exchange [with my 11-year-old daughter's friend] been, it suggested a disturbing new truth: We no longer live alone. My wife and I and our two -- I like to think -- reasonably well-bred daughters have been joined by a supporting cast of dozens who have access to our home whenever the computer is turned on, thanks to such technological marvels as instant messaging and Buddy Lists."For this reason I run no instant messaging software. If e-mail isn't fast enough for you to get in touch with me... learn some more patience, please.Will Instant Messanging become as pervasive as telephones? Do we want them to be?