A conversation with Robleh Ali, the former head of the the Digital Currencies team at the Bank of England. It was a wide ranging conversation about Bitcoin, economics and the role of central banks and regulators.

Audio of the conversation is available on SoundCloud and iTunes.

LibrePlanet 2016 and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) happened to be having meetings at MIT at the same time so Harry Halpin from the W3C thought that it would be a great opportunity to have a public discussion about Digital Restrictions Management* (DRM). The W3C was having a discussion about DRM and the World Wide Web and considering Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) which would build DRM support into the Web standards and various parties were trying argue against it. They didn't have room over at CSAIL so he approached me about having it at the Media Lab and I agree to host it as long as it was clear that this didn't didn't signal some official position by the the Lab.

We were able to pull together an interesting panel with Richard Stallman from the Free Software Foundation, Danny O'Brien from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harry Halpin from the World Wide Web Consortium as the moderator. Harry and I were speaking on behalf of ourselves and not our (in my case various) organizations and affiliations.

As you might imagine with this group, it wasn't a debate, but arguments against DRM from a various perspectives and levels of intensity. :-)

Here's the blurb from Harry.

Will the future of the Web include Digital Rights Management? The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the MIT-based international standards body in charge of "bringing the Web to its full potential" is in process of deciding if they should continue their work on Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). The recommendation of EME by W3C would standardize the use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) across browsers. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has petitioned W3C to stop all work on EME and DRM-related technologies. The W3C will consider adopting a DRM non-aggression covenant drafted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) at its Advisory Committee meeting at MIT next week.

This is an open invitation for genuine person-to-person dialogue with people from MIT, FSF, EFF, and W3C about DRM on the Web (and any other topics of importance to the Web).

Speakers:

- Joi Ito (Media Lab)
- Richard Stallman (Free Software Foundation)
- Danny O'Brien (EFF)
- W3C Team Member(s)
- Moderator: Harry Halpin (W3C)

March 20th 2016, 8 PM

* Richard Stallman insists we call it Digital Restrictions Management although industry more commonly refers to it as "Digital Rights Management."

I wrote a bit about DRM in my PubPub post, "Why anti-money laundering laws and poorly designed copyright laws are similar and should be revised."

Published this on pubpub.ito.com. Please comment there.

AlterNet

Senator Ted Stevens: The Remix

Posted by Melissa McEwan at 6:57 AM on July 11, 2006.

Last month, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) gave a rather stunning speech on the issue of net neutrality, in which he made such clueless statements as: "I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday," and "[T]he internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck. It’s a series of tubes."

Now, the good folks at Boldheaded have turned his "skillful fusion of political doublespeak and perplexing ignorance on how the Internet works" into the DJ Ted Stevens Techno Remix: "A Series of Tubes." [Stream or Download above]

All I can say is just go listen. And then laugh and laugh and laugh.

(ChezLark, Boldheaded)

I DID NOT KNOW that the Internet was a series of tubes.

Very funny. ;-)

You can download it from the Bold Headed Broadcast site.

via Scott via Deb

By Thomas Crampton

Europeans seem to be taking their real-world battles online with different views on domain names.

Wrote on it today: Cyberspace Unity Eludes Europeans

The EU wants people to use the newly launched .eu, while the national domain registries want people to use country domain names.

Neat fact:

The second largest domain suffix after .com is .de for Germany, according to Verisign.

Do domain names matter? Hasn't Google killed the need for them?

New York Times

Growing Number of Lawsuits Could Hurt Google's Ad Revenue

PARIS, March 27 -

[...]

This month, Mr. Dariot triumphed in his year-and-a-half-old lawsuit against Google's French subsidiary, which has been ordered to pay him $97,000 in fines and legal costs.

Dariot and his travel companies, Luteciel and Viaticum, successfully challenged Google's practice of selling Internet advertising from rivals designed to appear with Web searches for his trademarked Web site name, Bourse des Vols, which means flight exchange.

[...]

Mr. Dariot's company is one of the first to win against Google; similar cases in the United States and Germany that challenged the search engine's use of keywords have failed.

