As I read today's court ruling, the Supremes are saying that the company is liable if they're out to make a buck from infringing content creators' copyright, but there's nothing to suggest that individuals who use such services for legitimate purposes can be held liable in any way.
Yep, the geniuses at Universal Studios proposed it. This is one of the free chapters over at the Darknet mini-book. As long as you guys are paying attention, I'll be happy.
You know, you're right. The chapters I've released (as part of the Darknet mini-book) need to be made available as torrents, not just as html and pdfs. Thanks for the good idea.
I actually argued for the entire book to be released under a Creative Commons sharealike license. The higher-ups at Wiley didn't think that people would buy the physical book if they could read the whole thing online.
So we compromised. I'm releasing a mini-book online -- excerpts from the book, along with interview transcripts and new stuff, every Monday at Darknet.com.
Some day, book publishers will release all new works onto the Net in some fashion (perhaps with ebook DRM, perhaps not). But, alas, we ain't there yet.
Well, the book's been out for over six weeks now and still hasn't gotten a single review in any newspaper or magazine (despite five five-star reviews on Amazon). NPR's "On the Media" had me on. But more than 200 copies has gone out to mainstream media outlets and... silence.
It's partly because newspaper and magazine people don't understand what's at stake here, and probably partly because they don't like writing about changes occurring that threaten their livelihood. Still, I expected better.
Those who've read it uniformly say it's a fair account without taking the sort of didactic positions of those at the extremes of the debate. So, conspiracy nut? I think not.:~)
More than 30 bloggers have agreed to review or blog it as part of the Darknet Blogger Book Tour. Just fyi.
- jd (the author)
Re:Hollywood Always Fights, Then Accepts and Profi
on
Darknet: Hollywood's War
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
ausoleil writes: "The internet is here to stay, and so is piracy. Instead of focussing on preventing piracy, perhaps Hollywood should add enough to the value propostition that piracy is an afterthought."
Well put. I think you're absolutely right. The record labels could make considerably greater profits if they were less obsessed about piracy and more open to inventive new business models, even if they are "leaky" as the iTunes model. Same for Hollywood, with its crippled Movielink and CinemaNow services. Perfect protection is impossible in the digital age. Get used to it.
We'll work on the script. (Other treatments accepted.) You're right, we need some citizens media works to flesh out the more absurd excesses of the digital clampdown.
Larry Lessig says that people need to see these restrictions -- and how they apply to them and their kids -- in order to be properly outraged.
When I interviewed Jack Valenti for the book, he told me, "People are taking fair use and turning it into something else." I think he offers an absurdly cramped idea of fair use -- something that exists only in the classroom or academic journals.
OTOH, claiming that fair use allows unfettered access to creative works with the excuse that "True art comes from creative desire, not the profit motive" strikes me as equally fallacious.
But Big Al B is also incorrect when he writes, "Fair use is media backup or transfer once you have paid for the original media presentation of a work."
I devote quite a few pages in "Darknet" to fair use in cyberspace -- and, indeed, I have to wrestle with this almost every day at Ourmedia.org, deciding what media items have to come down because they go too far.
The kind of fair use I'm interested in helping to enable involves borrowing snippets from Hollywood movies or recorded music -- for commentary in a home video that you want to share online, for inclusion in a podcast that talks about the blues, for a brief educational or artistic touch in a nonprofit digital story, for a student report on how biased network news may be (from the political left or right).
Last week, I received a pretty good set of fair use guidelines from the SF law firm Fenwick-West and posted them at Ourmedia here. It's a good, straightforward set of fair use rules for the digital age.
Because this is such a fast-moving target, I decided not to write about current Congressional stupidity (the INDUCE Act, similar proposals to ban P2P networks, proposals to insert a copyright chip into computers, etc.).
But that's not to say Congress should be left out of this discussion. They can pass a lot of crap to make things worse. And in some cases, congressmen don't know what they're voting on.
I don't know that educating Congress will effect much change. But I do think that it could help. This is a long-term battle, and we've got to start somewhere.
A higher-up at the Consumer Electronics Association told me they were thinking of buying a copy of "Darknet" for every member of Congress. (Obviously, they think it could make a difference.) I don't know that they'll do that, but the idea of bringing other voices (from the grassroots) into this discussion -- people who use digital technology but are not lobbyists, lawyers or academics -- can only help.
