Lessig

This letter by Adam Smith on behalf of the "New Democrat Network" asking Cybersecurity Czar Richard Clarke to avoid GPLd software deserves a response. Here's a short one by me. And if you agree, then you should respond here.

ESR has a wonderful analysis of the latest Halloween document from (some mole in) Msft. Eric rightly emphasizes substantial good news. Yet though this may be just my nature, I think there is more here to be worried about than the good news suggests. Bottom line: Regardless of our OSS/FSF loyalties, we need to work hard to de-FUDify GPL.

So there's this amazing site (for opera fans at least) called MetManiac, which before the lawyers found it, collected lists of Met opera performances from the beginning of the Met. Non-commercial, pure hobby, an extraordinary historical resource, this was the passion of a fan. If you follow the link, though, you'll see the Met lawyers have demanded the site be shut down. (Shhh, but if you follow Brewster's link, you can see what the page was. Don't tell the lawyers, however, as they'll shut that down too.)

Can anyone explain what sense it makes that this fan site, which collects historical facts about an important part of our culture, can be banned? I know the lawyers say "the law makes us do it" -- that trademark law, etc., requires that they police the way other people use their name. But what possible sense does such a law make. And at a time when opera around the world is struggling for resources to build an audience, what possible sense does it make to begin to attack your fans?

Here's a company to watch: eAccess, Japan, building the fastest growing aDSL network in the world. They now offer 12 mbs (yes, I mean 12 mps) for $26/m, service within 7 days. And to celebrate their amazing success, on 12/12, they go public.

Talk to the extraordinary president of eAccess, Sachio Semmoto, and he'll tell you the key to eAccess's success: That Japan learned from the United States that access to copper had to be "open." Open access meant new competition; competition has driven prices down, speed up.

It's an amazing thing, competition. Apparently it doesn't work in America, though. Now that the Japanese have profited from the American lesson on regulation, the Americans are retreating. The FCC is moving as quickly as it can to undo open access requirements.

Jabber has written a powerful piece about the threat that AOL's patent covering IM technology creates for innovation in the IM market. Even if AOL does not enforce the patent, as Jabber argues, the threat that it may makes is much less likely that innovators will invest time to develop IM technology. AOL's sword will be enough to keep innovation away, Jabber says.

These issues are complex, but this case does lots to highlight just what wrong about the software patent business. Does anyone really believe that there was inadequate incentives to be inventing in this area? Was there really a need for a government monopoly to help spur innovation? And even if there is, does a 20 year monopoly over something as fundamental as IM make sense to anyone?

Vardi and his son were brilliant inventors. They deserve all the credit in the world. And it is exactly the wrong (since self-defeating) response to now attack AOL: They are a business; the managers are hired to make money; they will make money however they can given the rules as they are.

The appropriate response is to attack the system. It is four years since a court held that software and business methods were patentable. What exactly have we done since then to get legislators to fix this mess?

The Supreme Court has rejected our challenge to the Sonny Bono Law.

I had dinner last night with an extraordinary group of computer scientists. As always in such contexts, the discussion moved quickly to patents. I've been a skeptic about software and business method patents for a long time (while a supporter of, e.g., drug patents), but what always strikes me in these contexts is how violently opposed people in the industry are to software and business method patents while the legal system remains oblivious.

I had thought there was some hope in the new administration. An article by LA Times reporter David Streitfeld quoted the new Patent Commissioner, James Rogan, saying smart and skeptical things about the patent system. I wrote a piece for the FT based in part on that interview, only to have his office call me to tell me that I had gotten it wrong. The "crisis" that Commissioner Rogan sees is not the "crappy patents" (their words) issued by the patent office; the crisis, I was told, is that the office is not issuing patents fast enough.

But the more frustrating response to my article was the follow-up by Professor Epstein. He called my "indictment" "harsh." As he says, "to my knowledge" there is "no fundamental signs of breakdown." He points to "OS X by Apple" as evidence that "strong intellectual property rights [have not] Balkani[z]ed the intellectual universe." "One looks," Epstein writes, "for fundamental flaws in the underlying institutions only when the progress starts to grind to a halt."