But more companies are piling on. France is home to as many as 15 cases, according to lawyers involved.

[...]

In a recent California case, Norm Zada, the chief executive and founder of Perfect 10, a publisher of nude photographs and adult material based in Beverly Hills, said he started sending legal notices to Google about the unauthorized use of his images in 2001.

"After 16 notices, they said they couldn't do anything," Mr. Zada said.

Since then, he said, his attorney has issued a blizzard of 44 notices in the past two years that covered 9,000 unauthorized images. In January, he sued Google in United States District Court in Los Angeles.

Google is in an amazing position to be the target of tons of lawsuits that will set precedent for many important things for us on the Internet. I personally like that Google is pushing the envelope on fair use and other issues. For instance, I think Google Images "thumbnails" are no larger than 150x150 pixels. Because of this, I use 150x150 as my own "safe zone" for "fair use thumbnails". If someone sues me, at least I can point at Google. The other thing that Google, Yahoo and others are involved in is transborder lawsuits, which are a very interesting issue from an Internet governance point of view.

Maybe Google should get into the legal advisory business too. ;-)

Lawrence Lessig

“Free Culture” is

Thanks to the lessons explained by others (Cory), and the courage of a great publisher (Penguin), Free Culture launches today with a free online version of the book, licensed under a Creative Commons license. You can get the book here, though at the moment, only the bittorrent version is apparently up. Later today, there will be a direct download available from the Free Culture site, and from the Amazon site.

Sorry, a bit late in blogging this...

As we start working on the details involved in the launch the sampling license over at Creative Commons, we find, as always, that God is in the details. The idea behind the sampling license is that many artists don't mind if their music is sampled by other artists as long as there is attribution. The Creative Commons is currently proposing two sampling licenses. The normal sampling license which allows other artists to transform the work even for commercial use, while prohibiting distribution of verbatim copies of the entire work. The Sampling-Plus license offers the same rights but allows verbatim sharing of the entire work for non-commercial purposes.

This license would help those genres of music that rely heavily on sampling which have been getting a beating recently by record company lawyers.

It starts to get a bit sticky when one begins to explore some of the extremes of what are called "moral rights". In the article 6bis of the Berne Convention, the "moral rights" of authors includes the "right of integrety: mutilation or distortion that would prejudice the author's honor or reputation is not permitted." These rights are not protected under US Copyright Law but many countries elsewhere protect this. The question is, when does a remix "prejudice the author's honor or reputation" and do the Creative Commons licenses allow people to use the works in ways that "prejudice the author's honor or reputation".

This is where The Kuleshov Effect comes in. danah boyd blogged about it today. The Kuleshov Effect is when an image is perceived very differently depending on what other content is juxtaposed with the image. The question that danah raises is, how much control should / can an artist have of the context in which their material is used? How much of this should be made explicit in the Creative Commons licenses and should there be a waiver of these "moral rights" in countries outside the US where such rights are actually protected.

Dan Gillmor

The ultimate outrage: Rusty Lewis of VeriSign says this is a test for the Net, to see whether the infrastructure can be innovated. It's a threat: Let us do what we want or we won't invest in upgrading infrastructure, he implies.

In response to a question, he bascially indicates that ICANN doesn't have the power to keep VeriSign from doing what it's done. The company will have a dialogue with whoever wants to talk, but it plans to "reintroduce" Site Finder.

I think VeriSign has already won the key part of this war. It has persuaded reporters to call Site Finder a "service" instead of what it truly is, a misuse of its monopoly.

This sounds really bad. How can a company that tries to sell trust act in such a blatantly untrustworthy way...

I had just finished reading Philip Jacob's piece and was preparing my thoughts for a panel on spam that I THINK I'm on in January when I saw this piece by Larry. It's great. It's right on and he's putting his job on the line. I totally agree. We CAN NOT give up the stupid network just to stomp out spamming. I think that the label/punish idea is great. I only worry that the punishment loop is more difficult internationally. Maybe you'll end up with a lot of spam from Japanese, Chinese and Russian spammers. ;-) Larry will still keep his job though, because it will still be siginificantly less spam than you get now.

