(entry last updated: 2003-01-12 13:21:00)

Back from an NSF workshop in Birmingham, AL - to a much, much colder Boston than the one I left!

• RealNetworks tosses their DRM system into the fray - Helix DRM.

• The NYTimes Book Review writes about Gerald Posner’s Motown: Music, Money, Sex, and Power - although the reviewer sees a lot of weaknesses, he give a look at record company music practices that make it worth a look.

• Dave Winer’s going to be a Berkman Fellow - excellent!

• The EFF Unintended Consequences Report on the DMCA gets some ZDNet ink. Also some at Slashdot

• Today’s Doonesbury strip is a look at the campus crackdown on MP3 file sharing.

• LexMark is suing a company that makes a chip that tricks LexMark printers into using non-LexMark ink cartridges - under the DMCA because the development of the chip is a circumvention to receive access to the LexMark printer software! This should be good, as it illustrates just how far the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions go to stifle the innovation that we keep telling ourselves intellectual property is supposed to promote. Slashdot has a story - that they already covered (Both while I was out of town). Here’s The Register article

• MPEG-4 backers are taking note of Microsoft’s efforts to leverage its market position to displace MPEG-4 with Windows Media. While this transparent ploy is certainly a reason to complain, the MPEG-4 licensing policies have not been exactly pictures of openess and cooperation either - hard to like either actor in this conflict. Slashdot’s comments

• Cory Doctorow, of BoingBoing, gets a Wired profile, in part due to his copyright position on his new novel.

• Some other catching up:

  • iCommune - an iPod plug-in to share playlists

  • Michael Powell on the TiVo - the God box - Slashdot’s take - as others have noted perhaps this is a salient lesson:
    

    maybe, we need to start a campaign to give great geekware to legislators and government officials for the sake of winning their hearts (or wherever powell’s god lives) to our causes. if we can make enough lawmakers into violators of the DMCA and other heinous laws on the books, or proposed and show them why we feel strongly about this. or even have the EFF donate linux boxen to lawmakers. we will gain an advantage.

  • The NYTimes on product placement instead of skippable advertising. Bob Frankston’s commentary raises the very salient control issue

  • Larry Lessig on Japanese comic books and the interesting fact that the bulk of them, as derivative works, are probably illegal - yet the market thrives. - Man, Slashdot got this one too.

  • KaZaA can be sued in US, declares California judge - LawMeme raises a few issues - Slashdot