Late on the Tyranny of Copyright... and "the Copy Left" vs. "copyleft"

Surprisingly, my Dad read Robert S. Boynton's piece "The Tyranny of Copyright?" in the 25 January 2004 New York Times before I did. Here are my comments (slightly redacted):

That's not a bad article... I can't believe anyone would read the whole thing unless they are as paranoid about our nation's creative future as I am. If you read this entire article, I would appreciate you humoring me and entertaining a few points:

-First, full disclosure. Last tuesday, a similar protest as the Diebold protest happened. I participated just as I did in the Diebold matter... I decided not to tell you this time :). This time it was to keep a really good piece of music alive... and, if the lawyers for the Beatles (EMI) ever get around to it, I once again might face the spectre of a lawsuit (however, this time many many hundreds of people participated in the protest, it would be crazy to go after us all... we'll see what happens).

The work in question? A DJ had taken the a capella tracks from "The Black Album" (by rapper Jay-Z) and re-created the background music using exclusively sounds taken piecemeal from the Beatles "the While Album"... the result? The Grey Album. He did not get permission from anyone to do this... or it would never have happened.

-Second, the author tries to coin a new term/meme "the Copy Left" which is not used for this purpose in this community... and, unfortunately for the author, this exposes a large misunderstanding on his part. "Copyleft", in practice, refers to allowing anyone to copy, modify and distribute a work as long as any changes made to the material (a "derivative work") are licensed under the exact same terms. This may not sound like a big deal, but it is... it has the effect of using copyright to ensure that a work and any downstream derivatives remain freely usable.

-Larry Lessig makes a powerful point in a short Wired article this month where he points out that all the major modern content distribution channels (radio, cable, motion pictures, etc.) were all considered "pirates" at their beginnings. (the article will be available on 4 March)

-Further, a quickly made point is that there was no intellectual property protection before a few hundred years ago... and our planet has a vast history of remarkable creativity that needed no special incentive besides immediate compensation, slavery, etc.

-Lastly, Yochai Benkler (mentioned in the NYT article near the end) is, in my eyes, on par with our own Pam Samuelson here at UC Berkeley. He is an amazing thinker and a vastly deep mind. He isn't a large public figure like Lessig... but attacks problems from a quite different but complementary intellectual tact. I'm not sure the corporate interests know exactly what they are up against with the level of scholarship intrinsic to our community. We don't do this for money... but for culture. That is how we will win.

bye, bye Orkut

I just asked for my Orkut account to be deleted. Why? 1) It was boring and hard to actually make fun and 2) their ToS is freakin' evil.

Need a font?

Hats off to Ray Larabie at Larabie Fonts for all the free (for non-commercial and commercial use) and totally bitchin' fonts on his site. His licensing seems damn close to public domain... he just asks that all original packaged contents are distributed as a whole. He even creates custom typefaces over at typodermic... could you imagine receiving a font for a gift? That would be pretty damn cool... your own font!

I just re-did my masthead with Cretino and the True-Type version of You're Gone... both freely available from larabiefonts. With the addition of the pufferfish stencil (at right) this is now a true home... though still Not Quite a Blog. In case anyone was wondering, Not Quite a Blog will stay grey for a while... due to recent events.

The DIY Grey Album, CC moving image winners...

CC has announced its moving image winners.

As well, Ernie and Scot Hacker exchange thoughts on the possibility of a DIY Grey Album... That is, a recipe and program that would create the grey from the black and white. I think this is possible... as I said over there:

I am somewhat between you two... I know it can be done... however, it would be very hard (after writing the rest of this comment, I realized it's not really that hard!). You'd effectively have to have a recipe like this:

1. Open an a capella Jay-Z track.
2. Open the Beatles track from which you'd like to stitch together the background.
3. For each sound in the resultant Grey Album track, you have to know:
   1. the start and end time of that sound from the Beatles track;
   2. where said sound should go in the resultant grey track;
   3. exactly what affects, processing, etc. was done to the sounds (if any) and the settings used.
   4. if the sound was looped (this could save processing).
4. Then you just need an executible program (that is, not a human!) that could take the data from the recipe above and the two tracks and synthesize a grey track.

now that I've stepped through it, I realize this could be done relatively easy using XML. The hard part would be designing a program that could interpret the XML and do the actual processing and synthesis. Although, this would be, in essence, just a program that copied parts of an audio file and then processed them accordingly.

