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NY Times: "Hot Story to Has-Been: Tracking News via Cyberspace"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 5, 2009

Aug. 5, 2009

August 5, 2009 Hot Story to Has-Been: Tracking News via Cyberspace By PATRICIA COHEN Like a lot of new ideas, Media Cloud started with a long-running argument among friends. Ethan Zuckerman and a handful of his colleagues at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School found themselves in endless disputes about the mainstream media and newer digital variations. Who sets the agenda? How is public debate shaped? What topics are covered or ignored? Anecdotes favoring one side or another were as plentiful as pop-ups, but a comprehensive and reliable database that could track the daily rhythm of the news cycle over time and was available for public use didn’t exist. So Mr. Zuckerman and others at Berkman decided to create one. The result is Media Cloud, a system that tracks hundreds of newspapers and thousands of Web sites and blogs, and archives the information in a searchable form. The database, at mediacloud.org, will eventually enable researchers to search for key people, places and events — from Michael Jackson to the Iranian elections — and find out precisely when, where and how frequently they are covered, said Mr. Zuckerman, whose official title is senior researcher, though he acknowledges that a more accurate label would be computer geek and international development specialist. (At the moment only a small sample of Media Cloud’s tools are on the public Web site.) [...] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/arts/05cloud.html?_r=1 ciao, jc

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TechCrunch: "Why The FCC Wants To Smash Open The iPhone"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 2, 2009

Aug. 2, 2009

Why The FCC Wants To Smash Open The iPhone 203 Comments by Erick Schonfeld on August 1, 2009 Right about now, Apple probably wishes it had never rejected Google Voice and related apps from the iPhone. Or maybe it was AT&T who rejected the apps. Nobody really knows. But the FCC launched an investigation last night to find out, sending letters to all three companies (Apple, AT&T, and Google) asking them to explain exactly what happened. On its face, it might seem odd to some people that the FCC is investigating the rejection of a single iPhone app. After all, iPhone apps are rejected every day. But the Google Voice rejection caused an unusual amount of uproar, and there is nothing like a high-profile case to make an example out of in pursuit of pushing a bigger policy agenda. The FCC investigation is not just about the arbitrary rejection of a single app. It is the FCC’s way of putting a stake in the ground for making the wireless networks controlled by cell phone carriers as open as the Internet. [...] http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/01/why-the-fcc-wants-to-smash-open-the-ip…

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"Streaming and BitTorrent Sports Links Site Declared Legal"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 1, 2009

Aug. 1, 2009

Streaming and BitTorrent Sports Links Site Declared Legal Written by enigmax on July 24, 2009 A site which carries links to both live streaming sporting events and BitTorrent downloads has had the case against it kicked out by a judge. Rojadirecta.com was initially reported for copyright infringement by sports rights holder AudioVisual Sports back in 2007, but it’s been decided they have no case to answer. In 2007, Rojadirecta, which describes itself as one of the world’s major Internet sports broadcast indexes (linking to many soccer events plus NBA, MLB, NFL, NPB, IPL etc), was reported for copyright infringement by sports rights holder Audiovisual Sport. The company, a subsidiary of Spanish communications group PRISA (which owns Canal+, SportMania, various satellite channels, radio stations and newspapers), accused Rojadirecta of facilitating copyright infringement on various sports broadcasts by providing access to them via the Internet. [...] http://torrentfreak.com/streaming-and-bittorrent-sports-links-site-declared… ciao, juan carlos

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Joel Tenenbaum: RIAA wins $675,000, or $22,500 per song
by Irene Cassarino Aug. 1, 2009

