Lessig

Right-to-tinker maven Ed Felton is skeptical that copyprotection would be placed in the network. "From an engineer standpoint, that assumption looks wrong to me," he says. But what if we looked at Fritz "not an engineer" Holling's perspective? The point of my article is that Congress is pushing copyprotection in the network, whatever engineers would argue is ideal. A differend DRM would undermine that push. (But so too would a different Congress for that matter.)

The lack of broadband access at hotels drives me nuts. It was bad enough when you had to carry a screw driver and alligator clips. But it's been years since cheap and effective broadband technologies should have been deployed in major hotels. So it was a pleasant surprise when I received spam about this offer from W Hotels -- offering "free" Broadband Internet Access plus telephone calls -- for stupid people, apparently.

Doug Isenberg, whose GigiLaw.com and its companion Guide are a great resource, sent along some more examples of awful wireless marketing.

I'm in Japan for the fall, so I was eager to see MovieLink come online (not much on Japanese tv for a language-idiot like myself). As I was told by someone from the other side, MovieLink was intended to remove the "excuse" people had for "stealing" movies online -- once a "cheap, fast system" was offered, there was no good reason not to pay. So does that mean that because non-Americans, and non-MicrosoftOS users don't have a way to access MovieLink, they have an excuse to "steal"?

This should be a general rule: If you don't make it cross-platform compatible, you're not welcome on the Internet.

Insanely destructive problems with my machine here in Japan, so I apologize for the silence and unanswered emails. To my pleasant surprise, however, I discover that my Powerbook G4 has a world wide warranty. So after finding a number of the Apple Japan website, I called to get support. The Apple Store helpfully gave me an English speaking "toll free" number to call. At this point, of course, I didn't care squat about the toll; I wanted a voice that could fix the problem. I dialed the number. Couldn't connect. Over and over again, no luck. So I called the Apple Store back. "Are you trying to call this number from a business or university?" "Yes," I told her. "You can't call this number from most businesses or universities. You'll have to go to a payphone on the street and call from there." "Isn't there another number, maybe a non-toll free number I could call?" "No, only the toll-free number. We don't want to charge for support."

So in 1998, as a Christmas present to my parents, I promised to give them broadband service when it became available. They live just outside Hilton Head, SC. No San Francisco, no doubt (where broadband at 1.5 mbs is available at about $50 a month), but still, no backwater.

For the first time this year, service is getting close. A company called Hargray promises 768kbs for the amazing low price of $100 a month. No cable service available from AT&T. And no service available from anyone in the 1.5 mbs range.

Meanwhile, to repeat again: Here in Japan, they are selling 100 mbs for $50/month, 12 mbs for $25.

Tim Wu has a nice paper about "network neutrality." The basic idea is familiar: the original end-to-end internet is increasingly under threat as network providers develop technologies to discriminate among network users. For many years, this fear of discrimination led many to support "open access" campaigns — requiring providers to permit competitors to use their lines. Competition would, the argument went, weaken the incentives for certain forms of discrimination.
"Open access" has worked extremely well in Japan (where you can get 100 mbs for $50 a month), but it didn’t work well here. Tim’s proposal is for a different form of regulation aimed at neutrality. I recommend it strongly, and would be eager to see any feedback.

I know it's trendy to say nasty things about Amazon (one-click, etc.), but man do I wish they'd expand into really useful services, like banking. I've been struggling through nightmare experiences with "online banks" -- none of which have online services that are half as reliable or convenient as Amazon.

I've been through Merrill Lynch (awful awful awful), and then TD Waterhouse (sleek, but thin on service: no download to Quicken, for example), and now the latest was Citibank.

Citibank was recommended to me by Intuit. Said to be one of the "best" online banks. So I applied -- in February. Today, three months and at least 10 calls and 5 faxes later, I stopped the "application" process. Seems they were unable to verify my address (a house we've owned since September 2000) after my wife and I sent in document after document. Today it took them 15 minutes to determine that they weren't "sure" which documents would be needed, but then they helpfully gave me a list of three more I could fax in and they'd then determine whether that was enough.

Forget it, I told them. So I'm back to square-one: Does anyone recommend an online bank which: (1) has direct download to Quicken, (2) Amazon-like-reliability online?

Chris Kelly has been keeping a keen eye out for silliness. Here's his latest find.

So I have this from an extremely reliable source, who vouches totally for the facts that follow.

Story one: Last month while visiting Charleston, three women went into a Starbucks. They were spending the weekend together and one of them had a disposable camera with her. To commemorate their time with one and other they decided to take round robin pictures while sitting around communing. The manager evidently careened out of control, screaming at them, "Didn't they know it was illegal to take photographs in a Starbucks. She insisted that she had to have the disposable camera because this was an absolute violation of Starbuck's copyright of their entire 'environment'--that everything in the place is protected and cannot be used with Starbuck's express permission.