This could be very easily done if no processing needed to be done to the individual background sounds; if the executible just needed to copy parts of a sound and merge them with another static audio clip (the a capella track), this could be done by any competent C coder with the right mp3/wav library. And we could put the GPL on the program and CC licenses on the XML files. Then, users would just need the two tracks for the recipe, the XML file describing how to cook up a grey track and then the executible that did the actual synthesis.

Let's see the common-law copyright cops at EMI come after that!

A gorgeous picture of Saturn from Cassini...

Here's a gorgeous picture of Saturn taken by the Cassini spacecraft on its way to Saturn... it will enter the Saturn system on 4 July 2004. This is a very important mission for astrophysics. Specifically, because a moon of Saturn, Titan, appears to be much like the very early Earth.

Mis-use of government databases... if only they had access to TIA

(via Declan) Remember TIA? Remember that it was a gigantically vast system of databases, all populated in real-time with the smallest iota of a transactional information? Remember the arguments about how "safe" something like this system would have been and respectful of personal privacy? Well, get your chuckle on and look at this. Exactly what we'll see more of if we have governmental control over such large, connected sets of data: the value of this system will not go unignored by others with ulterior motives.

Students using wired technology to cheat in classes...

I was really caught off guard by this story in the Contra Costa Times describing in-class cheating using wireless technology. I've heard of students communicating via the infrared ports in their calculators... but I've never thought of cheating in class using instant messaging or snapping a phonecam shot of an exam question or answer sheet. This is becoming a big deal in education.

Many students use their cell phones as calculators or as watches to keep time. Not anymore in my classes. I will make sure their is a clock prominently displayed in all the classes in which I proctor tests and that the most complicated math is like, "What's the square-root of 4?" Then I will say the following: If you are using any electronic device other than a basic watch during the exam, you will be presumed to be cheating and in violation of UC Berkeley's academic dishonesty policy. Please don't be dishonest."

That's too bad... but this is the state of modern technology... I mean really, my Nokia 3650 can surf the web. That means that there is a vast amount of information at their disposal that isn't available to other students. That's some serious goddamn cheating.

the EFF "solves" p2p...

Derek points to the EFF's new plan to solve the filesharing dilema. I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that the music industry's reaction will be lukewarm to ice cold. At least if this is most of the pitch I don't find it convincing from the point of view of a recording executive (Fred from the EFF will be introducing it at the Future of Music Summit... he'll probably say a lot more than what's in this document there).

Why will this be ignored by the music industry? Because of this:

What about file sharers who won't pay?

The vast majority of file sharers are willing to pay a reasonable fee for the freedom to download whatever they like, using whatever software suits them. In addition to those who would opt to take a license if given the opportunity, many more will likely have their license fees paid by intermediaries, like ISPs, universities, and software vendors.

So long as the fee is reasonable, effectively invisible to fans, and does not restrict their freedom, the vast majority of file sharers will opt to pay rather than engage in complex evasion efforts. So long as "free-riding" can be limited to a relatively small percentage of file sharers, it should not pose a serious risk to a collective licensing system. After all, today artists and copyright owners are paid nothing for file sharing -- it should be easy to do much better than that with a collective licensing system. Copyright holders (and perhaps the collecting society itself) would continue to be entitled to enforce their rights against "free-loaders." Instead of threatening them with ruinous damages, however, the collecting society can offer stragglers the opportunity to pay a fine and get legal. This is exactly what collecting societies like ASCAP do today.

When you couple this relatively vague and unclear payment mechanism with the fact that there won't be a one-to-one accounting for all material downloaded, you get something that the music industry will not even take a second look at. As the Grey Album debacle has recently shown once again, the music industry is unhappy with anything less than total control of their IP.

