The Libertarian Forum

Bravo to Anthony Gregory!

2011-05-26T08:43:00.001-05:00

An excellent, trenchantly libertarian article on LRC today!

http://lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory213.html

No Property Rights, No Peace

2010-10-04T15:30:00.001-05:00

fascinating

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704631504575531341118871222.html?mod=wsj_share_facebook

No Property Rights, No Peace

The verdict in the case of the Babri mosque leaves Indian minorities less secure and more incentivized to bar others from places of worship.

By SHRUTI RAJAGOPALAN

Most discussion of the Allahabad High Court's verdict last week on the Babri Mosque focused on religious tensions. Hindus and Muslims have been battling for two centuries over the site, on which many Hindus believe a temple marking birthplace of the Hindu God Ram stood until Mughal Emperor Babur built a mosque in 1528. In 1992, a Hindu mob demolished the mosque that had stood for 465 years, and in the nation-wide violence that followed about 2,000 people lost their lives.

However, at root this is a legal dispute over a piece of land, and so the case must also be viewed as an important precedent for determining ownership. While one judge dissented in favor of giving the entire site to Hindus, the majority opinion decided to award joint possession to Hindus and Muslims in an effort to make everybody happy, or at least prevent either party from being so unhappy as to resort to more violence. While that may have preserved the peace in the short term, it creates new opportunities for religious zealots to pursue their claims.

The details of the court's distribution of the land are particularly telling. Two-thirds of the site belongs to Hindus, including the outer courtyard, which has historically been used by both Hindus and Muslims for prayers. The inner dome, which was exclusively used by Muslims until 1949, was also given to the Hindus. One-third of the site will belong to Muslims.

While one judge dissented on other grounds, all three judges agreed that in over 400 years of continued possession of the inner dome of the mosque, the Muslims did not perfect their title to the disputed site. The justification is that Hindus were allowed to offer prayers within the premises of the mosque in the outer courtyards, thus making the case for joint possession.

Two main questions arise from the verdict. When it comes to property, should historical wrongs be corrected? And, if India goes down that path, what does this mean for property rights?

View Full Image

Associated Press

An Indian policeman stands guard in front of the landmark Charminar.

Common law answers the first question pretty definitively, at least until now. Historically, suits over property were time limited, and the rule of adverse possession applied in cases where the ownership of property was unclear. It may seem unfair that with the passage of time a person could lose his claim to property that was unfairly taken. However, the same rule provides a great social benefit of stabilizing property rights.

When property is bought and sold, buyers and sellers only need to verify the last valid title instead of going back in history. In 1886, Judge F.E.A. Chamier, District Judge of Faizabad, used this rationale to settle an earlier dispute over the same site. He denied Hindus the right to build a temple because the mosque had existed under Muslim possession for almost 350 years.

The present bench has strayed from the firm ground of that ruling. Instead, they gave the inner dome, an area under continuous Muslim control and exclusively used for Muslim prayers until 1949, to Hindus. The justification lies in the religious belief of the Hindu majority that the inner dome is the birthplace of Ram. The bench has acted like a concerned parent dividing a treat between quarrelling siblings, instead of determining difficult legal questions over ownership.

In India, where there is little protection of property from the state, a new threat has arisen with this judgment. The property of religious, linguistic and caste-based minorities is immediately less secure. Minorities in India will now have to incur increased costs and take greater care in acquiring and using property when there is any Hindu presence near the site.

The judges justified their decision to grant of joint possession to both communities as a way to encourage Hindus and Muslims to continue praying together at the disputed site. That sounds like progress toward tolerance. But the judgment sets up perverse incentives that will have the opposite effect. The magnanimity of the mosque in allowing Hindus to offer prayers within the premises has cost Muslims the legal battle. In the future, no community will allow others to use their land. Instead of encouraging communities to pray together, the judgment ensures a strict separation of religious worship.

One can only hope that the Supreme Court will strike down this judgment and protect the principles that sustain property rights in India and throughout the common-law world. To prevent further Ayodhyas, the government legislated in the 1990s to provide security of property rights based on possession in 1947. But the protection is feeble.

The court favored the Hindu claim because according to the faith and belief of the Hindus the place under the inner dome is the birthplace of Ram. When matters like faith overrule the law on a matter of ownership, what chance is there that legislation can protect minorities?

With such a precedent, state legislatures are too feeble to prevent similar disputes in other religious sites where Hindus and Muslims pray together, such as Mathura and Varanasi. In a land of 820 million Hindus who worship several hundred forms of God, the danger of expropriation in the name of faith is real and imminent.

Ms. Rajagopalan is a doctoral student in economics at George Mason University.

OT: Evil "demon seed" children drive teen to suicide

2010-09-29T19:28:00.001-05:00

http://www.kget.com/news/local/story/UPDATE-Police-say-no-charges-in-death-of-bullied/fMemM4pc3Uiy_h8gvyac3w.cspx

An alternative to ecofascism

2010-09-16T07:33:00.001-05:00

Sent to you by Robert A. Wicks via Google Reader:

An alternative to ecofascism

via The Guardian World News by Micah White on 9/16/10

By liberating humanity from the compulsion to consume, climate catastrophe can be averted without recourse to authoritarianism

It is time to acknowledge that mainstream environmentalism has failed to prevent climate catastrophe. Its refusal to call for an immediate consumption reduction has backfired and its demise has opened the way for a wave of fascist environmentalists who reject democratic freedom.

One well-known example of the authoritarian turn in environmentalism is James Lovelock, the first scientist to discover the presence of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere. Earlier this year he told the Guardian that democracies are incapable of adequately addressing climate change. "I have a feeling," Lovelock said, "that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while." His words may be disturbing, but other ecologists have gone much further.

Take for example Pentti Linkola, a Finnish fisherman and ecological philosopher. Whereas Lovelock puts his faith in advanced technology, Linkola proposes a turn to fascistic primitivism. Their only point of agreement is on the need to suspend democracy. Linkola has built an environmentalist following by calling for an authoritarian, ecological regime that ruthlessly suppresses consumers. Largely unknown outside of Finland until the first English translation of his work was published last year, Linkola represents environmentalism pushed to its totalitarian extreme. "An ecocatastrophe is taking place on earth," he writes concluding several pages later that "discipline, prohibition, enforcement and oppression" are the only solution.

Linkola has a cunning ability to blend reasonable ecological precepts with shocking authoritarian solutions. His bold political programme includes ending the freedom to procreate, abolishing fossil fuels, revoking all international trade agreements, banning air traffic, demolishing the suburbs, and reforesting parking lots. As for those "most responsible for the present economic growth and competition", Linkola explains that they will be sent to the mountains for "re-education" in eco-gulags: "the sole glimmer of hope," he declares, "lies in a centralised government and the tireless control of citizens."

Environmentalism is currently marketed as a luxury brand for guilty consumers. The prevailing assumption is that a fundamental lifestyle change is unnecessary: being green means paying extra for organic produce and driving a hybrid. The incumbent political regime remains in power and the same corporations provide new "green" goods; the underlying consumerist ideology is unquestioned. This brand of environmentalism only emboldens ecofascists who rightly claim that shopping green can never stop the ecological crisis. And yet, ecofascists are wrong to suggest that the suspension of democracy is the only alternative.

Humanity can avert climate catastrophe without accepting ecological tyranny. However, this will take an immediate, drastic reduction of our consumption. This would however requires the trust that the majority of people would voluntarily reduce their standard of living once the forces that induce consumerism are overcome.

The future of environmentalism is in liberating humanity from the compulsion to consume. Rampant, earth-destroying consumption is the norm in the west largely because our imaginations are pillaged by any corporation with an advertising budget. From birth, we are assaulted by thousands of commercial messages each day whose single mantra is "buy". Silencing this refrain is the revolutionary alternative to ecological fascism. It is a revolution which is already budding and is marked by three synergetic campaigns: the criminalisation of advertising, the revocation of corporate power and the downshifting of the global economy.

In São Paulo, the seventh largest city in the world, outdoor advertising has been banned. Meanwhile, artists in New York City and Toronto are launching blitzkrieg attacks on billboards, replacing commercials with art. Their efforts have put one visual polluter out of business. Grassroots organisers in the US are pushing for an amendment to the constitution that will end corporate personhood while others are fighting to revive the possibility of death penalties for corporations. The second international conference on degrowth economics met recently in Barcelona. In Ithaca, New York a local, time-based currency is thriving. Buy Nothing Day campaign is celebrated in dozens of nations, is upping the ante with a call for seven days of carnivalesque rebellion against consumerism this November. And, most important of all, across the world everyday people are silently, unceremoniously and intentionally spending less and living more.

Authoritarian environmentalists fail to imagine a world without advertising, so they dream of putting democracy "on hold". In Linkola's dystopian vision, the resources of the state are mobilised to clamp down on individual liberty. But there is no need to suspend democracy if it is returned to the people. Democratic, anti-fascist environmentalism means marshalling the strength of humanity to suppress corporations. Only by silencing the consumerist forces will both climate catastrophe and ecological tyranny be averted. Yes, western consumption will be substantially reduced. But it will be done voluntarily and joyously.

Micah White

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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TLS -- edited, "Obama vs. The Economics of Education"

2010-09-09T14:00:00.001-05:00

The edited version is below. This is being submitted as a blog, per my
discussion with GAP.

Obama vs. the Economics of Education

By Zach Bibeault

Last month, President Barack Obama spoke to the University of Texas
[[hyperlink: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.2267033ea5e4a89c39757ee49f007d7b.df1&show_article=1]],
with the content of his speech focusing largely on the topic of
education and how the key to economic success is to "crack the books
and boost post-secondary graduation rates". He emphasized the
importance of enrollment in post-secondary education to secure a
solid-
paying position in the marketplace because of the need to keep our
economy strong during the hard recession times.

Obama is certainly correct that education is an important factor in
obtaining solid jobs (that is, the jobs paying the salaries that
students attend school in order to command). The vast majority of jobs
which are substantially above average in productivity added to a
production process require in-depth training and education. However,
there are countless errors with Obama's analysis.

For starters, the idea that having "the highest share of graduates
compared to other nations" is vital to the United States' economic
success is grossly mistaken. It is in error because education –
though frequently referred to in a mass aggregate -- is not a
homogenous one-size-fits-all commodity that, once "fitted" onto the
student, makes them immediately fit to command high salaries in the
competitive marketplace. Education serves such a purpose only insofar
as it provides students with knowledge and/or experience that makes
them more productive in the marketplace, which is incredibly diverse.
Surely Obama doesn't think that having a 40% increase in bachelors in
basket-weaving makes the economy more productive and more
"competitive", though without a rigorous praxeological [[hyperlink:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxeology]] analysis of
education and the reasons why individuals attend college to pursue it,
this is the logical implication.

Critics will charge that the basket-weaving analogy is unfounded, yet
it is not. Figurative basket-weaving degrees are everywhere in today's
colleges and universities in the form of – for example – broad-based
"liberal arts" degrees such as communications and psychology.

Both of these studies are directly applicable to positions that
can be acquired after graduation. The problem is that a large amount
of students take
up these majors because they don't know what to study, yet enrolled in
college anyways due to the massive pressure to attain degrees
which are required by nearly all jobs considered "post-
graduate" (a phenomenon caused largely by the government's
subsidization of college entrance via grants, loans, etc).

Obama's emphasis on other countries "outcompeting" "us" if "we" don't
increase net attendance and graduation from post-secondary reflects
the tragically commonplace mercantilist fallacy that international
trade is a zero-sum game and a mad race to the economic finish. Yet
what is needed is education, not degrees. The idea is that if
"we" (that is, the individuals within the borders of the United
States) do not obtain more "education", then other individuals within
other countries' borders will take all the good-paying jobs. The
"losing" country will be doomed to a lifetime of poor-paying jobs (a
belief that undoubtedly will fuel even more government interventionism
in the economy). Unfortunately all this ignores comparative advantage:
countries (more specifically, individuals) specialize in what they
have the most advantage in and trade for goods and services from
countries (other individuals) who specialize in what they have the
most advantage in. If, say, jobs in scientific research are more
suited for Sweden or Germany, no amount of rushing to acquire degrees
is going to help the individuals in the United States acquire those
jobs, and certainly degree subsidization will make things even worse.
In regards to the jobs that can be performed basically anywhere – jobs
such as writing, electrical engineering, etc – subsidization of
degrees through loans and grants will only make it harder for the jobs
to be acquired. It devalues degrees in exactly the same fashion as
central banks devalue currency through printing money out of thin air
(this practice is one of the primary reasons why college graduates are
having such a difficult time finding full-time work. And that's before
we figure in the current global depression).

Another flaw in Obama's statement lies in the fact that since
education is not a homogenous good, it is apodictically untrue that
society (as an aggregate of individuals) needs more post-secondary
education. Some individuals may need more, and some may not. Years
prior to the GI Bill and the following massive increase in college
costs/degree inflation as a result of government subsidy, individuals
who had specialized interests were able to be more specialized in
regards to their education – perhaps they would take an apprenticeship
and acquire some schooling in order to command the skills to reach the
salary/wage goal they desired. Perhaps they would not go to school at
all, and instead work and develop a strong resume (since costs of
living were much lower back then – prior to the complete separation of
the dollar from gold in 1971, far less interventionism in the
healthcare industry, etc., it was possible to do this and live
comfortably). Or perhaps they would want to acquire a four-year degree
– but it must be emphasized that it was not for all individuals. The
amount and style of schooling that individuals need is as unique as
the individuals themselves and their corresponding ordinal value
scales. Education back then was – with due exception to elements of
interventionism -- subject to consumer sovereignty. Today it has
mostly been removed from this thanks to ill-conceived government
policy.

A final point must be added that directly pertains to our current
economic quagmire: as previously mentioned, massive government
subsidization of loans and grants, regulation, etc. has made post-
secondary education massively expensive. In our current economic
environment that the government has shackled and chained with
inflation, taxes, and regulation and that the Federal Reserve has
pumped endless paper money and uncertainty into, this is arguably a
time when individuals might want to forgo college – at least for the
time being – in order to do the unthinkable: save. If not forgoing
college for the time being (or perhaps completely), cheaper classes
can be acquired through community colleges. Individuals as an
aggregate may indeed miss out on certain jobs that may pay better in
the short-term, but in the long term they will have saved more and be
in a sounder financial situation when health is restored to the
economic matrix. They will have education and work experience that is
highly marketable in an economic climate where government's degree
inflation has nearly destroyed the value of a four-year college
education as the bedrock of the majority of post-primary-education
occupations.

Govt to Scouts, 1917: take down your radios!

2010-08-29T12:34:00.000-05:00

Sent to you by Robert A. Wicks via Google Reader:

Govt to Scouts, 1917: take down your radios!

via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow on 8/29/10

This brief article from the June, 1917 issue of Boys' Life (a magazine for Boy Scouts) urges scouts to disassemble their wireless sets and turn in suspicious friends who refuse to stop using radio while WWI is raging.

Take Down Your Wireless (Thanks, Andrewmedley via Submitterator!)

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"Showtime Syndrome" Strikes Las Vegas

2010-08-27T12:56:00.001-05:00

Sent to you by Robert A. Wicks via Google Reader:

"Showtime Syndrome" Strikes Las Vegas

via Pro Libertate by William N. Grigg on 8/27/10

Bryan Yant during his 2002 coroner's inquest.

"He made me do my job," insisted Bryan Yant when asked to explain why he gunned down 21-year-old Las Vegas resident Trevon Cole last June in what was clearly an act of criminal homicide.

Yant, who is employed by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police as an undercover counter-narcotics detective, claimed that Cole -- who was accused of selling 1.8 ounces of marijuana -- "made an aggressive act toward me," which was "enough to make me fear for my life."

Cole's finance, Sequoia Pearce, offers a much different story. She maintains that Cole was cooperative, putting up his hands and saying "All right -- all right" in the instant before Yant fatally shot him. At the time, Pearce -- who was nine months pregnant with the couple's child -- was kneeling on the floor with a gun to her head.

Of the six-member narcotics squad involved in the late evening raid on the tiny one-bedroom apartment, Yant was the only one who claimed that Cole made a "furtive movement." Interestingly, he was also the only one carrying an assault rifle.

Unlike his comrades, who were armed with with department-issued handguns, the former Marine decided to bring along his personal AR-15. This isn't to say that the co-assailants earn points for restraint, given that the entire raid was an exercise in overkill. Trevon Cole's needless death was an outcome nearly as predictable as the result of the perfunctory coroner's inquest, which ruled that the murder was a "justifiable" exercise of lethal force.

On three separate occasions in the weeks leading up to the June 11 raid, police "arranged to meet with Trevon in the parking lot of his apartment complex" to conduct drug buys, attorney Andre Lagomarsino told Pro Libertate. "Trevon was never armed or dangerous, and he wasn't exactly a high-rolling dealer either, given the fact that he didn't even have a car."

In the hours leading up to the raid, "the police had the apartment under surveillance, and they knew that there was a pregnant woman in that room," continues Lagomarsino. "They had already established that this guy wasn't a threat. They had probable cause to arrest Trevon; why didn't they simply arrange to meet him in the parking lot and cuff him, and then execute a search?"

Nevada law doesn't criminalize individual possession of up to an ounce of marijuana. Each of the "controlled buys" the police set up with Cole involved amounts he could legally possess. The cops tried, without success, to bait Cole into selling larger amounts.

Although the police -- with the help of a camera crew from Langley Productions, which produces the execrable COPS "reality TV" series -- had captured Trevon Cole selling marijuana on video, the affidavit Yant filed to obtain an arrest warrant was fatally flawed. (Remember the COPS connection; we'll return to it anon.)

Trevon and Sequoia in happier times.

Yant misidentified the Las Vegas resident as another individual -- a Houston resident with a lengthy criminal record. The two men -- who had different birthdays and middle names -- looked nothing like each other. Trevon, a former college football player, was roughly 100 pounds heavier and three inches taller than the individual described in the affidavit.

