Oh Most High and Fragrant Emacs, please be in -*- outline -*- mode! * start with tentacles * explain why important, effect on open source * general trends ** Abandonment of end-user DRM Talk about Montreal experiences, EMI, iTunes ** Embrace of ISP-level DRM *** Universities http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/university-monitoring.pdf - Chilling effect on academic discourse - Invasion of privacy - Tagging of false positives (guilt by nominal association) - Presumption of guilt - Monitoring burden detracts from school's (or ISP's) mission - Not required by law (safe harbor provisions of DMCA) http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005221.php Ohio University Restricts All P2P File Sharing Software April 26, 2007 Citing the burdens of responding to the RIAA's flood of pre-litigation letters, Ohio University has decided to monitor its network in order to block all use of P2P file sharing software. Students caught using the software will have their network access disabled. This policy may temporarily relieve the IT department, but it doesn't get us any closer to a long-term solution to deal with file sharing. It won't stop "piracy," as students will simply migrate towards other readily-accessible sharing tools, and it certainly doesn't put any more money in artists' pockets. But this policy -- like related schemes implemented by other colleges -- does create yet more collateral damage to academic freedom. Want to use P2P to distribute your own writing or to acquire public domain works for class? Too bad. Meanwhile, computer science students will need to ask permission first to tinker with and study P2P software. Ohio University says it's targeting a few applications, but it's unclear whether the policy might extend to a variety of tools. For instance, there are lots of new "personal server" applications being developed for private sharing of movies, photos, and other data -- how exactly will the university draw the line? Blocking P2P is bad not only for the university and its students, but also for innovation more generally. Today's computer science students are tomorrow's technology leaders, creating tools that can empower millions. Remember, Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, and myriad other online technologies were created by students at universities, and innovative companies like Skype, Joost and BitTorrent are built on basic P2P technologies. The University's policy is misguided, but the bottom line is that educational institutions shouldn't be put in the position of wasting resources on the RIAA's copyright nastygrams in the first place. The record labels need to get out of the business of intimidating schools and let fans keep sharing in a way that gets artists paid. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005291.php A Better Way Forward on University P2P June 06, 2007 With the RIAA suing 400 college students each month (on top of their continuing campaign against non-collegiate filesharers) and Congress calling for more surveillance of university networks, it's high time that the university community offer up a sensible alternative to the RIAA's dystopian vision. I wrote an editorial with a suggestion along those lines in today's Washington Post, which echoes a proposal we've long been advocating for the P2P dilemma more generally: At its heart, this is a fight about money, not about morality. We should have the universities collect the cash, pay it to the entertainment industry and let the students do what they are going to do anyway. In exchange, the entertainment industry should call off the lawyers and lobbyists, leaving our nation's universities to focus on the real challenges facing America's next generation of leaders. UPDATE: for further thoughts, see my exchange with PFF's Solveig Singleton on the Technology Liberation Front blog. Copyright Silliness on Campus By Fred von Lohmann Wednesday, June 6, 2007; A23 What do Columbia, Vanderbilt, Duke, Howard and UCLA have in common? Apparently, leaders in Congress think that they aren't expelling enough students for illegally swapping music and movies. The House committees responsible for copyright and education wrote a joint letter May 1 scolding the presidents of 19 major American universities, demanding that each school respond to a six-page questionnaire detailing steps it has taken to curtail illegal music and movie file-sharing on campus. One of the questions -- "Does your institution expel violating students?" -- shows just how out-of-control the futile battle against campus downloading has become. As universities are pressured to punish students and install expensive "filtering" technologies to monitor their computer networks, the entertainment industry has ramped up its student shakedown campaign. The Recording Industry Association of America has targeted more than 1,600 individual students in the past four months, demanding that each pay $3,000 for file-sharing transgressions or face a federal lawsuit. In total, the music and movie industries have brought more than 20,000 federal lawsuits against individual Americans in the past three years. History is sure to judge harshly everyone responsible for this absurd state of affairs. Our universities have far better things to spend money on than bullying students. Artists deserve to be fairly compensated, but are we really prepared to sue and expel every college student who has made an illegal copy? No one who takes privacy and civil liberties seriously can believe that the installation of surveillance technologies on university computer networks is a sensible solution. It's not an effective solution, either. Short of appointing a copyright hall monitor for every dorm room, there is no way digital copying will be meaningfully reduced. Technical efforts to block file-sharing will be met with clever countermeasures from sharp computer science majors. Even if students were completely cut off from the Internet, they would continue to copy CDs, swap hard drives and pool their laptops. Already, a hard drive capable of storing more than 80,000 songs can be had for $100. Blank DVDs, each capable of holding more than a first-generation iPod, now sell for a quarter apiece. Students are going to copy what they want, when they want, from whom they want. So universities can't stop file-sharing. But