Smart Energy

There’s been a lot of buzz in the science blogosphere recently about the Research Works Act, a piece of legislation that’s been introduced in the U.S. that may have big impacts on open access publishing of scientific results. John Dupuis has an excellent round-up of posts on the subject and Kevin Zeinio has a great rant on the topic of keeping scientific knowledge open and accessible, too. What follows is an analysis by Janet D. Stewwedel from the Scientific American blog. Read the rest of this entry »

Andy Baio looks at youngsters’ persistent misapprehensions about copyright law, which is stricter than many realize. Exhibit A: a popular YouTube of Pulp Fiction scenes, remixed in chronological order, posted with the disclaimer “No copyright infringement. I only put this up as a project.”

Under current copyright law, nearly every cover song on YouTube is technically illegal. Every fan-made music video, every mashup album, every supercut, every fanfic story? Quite probably illegal, though largely untested in court.

No amount of lawsuits or legal threats will change the fact that this behavior is considered normal — I’d wager the vast majority people under 25 see nothing wrong with non-commercial sharing and remixing, or think it’s legal already.

Isn’t it also interesting how many young artists still instinctively honor the idea, as they see it, of copyright? Respect for other artists comes naturally. People don’t stop respecting copyright until they see how little the claimed principles have to do with the reality of enforcement—especially when it’s used to condem their own creative expressions as a form of theft.

via Young people’s idea of copyright vs. the law – Boing Boing.

Multi-instrumentalist Levon Helm was the chief voice of The Band -- and it's key songwriter.

I just heard an interview with Robbie Robertson, who has a new album out. In the interview, Robertson talked about what he was thinking and doing when he wrote all those great songs for The Band. The thing is, he didn’t write those songs and he continues to lie about it. Please don’t support this rip-off artist by buying his albums.

What happened with The Band and its songs was two-fold, and both were “business as usual” practice at the time.

Back then, it was standard practice to assign song writing credits to one or two members of a band. Witness the nom du musique “Lennon/McCarthy.” Paul McCarthy has said repeatedly that it wasn’t a fair way to do things and he wished he hadn’t gone along with the plan. For one thing, in the digital world, McCarthy’s name gets truncated, so it looks like his song-writing “partner” (they almost never wrote songs together) wrote everything. So it was with The Band: Robbie Robertson got credit for everything.

The other thing that has been standard operating procedure in the music industry is ripping off musicians and, when possible, musicians screwing their band mates. So it was with The Band: Robertson got the song writing credit and he and The Band’s manager shared the royalties, screwing the rest of the team.

Consider The Band’s songs and consider what Robertson has produced since the demise of The Band. The Band’s songs are noted for the stories they tell and for their deft reinterpretation of what now call Americana, American roots music. Thing is, since then, Robertson hasn’t written a single story-song. Indeed, he hasn’t written a memorable song. Ever. Period. More, though, was the subject of so many of the great Band songs, namely, life in the South. Where Levon Helm grew up (in Arkansas, in and around Fayetteville).

As a writer on NJN asks, how is it possible that Robertson, a Canadian Jew who grew up, the first few years of his life, on a Six Nations reserve, wrote “The Night They Drove Ol Dixie Down”, “Up on Cripple Creek,” or “Strawberry Wine”? Nothing Robertson did before or since is even remotely similar. Listen to any album Levon Helm was involved in since The Band (or before, when he was the leader of the Hawks) and the deep roots of his Southern American background come ringing through.

It’s a sad statement about the music business that the thief is the one inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and that music consumers are willing to go along with the lie by buying the poseur’s albums.

Sez Cory Doctorow:

Italy’s Berlusconi regime, already known around the world as an enemy of free speech and popular access to the tools of communication, has now floated a proposal to require Italians to get an “uploader’s license” in order to put any “moving pictures” on the Internet. The government claims that this is required as part of the EU’s product placement disclosure rules, which is about as ridiculous assertion as I’ve heard this month.

via Italy proposes mandatory licenses for people who upload video Boing Boing.

If there’s one group of authors who excel at envisioning utopias and dystopias, particularly those brought about by technology, it’s the science fiction crowd. So the fact that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America are sounding the alarm over the Google books settlement ought to give pause, at the very least.

via Is Google Books a Dystopian Nightmare? – critical difference.

Boing Boing has a great piece on copyright orphans. That’s what happens when we keep extending copyright:

Remember folks, thanks to 11 copyright term extensions in the past 40-some years, more than 98% of all works in copyright are “orphaned” — still in copyright, but no one knows to whom they belong…. the vast majority of the culture swept into this 20th century black hole was not commercially available and, in most cases, the authors are unknown. The works are locked up — with no benefit to anyone — and no one has the key that would unlock them. We have cut ourselves off from our own culture, left it to molder — and in the case of nitrate film, literally disintegrate — with no benefit to anyone.