It's impossible to dismiss Yant's misrepresentation as an innocent mistake. He had all the necessary information from Cole's California driver's license. Rather than correctly describing the subject as a young man with no prior criminal record, Yant depicted him as a dangerous repeat offender. This, in turn, prompted a judge to approve Yant's request for an armed, night-time raid on Cole's apartment. Res ipsa loquitir.

When the cops invaded Cole's apartment, the lights were out and a television offered the only illumination. In defiance of protocol, Yant -- acting without backup -- kicked in the bathroom door. He found Cole squatting in front of the toilet, apparently trying to dispose of a minuscule amount of marijuana.

According to the story Yant told the inquest, Cole "turned towards me, rotated his body," and assumed a shooter's stance. The detective was supposedly able to see all of this despite the fact that it was dark and the barrel-mounted flashlight on his rifle wasn't working.

That account can't be reconciled with the findings of Dr. Lisa Gavin, a medical examiner with the Clark County Coroner's Office, who said that the physical evidence shows Cole was facing away from Yant when he was fatally shot. The bullet that killed Cole followed a downward trajectory through his cheek into his neck.

During the inquest, Assistant District Attorney Chris Owens suggested that this was "consistent" with an accidental discharge of Yant's rifle as he kicked in the door. However, Pearce insists that Cole had sufficient time to raise his hands and signal his compliance before Yant gunned him down. Her account actually confirms Yant's testimony that the gunshot was a deliberate act, not an accidental discharge.

When coupled with forensic evidence indicating that Cole was shot from behind, this looks suspiciously like an execution-style murder -- or at the very least, something that should be prosecuted as an act of criminal homicide. Thanks to a system designed to validate questionable use of lethal force by police, Yant may conceivably lose his job, but he won't be put on trial.

Lagomarsino, who is preparing a lawsuit against the Las Vegas Metro Police on behalf of Cole's family and former fiance, describes the County Coroner Inquest procedure as "a kangaroo court and a dog and pony show." That is also the view of Don Chairez, a former Nevada District Court Judge who is a current candidate to be Clark County District Attorney. Chairez justification of an officer's actions."

Inquest critic: DA candidate Chairez.

The inquest procedure was introduced in 1969. Since 1976, more than two hundred lethal force incidents have been examined by a seven-member jury. Only one of them was ruled "negligent" -- and that decision was overturned on appeal. This isn't a surprising result, given that the inquest procedure is designed to be collaborative, rather than adversarial: The D.A.'s office literally orchestrates the questioning with the police department prior to the hearing.

Lagomarsino observes that no cross-examination of police officers is permitted. "We were allowed to submit written questions, one at a time, to the prosecutor, but we couldn't cross-examine Yant" or even ask follow-up questions, he told Pro Libertate. The prosecutors don't bother to present a summation for the jury, and established procedures also permit judges to offer what Lagomarsino called "very vague" instructions to the jury.

Additionally, jury nullification would avail little in this setting, since the inquest -- unlike a grand jury -- cannot return an indictment. At the end of the inquest into the Trevon Cole shooting, comments Don Chairez, it appeared that the judge "was almost asking for a directed verdict."

This wasn't the first time a coroner's inquest has rescued Bryan Yant. In 2002, Yant, at the time a 25-year-old street officer, shot robbery suspect Richard Travis Brown following a foot pursuit. Yant claimed that he had returned fire after Brown shot at him during the chase. Eventually Brown "buckled and fell face-first on the ground," Yant told the inquest. Sprawled on the ground with a "wild-eyed look," Brown supposedly pointed his gun at the officer, who unloaded the volley that killed him.

Brown was being pursued as a suspect in a violent crime. But he shouldn't have been summarily executed -- which is what apparently happened to him, given that the gun he supposedly pointed at Yant was found 35 feet from the spot where the officer shot him to death. This oddity didn't prevent the inquest from quickly validating Yant's actions as "justifiable."

Yant's "error" in describing an entirely different person in his arrest affidavit for Trevon Cole was hardly his first "mistake" of that kind. According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, Yant "is under investigation for apparently lying about drugs he didn't seize and actions he didn't take during a 2009 police raid that never happened."

More than a year before compiling an arrest affidavit that contained "gross misstatements about Cole's criminal history," Yant and fellow Officer David Goris falsely reported that "they sat in a car [and observed] ... while a confidential informant bought drugs from a man they identified as William Sigler," reports the Review Journal. "That alleged buy was used to justify a nighttime search of Sigler's home 12 days later. Police arrested Sigler and his girlfriend and seized prescription drugs, marijuana and cocaine from the home."

However, the charges were thrown out last week when it was established that "the informant did not buy drugs from Sigler." At the time the "controlled buy" purportedly took place, Sigler was in the Bahamas.

During the January 2009 raid on Sigler's residence, "Yant tore up and left three documents ... [describing] a different raid of Sigler's home, one that never took place," continues the paper. A "declaration of arrest" form claimed that police had detained suspects and collected evidence at Sigler's home in a December 2009 raid. "Evidence" supposedly collected in that fictitious raid supposedly tested positive for cocaine. All of this was was unalloyed perjury.

Ready for my close-up: Sheriff Gillespie.

At present, Yant remains on paid vacation. Clark County Sheriff Douglas Gillespie insists that the coroner's inquest conducted by his office was the epitome of institutional transparency. Gillespie acknowledges that there is room for improvement in the procedure for serving narcotics warrants -- which is why this task will now be assigned to the Las Vegas SWAT team.

Bear in mind that militarizing the execution of arrest warrants is presented here as a "reform" triggered by an incident involving the needless use of lethal force. It's not obvious how this policy change would reduce the likelihood of unnecessary civilian deaths. It is obvious, however, that SWAT teams are much more telegenic than run-of-the-mill counter-narcotics units -- and there's reason to believe that Sheriff Gillespie, like Detroit's recently ousted police chief Warren Evans, is playing to the "reality TV" audience.

In May, the Las Vegas Tribune described a "mandatory meeting" called by Lieutenant Clinton Nichols that involved "more than thirty detectives" from the Metro Police Department. The detectives "were introduced to four civilian visitors, [who] were the production staff of the `COPS' reality show. All thirty-three detectives with the robbery division were ordered, by the supervisory staff ... to cooperate, participate and assist all four of those television producers while in Las Vegas...."

Detective Gordon Martines, a 36-year veteran police officer, was among those present at that gathering. Martines asked Langley Productions representative Susan Carney "who ordered the production." According to Martines and at least one other officer who witnessed the conversation, Carney replied: "The Sheriff ordered this; we are here to help him with his campaign for re-election."

That statement was greeted with expressions of stunned disbelief from the officers. Carney broke the awkward silence by asking if she had said something wrong.

Gordon Martines

"Maybe we should introduce you to Sheriff candidate Martines," one of the other officers tersely explained.

On May 7, continued the Tribune, Martines filed a complaint with Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller alleging that Gillespie had violated election laws by using the television production company as a taxpayer-subsidized propaganda vehicle.

By any rational standard, it's an act of corruption for a Sheriff or police chief to enlist the officers under his command as armed bit players in an election-year "reality" show -- and it's likely that Gillespie's torqued priorities contributed to Trevon Cole's eminently avoidable violent death.

The meeting described by Martines occurred before the COPS film crew recorded the "controlled buys" outside Trevon Cole's apartment complex -- stings in which the police tried, unsuccessfully, to lure Cole into selling them cocaine and firearms. According to several accounts, the COPS film crew was supposed to be "embedded" with Yant's home invasion squad during the June 11 raid, but wasn't available. That would explain why the serial killer and impenitent perjurer who led that raid selected a big-ass gun that would look good on TV, rather than being content with his department-issued sidearm.

In a rational world, nobody would be punished (let alone killed) for selling or consuming marijuana. Trevon "most likely would have gotten probation, given his lack of a criminal background," according to Lagomarsino -- if his arrest had been carried out by peace officers, rather than paramilitary poseurs.

Gunned down: Erik Scott.

On September 22, the same inquest system that has repeatedly exonerated Bryan Yant will meet to ratify the actions of the Metro police officers who gunned down Erik Scott a month after the killing of Trevon Cole.

The 39-year-old West Point graduate was shot seven times by three officers in the parking lot of a Costco store. Metro Captain Patrick Neville said the police had responded to complaints that Scott was armed and behaving erratically.

Scott, who had a concealed weapons permit, was carrying two weapons at the time he was killed. Neville claims that "a dozen witnesses" saw Scott pull a gun. That account is disputed by many other eyewitnesses who were present at the crowded retail store on a busy Saturday afternoon. Significantly, the relevant security camera video has been withheld, and the police have suggested that the most crucial video evidence may be lost to a mysterious -- albeit oddly predictable -- "glitch. "

"Showtime Syndrome" probably didn't play a significant role in the killing of Erik Scott, which was most likely a product of police over-reaction to the presence of an armed citizen. His father, William Scott, is an aviation journalist of national stature with "extensive contacts in military and intelligence circles."

Thanks to William Scott's influence, there is an anorexically slender possibility that the coroner's inquest will be a legitimate investigation. If this does happen, more that a few Las Vegas residents will be prompted to ask why the same wasn't true in the case of Trevon Cole. That's when things could get really interesting....

Thank You

Once again I'm overwhelmed and profoundly grateful to those who have donated so generously over the past several days. This means more to me than I can adequately express. God bless each and all of you.

Please join me each Saturday evening from 8:00-11:00 (Mountain Time) for Pro Libertate Radio on the Liberty News Radio Network.

Dum spiro, pugno!

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The Objectivism-Anarchism Debate

2010-08-24T11:18:00.000-05:00

August 24, 2010

The Objectivism-Anarchism Debate

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: Anarchy, Ayn Rand, Objectivism — deadmanoncampus @ 7:41 am

Anarchists on Objectivism

The Facts Of Reality: Logic And History In Objectivist Debates About Government by Nicholas Dykes

Robert James Bidinotto And "The Contradiction In Anarchism" by Nicholas Dykes

Critique Of The Objectivist Ethics by Heumer

Objectivism, Bidinotto And Anarchy by Stephan Kinsella

Rand, Objectivism And One World Government by Stephan Kinsella

Before Vandanarchists There Were Randanarchists by Stephan Kinsella

Arguments Against Anarchy by Wollstein

Objectivist Resistance to Anarchy: A Problem of Concept Formation? By Carrie Burdzinski

Liberty Defended by Richard Sloman

Why Objectivists Became Cultists by Roderick T Long

Why Objective Law Requires Anarchy by Roderick T Long

Libertarianism: A Reply to Peter Schwartz by Ari Armstrong

Libertarianism vs Objectivism: A Response to Peter Schwartz by Walter Block

Peter Schwartz's 'Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty': A Restricted Critique by Kevin McFarlane

Is Libertarianism Evil? by Joseph Rowlands

Why I Am a Libertarian by Peter Saint-André

The Libertarians' Albatross by Butler Shaffer

Rand the Libertarian by Daniel Ust

The Epistemological Basis of Anarchism by Roy A. Childs, Jr.

Objectivism and the State: An Open Letter to Ayn Rand by Roy A. Childs, Jr.

Mrs. Logic and the Law: A Critique of Ayn Rand's View of Government by Nicholas Dykes

Internal Inconsistencies in Arguments for Government: Nozick, Rand, and Hospers by David Osterfeld

In Defense of Rational Anarchism by George H. Smith

When Is A Monopoly Not a Monopoly by Nicholas Dykes

Objectivists on Anarchy

David and Leviathan by Robert Bidinotto

Objectivism and Libertarianism by Nathaniel Branden

"Is Libertarianism Evil?" Revisited by Scott D. DeSalvo

Invitation to Libertarians by Joel Katz

What Is the Objectivist View of Libertarianism? by David Kelley and William Thomas

Libertarianism and Moral Disintegration by Joseph Rowland

Libertarianism and Objectivism: Compatible? by William Thomas

The Contradiction in Anarchism by Robert J. Bidinotto

Anarchism Vs. Objectivism by Harry Binswanger

Anarchism is evil by Leonard Peikoff

A is A; Anarchism is the Arbitrary by Lindsay Perigo

Freedom vs. Anarchy by Lindsay Perigo

Anarchism is not a form of capitalism (author anonymous)

BBC News - France begins deportations of Roma Gypsies

2010-08-19T08:02:00.000-05:00

BBC News - France begins deportations of Roma Gypsies

City to pay slain woman's family $4.9 million | ajc.com

2010-08-19T08:01:00.000-05:00

City to pay slain woman's family $4.9 million | ajc.com

"Let us stand on each other's shoulders, instead of each other's feet!"

2010-08-09T23:03:00.000-05:00

Are "Intellectual Property Rights" Justified?

v. 1.1
available at http://www.n-a-n-o.com/ipr/extro2/extro2mk.html
Markus Krummenacker

Abstract

Economic activity is based increasingly on information and intellectual products. Currently, legal restrictions exist that limit the free flow and re-use of information. Recently, these restrictions, in form of copyright and patents, have become dramatically more severe, set by many ugly legal precedents in costly lawsuits. The situation will deteriorate further, if the trends are not reversed, and will take a heavy toll on technology development, contrary to the rationale for implementing these legal restrictions in the first place. My opinion is that most of these government-enforced knowledge-monopolies need to disappear, and I will try to present the case why this would be beneficial. I will outline some economic alternatives, which do not need the enforcement of such severe restrictions on our freedom, which only hinder technological progress. I feel that it is high time for action that can change the current system. Otherwise, if we continue like this and don't fight back for our freedom, the knowledge-intense future will not look too rosy and will develop at a well-retarded pace, in stark contrast to Extropian interests and ideals. While this article here does not cover all that needs to be said, it is at least a small start.

machlup and penrose on origin of patents

2010-08-09T22:57:00.001-05:00

"Those who started using the word property in connection with inventions had a very definite purpose in mind: they wanted to substitute a word with a respectable connotation, 'property', for a word that had an unpleasant ring, 'privilege'."

Fritz Machlup & Edith Penrose, The Patent Controversy in the Nineteenth Century, Journal of Economic History, v. 10, (1950).

In the NYT mag - The Music-Copyright Enforcers

2010-08-06T13:49:00.001-05:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/magazine/08music-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine

August 6, 2010

The Music-Copyright Enforcers

By JOHN BOWE

Few things can make Devon Baker cry.

There was the time her pet hamster, Herschel, died. There was the time she was run over by a car. Neither episode provoked tears. Not even close. And yet, on a recent Thursday, as Baker drove down Highway 60, about 55 miles northwest of Phoenix, she had to wonder, Is today one of those days when I'm gonna cry?

Baker, who has preternaturally white teeth, green eyes, soft brown hair and a friendly way that she's the first to describe as "country," was on her once-a-month, weeklong road trip. She'd flown to Phoenix to meet with bar and restaurant owners to discuss a rather straightforward business proposal. Off she went on her rounds each day, navigating with a special Microsoft Streets and Trips plan she prepared in advance, with 60 to 80 venues marked with dots, triangles or blue squares, according to size, dollar value and priority, wearing her company badge with photo ID, hoping for a little friendly discussion. Except it didn't always work out so friendly.

Once, a venue owner exploded, kicked her off his property and told her, as she recalled, "to get the bleep outta here." Another hissed at her that she was "nothing more than a vulture that flew over and came down and ate up all of the little people." It wasn't fun. It was just the sort of thing, in fact, that could bring Devon Baker to tears.

Baker, 30, is a licensing executive with Broadcast Music Incorporated, otherwise known as BMI. The firm is a P.R.O., or performing rights organization; P.R.O.'s license the music of the songwriters and music publishers they represent, collecting royalties whenever that music is played in a public setting. Which means that if you buy a CD by, say, Ryan Adams, or download one of his songs from iTunes, and play it at your family reunion, even if 500 people come, you owe nothing. But if you play it at a restaurant you own, then you must pay for the right to harness Adams's creativity to earn money for yourself. Which leaves you with three choices: you can track down Ryan Adams, make a deal with him and pay him directly; you can pay a licensing fee to the P.R.O. that represents him — in this case, BMI; or you can ignore the issue altogether and hope not to get caught.

P.R.O.'s like BMI spend much of their energy negotiating licenses with the biggest users of music — radio stations, TV and cable networks, film studios, streaming Internet music sites and so on. But a significant portion of BMI's business is to "educate" and charge — by phone and in person — the hundreds of thousands of businesses across America that don't know or don't care to know that they have to pay for the music they use. Besides the more obvious locales like bars and nightclubs, the list of such venues includes: funeral parlors, grocery stores, sports arenas, fitness centers, retirement homes — tens of thousands of businesses, playing a collective many billions of songs per year.

Most Americans have no problem with BMI charging for its music — except when they do. As Richard Conlon, a vice president at BMI in charge of new media, put it: "A few years back, we had Penn, Schoen and Berland, Hillary's pollster guys, do a study. The idea was, go and find out what Americans really think about copyright. Do songwriters deserve to be paid? Absolutely! The numbers were enormously favorable — like, 85 percent. The poll asked, 'If there was a party that wasn't compensating songwriters, do you think that would be wrong?' And the answer was, 'Yes!' So then, everything's fine, right? Wrong. Because when it came time to ask people to part with their shekels, it was like: 'Eww. You want me to pay?' "

The day I accompanied her on her rounds, Baker was four days into her trip, on her way to Coyote Flats Cafe and Bar in the hamlet of Aguila. As we drove along Highway 60, the sunlight glared, hawks circled and the temperature was 100 degrees. Saguaro cactuses stood 30, 40-feet tall, stiffly riding up the foothills like porcupine quills. Baker mused about a picture she found online while researching the business. It depicted Coyote Flats's owner, Dorene Ross, posing with her husband, Jim, for The Arizona Republic. There they were standing behind the cafe counter, she with a .380 Firestorm, he with a 9-millimeter Smith and Wesson. The article was about the lengths they were willing to go to defend their business from local thieves. It wasn't exactly auspicious, given the volatile nature of Baker's client interactions.