Aug. 1, 2009

After a brief deliberation, a federal jury has ruled that PhD student Joel Tenenbaum willfully infringed on the record labels' copyrights, awarding them $675,000 in damages, $22,500 for each of the 30 songs in question. Ars reports with reaction from Tenenbaum and his attorney, Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/o-tenenbaum-riaa-wins-67500… A Boston federal jury has ordered Joel Tenenbaum to pay a total of $675,000—$22,500 per song—to the major record labels for willfully infringing 30 songs by downloading and distributing them over the KaZaA peer-to-peer network. The figure is closer to the $222,000 award in the first Jammie Thomas-Rasset trial than the $1.92 million figure from the second trial. The verdict came down at late Friday afternoon after less than three hours of deliberation. When asked about the size verdict, Tenenbaum's attorney and Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson told Ars that "it's a bankrupting award." He also felt things might have been different had they been allowed to argue Fair Use. "We were not allowed to speak to fairness," he told Ars. "I thought we had pretty damn good arguments on Fair Use." "I'm disappointed, but not surprised, but I'm thankful that it wasn't much bigger, that it wasn't millions," Tenenbaum told Ars after the verdict was announced. We asked him if he regrets not settling earlier on in the process. "Ask me in a couple of months," Tenenbaum replied. He also told Ars that he doesn't have the ability to pay the judgment and said that he'd be filing for bankruptcy if the award stands. Although the jury found that he willfully infringed on the copyrights in question, Tenenbaum said he was "not displeased with the jury considering how the trial went." What about the fact that the damages could have been much worse, as high as $4.5 million? "That to me sends a message that [the jury] considered [my] side legitimately," he replied. He was also evasive when asked if he regrets downloading music for free. "That's really a loaded question," he replied. "There are so many things that could have been different." The RIAA was pleased with the verdict. "We are grateful for the jury’s service and their recognition of the impact of illegal downloading on the music community," the RIAA said in a statement. "We appreciate that Mr. Tenenbaum finally acknowledged that artists and music companies deserve to be paid for their work. From the beginning that’s what this case has been about. We only wish he had done so sooner rather than lie about his illegal behavior." The trial was an almost entirely one-sided affair. Plaintiffs built their case with forensic evidence collected by MediaSentry, which showed that he was sharing over 800 songs from his computer on August 10, 2004. A subsequent examination of his computer showed that Tenenbaum had used a variety of different peer-to-peer programs, from Napster to KaZaA to AudioGalaxy to iMesh, to obtain music for free, starting in 1999. And he continued to infringe, even after his father warned him in 2002 that he would get sued, even after he received a harshly-worded letter from the plaintiffs’ law firm in 2005, even after he was sued in 2007, and all the way through part of 2008. And when he took the stand on Thursday, Tenenbaum admitted it all<http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/tenenbaum-takes-the-stand-i…>, including the fact that he had “lied” in his written discovery responses and at his first deposition in September 2008. Tenenbaum’s admissions were so clear-cut, and so damning, that Judge Gertner—who had recruited Nesson to represent the formerly lawyer-less 25-year-old—took the basic issue of infringement away from the jury, determining that no reasonable jury could find for Tenenbaum on that issue. The jury of five men and five women, all white and all from the Boston suburbs, were left only to determine the issue of willfulness and damages. Tenenbaum is only the second of approximately 18,000 individuals targeted by the labels to have gone to trial, and the second to lose. In June of this year, a Minnesota jury ordered Jammie Thomas-Rasset to pay $80,000 for infringing each of 24 songs, totaling $1.92 million. Last December, the labels announced that they were no longer initiating new cases against individual peer-to-peer users. However, they said they would see through to the end those cases already in the litigation pipeline<http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/hypocrisy-or-necessity-riaa…>. According to the labels’ attorneys, there remain about 100 cases pending where the defendant has filed an answer, about a dozen of which are being actively litigated in the discovery stage. The Tenenbaum litigation was dominated by the larger-than-life personality of Tenenbaum’s counsel, Harvard Law School professor, who infuriated the plaintiffs, and at times Judge Nancy Gertner, with his unusual litigation tactics. These included making audio recordings of the attorneys and the court, and then posting the results to his blog, and publicizing internal discussions with potential expert witnesses about legal strategy. A sanctions motion against Nesson for his recording practices remains pending. Tenenbaum’s case was dismantled piece-by-piece by a series of adverse rulings over the past several months. Judge Gertner dismissed his abuse-of-process claims against the plaintiffs and the Recording Industry Association of America; excluded four of his proposed expert witnesses and limited the scope of a fifth; and, in a coup de grace delivered less than eight hours before the start of trial, barred him from arguing fair use<http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/judge-rejects-fair-use-defe…>to the jury. Judge Gertner previously announced that she will hold a post-trial proceeding to determine whether the size of the award violates the US Constitution’s guarantee of due process of the law. While no federal court has ever invalidated an award of copyright statutory damages as constitutionally excessive, the record labels’ litigation campaign has spurred arguments that the Supreme Court cases imposing limits on punitive damages should be extended to statutory damages, which may contain a punitive element. Tenenbaum filed a motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ statutory damages claim on constitutional grounds, but Judge Gertner deferred ruling on the issue unless and until there was actually a damages award handed down by the jury.

