Elian Personal Notes6/5/2000; 7:17:37 AM April 24, 2000: Since you asked, I'd mostly like to ditto the Curmudgeon's opinions on Elian, in as much as you can call them opinions.The only thing I will say is I started out agreeing with the Miami relatives at first, before I knew the whole story. However, also before I knew the whole story, they completely turned me off with their treatment of Elian. A loving family would have shielded him from those cameras, not paraded him. Later understanding of the facts brought me more in line with the rest of America.My point was that even before I knew the relatives in Miami were distant, the Miami relatives had already completely turned me off. They acted in a totally reprehensible matter. Not that Fidel is or was any better, but you expect better behavior from those who consider themselves superior to Fidel.
Clinton and Gore's big promise looks like a diversion... Digital Divide6/5/2000; 7:17:34 AM April 24, 2000: Regarding the Digital Divide, "'People make it seem like it's a racial issue when it's not,' Ellison says of recent efforts by the Clinton administration to address gaps in computer technology access. Rather than concentrate on race, Ellison would like for more attention to be paid to the influence of income disparity on the digital divide. 'This is about economics,' he says."It may be noble for the administration to be concerned about this, but solving the wrong problem is no good.
AOL Founder: Censor the Net? Ha! Censorship6/5/2000; 7:17:31 AM April 24, 2000: "Communist Vietnam, China, and even the U.S. government should think again if they believed they could censor the Internet, the founder of America Online said Monday."Maybe true, maybe not, but they can definately make our lives miserable, so lets stop gloating and start working in Congress. This false security stuff bothers me.
More artists to sue Napster says Metallica lawyer Music & MP36/5/2000; 7:17:29 AM April 24, 2000: "Expect more headline acts to follow Metallica's lead and launch legal action against controversial software developer Napster - so says the metal band's lawyer, Howard King."I think there's still some confusion going on here. Napster-the-company is doing nothing illegal. All it does is offer software and provide a free indexing service. You may want to sue Napster-the-software... but you can't sue a piece of software.And if you really want to nail Napster-the-company for enabling extensive illegal activities, then you better broaden your suit. Along with Apache and ftp server developers, and with the people who run IRC and the people who make the software to interface with it, like mIRC, you'd better add any other piece of software that is primarily or often used for illegal purposes. Are you going to nail Netscape for providing a newsgroup reader that allows anybody with an internet connection regardless of age to view porn?The whole "Napster-the-company is responsible for our [hypothetical] lost income" bit only makes sense in isolation from the rest of the world. Applied elsewhere it's pretty scary.Watch 'dem lines... they bite.Alternate view: Hail, Metallica! in Salon.
Despite 'Piracy,' CD Sales UP Music & MP36/5/2000; 7:17:27 AM April 24, 2000: "the industry has been claiming rather loudly this year that digital piracy would hurt music retail. Despite the fact that the issue might not come up as focal point in the lawsuit, the fact that people are purchasing CDs at a higher rate than they were in 1999 is going to have to be addressed in the court of public opinion."It's really only a PR issue that the industry grew, because the RIAA is right: "'If we grew 3 percent as an industry, maybe we could have grown twice as much,' [Alex Walsh, the vice president of market research for the RIAA] said. 'There is just no way to tell how much we could have lost. There is no scientific or empirical way to determine how much more music we could have sold.'" True. Still, this points to the dangers of making a snap argument that's convenient now but not thinking about the future: At some point in one of these lawsuits, the RIAA or one of its representatives will be wanting to put monetary damages on the losses, and I'm sure this will be thrown back in their face. I will if nobody else does "smile" It should be thrown back at the RIAA, because it is correct. We're all arguing from ignorance, and bluster serves no purpose.