There was, for example, the gentleman at a Kentucky RV resort who told her on the phone that he was going to come into her office and "spray her down" with a machine gun. Then there was the female punk-rock-club owner in Colorado who ripped up Baker's licensing agreement, ordered her out of the club, followed her out the door, spit a huge goober on the paperwork and stuck it to Baker's windshield.

Not every experience is awful, she pointed out. She once signed an adult-club licensing agreement on the dance floor, beneath the strippers' poles — and the strippers themselves, as they danced; it couldn't have been more pleasant. Not long ago, she visited a manager for a health care chain and walked out half an hour later after a congenial sit-down with a signed agreement and a check for five figures.

But it was tough going sometimes, and these positive experiences were all too rare. "I actually had a guy that I called the other day," Baker told me, "and when I asked when he might be sending in his check, he said: 'I don't know, why don't you call Obama? Ask him! He runs everything now.' So, I put that in my notes, 'Client referred me to president of United States.' " Then there was the colleague of Baker's who got a letter saying, "Eat you-know-what and die." When she replied to the client, she got another letter, asking, "What part of eat you-know-what and die don't you understand?"

During her five years with BMI — on trips to Texas, Ohio, Florida, Washington — Baker has learned a lot: managers of adult clubs tend to be polite. People who run coffee shops tend to be difficult. Skating rinks are a pain – they have the longest outgoing messages in the world. Casinos owned by Indian tribes are tough. Every decision goes to the tribal council, and it can take forever. Arts and crafts festivals, forget it; creative types never have any money. ("You'd think they'd get it," Baker said, "But . . . ." She waved her hand.) The most important rule of the road, however, is never — Baker looked me in the eye — eat in the venue, even if they invite you. Because God only knows what they might put in your food.

Performing rights organizations in the United States came into being in 1914, when a group of musicians, including Victor Herbert, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin and John Philip Sousa, founded the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, otherwise known as ASCAP, the nation's first P.R.O., in 1914. It was formed in response to a 1909 amendment to United States copyright law that explicitly provided for performance rights as opposed to mechanical rights (paid to a performer who plays a song, regardless of who wrote it) or sync rights (music synchronized to pictures). The law — and ASCAP — were given new force when Herbert, then a celebrity composer for Broadway, sued a New York restaurant called Shanley's after hearing one of his compositions performed there. The case took a couple of years to wind through the courts, but in the end, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes decided for Herbert. "If music did not pay, it would be given up," Holmes wrote. "Whether it pays or not, the purpose of employing it is profit and that is enough."

In 1939, radio broadcasters, irked at paying royalties set by ASCAP, which was then a monopoly, founded their own P.R.O., BMI. This they did by rounding up the many songwriters excluded from ASCAP's umbrella: "race musicians," toiling away in the déclassé genres of jazz, country, blues and, later, rock 'n' roll. Today, BMI represents some 400,000 songwriters (ASCAP has 390,000, many of whom are from those formerly déclassé genres), including Willie Nelson, Dave Brubeck, Keith Urban, Lady Gaga, the Beach Boys, Taylor Swift, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Café Tacuba, Kanye West, Shakira, Linkin Park, Mariah Carey, Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock. The songs and compositions written by BMI signatories number some seven million tunes — about half the music in America — and bring in close to a billion dollars per year, which is distributed to its artists in quarterly royalty checks. For antitrust reasons BMI operates (as does ASCAP) by consent decree from the Department of Justice. It is privately owned but chartered to operate as a not-for-profit, to guarantee the maximum possible return to its songwriters and publishers (in 2010, it retained 11.6 percent of royalties collected for administrative costs).

In the past, BMI had 14 regional offices around the country, with field agents reading local newspapers and scouring the land on foot and by car, ever on the lookout for new bars and restaurants or old ones that aren't paying for their music. Now those offices are closed, and employees like Devon Baker do much of their work by phone from headquarters in Nashville. But with the Internet, it has never been easier to keep tabs on the nation's businesses. Venues advertise online which nights they offer live music or karaoke; state governments post liquor-license and corporate registries that give the names and addresses of business owners.

Once contacted by BMI, owners are given a worksheet. Does their venue use a radio, CD players, karaoke machine? Do they feature live music? If so, how often? How many people can the venue legally hold? For smaller businesses with low capacity that don't make much use of music, a license may be as little as $300 a year. For really big operators, the cost might be as much as $9,000 per location per year, the maximum BMI is permitted to charge a single customer. (The fees are distributed to artists based on what BMI calls "an appropriate surrogate" — local radio or TV — that reflects a sampling of bars and restaurants in the area.) All in all, the division Devon Baker works for, General Licensing, accounts for 11 percent of BMI's revenue.

According to Conlon, the struggles that Devon Baker faces on the road are emblematic of the difficulties faced by P.R.O.'s as a whole. "The dance that happens between the salesperson and a reluctant nightclub owner," he says, "is the same dance that happens all the way up the food chain, to the New York boardrooms of the biggest media companies in the world. Where the bar owner might have a shotgun and a dog and say, Beat it! Go away or I'll shoot you in the head, the more sophisticated iteration is done with teams of lawyers, pitted against each other, quibbling over niceties of copyright law." The battles can be fierce — and the outcome uncertain. When ASCAP sued Verizon, claiming it was owed additional royalties on ringtones for which Verizon had already paid a licensing fee, it lost. But when Weigel Broadcasting Company challenged the license rates for two local stations as excessive, they lost and had to pay BMI $1.4 million in back fees. "The arguments don't change," Conlon continued. "No one's an eager purchaser. People do believe in copyright. But the tensions in making that money flow are universal and constant. They don't want to pay!"

Devon Baker works alongside about 24 other licensing executives on the fifth floor of an office in Nashville, where most of BMI's 600 employees are based. It looks, at first blush, like any province in cubicle land. Except the men are all in ties. Facial hair, tattoos, but ties. It's a throwback, a stipulation from a former president and C.E.O., Frances Preston, that all male BMI representatives respect the line between artists and their representatives. Artists make music; BMI representatives handle money.

Collectively, Baker and her colleagues make about a million calls a year. Most of these are repeats, a fact that gets at the firm's peculiar, slow-boil form of suasion. Rather than initiating legal action, BMI and other P.R.O.'s prefer a kill-them-with-patience approach that can take dozens of phone calls, letters and as long as 10 years.

One afternoon, I sat with Baker at her cubicle. Besides pictures of her fiancé, Mike, and her nieces, she also has a smiley-face chart. Her boss made it up for all the licensing executives, to remind them that their moods and their tones will determine their success. The chart is like a traffic light. There's a green smiley face, a straight face in yellow, then a face in red, frowning. "You never wanna be on the red," Baker said.

Baker's computer, which runs on proprietary software, dialed an adult club in Maryland. BMI, she told me, had been pursuing the owner for four years. Over this time, he claimed that the club had no cover charge, that his staff never put money in the jukebox and that there was no drink minimum. "Which I guess we found is not the case," Baker said, smiling, referring to a part-time field agent who was unable to corroborate the owner's claims. Baker straightened her headset. "I hope we get him on the phone."

He answered. Baker informed him that his previous excuses didn't hold water. After some squirming, he announced that from now on, he just wouldn't use BMI's music — only ASCAP's: he was going to remove every BMI song from every karaoke machine, CD and iPod mix that would ever be played in his club. Right. Baker made a note to check back. A few hours later the owner called to say he'd pay.

Next, she tried to track down a Utah restaurant owner who has never had the money — he says — to pay for a license. Meanwhile, his business has grown from three restaurants to seven. She then called a Mexican restaurant in Georgia. Very polite — but the owner was not around. Because the owner was never around. Finally, she called a bar owner in Massachusetts. He sounded down on his luck; he said he understood the idea of music rights, and in fact, used to play in bands and even wrote a few songs himself. But unfortunately, he had no money. Baker made a note to call back.

The excuses fell like rain. On the road, Baker's client-management software offers her a list of common excuses — 24 in all — to keep track of what she's told. But in the end, she knows it's a game, a game she's going to win. Because after all the phone calls, letters and visits, she possesses a secret weapon: the law. Whether or not a music user believes copyright infringement is a big deal, violators face fines of anywhere from $750 to $150,000 per song. If after several years, a violator refuses to back down, Baker ups the ante and sends what is known in-house as "the Larry Stevens letter," named after one of Baker's bosses, informing them that their case is being referred to BMI's lawyers. Most but not all cases are settled out of court. That's because in 51 years, BMI has never lost a single case it has tried.

Being a BMI licensing exec is one of the hardest jobs a person can have, Mike O'Neill, senior vice president of repertoire and licensing, told me. "It's different from other industries and sales situations," O'Neill said. "Clients aren't deciding whether to pay you so you can send them your product. They've already got it."

We have a hard time paying for music, says O'Neill, because most of us grew up listening to it on the radio. It was free then. Shouldn't it be free now? Of course, music on the radio was, in fact, not free. Radio stations paid licensing fees to BMI and ASCAP and paid for those fees by airing commercials, which took up some 20 percent of airtime. The Internet allows users to download tunes, often without paying for them, avoid annoying commercials and play a song whenever they wish. The ease with which music can be had has contributed enormously to the notion that it's there for the taking. In 2008, 40 billion songs were downloaded illegally. It is estimated that 95 percent of music tracks are downloaded without payment to the artist or the music company that produced them. Peer-to-peer (P2P) file swapping of movies and music currently accounts for up to 80 percent of Internet traffic. Music sales among American record labels in 2010 are about 42 percent of what they were a decade ago. As an industry report from January of this year states, "A generation of young music fans is growing up with the expectation that music should be instantly available, with near-limitless choice and access and, of course, free."

Many musicians have coped with downloading by focusing on touring. They have learned to consider their recorded output, formerly their bread and butter, as a form of promotion for live shows. But the rise of musical genres, like northern Brazil's "tecno brega" ("cheesy techno"), which remixes and reworks popular songs, offers another, more direct challenge to who should be paid when music is recorded or performed. The producers give away their mixes, so there's no copyright infringement, then make their money by staging dance parties, to which admission is charged. In the States, producers like Danger Mouse and Girl Talk have created mash-ups of marquee copyrighted material, like Beatles songs, then released them to the general public free, daring authorities to charge them.

Most well-known songwriters are reluctant to advocate publicly for copyright law, out of fear of alienating fans. Dolly Parton is not one of them. "Ain't nobody got so much money they don't want all the money that's coming to them," she said when I spoke to her recently. Rank-and-file songwriters, whose livelihood can depend desperately on their BMI royalties, are the most likely to express sentiments similar to Parton's. One day, I visited a Los Angeles DJ and electronica composer named Alex Amato. Amato, as it happens, lives in a converted barn near Vine and Santa Monica that, he said, belonged to the filmmaker Kenneth Anger. Under the name Genuine Childs, Amato composes music with his twin brother, Anthony, which they've sold to reality shows like MTV's "Real World" and "Road Rules." They've also composed DVD menu page music for several big studio releases like "Scarface" and "The Bourne Identity." It's a rarefied niche, but Amato seems happy: his music reaches millions of listeners.

Amato also waits on tables and manages a restaurant near his house. His quarterly BMI checks, he insists, are the key to survival. "It's like my magical Willy Wonka ticket," he says. Creating music, Amato points out, costs money. It takes money to rent a space, buy equipment, run the equipment. How does music get made if everything suddenly becomes free?

"There are more people listening to music now than ever before," he told me. "But because of this new kind of accessibility, people feel like they don't have to pay. Why is that? Why does constructor Joe get to build a house, and he gets paid the same as before, but suddenly, there's this judgment about this one way of earning a living?"

It is worth noting that during the years the recording industry lost nearly 60 percent of its income, BMI and its competitor ASCAP had steady increases in profits. BMI has done so by going after how people use music commercially, regardless of medium. As the president and chief executive of BMI, Del Bryant, likes to say, "You have to be in the future a little bit."

In BMI's case, this has meant leapfrogging from AM radio to FM, from movies to cable to digital radio to streaming to (once-illegal) downloading companies like Napster. (BMI began working on a deal with Napster about streaming music even before it sorted out its legitimacy.) They also signed with Rhapsody, the online streaming site, when the company was in its infancy. The trick, says Bryant, is to understand the content world as an ecosystem. When a new player comes along, don't kill it, make a deal with it. With each new medium, he says: "We made agreements that weren't that heavily monetized, and not that heavily binding because we didn't know if it'd be around for long or how it would evolve. They were place keepers, ways to get us working together. And they slowly solidified. It's all a question of pricing. The system has to serve everyone's purposes."

Richard Conlon echoed what Del Bryant said. "We're not about shutting things down." he told me. "We're about nurturing markets. We don't want people NOT to use it. We know the market is fractionalizing. You wanna take our music and stream it and have electronic whatevers that play when you stick a chip into something or somebody? Go ahead! Do it! Just pay us!"

BMI is rosy about the future. According to Conlon, who spends a lot of time watching how 8-to-15-year-olds use technology, downloading is out, streaming is in. And guess what? Streaming pays — just like radio. Legally the climate is good too. In May, a federal court found LimeWire, one of the few remaining big free peer-to-peer file-sharing services, guilty of inducing copyright infringement. The company could be fined as much as a billion dollars.

While the rest of the content world worries that technology will be the end of content, P.R.O.'s are banking that technology will save it. BMI has developed a system called Blue Arrow that deploys the same technology as iPhone's Shazam to identify music. (ASCAP uses a similar system called Mediaguide.) These systems can listen to Internet sites, as well as radio and TV stations around the world and identify, in two seconds, virtually any piece of music being played — not just American, but Turkish, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Latin, Japanese and so on. The Blue Arrow database has a capacity of 500 terabytes (one thousand gigabytes each) of music, and can recognize eight million songs. About 3,000 new songs are added each day.

David DeBusk, who was vice president of business development when I met him this spring but has since left BMI, offered to show me how Blue Arrow works. An employee punched a few keys to find out which radio stations in Germany were playing "schlager music," a bizarrely kitschy form of country pop. One tap of the keyboard, and we were listening live: Oom pah pah, oom pah pah. We went on to display all stations, worldwide, playing Swedish death metal. Did I want to see which ones were playing compositions by the composer Milton Babbitt? How about radio stations in Laos?

In the old days, P.R.O.'s relied mainly on playlists from radio stations and queue sheets from TV networks to figure out which songs were broadcast each month. Queue sheets were quite precise, listing every song a station broadcast, but playlists were, at best, a sample, an attempt to track the bulk of what got played. With Blue Arrow, however, it is possible to count every song played by a representative sampling of 400 radio stations across the country. Under the old system, hit-makers tended to dominate the machinery of royalty collection and distribution. Now, the "long tail" can be more effectively monetized: writers with minor hits, older hits, songs played here and there.

When DeBusk and his team began to hear the world through Blue Arrow's ears, one thing they noticed was the number of "nonsong performances." Everyone knows that rap music relies on sampled music, some of which should be paid for and isn't. What surprised DeBusk was how common it was for copyrighted bits of music to be used free in jingles, as station-identification ditties and background music. DeBusk pulled up a screen detailing a list of nonsongs with generic names like "Graceful Power" and "Happy Days." Such compositions, he said, are known as "production music," written for ads and station identifications or for TV documentaries, and then sold to music libraries. If producers are looking for something that, say, sounds like boogie woogie or bebop, they go to a music library, listen to a few samples and purchase one.

One click with Blue Arrow and we knew that "Happy Days" was broadcast at five different times that morning on networks in the Southeast. Another click determined that it was used in a commercial for Country Crock margarine. Yet another click located its source: a music library in Atlanta. A few more key punches, and you knew if the library got their fee.

It was an awesome (or chilling) glimpse into the future: a world where if it can be tracked — on TV, on YouTube, in China — it will be charged for. Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor known for his stance against what he views as an overexpansion of copyright law, is not against BMI's being paid for its fair share but worries about the slippery slope created by new technologies. "If technology creates efficient ways to charge commercial users of copyright, then that's good," he told me recently, "but what I fear is that we evolve into a permission culture, where every single use of music creates an obligation to pay. I wish the line could be as clear as commercial exploitation — you're running a dance club, using it in a movie. The author ought to have the right to be paid for that. But I don't think that that right should translate into the right to control whether my kid uses the music for a collage he makes for a class about his trip to Costa Rica!" Friends I talked to had a similar reaction. To a one, they said: "Jesus. Sounds like Big Brother." When I mentioned this to DeBusk, he smiled ominously. "Yes. Well. We're here to help."

On the road, in Arizona, Devon Baker prepared to arrive in Aguila. More of an outpost than a town, Aguila comprised little more than a gas station, a bar catering to Mexican farmworkers, a small grocery store and a wind-and-sand-bitten motel. When Baker arrived at Coyote Flats, she forgot about the guns immediately. (For legal reasons, I was not allowed to witness the subsequent negotiation, but it was recounted to me later by both parties.) The bar was a big honky-tonk kind of a place, covered in graffiti, with pool tables and a cafe next door. The owner, Dorene Ross, was ready for Baker. Most venue owners, Baker says, are not. Ross, Baker told me, seemed nervous but sweet. She invited Baker to sit down.

Dorene Ross is 47. For the last three years, she has run Coyote Flats Cafe and Bar with her husband and a brother who works unpaid, just to keep busy. Their clientele runs mostly to "ropers" (rodeo gangs), "snowbirds" and tourists in the summer, driving cross-country. For the past 25 years, in Arizona and Alaska, where she lived until recently, Ross has worked as a bartender and cocktail waitress. Never, she says, did she ever hear anything about anyone paying a single dime for music rights. "I really didn't know much about it at all. I never even thought about it."