My initial (and uncharitable) response to reading this was that Professor Epstein was not looking very far. But after dinner last night, I recognized that there is a fundamental gap in understanding. Most lawyers and policy makers do not understand what technologists believe; most technologists don't understand that (at least some) lawyers believe that what technologists believe about the system should matter.

So here's an idea. I'd like to construct a page of views of technologists who have experience with the system. The aim will not be to evaluate the system as a whole, but instead to collect credible testimony about the burdens the system imposes. Policy makers should be evaluating whether the benefits outweigh the burdens. My aim is not to do that weighing. My aim is simply to collect stories and evidence about the burdens.

If you have experience and a view, then email me and describe both. I will collect them and verify the source, and then make the results available here. The aim is not to conduct a poll; this will not be a representative sample of anything. But it would help immensely to have a place where people could go to read what technologists say to me all the time.

Update: Karl-Friedrich Lenz has sent a link to a great list of patents. This is important and useful, but I'm eager to hear stories of how the system affects ordinary software development.

Thanks to Sean McGrath for sending me this wonderful story about the first copyright wars. The story is told in Ingenious Ireland by Mary Mulvihill, about the 3000 men who died in the "Battle of the Book at Cooldrumman" after copyists refused to return the copies after a court ruled against them. Perspective perhaps, but precedent too?

They say I'm a pessimist about the future of freedom on the net, and they've got two books of mine to prove it. But the report that the RIAA has now filed suit against four students for sharing content over a university network is a moment of hope. If we work hard to report the details and reality of this suit, then the extremism of the RIAA's tactics will finally get through.

Let this extremism finally force recognition of the best response to this problem for now: a compulsory license with a large carve out for non-commercial "sharing." Napster proposed as much in 1998. Had Congress listened, then we would have had just as much sharing over these last 5 years, but artists would have 5 years of income, and fewer of our children would now be felons. Instead, Congress did nothing (except pass the Sonny Bono Act and the DMCA), and 5 years later, artists are no better off, our kids are now "terrorists" (such is the rhetoric of the other side), and the cartel of the RIAA is only stronger.

What politicians need to remember is that Congress has always adjusted the rules by which creators get paid as a response to new technology. That's just what they should be doing today. Never before has the law been used to force new technology into old way of doing business. Every time before this, it was the law that adjusted to assure artists got paid given the new technology.

There are any number of proposals floating about just now for a compulsory license for content [Ed Felten has a nice post on this; my favorites are William Fisher's from Harvard, and Neil Netanel's from Texas] -- a way to free content while assuring that artists get paid. All of them would also have the salutary effect of leaving our courts to deal with real criminals (can anyone spell Enron anymore?), and leaving the internet to do what it does best (making content broadly and efficiently available).

It's time for Congress to turn its attention to constructive ways to assure that artists get paid without destroying the extraordinary freedom of the internet. This has been Congress's role in the past. It needs to get beyond the distortions of a bunch of lobbyists if its to play its proper role in the future.

So this story continues to amaze me. Pennsylvania has a law that gives the Pennsylvania Attorney General the power to order an ISP serving Pennsylvania citizens (read: any ISP anywhere) to block a site which the Pennsylvania Attorney General says serves child porn. There is no judicial review of the order, and as no ISP is likely to resist the order, the law results in unreviewed censorship of internet content. According to this report, the AG is now refusing to even reveal the list of sites his secret orders have blocked.

There are hard cases in the law of cyberspace, no doubt. But this should be a slamdunk easy case -- if anyone would have the courage to challenge it. CDT is exploring a challenge. Good for them. If the First Amendment means anything, it must mean that the government can't order the censoring of a publication without any judicial review at all. You might want to tell the Pennsylvania AG what you think. Here's a form.

