Oh dear. LOLcat translates “The Wastland.”
Articles by Solveig Singleton 
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Bill Rosenblatt reports on EFF’s and other’s support for fair use in filtering. My take: A constructive step. It remains to be seen whether an objective “fair use” standard can be developed; and then again, whether it can be technologically implemented; if not, the answer will be a combination of process for “appeals” and simple licensing mechanisms.
In particular, this is a welcome departure from the “filtering is useless” stance. Certainly, filtering can be defeated. But ultimately something posted for public consumption must be in the clear. And not everyone will encrypt, especially if they are unaware that they are infringing. By and large, it ought to be possible to get copyright filtering for entire works to work at least as well as spam filtering–that is, not perfectly, but enough to get a handle on the problem.
Public Knowledge has proposed some copyright reform principles. I agree with one of them. As for the rest… the “expansion” of copyright law that the proposed reforms are supposed to redress has come about in a context in which traditional enforcement mechanisms for copyright have become almost impossible to use. Given this problem, it is hard to see how the “expansion” as creating an imbalance–rather, it is a result of an imbalance created by technology. Unless one addresses the enforcement problem, one is not really addressing the “expansion” problem.
I do agree that music licensing needs work (proposal 4).
Re 1) Expanding fair use to include personal use etc. would create an exemption that would swallow almost all of copyright law.
Re 2) Why undermine the growth in licensing services since Sony was clarified and updated in Grokster? That is what a codification of the vast oversimplication of letting all and any “substantial non-infringing uses” behind a protective wall would do. If one is fond of the Sony case, one had better read the whole thing–and be aware of what it doesn’t hold, and it’s qualifications. If the law doesn’t keep up with technology, well, it can’t maintain balance very well.
Re 3) How about comparable penalties for overstating the rights of fair use? Or their importance? Or their role in the economy?
Re 5) Presumably consumers would get notice of contractual limits if they read the contracts… This no more needs to be legislated than any other aspect of the terms of sale. I do expect that market forces will continue to lead to improvements–there is room for those. In the end, though, what gets put front and center on the packaging ought to be determined by demand. Wrapping the entire package in fine print about what the technology can and can’t do (you can’t play it backwards like a movie reel… etc. etc.) is not likely to help anyone. It won’t get read.
A letter signed by a number of groups nationwide, opposing the current reforms.
And Claude Barfield and John Calfee weigh in via the Wall Street Journal Online (subscription required). They argue among other things:
Before rushing to enact major changes, Congress should remember that its past reforms have often spawned new problems. For example, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a specialized intellectual property court, was created in 1982 in order to centralize judicial decisions on patents and end forum-shopping. It accomplished that, by and large — but at the cost of producing a court, peopled largely by patent attorneys, that instinctively sided with patent holders, strengthened patent protection, lowered the bar for inventiveness (“non-obviousness” in patent-law jargon), and paved the way for large damages against alleged patent infringers.
A few links to discussions of the current patent reform legislation:
From Matt Buchanan’s Promote the Progress; cheaper iPods, fewer cures?
Robert Armitage on how the courts have beaten Congress to the punch.
And a quote from Robert Cresanti, now with Ocean Tomo:
“[Ocean Tomo] will still proceed with the exchange (even if pending Congressional reforms pass), but many patents may be devalued.”, he warned. “Our hope is the Senate will come around to the same conclusion we have – that there is no pressing need for reform in light of what the courts and USPTO have done.”, he added.
I mean, some kind of feline, obviously, but what kind? Some kind of wildcat? Something crossed with a domestic? T’ain’t no pixie-bob.
http://www.diesel.pp.net.ua/news/2007-02-15-104
From the WSJ, for subscribers, Holman Jenkins rather cynical take on net neutrality and Google, “Sort of Evil.”
On the policies that contributed to the rise of cell phones in Africa–and the resulting reduction in poverty.
The Financial Times has an interesting email discussion between Richard Epstein and Harry First on the merits of antitrust actions against Microsoft.
Needing a critter fix, I hauled The Grub, now three, off to the National Wildlife Visitor’s Center this weekend for their festival. Actual wildlife was promised, and they had splendid owls and turtles, looking rather sleepy. On the whole, though, I find that the direction that such organizations has taken in their public presentations to be both uninteresting and depressing. I learned little about the behavior, habits, and lives of the critters being studied, and a great deal about their habitats and the destruction thereof.
There are good reasons for the focus on systems. Although the naturalists would not put it this way: The environment is a commons of sorts; as such, it is likely to be degraded, with no one properly internalizing the costs–it needs a fix at the systemic level. But I already knew this; I wanted to learn more about the critters. I like critters. Too much. I am an old school amateur naturalist of the sort that made such a disaster of federal forest management–putting out forest fires when they ought to be allowed to burn off the brush and bugs, because I am not willing to see a racoon’s toes be singed. But the result of decades of such a policy is a sick forest that ultimately burns so fiercely it cannot be controlled at all.
Copyright debates strike me as suffering from the opposite defect. We hear a great
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