According to TechWorld,
“Microsoft and the entertainment industry’s holy grail of controlling
copyright through the motherboard has moved a step closer with Intel
now embedding digital rights management (DRM) within in its latest
dual-core processor Pentium D and accompanying 945 chipset. But as well
as the much-touted digital rights management hardware, the chips also
include systems management features.” (Via JZ).
A member of the founding team of Downhill Battle and several other projects, the charismatic Holmes Wilson, is leading the Tuesday lunch today. Listen in to the webcast. (Updated: the audio archive is here, or go straight for the mp3 file.)
If you haven’t heard Kaye Trammell (a prof of Mass Communications) on her dissertation topic — celebrity blogs — you have your chance later this week in NYC. Or check out the short-form on her own blog.
The American Association of University Press, via its executive director Peter Givler, has written
to our good friend (and long-time Berkman affiliate) Alex Macgillivray
to quarrel about Google’s extraordinary effort to digitize books from
university libraries. Mr. Givler’s letter, obtained by BusinessWeek, includes the following two
statements, among many others:
“The common mission that unites all our members is to help the
advancement of knowledge by making the results of scholarly research
known through their publications, …”
“Google Print for Libraries has wonderful potential, but that potential
can only be realized if the program itself respects the rights of
copyright owners and the underlying purpose of copyright law. It cannot
legitimately claim to advance the public interest by increasing access
to published information if, in the process of doing so, it jeopardizes
the just rewards of authors and the economic health of those nonprofit
publishers, like the members of AAUP, who publish the most thoroughly
vetted and highest quality information in the first place.”
I blame the copyright law more than the publishers, who are
understandably threatened (though I expected more from the university
presses, I have to say). A copyright law that results in such two
statements in the same letter — and such pushback against a plainly
important and good effort by means of a partnership between academic
institutions and a corporation that is footing the bill for
digitization — strikes me as, at best, an imperfect set of rules.
Both Lessig and JZ comment further, as quoted by BW:
“Some legal experts, such as Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig and
Harvard professor Jonathan Zittrain, argue that the real rub in this
dispute lies in the copyright laws’ murkiness. ‘The fair-use section of
[copyright] statute is fairly flexible’ says Zittrain. ‘Google’s plan
doesn’t disrupt the market for purchasing the book, and in that sense
it should heavily favor them.’
“Yet, legal experts also agree that Google’s plan could open the door
for liability for potential copyright infringement, in the event of
future litigation, if the issues being raised by the publishers now
aren’t settled to everyone’s satisfaction. ‘For registered works it can
be up to $150,000 per infringement,’ says Lessig. ‘I don’t think any
judge would do that because Google seems to be operating in good
faith…but there’s a huge exposure.’
“In the end, this disagreement comes down to whether the interested
parties can come to a peaceful solution — or fight it out in the
courts.”
NPR’s On the Media offers weekly podcasts of its shows. This week includes a segment on Internet governance. (Here’s the feed, for future reference. It belongs in your podcast aggregator.)
I am sitting on the floor of the west ballroom at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square,
as the staff cleans up around the dispersing crowds. The
Syndicate conference was an impressive public display of enthusiasm for RSS, this conference. Doc Searls
(man, is he right about the elevators) nicely ended things (and I only
caught the end) with a fine schtick on cognitive linguistics and with a
reminder that this space is and will be what we (users) make it.
The show overall has been “industry” heavy, unlike blogger conferences
I’ve been to, but not exclusively so — Mary Hodder just walked by me, and she is the ultimate blogger IMHO. The NYTimes, Google, and Nooked made news.
Denise Howell, fortunately, caught and reported in on the settlement
of the extraordinary Bikram Yoga intellectual property lawsuit over the
rights to “hot yoga.” (It is always best of course that matters
settle, but I can’t help but think that this outrageous dispute would
have made for a fabulous trial.)
From the Hindustan Times story: “Bikram Choudhury, who
trademarked his name and copyrighted his techniques, had been sending
‘cease and desist’ letters ordering studios to stop teaching the same
form of yoga that his private school has used to train more than 2,000
yoga instructors who have opened more than 1,200 Bikram studios in the
US.
Some of the studios formed a cooperative and sued Choudhury, claiming yoga cannot be copyrighted.
The settlement is confidential, but three people involved in the case,
speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Choudhury has agreed
not to sue the 50 members of the San Francisco-based yoga cooperative
for copyright violations. And cooperative members have agreed not to
advertise the trademarked name ‘Bikram’ without authorisation by
Choudhury.
The settlement avoids a June 20 trial that might have settled the legal
question of whether Choudhury’s copyrighted package of 26 poses and two
breathing exercises, performed in a certain sequence, could be legally
protected in federal court.”
The AP, if you are wondering, ran a photo with its story.
Our partner at Gartner|G2, Mike McGuire (blog) has a lovely review
of Yahoo!’s Music Unlimited, in which he and Allen Weiner highlight the
promise of the initiative as well as areas for improvement (such as
incomplete integration with 360, for instance). Via Derek.
Prof. Charles Nesson (aka eon)
has been on a blogging tear over the past day or so, with a couple of
audio and text blog entries on Grokster and on Harvard Law School Prof.
Roberto Mangabeira Unger’s decision to run for president of
Brazil. Start here.
“Politics,” says Prof. Unger on Charlie’s podcast, is “one of the
supreme forms of human activity.” (The other, were you to be
wondering, is philosophy.)
The DC Court of Appeals has stricken the FCC’s broadcast flag rules, a few months ahead of their proposed implementation. Congratulations to Art and Gigi of Public Knowledge and others who stood up to this one.