Last April 15 — tax day, she noted wryly — she got a letter from BMI. The letter explained how American copyright law works. It also included a worksheet, which encouraged Ross to indicate if she had karaoke machines, radios and televisions in the bar and how often she used them, how often she has live music and what her operation's capacity is. Ross filled out the worksheet. This much for the TVs. This much for the CD player. This much for the karaoke machine. That much for the radio. She discovered her yearly license would come out to $865.

Ross said, "My husband was like, 'Well, we ain't paying that!' " She laughed. "Giving away money wasn't right at the top of my priority list there."

It's not hard to understand why Ross, a small businesswoman operating in a rural area during a recession, was reluctant to take on another fixed cost. Her insurance runs $400 a month, her electricity $2,000, her mortgage $2,500. Payroll is $2,000 per week, property taxes are $2,500 per year and the liquor license is $585. Add on state and federal taxes and a health-department permit. "It's making it hard for us little people. I'm barely making it as it is." At her last liquor-board review, she heard that more than 200 restaurants in Maricopa County didn't bother to renew their liquor licenses because of the economic downturn. Each month, Ross said, she was lucky to clear $2,000. But given her kidney problems and $600 a month of medication, she said, "I'm like one bill away from folding."

She understood why musicians wanted their money, she said, but she didn't feel too excited about paying her share. Besides, how did anyone know that the songwriters got the money? How did she know this wasn't some scam?

When Devon Baker called to make an appointment, Ross was taken aback. She'd expected Baker to yell at her and say: "You're late! You've had the paperwork for two months already!" Instead, Baker seemed pleasant. "If they'd sent some big dude in a trench coat, some mobster type guy," Ross said, she might have resisted. Instead, here came Baker, all big smile and soft hair. "I wasn't expecting some cute little gal from Tennessee with a Southern accent."

Baker accepted Ross's invitation and sat down in the booth with Ross and her pug, Frank. Out came the checkbook. "I could tell she was low on money," Baker told me later. "I could tell it was hard for her to shell out the money. But I also know music helps her make money. Or she wouldn't have it. She and I knew she was doing the right thing."

Ross produced her paperwork. She'd already figured it out. $16 a week. She could handle it, she guessed. "I didn't want to give her the money. But I knew I had to."

John Bowe is a contributing writer for the magazine. His most recent article was on the Octomom. He is the editor of "Us: Americans Talk About Love."

Nonprofits Aren't So Generous When a Name's at Stake - The Wall Street Journal.

2010-08-05T17:37:00.000-05:00

I thought you would be interested in the following story from The Wall Street Journal.

Nonprofits Aren't So Generous When a Name's at Stake

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703700904575390950178142586.html

The Wall Street Journal for iPad provides a new way to experience the Journal's award winning coverage, blending the best of print and online. Special features include:

"Now" Issue featuring updated coverage throughout the day, with top article picks from Journal editors
Market Data including quote search and customizable Watchlist
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Click or tap the link below to download The Wall Street Journal from the Apple iTunes App Store.

http://www.wsj.com/ipad

Sent from my iPad

Slashdot Your Rights Online Story | Letter To Abolish Software Patents In Australia

2010-08-04T07:35:00.001-05:00

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/08/04/006259/Letter-To-Abolish-Software-Patents-In-Australia?from=rss

Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age

2010-08-02T13:53:00.001-05:00

Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age

By TRIP GABRIEL

Published: August 1, 2010

At Rhode Island College, a freshman copied and pasted from a Web site's frequently asked questions page about homelessness — and did not think he needed to credit a source in his assignment because the page did not include author information.

Enlarge This Image

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

Sarah Brookover, left, a senior at Rutgers University in New Jersey, with Vibiana Bowman Cvetkovic, a reference librarian.

At DePaul University, the tip-off to one student's copying was the purple shade of several paragraphs he had lifted from the Web; when confronted by a writing tutor his professor had sent him to, he was not defensive — he just wanted to know how to change purple text to black.

And at the University of Maryland, a student reprimanded for copying from Wikipedia in a paper on the Great Depression said he thought its entries — unsigned and collectively written — did not need to be credited since they counted, essentially, as common knowledge.

Professors used to deal with plagiarism by admonishing students to give credit to others and to follow the style guide for citations, and pretty much left it at that.

But these cases — typical ones, according to writing tutors and officials responsible for discipline at the three schools who described the plagiarism — suggest that many students simply do not grasp that using words they did not write is a serious misdeed.

It is a disconnect that is growing in the Internet age as concepts of intellectual property, copyright and originality are under assault in the unbridled exchange of online information, say educators who study plagiarism.

Digital technology makes copying and pasting easy, of course. But that is the least of it. The Internet may also be redefining how students — who came of age with music file-sharing, Wikipedia and Web-linking — understand the concept of authorship and the singularity of any text or image.

"Now we have a whole generation of students who've grown up with information that just seems to be hanging out there in cyberspace and doesn't seem to have an author," said Teresa Fishman, director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University. "It's possible to believe this information is just out there for anyone to take."

Professors who have studied plagiarism do not try to excuse it — many are champions of academic honesty on their campuses — but rather try to understand why it is so widespread.

In surveys from 2006 to 2010 by Donald L. McCabe, a co-founder of the Center for Academic Integrity and a business professor at Rutgers University, about 40 percent of 14,000 undergraduates admitted to copying a few sentences in written assignments.

Perhaps more significant, the number who believed that copying from the Web constitutes "serious cheating" is declining — to 29 percent on average in recent surveys from 34 percent earlier in the decade.

Sarah Brookover, a senior at the Rutgers campus in Camden, N.J., said many of her classmates blithely cut and paste without attribution.

"This generation has always existed in a world where media and intellectual property don't have the same gravity," said Ms. Brookover, who at 31 is older than most undergraduates. "When you're sitting at your computer, it's the same machine you've downloaded music with, possibly illegally, the same machine you streamed videos for free that showed on HBO last night."

Ms. Brookover, who works at the campus library, has pondered the differences between researching in the stacks and online. "Because you're not walking into a library, you're not physically holding the article, which takes you closer to 'this doesn't belong to me,' " she said. Online, "everything can belong to you really easily."

A University of Notre Dame anthropologist, Susan D. Blum, disturbed by the high rates of reported plagiarism, set out to understand how students view authorship and the written word, or "texts" in Ms. Blum's academic language.

She conducted her ethnographic research among 234 Notre Dame undergraduates. "Today's students stand at the crossroads of a new way of conceiving texts and the people who create them and who quote them," she wrote last year in the book "My Word!: Plagiarism and College Culture," published by Cornell University Press.

Ms. Blum argued that student writing exhibits some of the same qualities of pastiche that drive other creative endeavors today — TV shows that constantly reference other shows or rap music that samples from earlier songs.

In an interview, she said the idea of an author whose singular effort creates an original work is rooted in Enlightenment ideas of the individual. It is buttressed by the Western concept of intellectual property rights as secured by copyright law. But both traditions are being challenged.

"Our notion of authorship and originality was born, it flourished, and it may be waning," Ms. Blum said.

She contends that undergraduates are less interested in cultivating a unique and authentic identity — as their 1960s counterparts were — than in trying on many different personas, which the Web enables with social networking.

"If you are not so worried about presenting yourself as absolutely unique, then it's O.K. if you say other people's words, it's O.K. if you say things you don't believe, it's O.K. if you write papers you couldn't care less about because they accomplish the task, which is turning something in and getting a grade," Ms. Blum said, voicing student attitudes. "And it's O.K. if you put words out there without getting any credit."

The notion that there might be a new model young person, who freely borrows from the vortex of information to mash up a new creative work, fueled a brief brouhaha earlier this year with Helene Hegemann, a German teenager whose best-selling novel about Berlin club life turned out to include passages lifted from others.

Instead of offering an abject apology, Ms. Hegemann insisted, "There's no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity." A few critics rose to her defense, and the book remained a finalist for a fiction prize (but did not win).

That theory does not wash with Sarah Wilensky, a senior at Indiana University, who said that relaxing plagiarism standards "does not foster creativity, it fosters laziness."

"You're not coming up with new ideas if you're grabbing and mixing and matching," said Ms. Wilensky, who took aim at Ms. Hegemann in a column in her student newspaper headlined "Generation Plagiarism."

"It may be increasingly accepted, but there are still plenty of creative people — authors and artists and scholars — who are doing original work," Ms. Wilensky said in an interview. "It's kind of an insult that that ideal is gone, and now we're left only to make collages of the work of previous generations."

In the view of Ms. Wilensky, whose writing skills earned her the role of informal editor of other students' papers in her freshman dorm, plagiarism has nothing to do with trendy academic theories.

The main reason it occurs, she said, is because students leave high school unprepared for the intellectual rigors of college writing.

"If you're taught how to closely read sources and synthesize them into your own original argument in middle and high school, you're not going to be tempted to plagiarize in college, and you certainly won't do so unknowingly," she said.

At the University of California, Davis, of the 196 plagiarism cases referred to the disciplinary office last year, a majority did not involve students ignorant of the need to credit the writing of others.

Many times, said Donald J. Dudley, who oversees the discipline office on the campus of 32,000, it was students who intentionally copied — knowing it was wrong — who were "unwilling to engage the writing process."

"Writing is difficult, and doing it well takes time and practice," he said.

And then there was a case that had nothing to do with a younger generation's evolving view of authorship. A student accused of plagiarism came to Mr. Dudley's office with her parents, and the father admitted that he was the one responsible for the plagiarism. The wife assured Mr. Dudley that it would not happen again.

Objectivist Hsieh explains why Objectivism is Incompatible with Christianity

2010-07-28T14:28:00.000-05:00

Writes Dianah Hsieh:

"Would Jesus have blown up a housing project for the poor to protect his intellectual property, as Howard Roark did? Of course not!"

I think she's right!

Author Claims Patents Made Industrial Revolution Possible; Then Shows Why He...

2010-07-27T19:41:00.001-05:00

Sent to you by Stephan Kinsella via Google Reader:

Author Claims Patents Made Industrial Revolution Possible; Then Shows Why He's Wrong

via Techdirt by Mike Masnick on 7/27/10

A bunch of folks have been submitting the story about author William Rosen appearing on The Daily Show hyping his new book about the steam engine, where he claims that the industrial revolution happened because of the ability to "own ideas."

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

William Rosen

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

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Admittedly, it's Jon Stewart who tries to summarize/paraphrase Rosen's thesis by saying:

Jon Stewart: You say that the big difference there was the 'democritization of inventing.' This idea that, once people owned the idea of inventing... and I guess this happened in Britain... once the idea that ideas could be yours, and you would own them, that's what opened the floodgates.

William Rosen: Exactly. Once you actually empower people to get wealthy and famous as inventors, the floodgates are open. And an Oklahoma landrush starts to begin, where everyone's chasing not land, not 40 acres, but the next new invention. And the steam engine comes along right about that time.

Nice theory. Too bad the actual research has long debunked it. The mistake that Rosen makes here is a simple one that trips up plenty of people: it's confusing correlation with causation. The problem is that when people have looked at the issue in more detail, they've actually discovered that the correlation doesn't work the way that Rosen and other patent system proponents predict. In fact, it happens the opposite way. That is, greater IP protection trails periods of greater innovation. That is, what happens is that the industrialization period or a period of great innovation happens, and then those who led the way get upset about new competitors and new upstarts, and push for greater protectionist policies to keep the competitors out of the market. In fact, Rosen's later comments highlight why intellectual property tends to slow down the rate of industrialization, rather than aid it:

William Rosen: Sustained technological innovation is incremental -- small improvements. And that was the real magic of the era: all these micro inventions from one-time blacksmiths and carpenters... And that's why a steam engine could be made to operate a toy in the first century in Alexandria, but a working one... takes a village.

Odd wording choices aside, the problem with patents is that they get in the way of this kind of incremental innovation. Patents are designed to protect the big breakthroughs... and then limit follow-on innovation for the course of the patent. If the big breakthrough is the most important thing, then you can maybe make an argument that patents make sense. But, most innovation is, as Rosen notes, about that incremental improvements, where "it takes a village." But a patent denies the "village" the opportunity to make those improvements (at least without adding a significant cost) and thus delays innovation.

In fact, this is why research into the history of the steam engine suggested that innovation on the core James Watt invention was limited until after his patents expired.

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Trailer for the movie, "Who Owns You?"

2010-05-18T23:25:00.001-05:00

This is the documentary I'm in--the one mentioned here http://www.stephankinsella.com/2010/04/05/my-bourbon-and-cigar-entertaining-discussed-on-slate-culture-gabfest/

Sent to you by Stephan Kinsella via Google Reader:

Trailer for the movie, "Who Owns You?"

via Who Owns You? by drkoepsell on 5/16/10

My co-producer, and the director of the documentary we are producing, Taylor Roesch, has put together an engaging trailer. The principal shooting for the doc is complete, and he lined up a great range of experts to speak on the subject. We will wrap up shooting late this summer here in The Netherlands, and plan to put together a rough cut in time for some of the festivals. I'm really proud of Taylor's work, please check it out:

Who Owns You? - A Documentary - Trailer from Taylor Roesch on Vimeo.

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Guardian Says It Needs to Become an Open Platform

2010-05-18T21:47:00.001-05:00

fooken brilliant

Sent to you by Stephan Kinsella via Google Reader:

Guardian Says It Needs to Become an Open Platform

via GigaOM by Mathew Ingram on 5/18/10

While some newspapers like the Times of London and the New York Times have either implemented or are expected to launch paywalls for their content, The Guardian in Britain has taken the exact opposite approach: Not only does it give its content away for free to readers, but through its "open platform" and API, it allows developers and companies to take its content as well, and do whatever they want with it — including building it into commercial applications. Are the higher-ups at the paper crazy? Not according to Chris Thorpe, The Guardian's "developer advocate" and a member of the team that built the open platform and helps companies integrate it into their apps and services.

In an interview in Toronto on Monday, Thorpe said that the paper doesn't want to charge its users for content, but instead wants to enable developers and companies to create businesses around that content and then partner with them. Unlike the New York Times, which restricts developers to only an excerpt of its content and doesn't allow them to use it in commercial applications or services, The Guardian's API provides full access to its content and allows developers and companies to use it even in revenue-generating applications.

In fact, "We not only say that you can use the content in a commercial application, we encourage it," Thorpe said. "It gets our content to places where it wouldn't be otherwise, and then we can build relationships with content partners around that." The platform, which is still in the experimental stage, has attracted about 2,000 developers who have signed up for the API and created over 200 apps and web services. Platform developer Matt McAlister has called it an attempt to "weave The Guardian into the fabric of the Internet."

Thorpe noted that the API — which he said will be coming out of beta soon — may be free, but it does come with strings attached. If you want the full text of articles to use in your app or service, you agree (by signing the licensing agreement) that The Guardian has the right to insert ads into the stream of content it sends you through the API. The paper is also working on partnerships with a number of outside companies and agencies that use content from the newspaper's database as part of a their service or site, and some of those look to be closer to monetizing the paper's own content better than The Guardian itself can.

For example, Thorpe said that some sites and services that are focused on a sport such as football will take The Guardian's content related to a specific team and use that to build out their site. Using the same stories or content on The Guardian site isn't worth much, because the newspaper doesn't know when a diehard Arsenal fan visits the site, and therefore can't serve them related ads. But a dedicated site for those fans can take that same content and monetize it much more effectively.

Thorpe also admits that The Guardian's ownership structure — it's owned by the Scott Trust — likely has something to do with the paper's interest in an open API, and its willingness to provide its content to others despite the lack of any immediate return, since it can afford to think longer term rather than just focusing solely on quarterly earnings. The vision of the paper is to become the leading voice of liberal thought on the Internet, he said, and the newspaper's leadership firmly believes that becoming an open platform is the best way to achieve that.

In the video embedded below, Thorpe talks briefly about the strategy behind the open API:

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"Thank you for trying to help save a life" -- from a blood drive I want to. They turned me away for mad cow fears since I lived in England 1991-92. But I guess I did try to help save a life. I didn't save one, or even help to save one. But I TRIED to

2010-05-16T12:46:00.001-05:00

Does Intellectual Property Go Against Traditional Views Of Knowledge In India?

2010-05-15T23:19:00.001-05:00

Sent to you by Geoffrey Allan Plauché via Google Reader:

Does Intellectual Property Go Against Traditional Views Of Knowledge In India?

via Techdirt by Mike Masnick on 5/14/10

With India in the middle of its process of revamping its copyright laws due to pressure from Western nations (just a few years after it revamped its patent laws, also due to pressure from Western nations), Quentin Hartman points us to an interesting writeup by Venkatesh Hariharan taking a look at the status of intellectual property in India today and how it seems to conflict with the traditional view of knowledge and sharing knowledge in traditional Indian society. He notes a wonderful hymn that he learned as a child:

Wonderful is your gift of knowledge
the more we share, the more it grows
the more we hoard it, the more it diminishes

But, unfortunately, due to intense pressure from the US and other countries, India has been pushed into implementing US-style intellectual property regimes, in many cases leading to ridiculous results. The article reminds us of the story we've covered previously about the guy who claims IP rights over popular yoga techniques.

The article makes an amusing aside that I hadn't considered before, but should serve as an interesting rejoinder to those who constantly show up with the refrain of "don't like how our IP system stops you from copying? then make your own music/movies/software/novels, etc.." It points out that India's own IP system appears to be quite derivative from the American system. So for all of those "make your own!" folks out there, why isn't India allowed to "make its own" IP regime in the way that fit with its own goals? And why is the US pressuring other countries, such as Canada to make a "derivative" IP system, rather than allowing it to "make its own"?