Lawrence Lessig: putting my job where my mouth is

Lawrence Lessig

A kind-hearted email and a nice analysis of spam have given me an idea:

First the analysis: Philip Jacob has a great piece about spam and RBLs. The essay not only identifies the many problems with RBLs, but it nicely maps a mix of strategies that could be considered in their place. But, alas, missing from the list is one I've pushed: A law requiring simple labeling, and a bounty for anyone who tracks down spammers violating the law.

Then I got an email from a kind soul warning me about my work—"do you know how powerful your enemies are?" this person asked. No, I thought, I don't, but let's see. If I've got such powerful enemies, then I've got a good way to do some good.

Here goes: So (a) if a law like the one I propose is passed on a national level, and (b) it does not substantially reduce the level of spam, then (c) I will resign my job. I get to decide whether (a) is true; Declan can decide whether (b) is true. If (a) and (b) are both true, then I'll do (c) at the end of the following academic year.

So: Is there anyone else advancing a spam solution who would offer this kind of warranty?

PS We've had this discussion on spam on this blog before and my current position considering the technologies we have is that we use local whitelists (I use tmda) instead of central blacklists.

saw this on David Winer's Scripting News

Dave Winer

Press release: Yahoo to acquire Inktomi. Clearly they're getting ready to kick Google off their portal.

Yahoo Inc. Press Release

Yahoo! to Acquire Inktomi
Monday December 23, 9:19 am ET
Creates the Most Comprehensive Search Offering on the Web with Largest Global Audience, Unmatched Breadth and Depth of Online Services and World Class Technology

I had heard rumors that Yahoo was trying to steal stuff from Google and was being generally un-supportive even though they were an investor. (Unconfirmed theory. Will edit this if someone tells me this is wrong...) But I think that Google News probably shocked everyone who though that search mean... search. To a blogger, everything looks like a blog. To a search company, everything is search. ;-) Well, it will be interesting to see what happens when Google vs. Yahoo becomes no-holds-barred.

So yesterday's discussion with Hiroo Yamagata and Lawrence Lessig went well. It was a lot of fun and I think a constructive discussion. Hiroo was in good form. But he usually is... in person. ;-) He had written something negative about Mr. Ikeda in the afterward of translation of "The Future of Ideas" and had gotten in a dispute with Mr. Ikeda. He had just finished the battle and I guess they have both gotten over it now. Maybe Hiroo was just tired from that. I do generally agree with Hiroo's position, although maybe not the way he said it. I think Mr. Ikeda and others had inferred that Larry was against privacy policies. In a mailing list Mr. Ikeda had said that my efforts to stop the National ID were futile and that we didn't have any privacy anyway. The struggle for privacy is a struggle of data structures and can be achieved without destroying the end-to-end nature of the Net. It think it is simplistic to equate privacy with control of the Net. I just finished reading Hiroo's English translation of his afterward. It's quite good. He should post it on the Net.

Hiroo Yamagata

Freedom is supposed to be a good thing. People say Communism died and Freedom prospered, so freedom should be good. But when you ask these people to explain the actual benefits of freedom, hardly anyone can give you a meaningful answer. This isn't (necessarily) because they are stupid. It's because freedom itself doesn't do anything. Freedom is just an environment that allows you to do something.

Bill Thompson on why Europe has to take back the web from US hegemony. A bit emotional but very interesting position. Something I feel some empathy for.

From The Register
First sighted on David Farber's List

Damn the Constitution: Europe must take back the Web
By Bill Thompson
Posted: 09/08/2002 at 14:01 GMT

Guest Opinion I've had enough of US hegemony. It's time for change -and a closed European network.

Today's Internet is a poor respecter of national boundaries, as many repressive governments have found to their cost. Unfortunately this freedom has been so extensively abused by the United States and its politicians, lawyers and programmers that it has become a serious threat to the continued survival of the network as a global communications medium. If the price of being online is to swallow US values, then many may think twice about using the Net at all, and if the only game online follows US rules, then many may decide not to play.