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NYTimes: Even Google Is Blocked With Apps for iPhone
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 29, 2009

July 29, 2009

From The New York Times: Even Google Is Blocked With Apps for iPhone By JENNA WORTHAM There is tension between the companies because Apple sometimes rejects Google’s applications for the App Store.... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/technology/companies/29apps.html (sent from a mobile device)

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NY Times: "The Music Streams That Soothe an Industry"
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 29, 2009

July 29, 2009

THE NEW YORK TIMES July 26, 2009 Slipstream The Music Streams That Soothe an Industry http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/business/26stream.html?_r=1&ref=technology By BRAD STONE LIKE many teenagers, Josh Wilson, the 13-year-old son of the New York venture capitalist Fred Wilson, has on occasion visited the Internet’s peer-to-peer file-sharing services to download music and television shows. But recently, as Mr. Wilson recounted last week on his popular blog, A VC, Josh has started streaming television shows from Netflix under the family’s $24-a-month subscription plan and listening to licensed, ad-supported music videos from YouTube on his iPhone. Asked by his father why he was not using file-sharing services like BitTorrent to download shows like “Friday Night Lights,” Josh replied, “BitTorrent takes too long.” [... ampio pezzo centrale .....] Mr. Lefsetz believes that the answer is for the music industry to nourish the streaming sites and then push users toward subscribing to them for a monthly fee. “The key is to just get $10 from everybody,” he said. That, he said, might finally vanquish the demons of music piracy. Mr. Lefsetz uses himself as an example of this salvaged future. He used to turn to file-sharing sites to quickly sample new music he wanted to write about. Now he just streams songs free from Spotify. juan carlos

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[Fwd: [A2k] Berkman: Google Books Settlement Open Workshop]
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 28, 2009

July 28, 2009

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [A2k] Berkman: Google Books Settlement Open Workshop Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:44:33 -0400 From: Manon Ress <manon.ress(a)keionline.org> To: a2k discuss list <a2k(a)lists.essential.org> http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/googlebooks/Main_Page quote: The proposed Google Book Search settlement creates the opportunity for unprecedented access by the public, scholars, libraries and others to a digital library containing millions of books assembled by major research libraries. But the settlement is controversial, in large part because this access is limited in major ways: instead of being truly open, this new digital library will be controlled by a single company, Google, and a newly created Book Rights Registry consisting of representatives of authors and publishers; it will include millions of so-called “orphan works” that cannot legally be included in any competing digitization and access effort, and it will be available to readers only in the United States. It need not have been this way. This workshop seeks to bring a fresh, unique perspective to a complex and widely debated topic. It will focus not on the specific merits and demerits of the settlement itself, or the particular antitrust and privacy and other objections that have been raised. Instead, it will examine the idea of possible alternative universes and offer specific proposals for scenarios that may arise whether or not the settlement is approved. What can libraries, or universities, or non-profits, or Congress, do in the current landscape? And how might these possibilities help us to define a better world than the one that we have today and, more importantly, than the one that will exist if the Google settlement is approved in its current form? Regardless of what happens with respect to the Settlement, what alternative possibilities could lead to a richer, more open and better information ecosystem than the one we have today or might have tomorrow with the Settlement? By exploring these alternatives, this workshop seeks, in the end, to help inform the debate over the Settlement and its terms and to illuminate some of the key policy considerations that are at stake. Its ultimate goal is to develop a series of options and proposals that could improve on the status quo in novel ways. end of quote *************************************************************************** Manon Ress manon.ress(a)keionline.org Knowledge Ecology International 1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA Tel.: +1.202.332.2670, Fax: +1.202.332.2673 _______________________________________________ A2k mailing list A2k(a)lists.essential.org http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/a2k