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Some Fiction About Fan Fiction

2010-05-15T23:18:00.001-05:00

Sent to you by Geoffrey Allan Plauché via Google Reader:

Some Fiction About Fan Fiction

via Techdirt by Mike Masnick on 5/14/10

Reader Andrew sends in a blog post by George R.R. Martin, author of the fantasy series Song of Ice and Fire among other things, about his intense dislike for fan fiction. The post is long and rambles on repeating points somewhat randomly, but there are a few key points that he makes, that don't seem to have much support. First, he claims that he has to defend his copyright:

Furthermore, we HAVE to do it.... a copyright MUST BE DEFENDED. If someone infringes on your copyright, and you are aware of the infringement, and you do not defend your copyright, the law assumes that you have abandoned it. Once you have done that, anyone can do whatever the hell they want with your stuff.

This is just wrong. I don't know where he got his information from, but he's confused. That's true of trademark law, but not copyright law. For someone who insists elsewhere in the post that he knows copyright law, he got this one flat out wrong.

In that same paragraph, he talks about fair use as well:

There was a lot of talk about copyright, and whether or not fan fiction was illegal, whether it was fair use (it is NOT fair use, by the way, not as I understand the term, and I have a certain familiarity with what is and isn't fair use thanks to my own experiences with THE ARMAGEDDON RAG)

On this one, he's also wrong, but it's a little more blurry. Fan fiction can be fair use and it might not be fair use, depending on the fan fiction. He's wrong to make a blanket statement that fan fiction is absolutely not fair use. That's wrong, and courts have found that to be wrong... in some cases, but it very much depends on the work. That's why you have the case of The Wind Done Gone, which is an (unauthorized) rewrite of Gone With the Wind from another character's perspective. In that case, the 11th Circuit found it to be fair use. But, then again, we have the more recent case of Coming Through The Rye, an unauthorized sequel to Cather in the Rye -- which is still being argued in the courts, but so far, the courts have not bought the fair use claim (which, by the way, has horrified some copyright/fair use experts).

On a purely technical level, it's hard to see how copyright law outlaws fan fiction. The courts had been clear for ages, that copyright law only covers the explicit expression, and not the idea. In fact, courts have insisted that one of the reasons why copyright law does not violate the First Amendment is because of that separation between idea and expression. As such, it's difficult to see how any court could find fan fiction a violation of copyright, seeing as it's a totally separate expression, even if based on the same idea. It is true that some courts (a la the Salinger case above) have ruled otherwise, but this is hardly settled law, and Martin's claim to the contrary is wrong.

From there, he picks up on the usual point that if you allow fan fiction, then others might do stuff with your characters you don't like. To that, I think the only proper response is: that's life. You might not like it, but copyright is not a moral right -- at least not in the US. It is not intended to allow the author to control his or her characters forever. In fact, quite the opposite. Copyright has one stated purpose: to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. I recognize that it may be upsetting for others to do stuff with your works, especially if you don't like what they do, but there's no law against it (for the most part).

However, he then builds on that idea with a rather laughable defense of why it's bad to let others do what they want with your characters, by comparing Edgar Rice Burroughs with HP Lovecraft (though, oddly, he refuses to use either's name). He notes that Burroughs and his estate carefully protected Tarzan, while HP Lovecraft encouraged others to make use of Cthulu. Burroughs died rich, Lovecraft died poor. Thus, to Martin, we have proof that you should protect your works. I'm not kidding. Apparently, Martin is unfamiliar with the fact that correlation is not the same as causation, or that two anecdotes is not a representative sample.

I could just as easily pick out two different authors -- say J.K. Rowling, who (for the most part) allows fan fiction, and... uh... just about any author in the world who does not, and point out that Rowling is a hell of a lot richer. Based on Martin's reasoning, now there's proof that allowing fan fiction makes sense.

There was one other story in the post that Andrew pointed out, which makes an interesting case against allowing fan fiction:

Most of us laboring in the genres of science fiction and fantasy... had a lesson in the dangers of permitting fan fiction a couple of decades back, courtesy of Marion Zimmer Bradley. MZB had been an author who not only allowed fan fiction based on her Darkover series, but actively encouraged it... even read and critiqued the stories of her fans. All was happiness and joy, until one day she encountered in one such fan story an idea similar to one she was using in her current Darkover novel-in-progress. MZB wrote to the fan, explained the situation, even offered a token payment and an acknowledgement in the book. The fan replied that she wanted full co-authorship of said book, and half the money, or she would sue. MZB scrapped the novel instead, rather than risk a lawsuit.

That scenario does suck, but again, there's more to look at than what Martin presents. First of all, if Bradley had evidence that she came up with the idea separately, the lawsuit would not have gone very far. Furthermore, as he notes, it was just the idea that was similar -- and copyright has that idea/expression dichotomy. It is true that a lawsuit may have been filed and it can be expensive to fight a lawsuit, but just because there is one crazy person out there, doesn't condemn the entire concept of fan fiction.

I can certainly understand the emotional dislike for fan fiction (though, many who have embraced it have found that it also helps build a much stronger connection with fans). Both JK Rowling and Stephenie Meyer (who wrote the Twilight series) have (mostly... with some exceptions) embraced fan fiction, and it's helped build that intense fan loyalty. That's not to say it's the only way to do so, of course.

Martin doesn't quite get to the extreme argument we've heard before, but he sort of hints at it, with his claim that his characters are his children and only he gets to control them. But one of the standard arguments we've heard against fan fiction is "but what if a fan puts those characters into a pornographic story?" or "what if they make the characters into Nazis?" or something along those lines. And the answer is: so what? People have imaginations, and if they don't write it down it'll be in their heads anyway. What difference does it make? None of that takes away from the authentic characters that you create yourself. Just because someone else does something else with the characters, it doesn't change or impact the stories you wrote.

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Shale Gas Will Rock the World

2010-05-13T15:53:00.001-05:00

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303491304575187880596301668.html#mod=djemWMP_t

Shale Gas Will Rock the World

Huge discoveries of natural gas promise to shake up the energy markets and geopolitics. And that's just for starters.

By AMY MYERS JAFFE

There's an energy revolution brewing right under our feet.

Journal Report

Read the complete Energy report .

Topics: Shale Gas

Tapping the Gas

See how horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing work.

Over the past decade, a wave of drilling around the world has uncovered giant supplies of natural gas in shale rock. By some estimates, there's 1,000 trillion cubic feet recoverable in North America alone—enough to supply the nation's natural-gas needs for the next 45 years. Europe may have nearly 200 trillion cubic feet of its own.

We've always known the potential of shale; we just didn't have the technology to get to it at a low enough cost. Now new techniques have driven down the price tag—and set the stage for shale gas to become what will be the game-changing resource of the decade.

I have been studying the energy markets for 30 years, and I am convinced that shale gas will revolutionize the industry—and change the world—in the coming decades. It will prevent the rise of any new cartels. It will alter geopolitics. And it will slow the transition to renewable energy.

To understand why, you have to consider that even before the shale discoveries, natural gas was destined to play a big role in our future. As environmental concerns have grown, nations have leaned more heavily on the fuel, which gives off just half the carbon dioxide of coal. But the rise of gas power seemed likely to doom the world's consumers to a repeat of OPEC, with gas producers like Russia, Iran and Venezuela coming together in a cartel and dictating terms to the rest of the world.

John Gould/The Wall Street Journal

Houston Bucket List

2010-05-10T06:36:00.000-05:00

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Houston-TX/Houston-Bucket-List-Things-To-Do-in-Houston-Before-You-Die/116281225071169?ref=ts

Houston Bucket List - Things To Do in Houston Before You Die ◇► 2 ◀◇ experience what it is like to walk in space at the Johnson Space Center...

Space Center Houston

www.spacecenter.org

May 5 at 3:33pm · View Feedback (11)Hide Feedback (11) · Share

Houston Bucket List - Things To Do in Houston Before You Die ◇► 1 ◀◇ Visit the Menil collection... "One of the greatest private art collections in the U.S. features such surrealist works as those by Salvador Dali and Max Ernst, and offers visitors a sign-free and simply-designed environment in which to experience the art in a more personal way. The main building is accompanied by four satellite buildings."

The Menil Collection

www.menil.org

The Menil Collection is a museum dedicated to preserving and exhibiting the art collection of Houston philanthropists John and Dominique de Menil. Its diverse holdings represent many world cultures and thousands of years of human creativity, from prehistoric times to the present day. ...

China May ‘Crash’ in Next 9 to 12 Months

2010-05-04T12:52:00.000-05:00

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601010&sid=aMbfBKW.uKn4

China May 'Crash' in Next 9 to 12 Months, Faber Says (Update3)

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By Shiyin Chen and Haslinda Amin

May 3 (Bloomberg) -- Investor Marc Faber said China's economy will slow and possibly "crash" within a year as declines in stock and commodity prices signal the nation's property bubble is set to burst.

The Shanghai Composite Index has failed to regain its 2009 high while industrial commodities and shares of Australian resource exporters are acting "heavy," Faber said. The opening of the World Expo in Shanghai last week is "not a particularly good omen," he said, citing a property bust and depression that followed the 1873 World Exhibition in Vienna.

"The market is telling you that something is not quite right," Faber, the publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report, said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Hong Kong today. "The Chinese economy is going to slow down regardless. It is more likely that we will even have a crash sometime in the next nine to 12 months."

An index tracking Chinese stocks traded in Hong Kong dropped 1.8 percent today, the most in two weeks, after the central bank raised reserve requirements for the third time this year. The Shanghai Composite has slumped 12 percent this year, Asia's worst performer, as policy makers seek to rein in a lending boom that's spurred record gains in property prices. China's markets are shut for a holiday today.

Copper touched a seven-week low and BHP Billiton Ltd., the world's biggest mining company, fell the most since February on concern spending in the world's third-largest economy will slow and after Australia boosted taxes on commodities producers. Rio Tinto Ltd., the third-largest, slid as much as 6 percent.

Chanos, Rogoff

Faber joins hedge fund manager Jim Chanos and Harvard University's Kenneth Rogoff in warning of a crash in China.

China is "on a treadmill to hell" because it's hooked on property development for driving growth, Chanos said in an interview last month. As much as 60 percent of the country's gross domestic product relies on construction, he said. Rogoff said in February a debt-fueled bubble in China may trigger a regional recession within a decade.

The government has banned loans for third homes and raised mortgage rates and down-payment requirements for second-home purchases. Prices rose 11.7 percent across 70 cities in March from a year earlier, the most since data began in 2005.

The government has stopped short of raising interest rates to contain property prices. Within an hour of the central bank announcement on reserve ratios, Finance Minister Xie Xuren said that officials remained committed to expansionary policies to cement the nation's recovery.

Stocks 'Fully Priced'

The nation's economy grew 11.9 percent in the first quarter, the fastest pace in almost three years. The government projects gross domestic product growth for the year of about 8 percent.

The clampdown on property speculation may prompt investors to turn to the nation's stock market, Faber said. Still, shares are "fully priced" and Chinese investors may instead become "big buyers" of gold, he said.

BlackRock Inc. is among money managers reducing their holdings on Chinese stocks on expectations that economic growth has peaked. The BlackRock Emerging Markets Fund has widened its "underweight" position for China versus the MSCI Emerging Markets Index to about 7.5 percent from 4.6 percent at the end of March, the fund's London-based co-manager Dan Tubbs said.

Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., China Construction Bank Corp. and Bank of China Ltd, the nation's three largest banks, are trading near their lowest valuations on record as rising profits are eclipsed by concern bad loans will increase.

Local Governments

Citigroup Inc. warned in March that in a "worst case scenario," the non-performing loans of local-government investment vehicles, used to channel money to stimulus projects, could swell to 2.4 trillion yuan by 2011.

Housing prices nationwide may fall as much as 20 percent in the second half of the year on government measures to curb speculation, BNP Paribas said April 23. Under a stress test conducted by the Shanghai branch of the China Banking Regulatory Commission in February, local banks' ratio of delinquent mortgages would triple should home prices in the country's commercial center decline 10 percent.

Shanghai is projecting as many as 70 million visitors to the $44 billion World Expo, more than 10 times the number who traveled to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. More than 433,000 people visited the 5.3 square-kilometer (3.3 square-mile) park on its first weekend.

To contact the reporter on this story: Shiyin Chen in Singapore at schen37@bloomberg.net

Steve Jobs Hints At Theora Lawsuit

2010-04-30T18:57:00.001-05:00

Sent to you by Geoffrey Allan Plauché via Google Reader:

Steve Jobs Hints At Theora Lawsuit

via Slashdot by timothy on 4/30/10

netcrawler writes "Steve Jobs' open letter on Flash has prompted someone at the Free Software Foundation Europe to ask him about his support of proprietary format H.264 over Theora. Jobs' pithy answer (email with headers) suggests Theora might infringe on existing patents and that 'a patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other "open source" codecs now.' Does he know something we don't?"

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Yard sign... priceless

2010-04-29T14:46:00.001-05:00

                      Ralph, my neighbor is a "lefty" of sorts (Obama bumper

                        stickers, gung-ho socialized medicine, "guns should be

                        banned", etc.).  So last week I put this sign up in

                        my yard after one of his anti-gun rants at a

                        neighborhood cocktail party.  The sign wasn't up

                        more than an hour before he called the police and wanted

                        them to make me take down the sign.  Fortunately,

                        the officer politely informed him that it was not their

                        job to take such action without a court order and that

                        he had to file a complaint "downtown" first, which would

                        be reviewed by the city attorney to see if it violated

                        any city, county, or state ordinances, which if there

                        was a violation a court order would be sent to the

                        offending party (me) to "remove the sign in seven

                        days".


                        After several weeks he was informed that the sign was legal

                        (by a quarter of an inch) and there was nothing the city

                        could do, which obviously made him madder.  I tried

                        to smooth things over by inviting him to go shooting

                        with me and my friends at the hunt club but that seemed

                        to make him even more angry.  I then asked him if

                        he wanted to go to a Tea Party rally but again he

                        declined my outreach efforts to bring about a better

                        understanding between political and social

                        opponents.

                        I am at a loss how to reconcile our long relationship

                        (notice I did not say friendship), any suggestions would be

                        welcome.

                        Anyway, that's life in our neck of the woods, how's about

                        yours?

Google the IP Terrorist

2010-04-28T16:02:00.001-05:00

I thought their motto was "don't be evil"?

H/t Peter Klein:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1632080/google-threatens-booze-site-groggle-do-they-have-a-keg-to-stand-on

Google Threatens Booze Site Groggle. Do they Have a Keg to Stand on?

BY Addy DugdaleToday

This is Groggle.com, an Australian price-comparison website that hunts down the cheapest alcohol for your pleasure (and pain, the following day.) It's just been sent a cease-and-desist letter by Google.com--for those of you not in the know, it's an online search engine firm based in the U.S. which is diversifying into other markets. And it's all to do with the Groggle founders' choice of name.

Cameron Collie and Alec Doughty registered the name with the Aussie trademark office last year, and it was approved in February. Tens of thousands of dollars later, Google pounced, asking the dipsophilic start-up to withdraw its trademark, change its name, transfer the domain name--groggle.com.au to Google, acknowledge in writing that it had been a very naughty boy, that it had committed the tort of passing off, and so on and so forth.

Talk about using a piledriver, a few tons of plastic explosive and an army of Macgyvers to open a screw-top bottle of wine.

The Mindboggled blog has got something interesting to say about the episode. It notes that there are already a bunch of search engines that go by the names of Doogle, Joogle,and Toogle. I even found one called Moogle. Search engines. Not price comparison sites. Search engines. Now then, surely that is more of an infringement on Google's business than a place that lets you find the cheapest booze around and then, if not use it as antifreeze on your car, drink the stuff?

The smart money's on Google backing down over the affair. When far-reaching, tech-savvy, and, it must be argued, visionary company makes an ant-stampingly pathetic gesture like this, it's magnified by Hubble-sian proportians. The only thing that happens is that the behemoth looks like a toogle--sorry, tool--the plucky underdogs get Facebook pages and Twitter hashtags, and publicity campaigns led by slightly tragic politicians. It's non-news made nonsense.

It's been done before, most notably by Apple, who started flinging legal nunchuks in the direction of the city of New York when it dared to use an Apple in its GreeNYC campaign logo and, more recently, at Woolworths. Ironically enough, they'd been sued to buggery loads of times by the Beatles' Apple Corps record label in the preceeding 25 or so years. And you wonder why you still can't buy the Beatles on iTunes?

The one great thing about this little Google v Groggle dispute is that it has garnered acres of free publicity for the start-up. Although it does beg the question: why did Google think it necessary to jump in, studs up, and tackle a couple of enterprising blokes whose domain name is marginally similar to theirs? It's the part of the cease-and-desist letter where Google's lawyers demand transfer of the Groggle.com.au to Google Australia that leaves the Lucky Jim-style bad taste in the mouth. It's just greedy.

A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest. ~Irish Proverb

2010-04-28T10:19:00.001-05:00

A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest. ~Irish Proverb

Umbrellas at dawn as politicians hurl eggs and smoke bombs in Ukraine parliament over Russia navy deal

2010-04-28T09:42:00.001-05:00

hahaha

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1269139/Egg-bombs-hurled-Ukraine-parliament-Russia-Black-Sea-fleet-deal-ratified.html

Umbrellas at dawn as politicians hurl eggs and smoke bombs in Ukraine parliament over Russia navy deal

By Chris Johnson
Last updated at 3:01 AM on 28th April 2010

Eggs and smoke bombs were thrown inside Ukraine's parliament today as the chamber approved an agreement allowing the Russian Navy to extend its stay in a Ukrainian port until 2042.

Thousands of opposition demonstrators rallied outside the parliament building as deputies from newly elected President Viktor Yanukovich's coalition approved a 25-year extension to the Russian Black Sea Fleet's base in Crimea.

The chamber of the parliament filled with smoke as smoke bombs were released and Speaker Volodymyr Litvyn took shelter under several umbrella as eggs rained down on him.