We have already seen US law, in the form of Digital Millennium Copyright Act, used to persuade hosts in other countries to pull material or limit its availability. US-promoted 'anti-censor' software is routinely provided to enable citizens of other countries to break local laws; and US companies like Yahoo! disregard the judgements of foreign courts at will.

Congressman Howard Berman's ridiculous proposal to give copyright holders immunity from prosecution if they hack into P2P networks is the latest attempt by the US Congress to pass laws that will directly affect every Internet user, because no US court would allow prosecution of a company in another jurisdiction when immunity is granted by US law.

So it is a fight to be the most simple? Goggle beat Infoseek by being more simple and user oriented. Web services take that to the next level. If companies start competing to be easier to integrate, more open and more simple that's a great thing for us!

Quoted from the Goggle Weblog:

Google tells Amazon Light to Cease and Desist

Amazon Light, a very cool new use of the Amazon Web Services recently introuced (and clearly inspired by Google's Web API) provides a cleaner-than-Amazon interface to the same data. However, they recently report that they've been asked to cease-and-desist by Google's lawyers. The site was very much like Google's (screenshot) but it was clearly in good taste. I'm not sure why Google is so testy about it. Is a books.google.com coming soon?

I wonder if they'll go after Whois Report next.

[Thanks to Kevin Burton for alerting me to this.]

Posted by Aaron Swartz on July 19, 2002 07:33 AM

The Internet Multicasting Service and the Internet Software Consortium are two well respected non-profit public engineering organizations on the Internet. I recently talked to Carl Malamud since he's in Japan for IETF doing his thing. He is one of principles of IMS and according to the IMS web page "created the first Internet radio station and put the SEC's EDGAR database on-line. A serial social entrepreneur, he's helped run a number of nonprofit organizations and committed two Silicon Valley startups. Carl is the author of 8 books, numerous articles, a few RFCs, and takes up way too much space in Google."

Bloggers will already be aware of this, but web publishers are trying to make it illegal to link to pages on their site. The logic from some people is that it subverts the efforts of the publisher to manage the traffic, sell advertising and control the user. National Public Radio say that they just wanted to know who was using their stuff. The great debate following their taking this position seems to have changed their minds. The form one had to fill out in order to link to their page is no longer online and one day after the OJR article, June 27, NPR updated their Terms of Use Page which now says this about linking:

Links to NPR Web Sites
NPR encourages and permits links to content on NPR Web sites. However, NPR is an organization committed to the highest journalistic ethics and standards and to independent, noncommercial journalism, both in fact and appearance. Therefore, the linking should not (a) suggest that NPR promotes or endorses any third party痴 causes, ideas, Web sites, products or services, or (b) use NPR content for inappropriate commercial purposes. We reserve the right to withdraw permission for any link.

Anyway, as co-founder of Infoseek Japan (I'm still on the board), as a newbie blogger and as someone who believes that the contextual flexibility of the Internet is one of its most important attributes... I am horrified by the idea of limiting deep linking. It goes against the basic idea that brought us this medium in the first place.

A court in Copenhagen, Denmark ruled in favor of the Danish Newspaper Publisher's Association against the online news aggregator Newsbooster who was deep linking into the Newspaper's site. This is the first court ruling deep linking to be illegal.

I testified in a case in Japan where an Osaka court ruled that someone who linked to an illegal pornography site was actually running a pornography site and found guilty which has similar legal ramifications, but didn't seem to have the impact that the current deep linking debate has.

Sen proposes an interesting technical solution. (I always like technical solutions more than legal solutions.)

Frankly, I think that if people don't want to allow deep linking, people should just configure their software (probably requires some implementation work and may be some access control depending on how strict the site wants to be) to not permit browsers to reach portions of their site directly w/o a "legal" referer.

It's not a perfect solution, but I bet it would prevent 99% of people from reaching certain parts of websites directly...

Here are some links:

NPR's Mixed Messages - Online Journalism Review
NPR's brutally stupid linking policy - Boing Boing
Public Protests NPR Link Policy - Wired News
Danish Court Rules Deep Linking Illegal - Slashdot
Web site barred from linking to Danish newspaper Web sites - DigitalMASS.com