In The News

["Olga Francois" <OFrancois@xxxxxxxx>]

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France seeks a balance in Internet copyright bill
By BLOOMBERG NEWS,  January 17, 2006
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/255888_frenchinternet17.html

"The French government is reworking a proposal for a new copyright bill
in a bid to address concerns of media companies such as Vivendi
Universal SA and consumers over the sharing of music and movie files on
the Internet."
*
France planning to rework digital copyright bill
By America's Network.com, Jan 17, 2006
http://www.americasnetwork.com/americasnetwork/article/articleDetail.jsp
?id=283603

"France plans to "rework" a digital copyright protection bill to ease
restrictions on CD and DVD copying, as well as mete out smaller
penalties to peer-to-peer users, an AFP report said."
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New GPL Is Free at Last
 By Mark Baard, Wired.com,
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70028-0.html

"CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts -- Richard Stallman, author of the most
radical and durable license for free-software developers, is updating
the GNU Public License for the first time since 1991."
----

Tension grows between labels and digital radio
By John Borland, CNET News.com, January 13, 2006
http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-6027079.html

"The entry of satellite and digital radio into the technological
mainstream is increasing tension with the record industry, which wants
new rules governing how consumers can make digital copies of songs from
the airwaves."
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Video Clips of Interest:
Is Google Book Search "Fair Use"?
By Lawrence Lessig
http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=5l2nrbmBQXg
*
And...
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/cease-and-desist_640.mov
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Blog: Google Book Search and the Transaction Costs of Consent
By Randy Picker, The Faculty Blog, January 13, 2006
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/2006/01/google_book_sea.html

"Larry Lessig posted this week a synchronized set of slides and audio
addressing Google Book Search as fair use. The talk runs for 30 minutes
but ultimately the core point is simple and I think relatively
conventional: transactions costs matter for the scope of allowed fair
use. The suggestion here is a transaction-cost based opt-out model: for
low-cost of consent holders, GBS has to ask permission, but for
high-cost of consent holders, GBS need not ask permission, but instead
those holders have to opt out."
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Some Safety and Reliability Questions About DRM
By Victor Yodaiken, Groklaw.com, January 11 2006
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060111184253232

"Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies are supposed to protect
digitized "content", like movies and musical performances from being
illicitly copied or used. DRM technology is sometimes described as
security technology when it is really licensing technology -- something
very different. In fact, DRM may decrease security and reliability."
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The Technocultural Imagination: Life, Art, and Politics in the Age of
Total Connectivity

By SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN , Social Science Research Network, Jan 15, 2006
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=875471

"Abstract: For the past twenty years, the United States has been
experiencing a significant cultural, social, and political shift of
which we are only now taking account. The very presence of powerful
personal computers, loaded with easy-to-use editing and production
software, connected to millions of others at high speed at all times of
the day has changed the cultural and political environment radically and
irreversibly."
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Creatives face a closed Net
By Lawrence Lessig, Financial Times.com, December 28 2005
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d55dfe52-77d2-11da-9670-0000779e2340.html
Over the past few years, fans of the artists represented by the label
Wind Up Records have spent at least a quarter of a million hours
producing and sharing more than 3,000 music videos. These videos,
however, are unlike anything you are likely to have seen."