Enlarge

Brolly good: Security personnel protect with umbrellas Speaker of Ukraine's parliament Volodymyr Liytvyn during a fight at a parliament sitting in Kiev this morning

Enlarge

Target: One of Mr Lytvyn security men is struck on the head by an egg as the row escalates

Enlarge

Take that: A politician flings raw egg at fellow parlimentarians after the vote

Ukrainian nationalists, led by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and former President Viktor Yushchenko, regard the base as a betrayal of Ukraine's national interests.

They wanted to remove it when the existing lease runs out in 2017.

But parliament ratified the lease extension by 236 votes - 10 more than the minimum required for it to pass.

Yanukovich agreed the navy base deal with Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev on April 21 in exchange for a 30 per cent cut in the price of Russian gas to Ukraine - a boon to Kiev's struggling economy.

In a parallel discussion on Tuesday morning, the Russian Duma was expected to rubber-stamp the deal, which is being touted by the Kremlin as a diplomatic coup.

The Russian fleet has been based in Sevastopol since the reign of Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

Enlarge

The eyes have it: A smoke bomb fill the session hall during ratification of the Black Sea Fleet deal with Russia

Enlarge

Members of the Ukrainian parliamentary opposition factions stand in smoke near their seats covered with large pieces of blue-and yellow fabric symbolising Ukrainian national flag

But under an accord after Ukraine gained independence following the break-up of the Soviet Union, the fleet would have had to leave in 2017.

Yushchenko, Yanukovich's pro-Western predecessor who favoured Ukrainian membership of Nato, pushed hard when he was in office for the fleet to be withdrawn on time in 2017.

But the newly elected Yanukovich says he wants to significantly improve ties with Ukraine's former Soviet master.

He says the Black Sea fleet in Crimea does not endanger Ukraine's national interests and enhances European security.

Yanukovich's opponents say he is acting against the constitution. But the constitution is ambiguous, containing two contradictory articles on the stationing of foreign military bases in the country.

Enlarge

Opposition lawmakers hurled eggs and smoke bombs inside Ukraine's parliament on Tuesday as the chamber approved an agreement allowing the Russian Navy to extend its stay in a Ukrainian port until 2042

Enlarge

Ukrainian opposition and pro-presidential lawmakers fight against each other during ratification

'If society today turns a blind eye to the Kharkiv agreement, it is possible that it will be the biggest loss to our sovereignty and independence,' Yushchenko said at the weekend, referring to the meeting in the city of Kharkiv where Yanukovich and Medvedev agreed the deal.

The Russian fleet in Sevastopol comprises about 16,200 servicemen, a rocket cruiser, a large destroyer and about 40 other vessels including submarines, landing craft, small destroyers and support ships.

To the embarrassment of Yushchenko, the fleet sent warships to support Russian military action against Ukraine's then-ally, the former Soviet republic of Georgia during Russia's brief war there in August 2008.

Opponents of the Black Sea deal say that, by hosting the Black Sea fleet, Ukraine could be dragged into future Moscow conflicts with other powers.

Proponents point out that the Crimea was part of Russia until then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine in the 1950s.

The region retains a strongly Russian-leaning population.

Ukraine's parliament has voted to extend Russia's lease of a Crimean naval port for the Black Sea Fleet in a chaotic session during which eggs and smoke bombs were thrown

Some Reflections on Originality, Plagiarism, Intertextuality & Remix

2010-04-27T15:28:00.001-05:00

Some Reflections on Originality, Plagiarism, Intertextuality & Remix

leonidobusch | April 27, 2010 at 22:02 | Tags: Creative Commons, hip hop, intertextuality, originality, plagiarism, remix | Categories: Copyright Regulation | URL: http://wp.me/pqalD-eP

One famous quote of Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig claims that "[t]here is no art that doesn't re-use." In research, this principle is called "standing on the shoulders of giants" and meant to acknowledge that even the most original article largely builds upon previous achievements by numerous predecessors; a fact evidenced by an ever growing number of citations in current journal articles.

But what holds for the most pedantic researcher, namely that is impossible to accurately give credit to all intellectual influences leading to an article, is even more true for novelists and musicians. In case of the former this regularly leads to heated debates about whether "borrowing" ideas or even passages from other books is mere plagiarism or some form of "intertextuality". In Europe, for example, the Independent recapitulates at length the recent discussion whether the debut novel by German writer Helene Hegemann was plagiarism or "intertextual mixing"; in the second edition of her novel "Axolotl Roadkill", Hegemann responded to critics by listing all her sources in an appendix.

Could it be that giving credit becomes more important when obviously building upon others' works becomes both more common and more explicit? Developed particularly to allow mash-ups and remixing, all the different Creative Commons licenses, for instance, include the "attribution"-clause, which requires to give credit. In the realm of music, hip hop is probably best known for re-using - "sampling" - portions of existing sound recordings in creating new works. And again, giving credit is an essential part of hip hop culture, as was demonstrated by Eminem in his 2003 Grammy Award speech: Read more of this post

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Carbon offsets: fraud, exaggeration, and poorly run projects

2010-04-20T13:38:00.001-05:00

Sent to you by Geoffrey Allan Plauché via Google Reader:

Carbon offsets: fraud, exaggeration, and poorly run projects

via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow on 4/20/10

Today, the Christian Science Monitor published a damning, six-part investigation into carbon credits, and concluded that they are a hive of fraud and villainy, calling them "a 'Wild West' market ripe for fraud, exaggeration, and poorly run projects that probably do little to ease global warming."

An investigation by The Christian Science Monitor and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting has found that individuals and businesses who are feeding a $700 million global market in offsets are often buying vague promises instead of the reductions in greenhouse gases they expect.
They are buying into projects that are never completed, or paying for ones that would have been done anyhow, the investigation found. Their purchases are feeding middlemen and promoters seeking profits from green schemes that range from selling protection for existing trees to the promise of planting new ones that never thrive. In some cases, the offsets have consequences that their purchasers never foresaw, such as erecting windmills that force poor people off their farms.
Carbon offsets are the environmental equivalent of financial derivatives: complex, unregulated, unchecked and - in many cases - not worth their price.

Buying carbon offsets may ease eco-guilt but not global warming

(Image: DSC02702, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from kareneliot's photostream)

Previously:

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Hitler "Downfall" video meme is DMCA'd

2010-04-20T13:36:00.001-05:00

Sent to you by Geoffrey Allan Plauché via Google Reader:

Hitler "Downfall" video meme is DMCA'd

via Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin on 4/20/10

Copyright claims against various Hitler "Downfall" parody videos have resulted in the removal of these videos from YouTube. The DMCA claimant is Constantin Films, the German production company which owns rights to the 2004 film Der Untergang ("Downfall"), from which the source video is excerpted. Boy, is Hitler ever gonna be pissed.

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Google will provide more data about government requests for user data

2010-04-20T13:35:00.001-05:00

Sent to you by Geoffrey Allan Plauché via Google Reader:

Google will provide more data about government requests for user data

via Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin on 4/20/10

A great move by Google today: The search giant is "launching a new Government Requests tool to give people information about the requests for user data or content removal we receive from government agencies around the world. For this launch, we are using data from July-December, 2009, and we plan to update the data in 6-month increments. Read this post to learn more about our principles surrounding free expression and controversial content on the web." (via Jake Appelbaum)

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Amazon Fights For Privacy of Customer Records

2010-04-20T07:58:00.003-05:00

Sent to you by Geoffrey Allan Plauché via Google Reader:

Amazon Fights For Privacy of Customer Records

via Slashdot by kdawson on 4/20/10

suraj.sun notes a CNET article on Amazon's lawsuit against North Carolina on the grounds that the state is trying to violate the privacy and First Amendment rights of Amazon's customers. "Amazon.com filed a lawsuit on Monday to fend off a sweeping demand from North Carolina's tax collectors: [for] detailed records including names and addresses of customers and information about exactly what they had purchased. ... North Carolina's Department of Revenue had ordered the online retailer to provide full details on nearly 50 million purchases made by state residents between 2003 and 2010. Because Amazon has no offices or warehouses in North Carolina, it's not required to collect the [state's] 5.75 percent sales tax on shipments, although tax collectors have reminded residents that what's known as a use tax applies on anything 'purchased or received' through the mail." Amazon is arguing that the records of what books, music, and videos its customers bought deserve enhanced protection.

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BitTorrent CEO On Net Neutrality

2010-04-20T07:58:00.001-05:00

Sent to you by Geoffrey Allan Plauché via Google Reader:

BitTorrent CEO On Net Neutrality

via Slashdot by CmdrTaco on 4/20/10

angry tapir writes "According to BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker, the Internet industry has to regulate itself by responding to consumer demands in the wake of the recent US federal court ruling that the Federal Communications Commission didn't have authority to enforce its net neutrality rules."

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Swedish Band Releases New Album As A Magazine

2010-04-14T16:26:00.001-05:00

Sent to you by Geoffrey Allan Plauché via Google Reader:

Swedish Band Releases New Album As A Magazine

via Techdirt by Martin Thörnkvist on 4/14/10

The Ark was among the last Swedish bands in the late 20th century to sign an old school major label contract. On April 26, they are releasing their first album after that contract expired. Instead of making it as a plastic disc in a plastic case, they've decided to do it in the form of a magazine (99 Swedish kronor, around 13 USD), with cardboard sleeve holding both the paper and the CD.

Here in Sweden, as record stores are closing, shops selling magazines are opening at about the same pace. Therefore, it's an interesting strategy for The Ark's upcoming release to be done as a magazine. In terms of physical distribution, it means that their music is available in 1,100 stores instead of just the 110 record stores that are left in Sweden. Also they'll be able to sell the product with 6% VAT instead of the usual 25% VAT, since magazines and books have that lower VAT in Sweden. That equals 19 Swedish kronors per sold copy in "discount" or markup.

To further understand the band's reasoning, I called The Ark's manager Jon Gray up:

Why did you release a magazine?

For many in the younger generation, music is something that's for free. The idea is to work with another form of packaging, to raise other values around the music. The genius is not the idea, but implementation. That we took this from start to finish.

We have not only created a product but also an extended network of resellers to sell it for us. For us it was about creating a new dealer network in addition to the traditional music trade. The 1,100 stores that sell this product are located everywhere including where people live.

What is the product you created?

When we released the Jesus Christ Superstar album (the singer Ola Salo had the title role in the Swedish production last year and did his own translation), we worked with Johannes Sjöberg at So Music, who previously have done some fantastically special editions release of, for example, Astrid Lindgren's life. When we planned the release of the new album, we asked Johannes if he could come up with an idea.

The result was a 100-page magazine with high-quality images, text and design. Sandberg & Timonen made the design and well known Swedish writers such as Andres Lokko, Jan Gradvall and Hanna Fahl have contributed with the text. Also, for Ola Salo as a lyricist, this format is a dream. Rather than get 4 separate texts stuffed together on a 12x12 cm cd booklet page, here each text has its own full page. It's almost a return to the LP format.

Do you think that others will copy your concept?

Yes. Generally speaking, all other revenues for recorded music negligible. Recorded music is free, there is no other business model that has taken after where the CD left us. Whether it's digital downloads or Spotify. There is no money yet. If we become the best selling album in 2010 and the best-selling monthly magazine ever, as I believe we well, it's obvious to me that others will follow our example.

This text was originally posted in Swedish the media cluster organization Media Evolution's site.

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H.264 vs. Theora — Fightin' Words About Patentability

2010-03-27T20:25:00.001-05:00

Sent to you by Geoffrey Allan Plauché via Google Reader:

H.264 vs. Theora — Fightin' Words About Patentability

via Slashdot by timothy on 3/27/10

An anonymous reader writes "Thom Holwerda from OS News has penned a rebuttal to Daring Fireball's John Gruber's claims that Theora is a greater patent risk than H.264. Holwerda writes, 'And so the H264/Theora debate concerning HTML5 video continues. The most recent entry into the discussion comes from John Gruber, who argues that Theora is more in danger of patent litigation than H264. He's wrong, and here's why.'"

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Mommy Blogger dustup

2010-03-19T12:10:00.000-05:00

as discussed on Slate's culture gabfest http://www.slate.com/id/2246619/

Jennifer Mendelsohn's story about mommy bloggers in the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times and her blog.
A roundup of some of the mommy-blogger backlash against the New York Times.
The parenting blogs Dooce and Finslippy.

Uproar in India Over Quota for Female Lawmakers

2010-03-09T11:37:00.001-06:00

Sent to you by Robert A. Wicks via Google Reader:

Uproar in India Over Quota for Female Lawmakers

via NYT > Home Page by By LYDIA POLGREEN on 3/9/10

A plan to reserve a third of the seats in India's legislatures for women plunged Parliament into chaos and threatened the governing coalition.

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Spying school district update: remote webcam functionality disabled

2010-03-09T09:26:00.001-06:00

Sent to you by Robert A. Wicks via Google Reader:

Spying school district update: remote webcam functionality disabled, two IT monkeys suspended

via Engadget by Tim Stevens on 3/9/10

We're still waiting for all the legal fallout from the Pennsylvania's Lower Merion School District webcam spying case, but more news is slowly trickling out about the whole thing, including the technology that the school used: a remote administration suite called LANrev. An update to the software, releasing this week, will disable the option for admins (or pervy IT workers) to remotely switch on a computer's webcam, hopefully preventing a replay of this situation. Beyond that, two unnamed (and possibly pervy) IT workers have been suspended for their involvement in this whole situation. Are they the ones who went too far, or was it their managers who ordered them to do it and are now throwing their dutiful peons to the fire? We may never know the truth, but at least we can now frolic naked in front of our MacBooks without fearing that dreaded green light.

Spying school district update: remote webcam functionality disabled, two IT monkeys suspended originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Employers call for end to Mickey Mouse degrees

2010-03-09T08:41:00.001-06:00

Sent to you by Robert A. Wicks via Google Reader:

Employers call for end to Mickey Mouse degrees

via The Register on 3/9/10

Send fewer to uni, charge 'em more

A recruiters group is calling for an end to government targets to get 50 per cent of school leavers involved in higher education.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work

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Print Mindset vs. Internet Mindset: Do You Link? Do You Credit Sources?

2010-03-09T08:21:00.001-06:00

Sent to you by Robert A. Wicks via Google Reader:

Print Mindset vs. Internet Mindset: Do You Link? Do You Credit Sources?

via Techdirt by Mike Masnick on 3/9/10

We recently wrote about how the NY Post was caught taking a blogger's story and rewriting it for itself -- noting the hypocrisy of a News Corp. newspaper copying from someone else, after Rupert Murdoch and his top execs have been going around decrying various news aggregators (and Google especially) for "stealing" from News Corp. newspapers. It's even more ridiculous when you think about it -- because the "stealing" that Rupert is upset about is Google linking to the original story -- a step that his NY Post writer couldn't even be bothered to do.

Of course, as a few people pointed out in the comments, this sort of "re-reporting" is quite common in the traditional news business. You see it all the time in newspapers, magazines and broadcast TV. They take a story that was found somewhere else and just "re-report" it, so that they have their own version of it. That this is incredibly inefficient and a total waste of reporters' resources never seems to be considered. But it's a very traditional reporting mindset.

But sometimes that leads to trouble. Felix Salmon has an excellent discussion going about how the recent NY Times plagiarism "scandal" really came about because of this mindset. First, he notes that the "reason" that reporter Zachary Kouwe gave for plagiarizing a variety of stories on his NY Times blog, was that he saw the stories elsewhere and wanted to re-report them and "in the essence of speed" clearly cut some corners in his re-reporting. But, as Salmon notes, this is a traditional reporting mindset. An internet blogging mindset would just see this story, and in the "essence of speed" link to it:

If there's a minor news story on a trustworthy wire service, and you think you need it on the blog, then link to it. You add no value by rushing -- with "essence of speed", no less -- to get the exact same story yourself. You're a well-paid full-time journalist at the New York Times; there are surely higher and better uses of your valuable time than going back to rewrite a story which already exists elsewhere.

The sin that resulted in Kouwe's departure from the NYT was that he rewrote badly, and left large chunks of other people's work unchanged in his own copy. But the true underlying sin was that he spent so much time rewriting in the first place: the beauty of blogs, which exist to link elsewhere, is that he should never have needed to do that at all.

Salmon goes on to point out that the big newspapers, like the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal, keep putting traditional reporters in charge of their blogs (not always, but quite frequently), and they blog like reporters, rather than digital natives. That is, they re-report stuff, rather than linking. And that's often because traditional reporters lived by the "scoop" and the idea that they had to be first. Acknowledging that someone else got the story first is seen as an admission of failure. But in the blogging world, it's seen as a sign of respect and of gratitude. But it's difficult for those who've lived in that first world to get their heads wrapped around this.

We recently wrote about the important role of curation in journalism -- which includes the ability to link to other stories, and add value to those stories (whether by fact checking or commentary or discussion). But too many traditional newspapers still have no interest in that kind of journalism, even as greater and greater numbers of their readers are actively seeking it out.

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The Global Middle Class: The Scary New Rich

2010-03-09T08:20:00.001-06:00

http://www.newsweek.com/id/234589

Sent to you by Robert A. Wicks via Google Reader:

The Global Middle Class: The Scary New Rich

via digg.com: News / Popular on 3/9/10

The global middle class is rising faster than expected, in numbers and in wealth. Last year 70 million people joined the emerging-market middle class, with incomes between $6,000 and $30,000. They have become "the story of the decade," says Goldman Sachs's chief economist Jim O'Neill, and will surpass their Western peers in global spending power...

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Soldier jailed for refusing call-up

2010-03-05T09:02:00.001-06:00

Sent to you by Robert A. Wicks via Google Reader:

Soldier jailed for refusing call-up

via The Guardian World News by Peter Walker on 3/5/10

Joe Glenton, a cause celebre for the anti-war movement, sentenced to nine months' detention in a military prison

A British soldier who refused to return to duty in Afghanistan and went on to speak at anti-war rallies was today sentenced to nine months' detention in a military prison.

