The National Journal has an excellent indepth overview of the current state of DTV spectrum and how we got here from February 2005 by Drew Clark (Spectrum Wars). Must reading. via Freedom to Tinker Dashlog

Michael Geist is really going after the injunction a Canadian court has issued regarding the accidental sale of Harry Potter books before they officially go on sale in a couple of days (Harry Potter Injunction). It baffles me that this injunction is considered to be part of copyright law, just as I don't really consider Harper & Row to be part of copyright law. Both cases seem much more similar to trade secret cases than copyright law.

The India Resource Center reports that the Coca Cola company is going after an Indian artist whose commentary on Coca Cola's policies incorporates their logo (Coca-Cola Threatens Top Indian Photographer with Lawsuit).

Mr. Haksar, a leading international photographer and winner of the 2005 Cannes Silver Lion, has placed a large billboard in one of Chennai's busiest areas - one of India's largest cities - with his own "work (which) is solely an expression of creativity."

The billboard features the ubiquitous red Coca-Cola wall painting, commonly found across India. Directly preceding the Coca-Cola ad, and part of the billboard, is a dry water hand-pump, with empty vessels waiting to be filled up with water - a common scene in India, particularly in Chennai.

On July 11, 2005, the law firm of Daniel & Gladys, who represent Coca-Cola's Indian subsidiary, sent a letter to Mr. Haksar threatening him with serious legal actions unless the billboard was replaced 'unconditionally and immediately'. Coca-Cola would seek Indian Rupees 2 million (US$ 45,000) for "incalculable damage to the goodwill and reputation" of Coca-Cola, and also sought an 'unconditional apology in writing'.

Mr. Haksar said, "I have no intentions of issuing any apology. Because I have not committed anything wrong. If Coke pursues this legal course, my lawyers shall take appropriate counter action."

This is nearly a couple of weeks old, but Pacific Epoch reports that a Chinese divorce case involves a serious dispute over virtual goods (Game Accounts Take Center Stage In Divorce).

A divorce in Chongqing has turned ugly when both parties want their joint online game accounts, Chongqing Business Post reports. Mr. Wang from Chongqing and Ms. Ye from Huibei met last September on Shanda's (Nasdaq: SNDA) online game Legend of Mir 2. Wang saved Ye's character from being killed by another player. The couple married at the end of October but decided to get a divorce in June. During their marriage, the couple jointly played over ten Mir 2 accounts, attaining level 40 to 50 status for all of them. The characters and virtual items are estimated to be worth 40,000 to 50,000 Yuan. [$5,000-$6,000] Wang said that he wants to keep the accounts and virtual items and is willing to give their joint apartment to Ye. However, Ye wants to split the apartment and game items equally.

Ed Bott has some excellent questions about and recommendations for Microsoft's anti-spyware policies (Dear Microsoft: Why Should We Trust You to Detect Spyware?).

• Publish the Windows AntiSpyware database. Put it on the Web. Make it searchable. Provide a description of why each product is listed, how it's classified, and what the recommended action is. Include a change log to document when classifications and recommendations change and why. Make the review process public. Ben Edelman has made this suggestion before, and I agree with it.
• Release control of the detection database to a truly neutral third party. If Microsoft controls the contents of the database, it will never be able to overcome the perception that it is basing its decisions on criteria related to profit and not on user needs. Create a nonprofit organization with an independent board of directors and well-qualified management, give it a charter, fund it through an endowment, and agree to indemnify it for any legal costs related to complaints over classification. Let that group build a spyware classification system using published criteria and feedback from customers. Publish the database under a Creative Commons license. If the organization providing this database has no commercial interest to provide a potential conflict of interest, the Clarias of the world would have quite a burden to overcome before they could establish that they're being unfairly targeted.

[emphasis in original]

JD Lasica has an excellent collection of letters he has received from various studios when he asked permission to use short clips from their movies in home movies he was producing for family use only (When the Studios Won't Give Permission). Some of the responses are risible, others are just sad. There should be no permission necessary for the creation of works in which there is no public distribution. Life would be much simpler and just.

Constitutional Code has a great roundup of information on several decisions in German courts regarding the copyfight (German File-Sharing Round-Up: TV P2P & Advertisement). One version of P2P software cannot be distributed, it is illegal to link to allofMP3.com, and although internet portals are protected against damages for linking to sites that permit infringing, injunctions may still issue against them. Read the whole thing.

Citizen Paine has a bunch of links about a fair use debate regarding big media use of citizen created content (Use of G8 Protest Pics Stirs Fair-Use Debate). It isn't only big media that wants too much control through copyright.