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passaggio del discorso di Viviane Reding
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 28, 2009

July 28, 2009

“E' necessario punire coloro che violano la legge. Ma al momento ci sono sul mercato offerte legali, attraenti e vantaggiose, per gli utenti? Il nostro attuale sistema giuridico sui diritti di proprietà intellettuale è veramente adatto alla internet generation? Abbiamo considerato tutte le opzioni alternative alle misure più repressive? Abbiamo esaminato la situazione con gli occhi di un sedicenne o solo dal punto di vista dei professori di diritto cresciuti nell’era di Gutenberg? Ritengo che la crescente pirateria è dovuta a una non-fiducia negli attuali modelli di business e nelle soluzioni giuridiche. E dovrebbe essere un campanello d'allarme per i politici”. Tratto da http://www.key4biz.it/News/2009/07/10/Policy/Viviane_Reding_economia_digita… juan carlos

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How Copyright Can Be Viewed As Anti-Property
by Marco Pancini July 28, 2009

July 28, 2009

Interessante: http://techdirt.com/articles/20090719/0108125588.shtml -- Marco Pancini European Senior Policy Counsel Google Italy Corso Europa, 2 20122 Milano, Italia Tel. +39 02 36618524 Cell. +39.348.9946222 pancini(a)google.com Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/googlepolicyit This email may be confidential or privileged. If you received this communication by mistake, please don't forward it to anyone else, please erase all copies and attachments, and please let me know that it went to the wrong person. Thanks.

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NY Times: "Advocates Ask Google for Privacy Guarantees in Online Library"
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 26, 2009

July 26, 2009

July 23, 2009, 8:04 pm Advocates Ask Google for Privacy Guarantees in Online Library By Miguel Helft Three advocacy groups have asked Google to commit to protect the privacy of readers in its book search service, which is poised for a major expansion under a pending class-action settlement. The groups, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, have asked Google to limit the data it collects about users’ reading habits, to commit to protect reader records by handing them over only in response to subpoenas or court orders, and to put into effect measures giving users control of their data. The groups made the requests in a letter to Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive. In an accompanying blog post, the groups are urging people to send e-mail messages to Mr. Schmidt demanding privacy protections. “We’ve asked that Google only respond to legitimate warrants when the government comes calling, for example, and we’ve asked that they not share your private reading data with third parties without your permission, among other things,” the groups wrote. On its public policy blog, Google said it shared many of the privacy goals raised by the advocacy groups. But Google also said that its expanded book search service would not be built until an landmark settlement of a copyright class action filed by authors and publishers is approved by a court. (That settlement, which will allow Google to build an expansive digital library, has attracted criticism and is currently being scrutinized by the Justice Department for possible antitrust problems.) Because the service has yet to be built, it was premature to draft a detailed privacy policy it, the company said. “The services authorized by the agreement haven’t been built or even designed yet,” Dan Clancy, engineering director for Google Books, wrote. “That means it’s very difficult (if not impossible) to draft a detailed privacy policy. While we know that our eventual product will build in privacy protections — like always giving users clear information about privacy, and choices about what if any data they share when they use our services — we don’t yet know exactly how this all will work. We do know that whatever we ultimately build will protect readers’ privacy rights, upholding the standards set long ago by booksellers and by the libraries whose collections are being opened to the public through this settlement.” Cindy Cohn, legal director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that she decided to go ahead with the public campaign after months of discussions with Google. She said that Google’s response was insufficient and that the company should commit to guarantees in writing before the settlement is reviewed by a court in October. And she dismissed the argument that Google could not make privacy guarantees until the product was built. “Whether to hand data only in response to a warrant or not is not a tech decision,” she said in an interview. “Whether you are holding data for 30 days or longer is not a tech decision.” Other groups, including the American Library Association, have also raised concerns about privacy and have asked the court to exercise vigorous oversight of the settlement.

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