What the hell -- we're a free, not-for-profit, open-source media project. It doesn't get more Slashdotty than that.
We're looking for coders to help out on Ourmedia -- to make it a Slashdotter's multimedia wet dream.
The Ourmedia Project is relying on open-source developers to build new functionalities for the site -- such as media ratings, new RSS features, playlists, social networking, license searches, improved taxonomies -- and to help build a global registry connecting a network of grassroots media sites.
That means six months from now we don't want to be just a destination website -- we want open-source schemas that will let any site hook into a global network of freely accessible grassroots media.
But we can't pull that off unless more expert coders pitch in. (Here's our current project team and advisory board.) (Apologies, we're adding more servers tonight.)
See our Volunteer page for details. Pass it along. Or ignore this, as you wish.:~)
-- jd (email), co-founder
We're not looking to replace Flikr. We love Flickr. They do a lot of things better than we do -- certainly for photos, they have more functionalities today.
It's true that at a certain level of storage or uploads, Flickr charges and Ourmedia doesn't. But they offer other things of value.
Flickr's founder, in fact, is a member of the Ourmedia wiki.
Down the road, who knows? Maybe us nonprofits and for-profit outfits like Flickr will be able to find ways to collaborate... to everyone's benefit.
Buying the CD doesn't mean you own the music on it. It means you can listen to it, share it with *a few* friends, etc. -- but not publish it for the masses to hear.
We all know that by now, don't we?
But if you're the music's creator, you can publish it on Ourmedia (or hell, just the song lyrics, if you don't want to upload the music).
For the record: Our partners the Internet Archive, founded in the mid-'90s, host thousands of songs and concerts on their servers.
# of cease and desist orders they've received in their history? Zero.
One of the Wikimedia Foundation board members (the only at-large elected member) serves on our Advisory Board:
http://www.open-media.org/credits4.html
We're referencing a lot of Wikipedia articles throughout our site (Help pages, how-to articles).
And we'll be sharing our multimedia content (that's licensed under Creative Commons or is in the public domain) with Wikipedia -- and with anyone else who wants to host it.
... and podcasters, and videobloggers, and animators.
I know of podcasters who've been socked with $500/month bills because of bandwidth use. This solves their problem (they can point to their video or audio file on our servers from their own site).
BTW, we host all the media files on archive.org and all the accompanying pages on Drupal, and the performance problems you're seeing today is because of a too-small server on Drupal. They're working on that tonight.
We're already talking with foundations about receiving grant monies, and we'll be exploring sponsorship possibilities (while remain true to our grassroots, not-for-profit selves -- we ain't sellin' out). But you won't see banner ads, and you won't see us charging for storage or bandwidth.
Can this scale exponentially for the next decade? Who knows? But for as far as we can see, the Archive tells us they can handle what we throw at them. They've got the resources and Peta-boxes to spare. If it weren't for the Archive, this couldn't happen.
-- jd
Just so ya know, we're doing all we can to enhance performance. Didn't get to get slammed like this right out of the box.
We're got a first-rate team of Drupal coders on the case. Throttle is being turned on (so blocks won't appear, but site will still function), unused modules are being removed (even unused ones contribute to load as code gets parsed) etc. etc.
There is also a *lot* of php code and mysql tables that need to be vetted. there is a ton of custom code that has been volunteer written for ourmedia - so part of the task too is assessing some of this as we move along.
one side note: as for the serving of the actual media - it all happens from archive.org which does give us some short delays here and there. but nothing unsolvable.
Remember, folks, we're an all-volunteer open-source project. People have put in hundreds of hours -- and we ain't gettin' paid for this!
So please be patient and be gentle (right!) as we work out the kinks. As the site says in bright lettering, we're in Alpha mode!
So the deal is: Yeah, you can post pretty much anything here, for free. No porn or pirated works, though. Sorry 'bout that -- we'd like to remain open, thank you very much.
As far as "only copyrighted works" -- not quite. We'll host any materials: public domain texts and movies, GNU General License software, works that fall within well-accepted fair use standards. And, of course, the stuff you create yourself.
We're trying to help enable remix culture, so that people will be able to find works they can freely build upon, remix and recirculate. Without getting a call from your friendly RIAA/MPAA legal team.
This, to my mind, is the most important media issue before us during the coming decade.