A panel of three officers and a judge advocate, Emma Peters, conducting the court martial at Colchester in Essex, also reduced Joe Glenton's rank from lance corporal to private.

He pleaded guilty to going absent without leave in January after the more serious charge of desertion – which carries a maximum jail term of 10 years, rather than two years for awol – was dropped at the last minute.

Glenton, 27, had intended to deny desertion, and his legal team believe the charge was reduced to avoid a potentially embarrassing full trial at which he planned to defend himself on the grounds that the entire Afghan war was illegal under international law.

This would have been particularly sensitive at a time when the status of the Iraq war is being examined by the Chilcot inquiry, to which Gordon Brown is giving evidence today.

Glenton remains a cause celebre for the anti-war movement, writing to Gordon Brown to express his views and claiming support among other troops.

A group of Stop the War activists protested outside the army base this morning, with others supporting him in court.

Glenton served in Afghanistan for seven months with the Royal Logistics Corps in 2006. The following June, shortly before he was due to return to the country for a second tour, Glenton fled to Bangkok. He remained in Asia and Australia for just over two years before handing himself in to military authorities in June last year.

The custodial sentence was imposed despite mitigation evidence today that Glenton had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder which, along with his increasing doubts about the Afghan conflict, meant he did not want to return to the country.

Glenton's psychiatric condition had been largely ignored by his commanders, said his defence counsel, Nick Wrack.

The only advice Glenton was given on his return from Afghanistan, Wrack told the hearing, was a speech from a padre who said: "Don't go out and drink too much and beat up your wife."

Wrack said Glenton had then faced bullying and intimidation when he tried to tell his sergeant his wider concerns about the conflict.

"When he raised his objections to going back he was called a coward and a malingerer. He is neither of those," Wrack said.

Glenton had never been a pacifist, Wrack explained, and had joined the army in 2004, aged 22, while idealistic and "a bit naive". He had looked forward to going to Afghanistan, where he had been told UK forces were helping the local population.

"Over the course of his seven months [in Afghanistan] … his experiences began to conflict with what he had been told," Wrack said. "More and more he began to see the conflict in Afghanistan was wrong."

Despite these doubts he had worked diligently in Afghanistan, and the court heard testimony from officers who praised Glenton as ambitious, intelligent and a good leader, promoting him from private.

Lars Davidsson, a consultant psychiatrist, testified that he had diagnosed Glenton as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Although he had not served on the front line, Glenton's base in Helmand province came under rocket and mortar attack, and his work preparing coffins for dead soldiers left him with feelings of "guilt and helplessness".

The condition manifested itself in symptoms including nightmares and heavy drinking, Davidsson said.

The court martial heard that Glenton had seen an army GP and was due to see a psychiatric nurse before he fled. The decision was not the best in retrospect, but had been motivated by his psychiatric condition, Wrack said.

Glenton returned voluntarily after meeting his now wife, Clare, in Sydney. She wept as Wrack read aloud her letter to the court pleading with them not to jail him so they could restart their lives. She was comforted by Glenton's mother, Sue.

Glenton wished to leave the army and had a provisional university place to study international relations, Wrack added.

Peter Walker

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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Israeli Raid Cancelled After Very Stupid Facebook Post [Bad Ideas]

2010-03-04T23:25:00.001-06:00

Sent to you by Geoffrey Allan Plauché via Google Reader:

Israeli Raid Cancelled After Very Stupid Facebook Post [Bad Ideas]

via Gizmodo by Adam Frucci on 3/4/10

If you're in the military, here's a tip: don't put upcoming missions in your Facebook status. You wouldn't think someone would need to tell you that, but here we are.

A raid on suspected militants in the West Bank was cancelled yesterday after an Israeli soldier updated his Facebook status to read "On Wednesday we clean up Qatanah, and on Thursday, god willing, we come home." The solider has since, unsurprisingly, been relieved of combat duty for being a moron. He'll also spend 10 days in prison for his update.

Trying to educate soldiers on the importance of not leaking classified info to Facebook, the Israel Defense Forces have started putting up new posters in bases:

In posters placed on military bases, a mock Facebook page shows the images of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. Below their pictures - and Facebook "friend requests" - reads the slogan: "You think that everyone is your friend?"

I really want to see one of those posters. Anyone in the IDF want to send us a picture? My email address is below. I won't post it on Facebook, promise. [NY Times]

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RealNetworks to stop selling RealDVD, your copyrights are safe -- for now

2010-03-04T12:08:00.001-06:00

Sent to you by Geoffrey Allan Plauché via Google Reader:

RealNetworks to stop selling RealDVD, your copyrights are safe -- for now

via Engadget by Tim Stevens on 3/4/10

Remember when RealNetworks said it wasn't giving up on RealDVD, that it would fight the good fight and appeal the August ruling finding its DVD copying application wasn't quite legal. Well, a lot of things can change in five months and now it seems Real is caving in to the inevitable crush of the movie industry, setting the lawsuit filed by the MPAA for $4.5 million and instantly turning existing copies of RealDVD into collectors items. (Hope you kept those boxes in mint condition!) What's next for Real remains to be seen, as the company just spun off Rhapsody to be its own thing, but surely whatever it comes up with will not involve the copying of copyrighted things onto other things.

RealNetworks to stop selling RealDVD, your copyrights are safe -- for now originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink PhysOrg.com | RealNetworks | Email this | Comments

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If you blog unauthorized "Daily Show" or "Colbert" clips, Viacom will sue yo...

2010-03-03T21:17:00.001-06:00

Sent to you by Geoffrey Allan Plauché via Google Reader:

If you blog unauthorized "Daily Show" or "Colbert" clips, Viacom will sue your ass

via Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin on 3/3/10

News broke yesterday that Comedy Central would no longer allow popular video site Hulu to present episodes of "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report."

The Hollywood Reporter asked Viacom if the network intends to go after websites or bloggers who post unauthorized clips.

"Yes, we intend to do so," PR rep Tony Fox told THR. "My feeling is if (websites) are making money on our copyrighted content, then that is a problem."

What a big steaming pile of epic fail. How about blogs (like, oh, let's say Boing Boing) start suing Viacom for every time a Comedy Central writer grabs an idea or a story and fails to credit, namecheck or pay us? Oh, television suit-people, when will you ever learn. We are the internet. We are your traffic machine. We are your inspiration machine. We are the engine that propels your shows. (via EFF)

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horton w/ Sale on vermont secession

2010-03-02T19:26:00.000-06:00

wow, this is a fantastic interview-- I need to read more by this Sale dude

Kirkpatrick Sale

February 28, 2010| Constitution, Empire, Secession, US History | Scott Horton

Kirkpatrick Sale, director of the Middlebury Institute, discusses Vermont's secessionist movement that derives from the state's unique historical independence, the need to scrap the US Constitution due to its failure to preserve freedom and liberty, the inverse relationship between population size and the ability of government to function properly, the strong secessionist language enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Liberal tradition of supporting a strong national government to enforce civil rights despite the (at best) mixed results.

MP3 here. (33:33)

Kirkpatrick Sale is the author of many books, including Secession: How Vermont and All the Other States Can Save Themselves from the Empire. He is the director of the Middlebury Institute and has written for The Nation, Counterpunch and Mother Jones.

Lessons of the Patent Troll Tracker

2010-03-02T16:45:00.003-06:00

http://www.law.com/jsp/iplawandbusiness/PubArticleIPLB.jsp?id=1202439670830

Patent Litigation Weekly: Lessons of the Patent Troll Tracker

Joe Mullin

IP Law & Business

January 31, 2010

Two years after Richard Frenkel—at the time an in-house Cisco Systems, Inc., lawyer and now of counsel at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati—outed himself as the until-then-anonymous author of the controversial patent litigation blog, the Patent Troll Tracker saga appears to be over.
In January, a libel suit filed by East Texas lawyer T. John "Johnny" Ward, Jr. against Cisco over the contents of an October 2007 Troll Tracker post was settled under confidential terms. Frenkel—dismissed as a defendant in the case last August at Ward's request—has declined to comment on either Ward's suit or a second, related defamation claim filed against him and Cisco by East Texas lawyer Eric Albritton. (That suit settled in September after a week-long trial; see earlier coverage on The Prior Art here, here, and here.)
While it's clear now that at least a few high-level Cisco employees knew the Troll Tracker's identity, company lawyers say no one there besides Frenkel contributed to the blog. Still, because Cisco is helping to lead the lobbying charge in favor of reforming the nation's patent laws—with a particular focus on lowering litigation payouts to non-practicing entities (a.k.a. NPEs, or "patent trolls")—those who advocate for small patent holders sensed a Frenkel-Cisco conspiracy.
Putting aside the conspiracy theories aside and drama—two lawyers with a high profile in the Eastern District of Texas's lucrative patent litigation scene suing Cisco and one of its in-house lawyers for libel and defamation—it seems like an opportune time to take a broad look at the big issue at the heart of the Troll Tracker tale: that the huge piles of money at stake in patent litigation has created an independent class of IP professionals? As it happens, a PricewaterhouseCoopers study released in January on just that topic has some answers.
"Patent trolling" has its rewards.
Tech-sector executives and lawyers say privately—and an informed review of court dockets confirms—that so-called trolls aren't just surviving, they're thriving. The essential NPE tactic—suing a broad swath of companies for patent infringement, then settling with each defendant for less than the cost of fighting such a suit—is now an established business model. It's so solid, in fact, that patent-holders are starting to delve into previously untouched economic sectors, suing small retailers and even photographers.
One surprising statistic contained in the PwC study that supports this: since 2002, NPEs have consistently won larger damage awards than operating companies. That suggests NPE lawyers are learning new techniques for maximizing payouts, says one of the study's authors, forensic accountant Chris Barry.
Patent suits are rarely tied to marketplace competition.
PwC looked at more than 1,400 patent cases that resulted in a decision by either a judge or jury. Depending on the district, NPEs brought between 15 and 46 percent of such cases. The district with the highest rate of NPE litigation might surprise you: Washington, D.C. where 46 percent of verdicts came in cases brought by NPEs.
Also worth noting: A chart included in the study shows that NPEs won four of the top ten patent judgments reached between 2005 and 2008. But that doesn't tell the whole story.
Under a broader definition of what constitutes "NPE-style litigation"—one that draws a distinction between suits brought by actual competitors and those brought be patent-holders in search of royalty payments but either uninterested or incapable of competing in the market—the number rises to seven out of the top ten judgments.
(Two of the ten judgments went to Alcatel-Lucent as a result of suits brought against Microsoft. While Alcatel-Lucent can certainly be considered an operating company in general, in the context of the Microsoft litigation, it was not in competition with the software giant, but simply trying to monetize the patent portfolio it had inherited from Bell Laboratories. A third "operating company," Freedom Wireless, is tiny. While Freedom has profited handsomely from its many patent suits against international phone carriers, it's unlikely that it could seriously compete against any of those larger companies.)
That leaves just three of the ten largest patent litigation awards handed out between 2005 and 2008 going to patent-holders that compete with their alleged infringers. (Interestingly, those suits between real rivals all involved patents on medical devices.)
So what's going on here? It's possible that a split is emerging, with a small, select group of industries—including medical device, pharmaceutical, and chemical companies—using patents as tools to fight over market share, while across a broader swath of the economy, patents are used mainly (or even solely) to generate revenue for those who hold them. Falling into the latter category are classic "patent trolls," but also research universities and big companies with standalone patent-licensing operations.
Transparency is still lacking.
Historically, it's been extremely difficult to uncover even basic facts about patent plaintiffs lining up for their day in court. How difficult? It took "several hundred man hours" for PWC to put together its study, Barry says. And with many plaintiffs suing via shell companies, patent litigation can look less like inventors demanding just rewards, and more like shady operators seeking an easy payday.
Most people believe true innovators deserve compensation, and understand that patents can help them get it. But to a lot of tech industry insiders who learned the details of patent litigation by reading the Patent Troll Tracker, the system looked broken, if not corrupt.

Notes on other data contained in the PwC study:
•NPEs don't fare well on summary judgment, but do just fine at trial, where they and operating companies both win two out of every three verdicts. Still, because of their poor performance on summary judgment, NPEs have an overall "win rate" of just 29 percent, compared to 41 percent for operating companies.
•In general, alleged infringers fare best when they preemptively seek declaratory judgments against patent holders (in other words, when they shoot first and ask questions later).
•Certain federal district courts (particularly the eastern districts of Texas and Virginia) continue to be more favorable to patent-holders, with shorter times-to-trial, higher success rates, and higher median damages awards.
•Five federal district courts accounted for one out of every three identified decisions involving an NPE as the patent holder: the Northern District of California, Delaware, the Northern District of Illinois, the Southern District of New York, and, of course, the Eastern District of Texas.
See the full PwC patent litigation report.

Tipping the Scales in The Copyright Wars

2010-03-02T16:45:00.002-06:00

http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202442687277&hubType=Top%20Story&Tipping_the_Scales_in_The_Copyright_Wars

Tipping the Scales in The Copyright Wars

A video-sharing start-up takes on Big Media—and wins one for the little guys.

Joe Mullin

Corporate Counsel

March 01, 2010

The nation's major record labels have never been shy about enforcing their copyrights in court. And over the last decade, music industry lawsuits targeting individual consumers accused of illegal file-sharing have stirred controversy and criticism in certain quarters. At the same time, efforts by these copyright holders to wring hefty settlements out of Silicon Valley tech start-ups via litigation—or, in some cases, to snuff them out altogether—has gotten less attention.

Universal Music Group Inc., for example, has filed copyright suits against, and won settlements from such Internet-based companies as iMeem, Inc., Multiply, Inc., Grouper Network, Inc. (now Cackle, Inc.), Bolt, Inc., mp3.com, Inc., and Myspace Inc. Facing statutory damages awards of up to $150,000 per infringed work, virtually all the defendants named in these suits chose to pay large settlements rather than take their chances in court. (MySpace reportedly agreed to a settlement of nearly $100 million to end a UMG suit in 2007.)

In most instances, the settlement money came from venture capital originally meant to build up the businesses. For some companies, the short-lived Bolt.com, for one, settlement was a financial disaster that helped pave the way for bankruptcy. Ten years after the Napster case, it's hard to think of a suit in which an Internet company beat a big copyright holder. In fact, most such companies won't even fight.

Then there's Veoh Networks Inc. Launched in 2004 just three months after YouTube.com debuted, the San Diego–based online video company hosts both user-generated material (like YouTube) and high-resolution, professionally produced content (think Hulu.com). When it was sued, without warning, for copyright infringement by UMG in 2007, Veoh fought back. The result: a slam-dunk ruling in its favor last September that, if upheld on appeal, could have a big impact on the way major labels negotiate with emerging media and technology companies.

The basis of UMG's claim against Veoh was the same one it's made against other tech companies: Veoh was guilty of wide-scale infringement because it let users post videos that included unapproved UMG–owned music.

Veoh argued that it was immune to such a copyright claim because it fully complied with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The company maintained that it promptly responded to any DMCA take-down notices it received from copyright holders, and terminated the accounts of users who repeatedly broke copyright rules.

Veoh CEO Dmitry Shapiro says that even though he believed the company was on solid legal ground, the suit, combined with the recession, was nearly fatal. As the case proceeded, Veoh cut its workforce from more than 100 employees to about two dozen "hard-core" staffers. Meanwhile, Shapiro says, several companies that had shown interest in acquiring Veoh backed off.

It wasn't just the direct cost of litigation that hurt. UMG's legal tactics wreaked havoc on Veoh's day-to-day operations, Shapiro says: "They came after us with a 'shock and awe' campaign." The suit forced Veoh to design systems to ensure that no videos it hosted were deleted—even videos whose creators wanted them deleted. "We were prevented from doing any of that, simply because Universal said we had to store it. When you've got 23 million users processing data, that's really tough. For two years, my IT guys were walking around, saying, 'They're going to choke us.' "

Unlike other companies that decided it made sense to settle, Veoh could afford to fight UMG because it had more than $70 million in venture capital at its disposal. With that in mind—and aware that investors naturally try to avoid spending development funds on legal bills—UMG even attempted to include the venture capitalists backing Veoh as defendants in the suit. (Judge Howard Matz of federal district court in Los Angeles rejected that hardball tactic.)

Shapiro's decision to not back down proved to be the right one. Matz ruled in Veoh's favor on summary judgment, saying the company had indeed followed the DMCA to the letter, and that UMG's copyright claim couldn't stand. If users uploaded video with copyrighted material, Matz ruled, it was the copyright holder's responsibility to go after the actual user or to send a take-down notice asking Veoh to remove the offending content. Veoh, represented by Winston & Strawn, had a history of complying with those notices within a day or two, Matz wrote.

The dispute between UMG and Veoh isn't over yet. UMG, represented by Irell & Manella, has appealed the district court ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Still, at least for the moment, Matz's decision is among several developments that suggest a subtle shift in the ongoing IP disputes known collectively as the copyright wars.

Most people now accept that the phenomenon of watching and sharing video online is here to stay. That wasn't true when Veoh launched. Back then, Shapiro says, major media companies were dismissive when he proposed partnerships under which Veoh would broadcast their content. "The initial response was quite hostile," he says. "It was 'Absolutely not, we have no interest in a partnership—oh, and by the way, we just may sue you.' " Content companies firmly believed consumers had no desire to abandon their big-screen TVs. "They said, 'Nobody wants to watch online.' "

Today, Veoh hosts content produced by Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and CBS Inc., among others. "By now," Shapiro says, "everyone realizes that it's a tide, and you have to go with it. You need aggregators, a centralized place for consumers to find content. Veoh and YouTube and many other companies have created systems that democratize broadcasting." How far has the tide turned? One of the Web's most successful online aggregators of free TV programming, Hulu, was created by NBC and News Corporation.