I hope I'm wrong and that a label or two will initiate dialogue (you'd think that any revenue would be good revenue at this point for these guys)... it is a great idea grounded in precedent. I'd happily pay.

Grey Tuesday: creative genius cannot go unpunished

UPDATE: After seeing this huge list of sites posting the files, I suppose I should pitch in. Here is the Grey Album in .zip format and here in .tar.gz. I will take these down in 24 hours.

It's truly a grey tuesday... so grey that I've greyed my stylesheet (and it may stay that way).

I've just listened to the entire Grey Album by DJ Danger Mouse. It's absolutely amazing. It's a true testament to how innovative and creative certain artists can be without even recording an original note. If you have no idea what I'm talking about: DJ Danger Mouse, as a homage to both the Beatles and the rapper Jay-Z, has remixed the entirety of Jay-Z's recent album, The Black Album, exclusively using sounds from the Beatle's The White Album. The only thing remaining from Jay-Z's album is the vocals... everything else is built up from small samples of the White Album... in DJ Danger Mouse's words: "every kick, snare, and chord is taken from the Beatles White Album and is in their original recording somewhere."

Of course, genius like this cannot go unpunished by the major record labels. I'm sure they're pretty pissed off that they can't actually hire this kind of talent (although they do a good job with attorneys). EMI has issued a pretty amazingly agressive cease-and-desist letter. Downhillbattle has responded to this letter claiming fair use. Part of the movement to keep this work alive is a protest today where sites are putting the album up for download to make sure that it is not quashed by the commercial evil that is EMI.

I've got the album... I wish I had the vinyl. I'm reluctant to post these files on N.Q.B. If I know you personally (face-to-face or net), and you're having trouble getting these tracks, send me an email. If not, you should first try downloading it from a peer-to-peer network (see below) and then try either the link from downhillbattle (here) or one below from illegal art:

DOWNLOAD THE ALBUM

01 Public Service Announcement
02 What More Can I Say
03 Encore
04 December 4th
05 99 Problems
06 Dirt Off Your Shoulder
07 Moment of Clarity
08 Change Clothes
09 Allure
10 Justify My Thug
11 Interlude
12 My 1st Song

Help us save bandwidth by using the following options instead. All of these programs are free, trustworthy, easy to use, and they don't install any advertising or spyware on your computer.

Bittorrent lets all the people who want a file share some of the bandwidth required to distribute it. It's very reliable. Once you install it and click the link below, you'll have the album within a day.

1. Download Bittorrent (it's easy): Windows, Mac, Linux
2. Double-click on the installer. Mac people: drag the icon into your Applications folder.
3. Click on this link (Mac people: Control Click and "Download Link to Disk" and then open the file)

You can also get it the old-fashioned way, on a p2p network. Just search for "Grey Album" or "Dangermouse". Advantage: there are several other full-album remixes of the Black Album; you can get those too.

• Soulseek is the best client for Windows.
• Acquisition is the best client for Mac.

Another Joy of the GPL: Typesetting Complicated Exams in LaTeX

I'm a total nerd. A teacher nerd, to boot! What's my word-processor of choice? A combination of eMacs and LaTeX (with a little bit of dvipdfm for dvi->PDF translation). You can do anything with this combination (including PDFs with clickable links in them! [an example]).

I just finally tracked down a hard-to-find[1] package (a LaTeX plug-in) for typesetting complicated exams. Examdesign, (here's the tarball ) authored by Jason Alexander (formerly?) of UCSD, will let you write an exam in a simple mark-up text format while it takes care of the hard stuff like randomizing questions, making answer keys, etc. And what's even cooler than that? It's offered under a GPL license which means I can distribute it even if the author gets nuked off of the face of the planet... to ensure that all students have the privilege of gorgeously typeset, mutliple-versioned exams in any question format I want.

[1] I was only able to find it in one place: here.