PayLar$.com Music & MP36/5/2000; 7:17:25 AM April 21, 2000: "PayLars.com gives Metallica fans the chance to make a donation to the band to make up for all the revenue the band thinks it's losing to online MP3 trading. http://www.paylars.com/more_info.asp">Read more about what August Nelson is doing with the PayLars.com website."You can use this site to make a non-guilt-admission donation to Metallica for any MP3s you may have. As the site owner says, "'It's strange that any band would choose to sue its fans, private companies, and schools without at least asking if anybody would be willing to pay,' said Mark Erickson, CEO of August Nelson, the technology development firm that created the site."On other Metallica lawsuit topics, Indiana University has banned Napster again.
Doc Searls: Abolish Intellectual Property Laws General IP Issues6/5/2000; 7:17:23 AM April 21, 2000: "You know, quite frankly, I mean I'm going to go step way out here, I happen to think that if we got rid of all intellectual property law, and all copyright law for that matter, and just simply said, "Anybody can do whatever they want, we all inform each other," that's the virtue of being human, you know? If I inform you, you're different. And if you inform me, I'm different than I used to be."I understand where he's coming from but this suggestion goes way, way to far. Abolishing all IP law leaves us not free but defenseless. In re Dave Winer's recent troubles, if there were no IP laws, suppose Conxion just decided to block everything Dave says about them, realtime? Block the e-mails, snip those chunks out of Scripting News, change any image they want, etc. Dave couldn't claim copyright infringement, couldn't claim anything because he would have no property interest. With no IP laws we are defenseless in the face of those with the power to change things without our permission.This is the basic reason why integrity is so importent, and without some form of IP, we can kiss integrity goodbye. Unless we walk up to the server and extract something off of the disk, we'll never know for certain what somebody originally said. (There are ways to detect tampering with a message, but that doesn't mean you can reconstruct the original.)
Maryland may be first to enact UCITA
UCITA
6/5/2000; 7:17:21 AM April 21, 2000: "Although Maryland is the second state to approve UCITA, it may be the first state to legally enact the measure, according to a spokeswoman at the governor's office. The act, if signed Tuesday, will take effect latter this year."
Press & Weblogs... Personal Notes6/5/2000; 7:17:19 AM April 19, 2000: I was thinking about the essay... suppose Dave Winer declared Scripting News to be a member of the press. It's not unreasonable. Would Conxion's attempt to censor him attracted more attention from the more mainstream press?More on that thought-train... USIS -- Issues of Democracy, February 1997 -- Goodale on First Amendment and Press Freedom: "As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart explained in a 1974 speech, the 'primary purpose' of the First Amendment was 'to create a fourth institution outside the government as an additional check on the three official branches' (the executive branch, the legislature and the judiciary)." Hey, think about this for a second. Is iRights a member of the press, even a little? If that makes sense, then look! I'm part of the fourth branch of the government!The Internet brings government By The People, For The People to the masses again... one way of looking at it is the scaling of the fourth branch of the government to handle the 250 million+ people who now live in this country.This brings a new twist to weblogs that cover politics or political issues... I am fulfilling a civic duty to participate in the Republic with iRights! (Now if THAT doesn't add some legitimacy to the weblog movement, nothing will.)
Gnutella Links General IP Issues6/5/2000; 7:17:16 AM April 19, 2000: Jacob Levy needs a weblog... here's a smattering of Napster & Gnutella links he posted in a DG message.I actually can't understand the Upside article in those links; the article uses Napster to mean both the software and the company and doesn't clarify the two very well. For instance, the big paragraph I don't understand:
Yet, because "online services" and "network access" are such broad terms, and because Napster functions both as a peer-to-peer client and as a server, it could very well meet the definition of a "service provider."Napster-the-company is not a peer-to-peer client, but they may be a server of search results. Napster-the-software may be both server and client, but software can't be a "service provider", which has to be a person or corporation (as "service provider" here is a role a human or company plays, not just "a thing which provides service"). My attempts to tease out what that paragraph means have been futile.Like I said yesterday, enough with the companies with products with the same name!