Not media consolidation. Not FCC rules over capping media cross-ownership. But this:
Will the average American (not the typical/.er, but Joe and Jane Public) be given access to Internet media in their living rooms? Or will the corporate giants continue to impose a chokehold over the content coming through those pipes? (Yes, 500 cable channels are nice, until you discover that an entire range of commentary and visual creativity are kept off of all 500 of those channels.)
After the spate of Hollywood lawsuits, sonicBLUE went belly up. Its ReplayTV and Rio MP3 business units were purchased by a Japanese consortium, D&M Holdings, which removed all the really cool features (like the share a show feature between up to 10 households) from the new ReplayTV units.
So, the old units are much more capable than the new boxes.
Slashdot Mirror
As I read today's court ruling, the Supremes are saying that the company is liable if they're out to make a buck from infringing content creators' copyright, but there's nothing to suggest that individuals who use such services for legitimate purposes can be held liable in any way.
- jd (the author)
- jd (i wrote the thing)
So we compromised. I'm releasing a mini-book online -- excerpts from the book, along with interview transcripts and new stuff, every Monday at Darknet.com.
Some day, book publishers will release all new works onto the Net in some fashion (perhaps with ebook DRM, perhaps not). But, alas, we ain't there yet.
- jd (the author)
It's partly because newspaper and magazine people don't understand what's at stake here, and probably partly because they don't like writing about changes occurring that threaten their livelihood. Still, I expected better.
Those who've read it uniformly say it's a fair account without taking the sort of didactic positions of those at the extremes of the debate. So, conspiracy nut? I think not. :~)
More than 30 bloggers have agreed to review or blog it as part of the Darknet Blogger Book Tour. Just fyi.
- jd (the author)
Well put. I think you're absolutely right. The record labels could make considerably greater profits if they were less obsessed about piracy and more open to inventive new business models, even if they are "leaky" as the iTunes model. Same for Hollywood, with its crippled Movielink and CinemaNow services. Perfect protection is impossible in the digital age. Get used to it.
- jd (the author)
Larry Lessig says that people need to see these restrictions -- and how they apply to them and their kids -- in order to be properly outraged.
- jd (the author)
OTOH, claiming that fair use allows unfettered access to creative works with the excuse that "True art comes from creative desire, not the profit motive" strikes me as equally fallacious.
But Big Al B is also incorrect when he writes, "Fair use is media backup or transfer once you have paid for the original media presentation of a work."
I devote quite a few pages in "Darknet" to fair use in cyberspace -- and, indeed, I have to wrestle with this almost every day at Ourmedia.org, deciding what media items have to come down because they go too far.
The kind of fair use I'm interested in helping to enable involves borrowing snippets from Hollywood movies or recorded music -- for commentary in a home video that you want to share online, for inclusion in a podcast that talks about the blues, for a brief educational or artistic touch in a nonprofit digital story, for a student report on how biased network news may be (from the political left or right).
Last week, I received a pretty good set of fair use guidelines from the SF law firm Fenwick-West and posted them at Ourmedia here. It's a good, straightforward set of fair use rules for the digital age.
- jd (the author)
But that's not to say Congress should be left out of this discussion. They can pass a lot of crap to make things worse. And in some cases, congressmen don't know what they're voting on.
I don't know that educating Congress will effect much change. But I do think that it could help. This is a long-term battle, and we've got to start somewhere.
A higher-up at the Consumer Electronics Association told me they were thinking of buying a copy of "Darknet" for every member of Congress. (Obviously, they think it could make a difference.) I don't know that they'll do that, but the idea of bringing other voices (from the grassroots) into this discussion -- people who use digital technology but are not lobbyists, lawyers or academics -- can only help.
- jd (the author)
We switched over to some beefy new servers this afternoon, finising up at 5 pm PT Tuesday.
So, we're good to go now.
Please don't jilt us! We're sorry! We'll be good from now on!!
http://ourmedia.org
As for uploads, we're getting some new servers Tuesday so that should help a lot.
Dang, we need that DARPA Grand Challenge video on Ourmedia!
jd, ourmedia support
For the record, "they" are not us.
We're using the Internet Archive's servers, but there's not a single Internet Archive employee on our Project staff list:
http://ourmedia.org/about/team
(that is, if our freaking creaking servers regain life later tonight)
We'll be dealing with removal requests when they come in. But we won't be removing media just because someone doesn't like it.