Story two: At our local [North Carolina] Starbucks, a friend's daughter, who often has her camera with her, was notified that she was not allowed to take pictures in any Starbucks. No explanation was given, but pressed I would think that the manager there would give a similar rationale.

I wonder what would happen if hundreds of people from around the country experimented this holiday weekend by taking pictures at their local Starbucks ...

So on May 22, at 11:49am I posted my offer to spammers that I'd be happy to read their spam sent to a special spam email address if they promise to pay $500 for the privilege. At 9:58 this morning -- less than 2 days later -- I received my first acceptance. How exciting!

Mr. Richard Bennett accuses me of "latent fascism" for deleting a comment from a post. In fact, I have never deleted any comment from any post, his included. I should think, rather than calling someone a fascist, the decent thing to do when one suspects such a thing is to simply ask.

I'm happy to have you "disagree with [me] on my blog," Mr. Bennet. And as to the claim you say you posted, viz, that I "can't be that ignorant" about the Sony Bono Act "harmonizing" the US term with the EU.: in fact, as Professor Karjala nicely demonstrates, the Sonny Bono Act did no such thing. That's precisely why members of the EU are now pushing to increase terms for recordings -- to catch up to the longer term that US law sets.

And if you have trouble posting a comment again, let me know. I'm happy to help.

another cost of losing eldred.

John Gilmore wrote Declan a letter about an extraordinary measure of our times. Gist: John was wearing a "Suspected Terrorist" button on a flight to London. BA turned the airplane around on the ground and returned to the terminal to enable the captain to eject him. Read the full story.

I got an email from a reader. "I'm reminded of ibex," she wrote. Indeed. Here's a couple pages from Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.

As Michael Geist writes, it is increasingly the practice of the US government to export its copyright policy though bi-lateral trade agreements. One example is the trade agreements being concluded with Australia right now that will require Australia to increase its copyright term to life plus 70.

The Allen Consulting Group has prepared what it apparently considers an economic analysis of the proposed Term Extension. The report was commissioned by the Motion Picture Association, among others. The report is embarrassingly poorly done.

I describe some errors in the extended entry below. But I hope for the Allen Consulting Group that this report is not representative of its work in general.

Last month, I posted a link to some free software for Mail.app OS X that Jonathan Nathan is offering under the GPL. This code was designed to allow a user of Mail.app to move a message to a folder with a single keystroke.

Since then, there's been some progress in the Mail.app app, but not as much as one would think. Apple has released Panther, and Aaron has released a script that does the same thing within Panther.

Both Jonathan's and Aaron's nicely move a message to a folder. Aaron's is built to enable the binding of a keystroke to an AppleScript directly. But both have a common weakness: After a message is moved, the system forgets which message it has last selected.

Weird, because, e.g., this very simple script within Microsoft's Entourage does the same thing, but without forgetting the last message selected:


--Open this script in a new Script Editor window.



tell application "Microsoft Entourage"

    set curMsgs to current messages

    repeat with theMsg in curMsgs

        move theMsg to folder " friends" in folder "Archive"

    end repeat

end tell

(Update:: this cool applescript formatting trick is thanks to another Jon Nathan script -- available here)

Note in Entourage, if you save the script with a "\cX" in the script name, then ctrl+X will run the script.

It is surprising, one might think, that Microsoft's mail app operates more robustly with AppleScript than Apple's. As well as a bit frustrating.

Andy Orlowski has a wonderfully argued but sad piece about the sale of mp3.com to CNET. As he reports, the archive of music that was mp3.com will be destroyed. As Andy writes,

"Not since the Great Leap Forward has there been such a destruction of the commons. Back then, for political reasons, millions of books were burned. Now, for very sensible commercial reasons that we must not question, millions of MP3s will be lost to the commons. You have precisely seventeen days to grab the good stuff (and, Steb Sly - we hope you have a backup) ... CNET will follow Wal-Mart, Real Inc. and Apple Computer into the DRM business, infecting as many computers as they can with restrictive software controls that close what for a brief period has been an open computer platform. They all hope that this tentative business model, the terms of which are set by the entertainment "industry", will somehow turn them a profit. Or at least give the illusion of doing so, until a better idea comes along.

I've been lamenting the fast slide of mp3.com for sometime now. Now there's nothing more to lament. CNET's got a great domain name. And beyond that, Michael Robertson's vision of a new industry is over.

I apologize for the silence, but we've been in Japan this week announcing iCommons in Japan. (More on that soon). But after reading this extraordinary document by Darl McBride of SCO infamy, I couldn't resist canceling this morning's meetings to respond.

From the start of this pathetic lawsuit, Eben Moglen of the Free Software Foundation has argued that there was nothing behind the SCO claims. His arguments are persuasive. But if you want a clue of just how clueless this case is, consider the constitutional arguments made by SCO.