Ping's two-handed user interface

Occasionally, I'm reminded just how lucky I must be to share affiliation with people like Ka-Ping Yee (a/k/a Ping). Ping has just come up with a two-handed interface for tablet PCs... to grasp what this is, take a look at this movie (it's large, 14 MB). This is truly something revolutionary... I can just feel my tendonitis (which will some day be CTS) melting away. If you're interested in the paper behind the movie... it is here and was just accepted to CHI.

One drawback of using a web-based aggregator...

Well, have I mentioned that I love Bloglines? I guess I have. However, there's one inevitable problem with a web-based aggregater... outages: I realize that the service is free and that it would only be down for a few hours... but in the nature of aggregation, I only have a couple points in my day in which I can read my feeds. If I skip one, then I start to get too many damn things to look at and my attention is stretched to its practical limit. It would be nice if Bloglines had some redundancy so that we wouldn't notice maintenance or that any (expected) maintenance would be late at night (although who's time-zone to take?). Anyway, keep up the good work, of course!

A great part of a great brief: Ed Felten's declaration in the EFF's BNETD brief

As Cory notes, the EFF's hot-off-the-presses brief (mostly, I think) written by Jason Schultz in the BNETD case is really quite gorgeous. My favorite part (on page 10) is how they take Blizzard to task (with the expert help of Ed Felten) for claiming copyright infringement on the tiny little icons that display a users connection status. Another lesson in de minimis copying... after the Beastie Boys case, you'd think counsels would learn.

The icons here are insignificant as a proportion of the copyrighted works. The entire file of icons, called “icons.bni,” is only 15 kilobytes, or 15KB, in size. By comparison, Blizzard’s Diablo II video game client program is 575 megabytes in size, or 588,800 KB. Thus, “icons.bni” makes up only 0.0025% of the Diablo II game, a microscopic percentage well below established de minimis use thresholds.
[Footnotes to Ed Felten's Declaration removed. -Joe]

Dark, Queer Punk Rock! Malaqueerche!

Alison just lent me a great DVD, Malaqueerche. It's about two queer gangs (The Mullets and The Mohawks) and their adventures during the day before a show. Great acting; the two bands are played by the same people.

The soundtrack is absolutely killer. Two of the bands on the soundtrack, Gravy Train!!! and Veronica Lipgloss and the Evil Eyes, are playing the Eagle Tavern in San Francisco tomorrow (along with Von Iva). I'll be there. So will the director/producer of Malaqueerche, Devon Devine. I emailed Devon to get the skinny on the soundtrack... it's not being sold, but I'm going to piece my own together from the following list Devon was so kind to offer:

• the gossip (from the album movement, maybe track 1?),
• gravy train (two songs- both songs from Hello Doctor, Laffin' all the way to the bank (track 5) and Kottonmouth Blowjob (track 4)
• Erase Errata - a track called marathon from... forget the name of the album....
• Princess Superstar - "i like sex" not sure what album
• Creme Blush -- not sure what album, but all of them are good, i think it is called Ciao, Manhattan
• Half Seas Over - this might be hard to find i don't know if they ever released any official albums and i think they might be broken up now, but the song is called Skool Spirit
• Veronica Lipgloss and the Evil Eyes - from their first ep
• The King Cobra - the last track on their album called "This Town Ain't Big Enough For the Both of Us" and i know that its not an original, its a cover of an older song by some band i'd never heard of before
• The Vicious White Lies - this is just a little olympia band that already broke up, they were a fun punk rock band with a girl lead singer i have their album but i would be surprised if it ever got out of olympia
• SCREAMCLUB - pretty much any song without words (other than the gravy train song at the end) that was used as background noise was a screamclub song but without the vocals and then the song that we used with words is Whathefuckenshit
• Romantic Retard Nation - from their remix album, i know they've toured the west coast and sold their albums at shows but i think that they would be hard to find anywhere but olympia...

Add to the cell phone wish list: Schedule volume synchronization

Here's one for the cell phone-feature wish list: the abilitiy to sync to your schedule in order to automatically turn it to the proper volume appropriate for the engagement... and then back on again afterwards. So simple, so non-existant. If someone knows of a way to do this, let me know... as a new cell phone addict, I could really use this. I either end up with my phone going off in a meeting, or I end up missing all calls all day long because it's set on silent.