Two articles from The Hindu suggest the interesting world we've entered. In the first, India's Union Minister for Civil Aviation says that the doctrine of "pre-emptive war" (relied upon by the United States to justify its war in Iraq) should be used to justify a war against Pakistan to counter its allegged support for "terrorism." In the second article, Pakistan says that there is "ample proof that India possesses biological, chemical and other weapons of mass destruction" and of the "massacre of innocent civilians in Ahmedabad and Kashmir" and therefore is a fit case for "pre-emptive strike."

An interesting mix of Senators has written a strongly worded letter to Chairman Powell about his apparent decision to revise media ownership rules without public hearings. This does seem a curious way to launch profound changes of media policy -- in a democracy at least.

There's a standard dance that the IP extremists do well: When they lose in Congress, they go overseas and negotiate a treaty that imposes on the US the same obligation they just lost in Congress; then they come back and say, "we must do this to live up to our international obligations."

So here we go again: The US Trade Representative is negotiating trade agreements with Chile and Singapore. The agreements essentially require these two countries to adopt the DMCA, and make it a violation of "our international obligations" if we were to change the DMCA. Representatives Lofgren and Boucher -- who both have bills introduced to amend the DMCA -- have written a strongly worded letter to the USTR asking for clarification. For consistent with this policy making process, just what is being promised is never made clear -- until it is too late. Here's the letter.

This story is beginning to walk. Donna launched it. JD Lasica has collected a bunch of links on his page. JD points to a great little piece by Jesse Walker of Reason. And Amy from the Harvard blog has been writing about this for a while.

It is a month till D(eregulation) Day. We've given them the language (how is it "deregulation" when it will produce 3 companies owning everything?); there's much more to do if the call mediageek has echoed is to have any effect.

Bob McChesney has been studying concentration in media for a long time. His challenge is worth reading.

Bruce Lehman -- the Clinton Administration's IP czar and a debate no-show (he's scheduled and not shown at at least two debates that I know of -- one with Jamie Boyle, and one with me) -- has been doing more good in the world. As reported in Technology Review and commented upon at TeleRead, when a Cairo consortium called WIPO to ask for advice about images of Egyptian artifacts that they wanted to place on the web, Lehman's new international organization sent a lawyer to Cairo to advise them against spreading such knowledge freely. Better to copyright and control access to such knowledge. The images, he is reported to have said, "should be licensed."

We'd suggest a Creative Commons license, or at least some way to keep Mr. Lehman at home.

This is a great piece about the mistake in the administration's recent trade agreement with Singapore -- requiring it (and us) to stick to the DMCA. Less noticed is article 16.4.4 which increases the term of copyright from 50 pma to 70 pma. (Remember, we had to increase our term to harmonize with the rest of the world; now the administration is pushing the rest of the world to increase its term to harmonize with us).

The frustration in all this is the total disconnect between criticism and governmental response. It is the form of a democracy, but with none of the substance. We make mistakes, and we force them on the rest of the world. The world then simply adopts the mistakes we make -- in the face of overwhelming criticism.

For example, has anyone explained why, if a country needs a DMCA law, it can't pass a law that respects fair-use like exceptions? Or if a country needs to extend copyright terms, it can't limit the extension to works with commercial value?

The world loves to criticize the US, and criticize they often should. Yet the criticism would look a bit more credible if critics didn't dress like puppets.

Mr. Gates has proposed his solution to spam. Unfortunately, it is yet another idea that will not work.

The problem the MSFT solution aims to solve is the problem of distinguishing good spam from bad. The proposal has a clever (though I think dangerous) safe harbor provision to "create incentives for email marketers to adopt best practices, and to certify themselves as trusted senders who can be more easily identified by consumers and filters alike." Presumably, if we know which marketers are "trusted senders" we can accept their mail, and block all the rest -- spam and non-spam alike. Thus, email would become a more effective channel for trusted marketing -- but little else.

The safe harbor provision could make sense if there were a background requirement that all spam be labeled. There's a hint of that requirement in the letter Mr. Gates wrote to the Senate Commerce Committee ("participants would be entitled to avoid the burden of additional labeling requirements (such as "ADV:" )"). But the proposal doesn't actually endorse a labeling requirement. And without it, the proposal does nothing to distinguish real email from HGH sellers. The proposal would help distinguish HGH sellers from, say, Amazon. Wonderful, but I didn't know that was the problem.

