Recording Industry Near Deal In [MP3.com] Suit Music & MP36/8/2000; 1:57:09 PM "Several major record companies are close to a deal that would end a copyright-infringement lawsuit against online music site MP3.com in return for a cash payment of more than $100 million, sources said yesterday."File that one under "expensive mistakes".Later in the article,

In a speech to members of Congress yesterday, Walt Disney Co. chief executive Michael Eisner urged lawmakers to consider requiring computer makers and Internet service providers to include in their products technology that would protect intellectual property from pirates. Eisner would like to see a system in which computers and ISPs would be programmed to check each digital copy of a movie or record for an electronic watermark before allowing a copy to be made or transfer to take place.

*shudder* I don't trust Disney with that sort of power over my computer.

Jeff's Weblog joins Linkback LinkBack6/8/2000; 1:40:38 PM Jeff's Weblog at the unforgettable URL of http://ican.editthispage.com has joined the LinkBack program; here's the page.(BTW, in case you're wondering why I announce these things, it's to give the program something to work with and make sure things are still working right.)The more the merrier!

'Invisible' web code infringes trademark Country Watch: Britain6/8/2000; 1:32:19 PM "A trademark is a trademark even if only a computer can read it, according to a UK high court ruling."The "invisible" web code in question is a META tag that tells search engines what's on the page... Mandata used Road Tech's (a competitor) trademarks in these tags so when people searched for Road Tech stuff, the search engines would return links to Mandata's page.While this ruling is not surprising, it's worth pointing out that Mandata's presumption that as long as no human viewed the trademarks that it would be OK is not necessarily too far off base. Computers have no legal existance (a computer can't break the law, only the user), so this may be the first case where a trademark violation occurred with only the violator involved. Trademarks were originally meant to protect brands from being diluted in mind-share-space, but this extend some protections into cyberspace as well.

Personal Data for Sale Privacy from Companies6/8/2000; 1:23:59 PM "From now on, when those scurvy dog Internet marketers want our personal and private information, maybe we should charge them for it. That ought to apply the brakes to the Net's privacy problem.... 'It's time for us as consumers to monetize our data,' says Charles Jennings, co-author of a new book on Internet privacy, The Hundredth Window. 'Think of this data as real money, because everybody in business does.'"I could get behind this. Rational laws could be written to enforce this. As a side-effect, by training people to think of personal data as valuable, and as their own data belonging to them, we'd go a long way towards winning the privacy war on any number of other fronts as well. After all, if you don't want to sell... don't. Works for me.I think most of us could be convinced to sell our data to some people, esp. if we could be assured those people wouldn't illegally share it. But I have a hard time believing we'll get thousands of dollars for it, unless the laws made to enforce whatever system would be created ensured strong and vigorous competition.

TVT Joins Anti-Napster Brigade
Music & MP3
6/8/2000; 8:39:48 AM "The lawsuit [against Napster], filed in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, seeks damages and an injunction barring the San Mateo, California-based company from allowing TVT's songs to be listed on directories that allow the music to be traded and ultimately downloaded onto a user's computer."

It's a pity that it just doesn't work that way. Napster-the-company can't ever make that guarentee. They don't have the MP3's. They can block "songs with Snoop in the title" from appearing in their search engine, but such songs will still be traded, just under different names.

One Page Protecting Yourself6/8/2000; 8:24:31 AM Applies to: Server ownersIf you want to prevent One Page from using your server's content, it may be possible to do so by blocking the IP address 208.50.163.174 or even the whole sub net.To determine the IP address for blocking yourself, use their live demo and then read your server logs for the source. Note that IP address I obtained did not nslookup to anything, so you will probably need to actually find the IP address (if it moves), rather then trying to ban the domain.

One Page
Boundary Breakers
6/8/2000; 8:20:26 AM One Page is a CallTheShots.com look-alike. (writeup)

One Page
Content Integrity
6/8/2000; 8:19:01 AM One Page is a service that appears to be a look-alike of CallTheShots.com, except that it has an easier user interface. Like CallTheShots.com, it allows you to pull content from any web page in the world and mix it arbitrarily with other content from web pages, without permission from any owners.

Copyrant General IP Issues6/8/2000; 7:42:30 AM Lookee lookee, Slashdot's starting to wake up a little and come out of script-kiddie law land (or Katz law land, only slightly more sensible). The comments on the article are still atrociously ignorant, but the article itself isn't half bad... just too long. (This coming from the king of "too long".)"If you buy a car, you are almost certainly protected by state 'lemon laws'. They were enacted to prevent the abuses that were extremely common, and so you acquired certain minimum rights in the purchase transaction which cannot be waived: if the car breaks down all the time, you can return it and get a refund plus your expenses paid. No matter what the sales contract says. . . We haven't got anything of the sort with software purchases."And this is as much as I really want to say about the Microsoft decision... I had hoped that Microsoft's fear of being broken up would have given it an incentive to not pull the stunts referred to in this Slashdot article. If I own a license to a piece of software and my hard drive wipes out, I expect to be able to re-install. I think that behavior will look an awful lot like something only a monopoly could hope to get away with in the consumer market. (It might make a certain amount of sense on the corporate side, but not for home users.)

Judge bars Bidder's Edge Web crawler on eBay Content Integrity6/8/2000; 7:22:28 AM 'In his ruling, Whyte scoffed at the broader implications of the lawsuit. "The parties submit a variety of declarations asserting that the Internet will cease to function if (they lose the dispute)," Whyte wrote. "The court suspects that the Internet will not only survive but continue to grow and develop regardless of the outcome of this litigation."'If every court says that, the court suspects incorrectly. Consider earlier in the article this pronouncement from the judge:'"It is undisputed that eBay's server and its capacity are personal property, and that Bidder's Edge's searches use a portion of that property," Whyte wrote in his order. "Even if its searches use only a small amount of eBay's computer system capacity, Bidder's Edge has nonetheless deprived eBay of the ability to use that portion of its personal property for its own purposes. The law recognizes no such right to use another's personal property."'Well... that certainly has far-reaching consequences considering the alternative, that Bidder's Edge could force E-Bay to allow them to search as they liked.The ruling is probably correct overall, considering the alternative, but the judge's religious faith in the abilities of the Internet is disturbing. In a judge, such faith is self-un-fulfilling.