BIBLIOTHEKE

It’s real spooky when CIOs advocate locking down the internet and greatly restricting access and the freedom to make even little scripts:

Let’s make all end user devices nonprogrammable. No one can connect to the Internet on a machine that creates code. If you want a computer to do programming, you would have to be licensed. We could license software companies to purchase programmable machines, which would be completely traceable along with the code created on them.

Like I said, spooky, although certainly far from realistic.

Fortunately, we have folks like Cory Doctory to provide great arguments for why the problems are something we just need to learn to deal with. “All complex ecosystems have parasites,” he says, and these “parasites” are natural and unavoidable. The truth is that we can never get rid of these problems and draconian policies won’t do anything but hurt the public instead of the “parasites.” Also note:

In Hollywood, your ability to make a movie depends on the approval of a few power-brokers who have signing authority over the two-hundred-million-dollar budgets for making films. As far as Hollywood is concerned, this is a feature, not a bug. Two weeks ago, I heard the VP of Technology for Warners give a presentation in Dublin on the need to adopt DRM for digital TV, and his money-shot, his big convincer of a slide went like this:

“With advances in processing power, storage capacity and broadband access… EVERYBODY BECOMES A BROADCASTER!”

Heaven forfend.

It’s completely out in the open that these companies are explicitly interested in restricting the rights of content creators. One moment they cite the pain and suffering piracy causes content creators and then turn right around and state that they only want a world where content creators play by their rules. It kind of makes you wonder who the “parasites” really are…

Timothy K. Armstrong sat in and has a long post detailing the argument. SCOTUSblog also has good info, including:

Several members of the Court — but especially Justices Antonin Scalia, Stephen G. Breyer and David H. Souter — seemed troubled about the potential impact of a tightening of copyright law on small inventors — “the guy in the garage,” as Souter put it.

Breyer wondered whether a lawyer for a developer — for example, the inventor of the iPod — could assure his client that he could continue to develop new products without fear of being held liable for the illegal uses to which the products might be used by some.

Finally, Copyfight has a few more links to commentary.

UPDATE: Yet more details from CNN/Money.

Via BB, a c-span segment with a debate between EFF’s Fred von Lohmann and Solcitor General Theodore Olson (in the RIAA/MPAA ring) on Grokster. Some callers make very good points, including one who notes that indie musicians rely on P2P for exposure. As Cory Doctorow points out, Fred von Lohmann totally schools Olson.

It’s a decent length and covers many of the competing interests and issues. Music file-sharing case before high court. Ruling could have major effect on future of entertainment industry, consumer rights. Benny Evangelista, 3.28.5

When should virtual property be treated like physical property?

excerpt:

Massive multiplayer games have exploded in popularity, with games that range far beyond the quests and giant rat killings of a traditional title such as “Everquest II.” Some skip Dungeons & Dragon-style role-playing altogether in favor of a free-form world not unlike a virtual “Burning Man.” … What happens in Norrath doesn’t always stay in Norrath, however. Virtual goods now appear for sale in the real world, on eBay. Exchange rates for game currency and U.S. dollars are posted on sites like IGE. An island in one virtual world recently sold for $30,000! That kind of money attracts attention. Digital sweatshops, businesses where Third World laborers play online games 24/7 in order to create virtual goods that can be sold for cash, are also on the rise… “Now that there’s commerce, trading and the exchange of virtual goods in virtual worlds, the law is going to come in,” [says Beth Simone Noveck, an associate professor of law at the New York Law School]

It’s a very interesting article worth checking out.

UPDATE: Man killed for selling a virtual sword that apparently belonged to someone else.

Copyfight’s Alan Wexelblat comments on P2P FUD and cites a japanese study (PDF) that didn’t find any negative effect on CD sales due to p2p and, in fact, found evidence that using p2p may increase CD purchases. That’s not the only study to find similar results, and just the other day I mentioned the situation with Fiona Apple’s album and how file sharing has actually created demand for it.

The run-down by Om Malik

The Economist is running a story on tomorrow’s Grokster v MGM hearing that gives a short overview of the case and the history of attacks on the tech industry by the content industry.

The conclusion (also cited by BB):

But even if the entertainment business manages to coax more users into paying for legal downloads and succeeds in court against Grokster and StreamCast, its problems are unlikely to go away. True, a Supreme Court ruling in the industry’s favour would put paid to other P2P services. But it is not clear that curbing illegal downloading will translate into extra sales for the music business. A rush into legal downloading would hardly be good for sales of CDs: some cannibalisation is inevitable. And perhaps the decline in global sales is indicative of a far greater problem for the music industry—consumers simply think that many of its products are just not worth paying for.

NPR has an interview with Donald Knuth, author of the multi-volume Art of Computer Programming and creator of T_EX.

And he makes some important points in his blog post on it:

It wont be a good day when high school entrepreneurs have to get a fairness opinion from a technology oriented law firm to confirm that big music or movie studios wont sue you because they can come up with an angle that makes a judge believe the technology might impact the music business. It will be a sad day when American corporations start to hold their US digital innovations and inventions overseas to protect them from the RIAA, moving important jobs overseas with them.