Ed Felten points to a report (behind a firewall) that the RIAA is making the argument that anti-spoofing technologies on P2P networks may be evidence of inducement under Grokster (RIAA Saber-Rattling against Antispoofing Technologies?). Ed is entirely right that anti-spoofing technologies have both good and bad uses (you want to make sure you get a good connection/copy of that open source program). It is unlikely that these technologies alone will create liability (fact dependent Sony test necessary, however). Nevertheless, I can see under Grokster that if a court does find other evidence of intent that, like using an advertising-based business model or not employing filtering, a court could find the use of anti-spoofing technology to be further evidence of intent. So, if there is no initial evidence of intent, anti-spoofing is probably good. But, if the court finds evidence of intent, then anti-spoofing could be found to be further evidence of bad intent. What a mess.

One would think this is parody, but apparently it is not. The Independent reports that classical music labels are lambasting the BBC for making MP3s of classical music available for free download (Downloading Trouble at the BBC).

The BBC has been lambasted by classical music labels for making all nine of Beethoven's symphonies available for free download over the Internet. ...

But the initiative has infuriated the bosses of leading classical record companies who argue the offer undermines the value of music and that any further offers would be unfair competition.

Managing director of the Naxos label, Anthony Anderson, said: "I think there is a question of whether a publicly funded broadcaster should be doing this and there is the obvious issue that it is devaluing the perceived value of music. You are also leading the public to think that it is fine to download and own these files for nothing."

Public Knowledge reports that the Senate Commerce Committee will be holding a hearing on the Grokster decision on July 14. The Technology, Innovation, and Competitiveness subcommittee will hold hearings on July 28. No witnesses yet known.

Opera Watch ("the unofficial Opera blog") reports that the latest version of the Opera web browser will natively support BitTorrent (Opera Adds Support for BitTorrent). Unfortunately, Opera is a fairly niche product, though highly popular with those who use it. How long before Firefox or Internet Explorer adopt this? That would be a big deal as it would make BitTorrent files readily accessible to the masses.

Ed Felten declares computers the winner in the man vs. machine chess arena (Chess Computer Crushes Elite Human Player).

This may seem inevitable in hindsight, but for the longest time people insisted that human chess players had something special which computers could never duplicate. That was true, up to a point. ...

Chess computers have succeeded by ignoring what human chessplayers do best, and doing instead what computers do best. And what computers do best is to run programs written by very clever human programmers.

EFF has added a labor law section (Bloggers' FAQ: Labor Law) to their excellent Legal Guide for Bloggers (Blogging and the Workplace). Now if I only had a job where I could use this ...

Business Week's Blogspotting has some interesting evidence of the failure of the closed network model for cellular service (Mobile Internet: a Story of Stagnation).

What can we gather from this? The mobile industry, which has been breathlessly awaiting revenue growth from mobile data, has utterly failed to provide Internet handsets and services worth our time and money. Significantly, the one area of growth--wireless email--developed largely on services and handsets that came from outside the phone industry, from Research in Motion's Blackberrys and PalmOne's Treo.

Michael Madison has a short collection of links on various changes in the legal academe, including a link to a review of the new edition of the Blue Book for legal citation (Blue Booking and the Academy). Read the whole post, but here's my question. When, oh when, will they make the Blue Book freely available online? And when will we have a Blue Book for Legal XML? Let's see some well-formatted metadata inside the text. After all, isn't that what Blue Booking is all about? Providing well-formatted metadata?

Engadget notes what sounds like a pretty good use of RFID (Perfect Gate RFID Bike Parking in Japan: Not Bad!).

We were a little skeptical last year when we heard some company called Perfect Gate Ltd. would be rolling out an RFID-based system for the locking of bikes—not to mention the not a chance in hell attitude we got from our friends big on biking. But hey, what do you know? The Maruyoshi Cycle bike parking lot in Osaka (yeah, they have those over there) has reportedly cut theft from one bike monthly to zero for over a year now by implementing the system, which consists of one embedded tag in the front wheel of the user’s bike, and a counterpart RFID tag that links the owner to the property and grants access to the lot.

EFF's Fred von Lohmann has some positive things to say about the Copyright Office's proposal to reform 17 USC 115 (A Worthy First Step).

This is an important step in the right direction, creating the prerequisites for a real, market-based solution to the P2P dilemma. Of course, it will still be up to the record labels (which own the copyrights in the sound recordings) to join the MROs or create their own collecting societies to license P2P users directly, but the MRO example, if successful, may provide just the push that the record industry needs. At a minimum, this reform should accelerate the licensing of digital music services and novel online uses, like podcasting, that should not be held hostage to internecine squabbles between middlemen, all of whom claim to represent the same rights holders.