So we have returned from Japan. Willem's passport is stamped with its first stamp. But there was a moment before we left when we were uncertain we would go. Bettina and I had purchased economy seats months ago, which we had upgraded (the one good from traveling too much). We had confirmed we didn't need a ticket for our 3 month old child, and had reserved bulkhead seats to make the flight easier.

When we arrived at the airport, we were told we needed a ticket for the child. And because we were now sitting in business class, that meant we would have to pay $650 for the child -- even though he obviously would occupy no seat, and consume no service at all. The agent behind the desk was very understanding and sympathetic. But rules were rules were rules.

I can understand United's desire to keep kids out of business class. As President Reagan taught us, if you tax something, you get less of it, and United is perfectly rational to want fewer children in its business class. But at least they should redistribute the income from its baby tax to the people sitting near the baby (a baby bonus coupon!). For while Willem was an angel, had he not been, it would not have been United revenues that would have suffered.

So I am just returning from the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva -- a fantastic (in the sense of Jules Verne) and depressing (in the sense, would there really be a digital divide if the money spent on this were instead given to the developing world?) event. Some nits follow. Other thoughts later.

WalMart's launched a music downloading service. For just 88 cents, you can download a song in a Windows Media Player format. I tried the service. For 88 cents I bought a Beatles song (they've got a total of 12 available. Wuhoo!). When I went to play it, however, it wouldn't. LiquidAudio's server was not found.

But the real devil here is not that the service doesn't (yet) work. It is the details of the TOS. These are among the most restrictive in the business, authorizing 10 burns from 3 machines, but requiring you promise:

"You may not reproduce (except as noted above), publish, transmit, distribute, display, broadcast, re-broadcast, modify, create derivative works from, sell or participate in any sale of or exploit in any way, in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, any of the Products, the Service or any related software. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, modify or disable any copy protection or use limitation systems associated with the Products. You may not play and then re-digitize any Products, or upload those Products to the Internet. You may not use the Products in conjunction with any other third-party content (e.g, to provide sound for a film). You may not sell or offer to sell the Products, including but not limited to, posting any Product for auction, on any Internet auction site. All Products are sublicensed to you and not sold, notwithstanding the use of the terms "sell," "purchase," "order," or "buy" on the Service or in this Agreement."

Worse still, if you go to this page, you'll be informed that "What's more, you'll enjoy the same usage rights for ALL the music you purchase" as if you had purchased the CD. Here is where all the action is. What's happening with this download world is that the "rights" people have with music are now to be defined by licenses. Long before we have any useful litigation about the fair use rights associated with music, the licenses will define that you have only the right to play the music, and only the right to burn it 10 times. Anything more -- for any reuse, mixing, transforming, even for noncommercial use -- is not your "right."

This is the real aim of the "war" against "piracy." Focus the attention of the world on "pirates" and then "solve" that problem in a way that effectively removes all other creative rights for consumers. This is a total perversion of copyright law, as the late Professor Lyman Ray Patterson showed. The law, intended to regulate competitors, is now a tool for controlling consumers.

But alas, the story is not a completely happy one. For in addition to the iMac, I needed a router. At first bought a Belkin router from the Apple site. (By now, I had changed the one-click preferences to ship to my parents, so I was able to buy the Belkin router with one click.) But then seeing that I could get a Belkin wireless router elsewhere (of course, not on the site selling Airports), I tried to cancel the order from Apple. Yet when I went to return the Belkin router, life was not so simple. There was no link in the confirming email, and it took a good routing around on the Apple site till I found a web form to request the canceling of an order (it was too late to call, I discovered after calling). So literally 20 minutes after I placed the order, on Christmas Day, I sent a request to cancel it. Today, five days later, I received an email informing me that it was too late to cancel the order -- which I had discovered, since my Dad called to say the router had arrived. Twenty minutes on hold later, I received a RMA to return the router -- of course, we pay shipping.

I wonder just what the thinking of the Apple Exec who set up this one-click-to-buy, a million-clicks-to-fail-to-cancel system was: "We'll make it really hard for them to cancel an order, and maybe they'll get so frustrated, they just won't cancel it!" Yes, that is brilliant.

Oh well, here's to the Crazy Ones.

The one thing that DC types seem to have learned from the digital age is binary thought. We're ruled by the bin-heads. You're either for us or against us (the war). You're either for us or against us (the copyright war). And more and more, you're either for us or against us (the privacy war). That, I guess, is the nub of what angered me in the latest instance of bin-head "thinking": The RIAA-like wilfullness to take a balanced view and transform it into an extreme. It's bad enough that people hear extremes in balance. It is a special sin to paint balance as an extreme.

In the latest example of Word not keeping its secrets, Joi reports that the California Attorney General is circulating a draft letter condeming p2p sharing -- a letter authored by the MPAA.