Ellison v. AOL: Many organizations could be held contributorily liable.

(I've finally got a scoop...)

The 9th Circuit just handed down a decision in Ellison v. AOL that could leave many organizations (such as my institution, UC Berkeley) liable for contributory copyright infringement. The 9th Circuit found that AOL's failure to update its agent of record with the copyright office could possibly constitute contributory liability because, if it had kept that information current, AOL would have not missed DMCA Section 512 notices sent to that address.

Here's the kicker: I learned when I was C&D'd by Diebold, Inc. last fall that UC Berkeley's agent of record is out of date. Specifically, the listed agent of record is Jacqueline Craig, who recently left UC Berkeley to become the new University of California Office of the President's Director of Policy. Berkeley's agent of record is listed with the Copyright Office here (local copy here). AOL's agent of record was last updated in 1999! (local copy here )

The bigger picture becomes apparent when you start to poke around the agent of record list at the U.S. Copyright Office... many of the entries were last updated a long time ago (note that in the Ellison case that AOL had lagged in updating by "months"). I'm still wrestling with the implications that this could have. For example, this seems like a tool the RIAA (or anyone really) could use to get in the very deep pockets of Universities and large ISPs. Yikes.

When was your institution/organization's record last updated... let's take a look: Harvard (02/2003), Stanford (08/2002), Berkeley (01/2000), MIT (01/1999)...

No Fulbrights for UC Berkeley grads this year... FedEx fucked it all up!

Typically half of UC Berkeley graduate applicants to the prestigious Fulbright scholarship program make the cut... not this year. Due to FedEx installing bunk software on the pick-up date, they didn't pick-up the applications. Further, the Department of Education has refused to consider any of the 30 Berkeley applications. This is straight fucked-up. It is not a failure upon our part... but on the part of an intermediary. Why should we be liable for a mistake on the part of FedEx? If FedEx had lost the applications somewhere down the line, the DoEdu would have allowed resubmission... why not in this case?

Why your Movable Type blog must die

great article... here's and excerpt:

You are all pretentious twats

Every last one of you. You're all latte-sipping, iMac-using, suburban-living tertiary-industry-working WASPs who offer absolutely no new insights on anything whatsoever apart from maybe one specialist field if we're lucky. Most of you think that you're writing original content and that you're making a contribution by licensing your spewings under Creative Commons "Some Rights Reserved" licences, just because it's the hip thing to do. You think you know all there is to say about blogging because you understand the concept of HTML and CSS, but the horrible truth is that 40% of you are all using the same shitty default layout. Then you take pictures of yourselves looking pensive

I will invite anyone into Orkut... (If I had an account in the first place!)

UPDATE [2004-05-29]: I no longer have an Orkut account... so I've changed the title of this post to reflect that and I can no longer invite anyone into Orkut. Sorry.

UPDATE (2004-03-20 09:07:34): I had my account deleted from Orkut... it wasn't fun and I was bored with it.

Old Post

You heard right... if you'd like an invitation to come into Orkut, let me know[1], I'll invite you. This is in direct disregard for the invitation elitism that Orkut has put forth... however, if I don't know you and you are not, in fact, a friend of mine, I will immediately delete you from my friend network.

[1] Post a comment to this entry with a valid email address... don't worry your email address will not be displayed (as long as you include a web address as well).

The Beatles: 40 years of rock...

The Beatles made their appearance playing "All My Loving" on the Ed Sullivan Show on 9 Feb 1964. About 73 million American households (40% of the population) watched that performance. Now if only their rights-holders weren't so stingy...

Bonus question: What was with all the screaming? I realize it was a display of affection but listen to this quote:

"I screamed so much at the afternoon [live] show that I had completely lost my voice by the evening. I remember crying because I couldn't shout. Couldn't hear them, of course, at either show. At least on 'Sullivan,' we could hear them." -Phyllis Gordon

What's the modern-day equivalent? Probably the "woo!" or "woo-hoo!" scream. They just don't make displays of affection like they used to.