The Shifted Librarian brings news of the Spoken Alexandria Project (Introducing the Spoken Alexandria Project + Podcast). The Spoken Alexandria Project

is creating a free library of spoken word recordings, consisting of classics in the public domain and modern works (with permission). AAC, Ogg Vorbis, and MP3 audiobooks available for free download and redistribution.

Cory Doctorow reports on BoingBoing that Euro software patents are dead (Euro Software Patents are DEAD! w00t!). Good news! UPDATE 0940PT Jason Schultz has more on why this is important and what it means on Copyfight (EU Parliament Votes Down Software Patents, 648-14).

C|Net News' Declan McCullagh reports on a new security/privacy law that could have a chilling effect on blogs and other small publishers (The Coming Web Security Woes).

Anyone who runs a Web site with registered users and receives income from it (Blogads and Google Ads count) should be concerned. The Specter-Leahy bill says that if that site's list of user IDs or e-mail addresses is compromised, each registered user must be notified via U.S. mail or telephone. Refusal to do so can be punished with $55,000-a-day fines and prison time of up to five years.

That's remarkable but not as extreme as the second requirement: The Web master or mailing list operator might have to "cover the cost" of 12 monthly credit reports of each person whose e-mail addresses was lost or purloined.

Another great post from Eric Goldman, this time on a "click fraud" lawsuit against Google (Click Fraud Lawsuit--Click Defense v. Google).

I vacillate between two competing perceptions about click fraud lawsuits. Sometimes I think that Google deserves some legal heat for its blasé attitude towards click fraud. Other times, I think click fraud plaintiffs are merely media grandstanders and quasi-extortionists. Unquestionably Google can do more to address click fraud, but advertisers—especially Click Defense (given its specialty in click fraud tpics)—know about click fraud and yet voluntarily decide to enter into a contract with Google and voluntarily choose the keywords and pick the CPCs they think are profitable knowing that click fraud exists.

I think Click Defense’s complaint is legally weak but not frivolous. Perhaps with sufficient legal sophistry, Click Defense can find a way to convince a judge to give it legal redress. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that click fraud should and will be solved through business dealings rather than in a court of law.

This is almost unfair. Susan Crawford pulls an admiring profile of AOL from 1995 and basically allows it to make a fool of itself (Someone to Watch Over Me).

Case believes that Microsoft and the Internet players are not going to be cheaper or easier to use, and therefore, are not taking the approach that's going to build a mass market. He's convinced that his opponents' strategy of "disintermediation" - unbundling systems and letting users "roll their own" packages - is going to be too much of a hassle for Mr. and Mrs. Average Online Consumer. "I don't see any evidence to suggest that this is what the 93 percent [the percentage of Americans that were unconnected in 1995] wants," Case says. "I think a subset of the 7 percent wants that. The people I talk to who don't yet use online services don't use them because they are still a little scared of them. Making it more complicated for people to connect and use the service, giving them a bewildering array of options to pick from - it's hard to imagine that's going to help."

Om Malik on RSS spam clogging up places like Technorati, PubSub and Feedster (RSS Spam Cometh?).

It has been working well, but lately I have observed a few disturbing signs that can quickly turn RSS into yet another technology to avoid. RSS searches are now throwing up classifed listings from not just Craigslist but other sites. It shows the obvious shortcomings in the RSS search engines. This is going to be a bigger problem going forward - more and more people are indiscriminately churning out RSS feeds.

Constitutional Code brings some disturbing news from Germany (DNS Poisoning Requested From Providers by Rights Organisation).

The German rights organisation for composers, lyricist and publishers, GEMA, has asked 42 access providers to poison their DNS servers in order to block sites that provide links to eDonkey files. In short, DNS poisoning obstructs the process of converting a URL to a numeric IP address. The GEMA apparently expects the access providers to configure their DNS servers so that "inquiries by end-users are not passed to the correct server, but to an invalid or another pre-defined side." The GEMA also demands that the providers sign a testimony,with which they commit themselves to ensure full blockage under a contractual penalty of 100.000 euro if any of their customers can still reach the targeted site after July 25th....

In the Pennsylvania child pornography case, slightly reminiscent of this one, new legislation allowed the government to aks access providers to block sites, using DNS poisoning amongst others. In that case there was a law to challenge, constitutional restraints to invoke, a court to review the pressure put on the public (government) - private (users) relationship. While laws may be applicable in the German case, users could "constitutionally" loose out if private demands are enforced by private parties. A judicial review is appropriate here, if for one thing, to test how far decisions to block the information flow can be pushed and taken within the private realm. Even if there's arguably illegal activity involved. Because there always is....arguably. [links, emphasis in original]