I've been begging my wife to let me close down all but one or two of our credit card accounts. The hassle of dealing each month with many different accounts is more than these fingers can handle. My latest victory was to be Chase. She has had a Chase account for ever. But I finally convinced her there was no real benefit to keeping that account open.

So she called Chase and asked that they close the account. Chase was not happy. "What can we do to keep you as a customer," they asked. I was standing next to her when they asked her, so she asked me. I pointed to an advertisement we had just received from AT&T Universal card, promising no fees, zero interest, no payment for a year for balance transfers. She told the Chase representative we'd keep the card open if they gave us the same terms. The representative said she'd have to check, and said she'd call back later. She did. Chase offered the same terms as AT&T, and based upon that offer, we transferred a substantial chunk of airplane ticket debt to Chase. (The worse thing about traveling to speak is carrying the costs of the airplane tickets till reimbursed. At one point last year, I was carrying more receivables in conference expenses than my wife earns in a year.)

I remember thinking when this all happened how amazing it was that such a significant transaction could happen based only upon the word of a voice at the other end of the phone promising she spoke for Chase. How advanced the world had become! I thought for a second to ask that they send the offer in writing, but it seemed so 19th century. And anyway, it was Chase! And they were being so cyber! Who was I to spoil the fun?

This month we received our statement. As promised, zero interest, and zero fees for the transfer. But contrary to the promise, Chase was demanding a minimum monthly payment. When we called to say that this was not what was agreed to, we were instantly shipped back to the 19th century: "Do you have the offer in writing" the agent at the other end asked?

No, we didn't. And after our payment for the full balance transfer is cleared, neither will we have a Chase card anymore either.

"Add digital rights management and the story becomes more complex."

Last month I wrote about the DRM-encumbered Constitution. Note, this is not really Microsoft's doing -- they just build the bombs, others choose to use them. But a bunch have sent links to free Constitutions. Here's one for the iPod created by the American Constitution Society.

I've never really bought the conspiracy story surrounding the Diebold voting machine stuff. I've been happy that the issue has been raised (and even happier that the battle about copyright that Diebold's effort at censoring criticism created also created the Free Culture movement at Swarthmore, and now spreading).

But if this story is true, I will have to rethink my view. As reported at Blackboxvoting:

By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks.

Is this really true?

I continue to be astonished at how far PFF has moved from its roots. The group has issued a press release demanding Supreme Court review of Grokster, buttressed with supporting blog entries by Bill Adkinson and a "grid" by Solveig Singleton with a six (yes, count them, six, with some including italics) factor test that courts are to apply to decide whether a technology is legal or not.

I can well understand New Dealers racing to craft multifactored tests to regulate innovation. But I thought the whole point of the conservative (economic) movement was to teach us how harmful such regulation was to innovation and growth. Any test that cannot be applied on summary judgment guarantees that federal judges will be forced into a complex balancing to decide which innovation should be allowed. And thus, any industry threatened with competition can then use the courts to extort from these new competitors payment before they are permitted to compete. That is precisely what Valenti says the VCR case was about. He didn't want to stop the VCR, he tell us. He wanted only to force VCR manufacturers to pay for the right to sell consumers VCRs.

Courts, and lawyers, have ruled Silicon Valley long enough. The great hope of the Grokster opinion was that it would return us to the time when entrepreneurs could invent without seeking a permission slip from a federal court (to borrow from the President) . It is simply bizarre to see PFF now call for a return to the days of industrial policy regulated by federal judges. Especially bizarre when you consider how taxing this policy will be to many of the "supporters" of PFF. Many (e.g., Apple, Microsoft, Intel), but alas not all (EMI, Vivendi, BMG). Thus the danger of putting principle up for bid.

So though I have spent over $60 for wireless service this month, I've had no wireless phone. And indeed, if this is Audiovox's policy, it is a really good reason not to rely upon that company. Unless of course, your cell phone is just a toy which you don't really need, and you don't mind spending scores of dollars for service that you cannot use.

But thirteenth in broadband adoption. The amazing non-issue of this campaign.

In 1991, according to The Patent Wars by Fred Warshofsky, Bill Gates said this about software patents:

If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. The solution . . . is patent exchanges . . . and patenting as much as we can. . . . A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high: Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors.

Regarding Mr. Orlowski's breathless rant about Doonesbury and Creative Commons: as the Surburban Limbo evinces (thanks, Staci!), the plot-line is actually two years old. While you'd have to be a bit clueless to believe that Thudpucker is actually speaking CC-speak, it would be quite amazing to think that he was speaking CC-speak in January, 2003. Sure, CC had been around for six weeks. But even Mr. Trudeau is not following events that closely.

Another mistake, Mr. Orlowski. Will you correct this one?

An insanely poor editorial by the NYTimes about Grokster.