UPDATE: Interview with Cuban discussing his decision

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch has a blog post taking a critical look at tagging and the history of web metadata attempts. He notes that metadata has largely been useless and overly complicated for use in the overall web and argues that tagging has the same problems, one major problem being the lack of a controlled vocabulary. In one of his past articles cited in the post, Sullivan discusses the problems that arose with the meta keywords tag, how it was used to spam search engines and was, thus, subsequently dropped by all of the major search engines.

Part of what apparently motivated Sullivan’s post was a news.com.com.com.com article on the Yahoo!/Flickr deal and the fact that tags seem to be the motivating factor behind the purchase. From the article:

Yahoo itself said that digital photography was secondary to its decision to buy Flickr. More important is Flickr’s technology and founding team who “get it,” said Yahoo spokeswoman Joanna Stevens. “Flickr’s strength are complimentary to Yahoo’s goals for creating next-generation services,” Stevens said.

More discussion on the subject is also taking place in the SEW forums

Personally, I’ve found the technorati tags feature to be very useful, but it still has the same problem with the lack of a controlled vocabulary. For example, on this site I use the tag “library,” as do 62 other technorati blogs, but there are 34 that use the tag “libraries.” While Technorati has a “Related tags” list, “library” and “libraries” aren’t going to show up in one another’s list because folks only use one or the other. How many examples are like this and when will there be any easy and clean solution?

Yahoo! has added a search page specifically for content licensed under a CC license. Stuff like this makes me love search wars.

Excerpt:

Three months after undertaking an ambitious project to digitize thousands of books, Harvard University Library (HUL) and the Google Print project are facing scrutiny from publishing organizations, who claim the project may infringe copyright law.

Read on @ the Havard Crimson Online

Earlier this month, Greg Duffy posted a fascinating dissection of Google Print with details on how Google’s cookie apparently works and an algorithm for getting past the copyright restrictions. Excerpt:

Most web browsers allow small text files, called cookies, to be stored on behalf of web servers … this allows a persistent state to be associated with a user. After a cookie is created, it will be sent back to the web server every time you request a page (but only when you request a page from the server that originally requested the cookie). For example, when you set your SafeSearch preferences on the Google web site it stores your choice in the Google cookie. Then, whenever you request a page from Google it can see what you set your preference to earlier and use it without having to ask you again. If you delete your cookie, you’ll just get a new cookie the next time you visit … but you’ll have to set your preference again. Pretty useful, huh?

Google does some more interesting things with its cookie, though. Some of them are hard to figure out. The first thing to notice is that your cookie will store some preferences locally, like SafeSearch, because Google probably doesn’t care if you see that information (it won’t bother you to see that they are storing your preferences). Otherwise, they probably have a server side system that uses the following characteristics of the cookie to store more .. ahem .. personalized information about you.

in other Google Print news, slashdot notes that more and more books are showing up as OneBox insertions

I was browsing Apple-related forums and came across a nice long list of all of the new Tiger features. There are rumors that it will be coming out as soon as next month and I’m really excited to see some of the new features, in particular Core Data (bottom of page). Click below to see the list.

Read the rest of this entry »

The BBC has a great overview on the current state of DRM and ‘trusted computing.’ This is something that will likely have a strong impact on libraries considering how quickly we are moving to electronic publications and restrictive contracts. While I don’t know the details regarding what trusted computing is capable of restricting, the developments with iTMS, mentioned in the article, give a hint toward the inevitable restrictions. From what I can tell, issues like trusted computing, DRM, restrictive contracts and the architectures of free electronic info sources are probably the biggest issue facing libraries as the electronic shift continues.

Last week SFGate ran a story discussing the storm surrounding the unreleased Fiona Apple album. What’s really interesting is that it vividly demonstrates the faultiness of the RIAA fear mongering toward p2p. You see, the album has leaked online and fans are sharing it like crazy. According to the RIAA fictional narrative, this would mean that there wouldn’t be demand for a CD anymore. However, the opposite has happened. Fans are begging Sony to release the album, even setting up a website and, obviously, getting media attention. If anything, we now have a clear example of how p2p can actually create demand for artistic work.

From the FlickrBlog:

Holy smokes, SOMEBODY out there is bad at keeping secrets!! Yes! We can finally confirm that Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr and us, Ludicorp. Smack the tattlers and pop the champagne corks!

And here I am reading Hackers and Painters and Paul Graham’s experiences with the same thing.

By the way, check out Cal Henderson’s presentation on Flickr’s architecture if you haven’t already. PDF thanks to Niall Kennedy

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), one of the entertainment industry’s most powerful congressional allies, will remain at the forefront of the national debate over copyright and illegal downloading after being named to head a new subcommittee on intellectual property.

from WaPo

It’s a rather unfortunate path we are headed down. /. discussion here

The Findory neighborhood for Bibliotheke shows all of the related blogs on Findory and represents their relative ‘connectedness’ through size and shading.

Findory itself is pretty cool. As you read articles or blog posts it changes the ranking of other articles, thus personalizing the interface by giving you stories according to your past reading.