Incredibly, Microsoft and Disney ranked very high in trust, according to the Boston College-Reputation Institute 2009 CSR Index. Disney ranked #1 in the index. Others in the top 10 were Google, Honda of America, Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo., General Mills, Kraft Foods, Campbell Soup Company and FedEx. (This comes to me via Environmental Leader.)

That blows me away, because Disney is a purveyor of crap and a copyright monger. If it weren’t for Disney keeping the wraps on Mickey Mouse, we’d have sane copyright laws in this country — and likely in the rest of the world, too, which, as with drug laws, has been pressured by the U.S. to be ever more restrictive.

But that Microsoft scores so high is just insane. I mean, this is the demon tribe that makes our lives miserable with Office! Not to mention the insanely bad SharePoint (bad for business, bad for Web content management; oh, well, it just sux!). People, wake up! Here’s what Microsoft is really like, via Slashdot (and an update here from ComputerWorld):

“Windows Presentation Foundation” plugin that Microsoft slipped into Firefox last February apparently left the popular browser open to attack. This was among the many things recently addressed in the massive Tuesday patch. “What was particularly galling to users was that once installed, the .NET add-on was virtually impossible to remove from Firefox. The usual ‘Disable’ and ‘Uninstall’ buttons in Firefox’s add-on list were grayed out on all versions of Windows except Windows 7, leaving most users no alternative other than to root through the Windows registry, a potentially dangerous chore, since a misstep could cripple the PC. Several sites posted complicated directions on how to scrub the .NET add-on from Firefox, including Annoyances.org.”

Q-Burns Abstract Message is one of my favorite remix artists. He recently did a mix of Youssou N’Dour’s “Wake Up,” which you can stream or download here. I really like the on-page player; if you create an account and log in, you can post comments which show up on the player’s timeline. Q-Burns writes that the N’Dour remix project is

part of a campaign spearheaded by IntraHealth OPEN, a non-profit organization focusing on open source technology and how it can be used to advance health care in Africa.

Q-Burns is one of eight artists who contributed mixes to the project. Check ‘em all out here.
Youssou N’Dour – Wake Up (Q-Burns Abstract Message Remix) by Q-Burns Abstract Message

This just in from Defective by Design:

Yesterday, Viviane Reding, European Union commissioner for information society and media, issued a report sanctioning a “transparent” DRM framework for the EU. This irresponsible and senseless report comes just a day before Sony BMG announced that they would join Warner Music Group, EMI, and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group in selling DRM-free music downloads in the United States.

Help us take action now by reading and signing our open letter. Our signed letter will be sent to the commission’s office, and will add weight to the dozens of phone calls that will be made next week to her office demanding that she retract her statement and letting her know that we oppose any attempt by the EU to sanction, promote, or endorse DRM technology platforms.

And this heartbreak from Kathy at Olympic Cellars. Readers from away should know that a certain micro-continent some millions of years ago slammed into the bulk of what is now Washington state to form what we call the Olympic Peninsula. Beautiful place, and I can’t wait to get over there to sample some wine from Olympic Cellars. Read the rest of this entry »

I think the general public, that gang of knavish sprites, is finally catching on to the hell that is digital rights management. The issue appears to be slowing creeping into the mainstream press. (Other than news about kids and single moms being sued by the RIAA, I mean.)

I could be wrong. Easily. Have sales of iPods really declined? No. And if jah people were really concerned about the creative commons (and DRM is the anti-cruise of creativity), they’d stop buying iPods. (I just bought a Sansa; it’s OK; at least as good as any generation of iPod I’ve tried.) In any case, I blame DRM Hell on the Beatles breaking up and the “Sue Me, Sue You Blues.” (Copyright is an old bane, by any measure. Victor Hugo, the modern inventor, was clear that ownership should only extend through the lifetime of the creator; screw the blood-sucking heirs.) Read the rest of this entry »

Dylan

You can type your own message into the placards from Pennebroker’s famous 1966 film of Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” You can read Puck’s message or make your own. This is — obviously, I guess — a marketing thang, so let me help out by suggesting you buy six or seven Bob Dylan CDs. Puck could use the lunch money.

Since this Dylan thing plays on the edge of the Creative Commons (in a strictly controlled way, of course — there’s really nothing being placed in the Commons there), let me point you to the pirates over at Torrentfreak, who have leaked something like 700 megs of email from MediaDefender, a group that is playing the BitTorrent field like undercover cops. Are they collaborators, hitmen, or what for the record and movie industry? In any case, one way to keep the Commons open is to make like a hydra and propagate.