COPYCENSE

We are going to try something new beginning this week: for now, we’re calling it “CopyCense Clippings.”

The experiment is borne out of an unusually busy workload and reduced summer readership. We want to continue to provide the news and angles we normally provide, yet allow for a bit more flexibility in our publishing schedule (which normally is Monday through Friday). Instead of publishing our normal five to seven stories per day, we’ve culled together some of the most interesting stories of the past two weeks and summarized them in a single story.

Most of the entries are consistent with CopyCense’s traditional code and content coverage. Others — like our Malcolm Gladwell post — initially seem off-topic, but somehow we try to tie the subject matter in to what we normally do. The hope is that Clippings will allow us to continue posting regularly (but less than daily), while continuing to provide the “connect the dots” coverage to which our readers have become accustomed.

We concede there are some pitfalls to this approach. First, Clippings is more a “Week In Review” approach than a daily approach. Some will like that, some won’t. Another thing we lose with this approach is our categorization scheme, which we hold sacrosanct here. We’re testing different solutions that may supplement or replace our traditional approach to categorizing stories.

Let us know what you think.

CopyCense Clippings: Week of Monday July 3, 2006

• Wade Roush. Inside the Spyware Scandal. Technology Journal. July/August 2006. (A great article about the Sony-BMG spyware scandal, the class action lawsuit it engendered, and how Big Content executives try to rationalize criminalizing its customers and using DRM.)
• Spencer Reiss. The Wired 40. Wired. July 2006. (Verizon enters the Top 40 for the first time, as Wired points to its fiber optic offerings. We’d point more to its pioneering stance on DMCA subpoenas, and its more traditional Luddite stance on Net Neutrality.)
• Michael Orey and Moira Herbst. Inside Nathan Myhrvold’s Mysterious New Idea Machine. BusinessWeek Online. July 4, 2006. (Profile on former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold’s new company, Intellectual Ventures, which specializes in buying small companies and patent portfolios.)
• Linda Greenhouse. Roberts Is at Court’s Helm, but He Isn’t Yet in Control. The New York Times. July 2, 2006. (Political Washington often waits with bated breath for Greenhouse’s end-of-term analysis of the Court’s activities, which often is the final and most influential commentary about each term. Like Patry, below, Greenhouse asks questions about Chief Justice Roberts’ influence after his first term.) Tame The Web. Ten Rules for the New Librarians. June 30, 2006. (Michael Stephens’ Rule 4: “Understand copyright and the Creative Commons very well and understand what it means for our future content creation-driven culture.” If only more librarians really took this seriously.)
• Alice LaPlante. Media Distribution Rights: Here Come The Judges (And Congress). InformationWeek. June 29, 2006. (A good summary of pending legislation that hinders buyers’ ability to freely use digital content they’ve paid for. It’s a Congressional election year, there is a low likelihood that any of these initiatives will passed into law on their own. Still, since it is an election year, one has to be careful that such bills don’t get passed as part of larger, omnibus legislation that becomes so popular and has so much political momentum that the content bills get passed under broader political cover.)
• Bambi Francisco. NBC Embraces YouTube. MarketWatch. June 29, 2006. (Interview with NBC Universal Television Group executive John Miller about his company’s strategic alliance with video sharing site YouTube. In the NBC and YouTube deal, NBC will have its own dedicated channel on the video-sharing service.)
• Digital Music News. RIAA Taps i-Safe on Internet Awareness, Education Push. June 29, 2006. (The new battle in the copyright wars is over “education.” Big Content has been working all year in the California state legislature seeking to make its version of copyright education a requirement of receiving funds from the state’s technology grant. Now, news arrives that Big Content has teamed with an organization that bills itself as “the worldwide leader in the Internet safety education” and “endorsed by the U.S. Congress.” Be afraid, be very afraid.)
• Anne Broache and Declan McCullagh. Senate Deals Blow to Net Neutrality. News.com. June 28, 2006. (The Senate Commerce Committee failed to approve a Democrat-backed amendment that would have ensured all Internet traffic is treated the same no matter its “source” or “destination.”)
• TMCNet. Spain Outlaws P2P Filesharing. June 27, 2006. (“Spaniards caught grabbing content from, say, eMule, will have to reimburse rights holders for losses — although such losses will be difficult for authorities to track. But the government is going after Internet service providers; it’s a criminal offense for ISPs to facilitate unauthorized downloading.”)
• Anne Broache. Senators Endorse Broadcast Flag Plan. News.com. June 27, 2006. (A bill that would revive a controversial anticopying system for digital television cleared a U.S. Senate panel last week. The entire communications bill won’t become law unless it receives final approval by the full Senate and is reconciled with a much different House version.)
• Elinor Mills. Brewster Kahle’s Modest Mission: Archiving Everything. News.com. June 23, 2006. (Profile of Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle.)
• Sara Kehaulani Goo. Concerns Raised Over AT&T Privacy Policy. WashingtonPost.com. June 23, 2006. (You had to know this was coming. As data becomes the currency of choice for the Internet Age, privacy policies will continue to tighten. Regular CopyCense readers shouldn’t be surprised at AT&T’s actions — read Anne W. Branscomb’s 1994 book Who Owns Information? for more insight. In keeping with Gladwell’s theme, though, we want to know why the Post buried this story on the fifth page of its print business section?)
• The Patry Copyright Blog. Is the Supreme Court Broken? June 23, 2006. (In talking about the Court’s decision not to decide a patent case, one of our favorite commentators skewers the august institution and the Nine Robes over, among other things, “what [he] perceive[s] to [be] a pattern of taking important intellectual property issues and then dodging them.” Patry also criticizes Chief Justice Roberts’ “fractured way of working.” Ouch.)
• Gladwell.com. The Times’ Drug Problem. June 21, 2006. (Author Malcolm Gladwell analyzes skewed reporting by The New York Times in its reporting of name-brand drug prices. This story is posted not so much because it relates to code and content, but because it relates to how stories get covered, how issues get framed for wider public consumption, and the influence of large companies — in this case, Gladwell calls them Big Pharma — all of which influence the code and content debate.)
• Eric M. Weiss. Studio Sues Over Internet Film Based On Stone’s Script. WashingtonPost.com. June 21, 2006. (Using a bootlegged script, a Washington, D.C. amateur filmmaker creates a 12-minute version of the upcoming Oliver Stone movie “World Trade Center.” Paramount Pictures sues, claiming the amateur’s version likely will confuse audiences who want to view the Stone version, which opens August 9 and features Nicolas Cage and Maria Bello.)
• Anthony Ramirez. Library Phone Answerers Survive the Internet. The New York Times. June 19, 2006. (Ever wonder what happened to telephone reference in the Internet Age? Apparently, it remains alive and well at The New York Public Library.)

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