Michael Robertson, a friend of Shapiro's and a fellow tech entrepreneur who founded digital-music site mp3.com, has followed the Veoh litigation closely. He says the ruling in the case is unique. "Often, the record labels sue a start-up and then the company either runs out of money, or the investors compel them to settle," Robertson says. "There's actually not been a lot of cases that have gone to a ruling from a judge using the DMCA as a defense."

Robertson currently runs a company called mp3tunes.com that allows users to store their music online and access it from multiple devices. The company is currently defending itself against a copyright infringement suit brought by EMI Group Limited in New York's Southern District. EMI claims mp3tunes.com's online storage system violates copyright law. Robertson argues that all his company does is provide users with "an empty locker" to store files from their own computers. Robertson takes a postion similar to Veoh's: that mp3tunes.com is immune from copyright liability under the DMCA.

Big music companies clearly haven't changed their tune about copyright infringement suits. Witness also the Recording Industry Association of America's decision to go to trial a third time with file-sharer Jammie Thomas-Rasset after the judge in the case cut a jury award against her from $1.92 million to $54,000.

"The mind-set of the record labels," Robertson says, "is 'If you touch copyrighted work in any fashion, it's a violation, because it's ours.' " The result of such an aggressive strategy? Fewer digital music start-ups, he says: "It's really slowed down the space, reduced competition, and reduced innovation."

Compare that to what's going on in online video, where even before Matz issued his decision, Veoh was cutting deals with big companies. Indeed, as the UMG v. Veoh suit winds its way through the courts, it appears that a real split is developing among the industries that fall under the umbrella often known as "big content." While Viacom Inc.'s much-hyped suit against YouTube still looms, the entertainment conglomerate already has a deal in place to share content—and split ad revenue—with Veoh. It's another example of how, as companies that work with video figure out ways to work with online start-ups, large music labels—and their aggressive lawyers—keep marching to the beat of their own drummer.

Homeschooling Family Granted Political Asylum

2010-03-02T11:29:00.001-06:00

Sent to you by Robert A. Wicks via Google Reader:

Homeschooling Family Granted Political Asylum

via ARE THEY ALL YOURS?!?? by Zsuzsanna on 2/1/10

Immigration Judge Says Germany Violating Basic Human Rights

In a case with international ramifications, Immigration Judge Lawrence O. Burman granted the political asylum application of a German homeschooling family. The Romeikes are Christians from Bissinggen, Germany, who fled persecution in August 2008 to seek political asylum in the United States. The request was granted January 26 after a hearing was held in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 21.

"We can't expect every country to follow our constitution," said Judge Burman. "The world might be a better place if it did. However, the rights being violated here are basic human rights that no country has a right to violate."

Burman added, "Homeschoolers are a particular social group that the German government is trying to suppress. This family has a well-founded fear of persecution…therefore, they are eligible for asylum…and the court will grant asylum."

In his ruling, Burman said that the scariest thing about this case was the motivation of the government. He noted it appeared that rather than being concerned about the welfare of the children, the government was trying to stamp out parallel societies—something the judge called "odd" and just plain "silly." In his order the judge expressed concern that while Germany is a democratic country and is an ally, he noted that this particular policy of persecuting homeschoolers is "repellent to everything we believe as Americans."

'Embarrassing for Germany'

"This decision finally recognizes that German homeschoolers are a specific social group that is being persecuted by a Western democracy," said Mike Donnelly, staff attorney and director of international relations for Home School Legal Defense Association. "It is embarrassing for Germany, since a Western nation should uphold basic human rights, which include allowing parents to raise and educate their own children. This judge understood the case perfectly, and he called Germany out. We hope this decision will cause Germany to stop persecuting homeschoolers," he added.

The persecution of homeschoolers in Germany has been intensifying over the past several years. They are regularly fined thousands of dollars, threatened with imprisonment, or have the custody of their children taken away simply because they choose to home educate.

The Romeikes expressed relief when they heard the decision.

"We are so grateful to the judge for his ruling," said Uwe Romeike. "We know many people, especially other German homeschoolers, have been praying for us. Their prayers and ours have been answered. We greatly appreciate the freedom to homeschool we now have in America and will be building our new life here," he added.

Donnelly testified at the hearing on January 21, telling the immigration Judge that homeschoolers are persecuted all over Germany.

'Ignoring the Truth'

"There is no safety for homeschoolers in Germany," Donnelly said. "The two highest courts in Germany have ruled that it is acceptable for the German government to 'stamp out' homeschoolers as some kind of 'parallel society.' The reasoning is flawed. The fact is that homeschoolers are not a parallel society. Valid research shows that homeschoolers excel academically and socially. German courts are simply ignoring the truth that exists all over the world where homeschooling is practiced. They need to look beyond their own borders."

In 2003 the highest administrative court in Germany, which interprets its federal Constitution, ruled in the Konrad case that it was permissible for parents who have jobs that require them to travel—such as circus performers and musicians—to homeschool, but homeschooling was prohibited for parents who wanted to for reasons of conscience. The highest criminal court said in the Paul-Plett case in 2006 that the government was allowed to take custody of children whose parents want to homeschool for reasons of conscience.

Donnelly challenged the reasoning of the German courts.

"It is ridiculous for German courts to say that homeschooling is allowed if you have practical reasons but disallowed if you have conscientious reasons," Donnelly said. "This is simply about the German state trying to coerce ideological uniformity in a way that is frighteningly reminiscent of past history. Homeschooling is a growing social movement all over the world, and the Germans want to stamp it out based on a fabricated notion that homeschoolers are a 'parallel society.' Germany's treatment of homeschooling families is worthy of condemnation from the international community. I am proud that a United States immigration judge recognized the truth of what is happening in Germany and has rendered this favorable decision for the Romeike family."

German homeschoolers have been organizing and trying to draw the attention of German politicians. It has been difficult. Juergen Dudek is a homeschooling father who had been sentenced to 90 days in jail for homeschooling, but whose sentence was reduced to a $300 fine. He noted that officials in Germany have no appreciation for homeschoolers who think differently than the state.

'Send a Loud Message'

"It is incredible to me that these officials give absolutely no weight to our faith or other conscientious objection to attendance at the public schools," said Dudek. "We have had a number of families who are not homeschoolers, but who know that the German school system is failing, who called us to encourage us. In our re-hearing the judge issued a decision reducing our sentence from jail to a fine but was totally dismissive of our reasons for wanting to homeschool. We have always been encouraged by the support of American homeschoolers, and we hope that this decision will send a loud message to the German people that what our country is doing is wrong."

A board member of the Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit, an organization working for freedom for homeschoolers, said that the ruling would be helpful to homeschoolers in Germany.

"This decision reveals to the rest of the world that the German state acts outside the mainstream of Western democracies. Germany is in the company of countries like China, North Korea and others where fundamental human rights are not respected. Germany's behavior exposes the totalitarian character of the German school law that takes away a parent's right to educate their children. A decision on behalf of the Romeikes puts blame on the German government and is a serious warning to Germans officials to change their policies and further accept the rights of the parents. We hope that the decision will send a clear message to authorities in Germany to make changes right away!"

Mike Smith, president of HSLDA, also applauded the decision.

"It's recognition that the German state is persecuting homeschoolers," he said. "We are pleased to have been able to support this courageous family, and we hope and pray that this decision will have a decisive effect on German policy makers who should change their laws to recognize parents' rights to educate their own children."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Copied from the website of HSLDA. Emphasis in red added by me.

I myself am a product of German public schools, having attended them from the second semester of 2nd grade until I graduated after 13th grade. I can verify from personal experience that the information in this article is correct. Public schools in Germany make the public education in the US look like Sunday School.

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Cuffed and Stuffed for Asking “Why?”

2010-02-17T18:51:00.001-06:00

Sent to you by Robert A. Wicks via Google Reader:

Cuffed and Stuffed for Asking “Why?”

via LewRockwell.com Blog by William Grigg on 2/17/10

Minnie Carey, a 61-year-old Atlanta resident, was peaceably assembled with three of her friends on a sidewalk outside a convenience store, discussing funeral plans for a friend, when two heroic guardians of public order pulled up next to them.

"Move it," grunted Officer Brandy Dolson of the Atlanta Police Department. Despite the fact that Carey and her friends were not blocking the sidewalk or otherwise causing problems for anybody, three of them complied with Dolson's imperious demand.

Carey herself, however, asked why they were being ordered to vacate a public sidewalk.

"Because I said so," Dolson declared, as if that were a good and sufficient reason. It was neither, of course, as Carey pointed out to the tax-supported armed functionary.

"I'm a citizen and a taxpayer and I have a right to be here," she explained, according to police records cited by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "I'm merely tring to find out about a sister's funeral."

Within seconds, Dolson and his cohort in state-sanctioned crime, Officer Jamie Nelson, had Carey "cuffed and stuffed" in their patrol car. After being held with her hands cuffed behind her back for 45 minutes, Carey was transferred by her abductors to a poorly ventilated paddy wagon in which she was held for another 45 minutes.

"I was very upset and very angry," Carney recalled to the Journal-Constitution. "Here I am being treated as if I'm not human, not a citizen of this country. I was in this little hot box. There was no air. I was perspiring so much my glasses were sliding off my face."

The middle-aged woman, a diabetic, was kept from eating for several hours. Wearing the handcuffs for an hour and a half left her with dangerous swelling in her hands.

Carey was cited for "disorderly conduct," a cover charge preferred by uniformed bullies seeking an excuse to intimidate and harass Mundanes who are considered insufficiently docile. She endured three court hearings before the spurious charge was withdrawn. Officer Dolson didn't deign to appear in court to press the charge.

Atlanta's Civilian Police Review Board recently sustained Carey's false arrest complaint against Officer Dolson, who has racked up 18 citizen complaints since 2001. As with every other Atlanta PD officer summoned by the Civilian Review Board, Dolson refused to cooperate with the inquiry.

The Board was resurrected following the 2006 police murder of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston, who was gunned to death in her home by a wolf pack of corrupt narcotics officers (but then, I repeat myself). Three of the officers involved in the murder of Mrs. Johnston are serving prison terms for charges arising from the killing and the attempted cover-up of the crime.

Despite the fact that the police department is required, by municipal ordinance, to provide the Review Board with "full access" to documents relevant to misconduct inquiries, the department — and, of course, the local donut-grazers' union – has done everything possible to obstruct the Board's work.

Sgt. Scott Kreher, president of the Atlanta chapter of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, insists that the Review Board "shouldn't be doing these investigations," reported the Journal-Constitution last August 26. A more suitable approach, he told the paper, would be to have the APD conduct its own reviews, perhaps aided by the Fulton County DA's office, the FBI, or the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

The problem with civilian oversight, Sgt. Kreher maintains, is that the board "cannot assure officers their `Garrity rights,'" reported the Journal-Constitution. This can only be done by the agency employing them, according to Kreher.

As previously explained in this space, the so-called "Garrity Rule" provides police with a specially enhanced protection against self-incrimination: The instant the word "Garrity" falls from the tax-devouring lips of an officer caught in prosecutable misconduct, everything he says can be used only for the purpose of internal discipline, rather than criminal court.

In one recent case, a police officer who had just finished the literal execution of an intoxicated driver immediately started to blubber, "I want my Garrity!"

"We support citizen oversight," insists Kreher, "but where the line is drawn is when the Citizen Review Board violates the officer's due process rights" — which supposedly includes special immunities against prosecution they alone enjoy.

Given the abnormally high rate of Atlanta police academy graduates with criminal records, the immunities defended by Kreher and his ilk have the effect of turning the Atlanta PD into a haven for the community's criminal element.

In an ideal world, as envisioned by the coercive caste, just as ordinary "citizens" like Minnie Carey have no right to question arbitrary orders issued by their uniformed superiors, the actions of the state's armed enforcers wouldn't be aren't subject to official review by mere Mundanes in positions of political authority.

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The State Cannot Protect You

2010-02-17T13:01:00.001-06:00

http://www.postgazette.com/pg/10048/1036403-53.stm

Sent to you by Robert A. Wicks via Google Reader:

The State Cannot Protect You

via who's your nanny? by Trevor Bothwell on 2/17/10

Apropos a comment by reader Joe, who claims that if it weren't for the government, people wouldn't be taken to the hospital when needed, a Pennsylvania man was tragically left to suffer and die in the cold for three days when repeated calls to 911 ambulance units went unheeded in the wake of the region's most recent snowstorm.

The relevant question here is not why paramedic units did not respond to these calls -- the state is an inefficient, unaccountable bureaucracy and therefore this is what we should expect; the question is why we insist upon placing our trust in the state in the first place when it repeatedly proves that all it does well is pillage, intimidate, and kill.

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Are DUI Checkpoints Targeting Illegal Immigrants?

2010-02-17T12:49:00.001-06:00

http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/city-news/dui-checkpoints-latinos/

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Are DUI Checkpoints Targeting Illegal Immigrants?

via digg.com: News / Popular on 2/17/10

A recent report by California Watch questions whether DUI checkpoints are really nets cast to seize the vehicles of illegal immigrants.

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Central Falls High School To Fire Every Single Teacher

2010-02-16T21:59:00.001-06:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/16/central-falls-high-school_n_464451.html

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Central Falls High School To Fire Every Single Teacher

via digg.com: News / Popular on 2/16/10

A Rhode Island high school has fired every single teacher after the teachers; union refused to go along with the superintendent's proposed plan for increased workload without much extra pay. The school, Central Falls High School, was one of the worst-performing high schools in the state.

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Google Says No To Australia's Request To Censor YouTube Videos

2010-02-12T18:18:00.001-06:00

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Google Says No To Australia's Request To Censor YouTube Videos

via Techdirt by Mike Masnick on 2/12/10

After Google announced plans to no longer censor content in China, we wondered if they would do the same in other countries, like Australia, which was pushing for much greater censorship online. So it's nice to see that Google is pushing back in Australia and telling the government that it will not voluntarily censor YouTube videos based on Australia's classification. YouTube already has rules in place to block certain types of videos, but it feels that Australia's rules go too far in blocking what could just be political speech that the government disagrees with. What's really amazing (and worrisome, if you're Australian) is that the government referred to the rather oppressive censorship of the internet done in China and Thailand as good examples of how Google should censor the internet in Australia.

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Google’s Sudden Music Blog Purge And Its Implications

2010-02-11T21:24:00.001-06:00

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Google’s Sudden Music Blog Purge And Its Implications

via TechCrunch by Devin Coldewey on 2/11/10

Yesterday, in response to allegations of DMCA violations, several popular music blogs were wiped off the face of the net. They were hosted by Google via Blogger, and it was only after they were completely erased that the owners received emails to the effect of "We got one too many complaints — you're deleted. Love, Google." It's trending around the net as "Musicblogocide 2010," but that puts too much of it on Google's lap, I think. After all, it's the clumsy and outdated DMCA that actually led to the blogs being deleted.

It's a bit of a sticky wicket, speculating about the legality of these things, but with such a decisive and bold action as the one Google has taken, we can probably reach some conclusions about how it should have gone down.

Read the rest of this story at CrunchGear…

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The Libertarian Forum

Bravo to Anthony Gregory!

No Property Rights, No Peace

No Property Rights, No Peace

The verdict in the case of the Babri mosque leaves Indian minorities less secure and more incentivized to bar others from places of worship.

By SHRUTI RAJAGOPALAN

OT: Evil "demon seed" children drive teen to suicide

An alternative to ecofascism

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TLS -- edited, "Obama vs. The Economics of Education"

Govt to Scouts, 1917: take down your radios!

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"Showtime Syndrome" Strikes Las Vegas

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The Objectivism-Anarchism Debate

August 24, 2010

BBC News - France begins deportations of Roma Gypsies

City to pay slain woman's family $4.9 million | ajc.com

"Let us stand on each other's shoulders, instead of each other's feet!"

Are "Intellectual Property Rights" Justified?

Abstract

machlup and penrose on origin of patents

In the NYT mag - The Music-Copyright Enforcers

The Music-Copyright Enforcers

By JOHN BOWE

Nonprofits Aren't So Generous When a Name's at Stake - The Wall Street Journal.

Slashdot Your Rights Online Story | Letter To Abolish Software Patents In Australia

Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age

By TRIP GABRIEL

Published: August 1, 2010

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

Objectivist Hsieh explains why Objectivism is Incompatible with Christianity

Author Claims Patents Made Industrial Revolution Possible; Then Shows Why He...

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Trailer for the movie, "Who Owns You?"

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Guardian Says It Needs to Become an Open Platform

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"Thank you for trying to help save a life" -- from a blood drive I want to. They turned me away for mad cow fears since I lived in England 1991-92. But I guess I did try to help save a life. I didn't save one, or even help to save one. But I TRIED to

Does Intellectual Property Go Against Traditional Views Of Knowledge In India?

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Some Fiction About Fan Fiction

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Shale Gas Will Rock the World

Shale Gas Will Rock the World

Huge discoveries of natural gas promise to shake up the energy markets and geopolitics. And that's just for starters.

Journal Report

Read More

Tapping the Gas

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Houston Bucket List

Houston Bucket List - Things To Do in Houston Before You Die ◇► 2 ◀◇ experience what it is like to walk in space at the Johnson Space Center...

China May ‘Crash’ in Next 9 to 12 Months

China May 'Crash' in Next 9 to 12 Months, Faber Says (Update3)

Steve Jobs Hints At Theora Lawsuit

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Yard sign... priceless

Google the IP Terrorist

Google Threatens Booze Site Groggle. Do they Have a Keg to Stand on?

A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest. ~Irish Proverb

A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest. ~Irish Proverb

Umbrellas at dawn as politicians hurl eggs and smoke bombs in Ukraine parliament over Russia navy deal

Umbrellas at dawn as politicians hurl eggs and smoke bombs in Ukraine parliament over Russia navy deal

Some Reflections on Originality, Plagiarism, Intertextuality & Remix

Carbon offsets: fraud, exaggeration, and poorly run projects

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Hitler "Downfall" video meme is DMCA'd

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