US News & World Report has posted a story called, "America Needs More Boing Boing Economics" which has opinions from several thought leaders, including Cory Doctorow on how US laws or policy should change. Here are Cory's suggested changes and a below each, my thoughts:
1) I would repeal the Digital Millennium Copyright Act so that it would once again be legal to create technology that competes directly with incumbent technology–for example, to make a device that plays all the songs on your iPod. It's presently illegal to do so, because you have to break Apple's copy prevention to get the songs to play on non-Apple hardware.
Generally speaking, I agree that the DCMA is overreaching. I do think copyright holders should have the legal right to use copy protection technology to protect their IP. And I think it should be illegal to create, sell, or knowingly distribute technology with the primary purpose of enabling piracy. But I would stop short of making it illegal to make technology that defeats DRM for the purpose of personal use (back-ups, transcoding to another device format, etc.) Under my law, you could de-CSS a DVD, rip it to a computer, and transfer it to your iPod. And you could use a DRM stripping program to move songs your downloaded from iTMS to another device. But record labels would still have the right to shut down a Grokster, which was making a business out of piracy. I would not reduce copy holders' rights to enforce its copyrights via DCMA takedown notices, and I would require companies whose technology could be used for piracy responsible for making reasonable and commercially viable efforts to safe guard against illegal uses of their technology. Under this law, YouTube would be responsible not only for taking down violating content when notified, but they would be responsible for creating safe guards against further violation of the copy holder's rights (ie filtering). However, I would re-affirm fair use and remove the sections of the DCMA that undermine it. My basic goal would be - keep piracy illegal and preserve the tools to combat it, but eliminate the aspects of DCMA that undermine fair use and consumer rights.
2) I would then create a black-letter law that repealed the "inducement" standard set out in the Grokster Supreme Court decision. That's the standard that says that if you designed your technology with the idea that some users might use it unlawfully, then your technology is illegal. The problem is that it's often impossible to know which uses will and won't be lawful until a court rules on them. Under this standard, the videocassette recorder would be illegal, since Sony advertised it as a machine for time-shifting (which the Supremes found legal) and for making libraries of shows (which they didn't find legal). It's inducement that's at the heart of Viacom's ridiculous lawsuit against YouTube.
I would soften the standard, but not eliminate it. The standard should not be "some" unlawful use, it should be primary unlawful use. I don't find Viacom's lawsuit ridiculous. YouTube is owned by a very profitable, very large company that is making a business out of copy infringement and they should not be allowed to do so. BTW, YouTube has been hiding under the skirt of the DCMA in its own perverse way. Because the DCMA requires copy holders to issue takedown notices for each specific instance of a piece of content, it is almost impossible for the copy holder to enforce in a YouTube like scenario. That's why Viacom is shifting from a DCMA strategy to this inducement strategy. I would close this loop hole in the DCMA and make it possible for copy holders to issue a blanket takedown for groups of content like seasons or movie franchises. For example, "please stop allowing the post of all episodes of Lost" as opposed to the current "please take down this specific instance of a Lost episode at this specific URL."
3) Finally, I would regulate telcos to enforce a neutral Internet. These companies are creatures of enormous regulatory largess–without government handouts, like rights of way into every basement in the country, they wouldn't exist–and if they don't want to play fair, let's get someone else to run the phone network. Government monopolies aren't a right; they're a privilege.
The net neutrality debate is interesting. If you don't allow service providers to prioritize some traffic, you may never see a net based alternative to cable and satellite TV because the SPs won't be able guarantee quality of service. On the other hand, with no law, the SPs will probably start to shut off access to things like YouTube, or really slow them down to the point that they are unusable in favor of their own services. I'd like to see a solution where SPs can't favor their own services over competitors, but they can offer a "fast lane" that everyone has equal access to.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
America Needs Boing Boing Economics?
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Autobots: start your engines
When I was a kid, I would have given both my nuts for this Optimus Prime helmet. Soooo coool!
Starbucks
You may have heard that Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz recently penned an internal memo that got out to the press about how he felt Starbucks was losing its atmosphere because it had moved to automatic coffee machines and flavor locked coffee instead of grinding its own beans. Time columnist Bill Saporito thinks different:
It's not the atmosphere, Howard. It's your incompetence. Or at least that of the executives who work for you at your way too laid-back HQ. You're talking atmosphere when you should be talking about front-end operations. Instead, in my Starbucks we have the morning chaos, the lines stretching all the way to the ludicrously heavy doors, a drill duplicated at the coffee hour of 4 p.m., where they've mastered the art of have exactly one less person on hand than needed. Then again, I can't blame the local manager for this parsimony, since she hardly has any room for more people. The place is too cluttered up with displays of coffeemakers, mugs, CDs, books and that other crap you can't sell.
And please, let's not blame the machines, either. French and Italian cafes ditched the handmade espresso years ago for automation and don't seem to have suffered ennui because of it. You think Café Flore in Paris would lose its charm because it served automated café au lait? Je pense que no friggin' way. Sit down in Starbucks and enjoy a cup and some conversation? Sure, if you can manage to snag a seat from the WiFi squatters who have set up an office for the price of a latte. (Here's a suggestion: Set up joint outlets with Kinkos, and get these freeloaders out of your stores. What shall we call it? Starkos? Buckos? Stinkos?)
RIP: Captain America
Marvel Comics has killed Captain America. He died by a snipers bullet upon entering a courthouse. Caps was better than that and shouldn't have gone out that way. Something tells me, he'll be back.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Terrible story
What you see here is a letter from a 9 yr old boy named Kevin who is currently sitting in a Texas prison as the victim of a heartbreaking story of immigration nightmares. Long story short, Kevin's parents fled Iran and sought political asylum in Canada. They lived there for several years and gave birth to their son. Then their request for asylum was denied and they were deported to Iran, where the father was promptly arrested, beaten, and tortured. When the father got out of prison, he knew he had to get his family out of Iran. Desperate, he paid a people smuggler to get them fake Greek passports, because there is no visa needed for Greeks to get into Canada. All was going according to plan until a woman on their flight had a heart attack and died. The plane made an emergency landing in Puerto Rico and the family were made to enter the US. Except Greeks must have a visa to enter the US, and that's when the gig was up. Now the entire family is sitting in a Texas jail.
This is absolutely terrible. Sure, they broke the law. But what would you do if you were in the same circumstances? Why must this kid and his family rot in jail because they didn't want to be beaten and murdered in their homeland?
Slide.com
Business 2.0 called this one of 2007's top 25 start-ups to watch, so I thought I would check it out. Basically, you upload photos and it makes these Flash slideshows you can embed in your blog. Pretty nifty. Problem is, you have to upload one picture at a time, so it takes a long time. I have 49 photos of Nuremberg Toy Fair I've been meaning to upload, but just don't have the patience to do it this way. Too bad.
