This is simply breath-taking: Wholesale copying of music on P2P networks is fair use. Statutory damages can’t be applied to P2P users. File-swapping results in no provable harm to rightsholders. These are just some of the assertions that Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson made last week in his defense of accused file-swapper Joel Tenenbaum. Nesson [...]
Contrary to the expectations of Congress and the FCC, the first phase of the DTV transition took place without major incident. Some 23% of American TV stations stopped sending out analog signals Tuesday at midnight, and only 28,000 calls came into the centers the FCC and the cable and satellite providers have established for transition [...]
Among my missions in this life is the chore of explaining networking in general and the Internet in particular to policy makers and other citizens who don’t build network technology for a living. This is enjoyable because it combines so many of the things that make me feel good: gadgetry, technology, public policy, writing, talking, [...]
Obama’s Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy: According to presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota, some Americans might find it “alienating” to have a president who speaks English as if it were his first language. “Every time Obama opens his mouth, his subjects and verbs are in agreement,” says Mr. Logsdon. “If [...]
Y’all should go read about this amazing dress designer, Miranda Bennett, in Time Out New York A very feminine and elegant woman’s line with a little edge and a lot of versatility. “For my current collection, I imagined a really well-packed suitcase,†she explains. “I wanted the pieces to function together and fit a woman’s [...]
Jeff Jarvis is an intelligent man with a sentimental populist side. He’s writing a book praising Google, and sharing his thoughts as he goes along. Today’s entry goes off the deep end with this dismissal of intelligence: The curmudgeons also argue that this level playing field is flooded with crap: a loss of taste and [...]
NBC is streaming the Olympics over the Internet, in multiple resolutions, in what amounts to a massive test of the ability of the Internet fabric to handle load. Nothing on this scale has been done before, although BCC did stream the last Olympics inside the UK using Multicast. So we’re going to learn just how [...]
I like Andrew Keen, occasionally. He makes an interesting observation about Larry Lessig in Internet Evolution: The cold Net neutrality war is about to get very hot. Lessig may be crazy, but he isn’t stupid. He knows that Obama will probably win the election and that a Democratic president and Congress are much more likely [...]
Another sign of the ongoing convergence is TiVo new software enabling Series 3 and HD customers to play YouTube directly from TiVo in the latest software: As I’d suspected, TiVo support for YouTube is indeed hidden within the 9.4 software update. Series 3 and TiVo HD subscribers should start seeing the application show up as [...]
Public Knowledge and Free Press have apparently hired file-sharing enthusiast Robb Topolski in some lofty-sounding role, and he feels compelled to expound on network theory that’s way over his head. I’m trying to correct some of his misunderstandings, but it’s not going well. Here’s what I told him at his new employer’s blog: FacebookTwitterDiggItTechnoratiDel.icio.us
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