they can still help artists get paid for it. How? By putting some cash on the bar. Universities already pay blanket fees so that student a cappella groups can perform on campus, and they also pay for cable TV subscriptions and site licenses for software. By the same token, they could collect a reasonable amount from their students for "all you can eat" downloading. The recording industry is already willing to offer unlimited downloads with subscription plans for $10 to $15 per month through services such as Napster and Rhapsody. But these services have been a failure on campuses, for a number of reasons, including these: They don't work with the iPod, they cause downloaded music to "expire" after students leave the school, and they don't include all the music students want. The only solution is a blanket license that permits students to get unrestricted music and movies from sources of their choosing. At its heart, this is a fight about money, not about morality. We should have the universities collect the cash, pay it to the entertainment industry and let the students do what they are going to do anyway. In exchange, the entertainment industry should call off the lawyers and lobbyists, leaving our nation's universities to focus on the real challenges facing America's next generation of leaders. The writer is a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He represented one of the defendants in MGM v. Grokster, a landmark case concerning peer-to-peer file sharing. HILARIOUS: http://www.eff.org/share/?f=collective_lic_wp.html ... doesn't talk about the derivative works problem, and itself is released under an CC-Attribution-No-Derivatives license. ** (DMCA takedown abuse ?) * give America overview http://barcorefblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/controversial-file-sharing-amendment-to.html Debate on the Higher Education Act Amendments of 2007 (S. 1462), which will renew the Higher Education Act, is scheduled to begin today and the Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that Sen. Harry Reid (D. NV) has added a controversial amendment. His amendment would require many of the largest colleges to use technology designed to prevent students from illegally downloading and swapping music and movie files. The amendment that Sen. Reid is sponsoring, Senate Amendment 2314, requires institutions of higher education to keep careful track of file-sharing, report to the Secy. of Education, and "provide evidence to the Secretary that the institution has developed a plan for implementing a technology-based deterrent to prevent the illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property." * give Europe, world overview http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2007_03.php#005156 March 13, 2007 American Studios' Secret Plan to Lock Down European TV Devices EFF Exposes Standards Jeopardizing Innovation and Consumer Rights San Francisco - An international consortium of television and technology companies is devising draconian anti-consumer restrictions for the next generation of TVs in Europe and beyond, at the behest of American entertainment giants. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the only public interest group to have gained entrance into the secretive meetings of the Digital Video Broadcasting Project (DVB), a group that creates the television and video specifications used in Europe, Australia, and much of Asia and Africa. In a report released today, EFF shows how U.S. movie and television companies have convinced DVB to create new technical specifications that would build digital rights management technologies into televisions. These specifications are likely to take away consumers' rights, which will subsequently be sold back to them piecemeal -- so entertainment fans will have to pay again and again for legitimate uses of lawfully acquired digital television content. "DVB is abetting a massive power grab by the content industry, and many of the world's largest technology companies are simply watching," said Ren Bucholz, EFF Policy Coordinator, Americas. "This regime was concocted without input from consumer rights organizations or public interest groups, and it shows." Despite recent record profits, American movie and television studios insist that new technologies could ruin their industry. In past battles against innovation, these same studios sued to block the sale of the VCR and the first mass-marketed digital video recorder in the U.S. Having failed in those efforts, they have now turned to creating technical standards that, when backed by law, are likely to restrict consumers' existing rights and threaten the future of technological innovation. With DVB, the plan begun by entertainment companies in the U.S. has now gone global. EFF's report is aimed at alerting European consumer groups and consumers about the dangers posed by the proposed standards and providing informational resources for European regulators. "DVB members' active indifference, even hostility, to user rights is shameful," said EFF Staff Technologist Seth Schoen. "When American studios ask for regulatory support for restrictions pushed through the DVB Project, public officials must stand up for consumer rights, sustain competition and innovation, and tell Hollywood to back off." * Australia Wanted to do free trade agreement with US a couple of years ago. Most of it came into force, but one section was delayed implementation due to need for legislative changes. That part came into effect this year: now Australia has a DMCA-like law. There was a bit of a furor. Linux Australia submitted a protest to attorney general's department, but didn't get very far. Did do some radio interviews. Involved lots of changes to fair use. Jonathan says (secondhand report) amazing how much personalities and individual experiences affect decision-making process, e.g., daughter's iPod was within his experience, but need for open source developers to be able to write interoperable software is outside. Rusty Russell is LA's IP person. Did a road show around Australia. Trade Agreement was: DMCA-like clone law was: (from Jonathan Oxer) http://old.linux.org.au/fta/ http://old.linux.org.au/papers/fta-paper.html * show strange international stuff (Brazil/Japan) * show how they're converging * give more details on the Pirate Party * explain what QCO is doing