What the hell -- we're a free, not-for-profit, open-source media project. It doesn't get more Slashdotty than that.
We're looking for coders to help out on Ourmedia -- to make it a Slashdotter's multimedia wet dream.
The Ourmedia Project is relying on open-source developers to build new functionalities for the site -- such as media ratings, new RSS features, playlists, social networking, license searches, improved taxonomies -- and to help build a global registry connecting a network of grassroots media sites.
That means six months from now we don't want to be just a destination website -- we want open-source schemas that will let any site hook into a global network of freely accessible grassroots media.
But we can't pull that off unless more expert coders pitch in. (Here's our current project team and advisory board.) (Apologies, we're adding more servers tonight.)
See our Volunteer page for details. Pass it along. Or ignore this, as you wish. :~)
-- jd (email), co-founder
It's true that at a certain level of storage or uploads, Flickr charges and Ourmedia doesn't. But they offer other things of value.
Flickr's founder, in fact, is a member of the Ourmedia wiki.
Down the road, who knows? Maybe us nonprofits and for-profit outfits like Flickr will be able to find ways to collaborate ... to everyone's benefit.
-- jd
We all know that by now, don't we?
But if you're the music's creator, you can publish it on Ourmedia (or hell, just the song lyrics, if you don't want to upload the music).
For the record: Our partners the Internet Archive, founded in the mid-'90s, host thousands of songs and concerts on their servers.
# of cease and desist orders they've received in their history? Zero.
-- jd, ourmedia co-founder
Somebody get this guy a library card!
One of the Wikimedia Foundation board members (the only at-large elected member) serves on our Advisory Board: http://www.open-media.org/credits4.html
We're referencing a lot of Wikipedia articles throughout our site (Help pages, how-to articles).
And we'll be sharing our multimedia content (that's licensed under Creative Commons or is in the public domain) with Wikipedia -- and with anyone else who wants to host it.
-- jd
... and podcasters, and videobloggers, and animators.
I know of podcasters who've been socked with $500/month bills because of bandwidth use. This solves their problem (they can point to their video or audio file on our servers from their own site).
BTW, we host all the media files on archive.org and all the accompanying pages on Drupal, and the performance problems you're seeing today is because of a too-small server on Drupal. They're working on that tonight.
jd
Only as a last resort.
- jd
Can this scale exponentially for the next decade? Who knows? But for as far as we can see, the Archive tells us they can handle what we throw at them. They've got the resources and Peta-boxes to spare. If it weren't for the Archive, this couldn't happen. -- jd
We're got a first-rate team of Drupal coders on the case. Throttle is being turned on (so blocks won't appear, but site will still function), unused modules are being removed (even unused ones contribute to load as code gets parsed) etc. etc.
There is also a *lot* of php code and mysql tables that need to be vetted. there is a ton of custom code that has been volunteer written for ourmedia - so part of the task too is assessing some of this as we move along.
one side note: as for the serving of the actual media - it all happens from archive.org which does give us some short delays here and there. but nothing unsolvable.
Remember, folks, we're an all-volunteer open-source project. People have put in hundreds of hours -- and we ain't gettin' paid for this!
So please be patient and be gentle (right!) as we work out the kinks. As the site says in bright lettering, we're in Alpha mode!
- jd, schmoozer in chief and co-founder
So the deal is: Yeah, you can post pretty much anything here, for free. No porn or pirated works, though. Sorry 'bout that -- we'd like to remain open, thank you very much.
As far as "only copyrighted works" -- not quite. We'll host any materials: public domain texts and movies, GNU General License software, works that fall within well-accepted fair use standards. And, of course, the stuff you create yourself.
We're trying to help enable remix culture, so that people will be able to find works they can freely build upon, remix and recirculate. Without getting a call from your friendly RIAA/MPAA legal team.
-- jd, one of the founders
Not media consolidation. Not FCC rules over capping media cross-ownership. But this:
Will the average American (not the typical /.er, but Joe and Jane Public) be given access to Internet media in their living rooms? Or will the corporate giants continue to impose a chokehold over the content coming through those pipes? (Yes, 500 cable channels are nice, until you discover that an entire range of commentary and visual creativity are kept off of all 500 of those channels.)
- J.D. Lasica
So, the old units are much more capable than the new boxes.
-- jd lasica (the Engadget article's author)