The proposal does say lots about making sure ISPs and state attorneys general have the power to sue -- again, like most (but not all) solutions, centralizing the enforcement function. But all such solutions will fail because a centralized system for enforcing spam regulations will never be enforced. ISPs and state attorneys general have better things to do than enforce spam regulations. They always have; they always will.

This is the key point: the enforcement problem. Whatever the requirement, if it is not effectively enforced -- meaning that most spammers do not fear that they will be caught and punished for failing to obey a requirement -- then it will fail. And if it is effectively enforced, then it will work even if its penalties are not harsh. Solve the enforcement problem, and a slap on the wrist will work. Fail to solve the enforcement problem, and even the death penalty would be ineffective.

It's no surprise that Congress doesn't get this. Congress gets points for "seeming" tough. If you seem tough, it doesn't matter if your ideas work. So puffed-up "get tough" rhetoric tied to totally ineffective legislation is the norm.

But it is a surprise that a company as skilled as MSFT would make the same Washington (DC) mistakes. Mr. Gates has done extremely well in world where mistakes hurt profits. He is doing extraordinary good in the world where generosity (indeed, astonishing generosity) corrects for policymakers' mistakes. But as a policymaker himself, he is still MSFT v1.0.

Let's hope he gets to MSFT v3.1 soon.

So it you want to read a story about extremists, here's one that's hard to beat. These people are looking for help, so anyone in New York who can help should follow up. I have permission to post this, but I haven't verified the facts.

Declan's got a great piece about the Council of Europe and rights to reply.

Senator Hatch has been swallowed by the extremists. (Though this might not be such a bad idea. Can we bomb the offices of stock brokers thought to be violating SEC regulations? Or bulldoze houses of citizens with unregistered guns? Or -- yes, this is good -- short the telephones of people who use indecent language?)

If you have not yet, you should consider contributing to the RIAA scapegoats. Jesse Jordan's story is particularly extraordinary. He built a search engine for RPI's network -- one of a half-dozen such engines running at the time. Three-fourths of the files in the directory were not music files. Yet he was sued by record companies, demanding hundreds of millions in damages.

When they discovered that he had saved $12,000, they gave him a classic Sopranos-like choice: Either defend yourself in court (which would cost his family over $200,000) or pay us $12,000. He handed over the $12,000.

He, and some of the other student defendants, have set-up donation booths. Whatever your view about these issues, you should consider contributing. Whether or not the RIAA is right about the law, there is something deeply wrong about using the law to squash the likes of Jesse. He was not running Napster; indeed, he did nothing more than hack an improvement to an already existing search technology that existed in RPI's net. Yet as the RIAA lawyers knew, it would cost him more to fight this suit than to settle it. So his defense would never get a chance to show that the law is not yet as extreme as the RIAA lawyers would like it to be.

Our legal system gives companies like A&M Records the power to do this to people like Jesse. We each, individually, by donating to these students, can help remove some of the burdens of that flaw. We all, collectively, should do something to change that legal system to remove that flaw. Soon.

Dan Gillmor nicely captures the truth around the emerging spam consensus in DC: A spam bill that will make it (1) harder to decline UCE from companies with famous logos, and (2) impossible to block UCE from spammers.

I'm relieved to find myself again in disagreement with Declan. In the simple world that images just two choices -- regulation or no regulation -- Declan thinks Microsoft is behaving inconsistently. Microsoft has argued (rightly and wrongly, depending upon the case, imho) against various examples of regulation. But Declan is now aghast to discover that Microsoft has been now lobbying to get the FCC to impose a different form of regulation. Oh my gosh! Imagine that!

The problem here is not Microsoft's. The problem is Declan, and the simple-isms that continue to reign in Declan-thought. No one serious opposes all regulation. No one serious supports all regulation. The only serious debate is whether a particular regulation makes sense.

The particular regulation that Microsoft has endorsed does, in my view, make lots of sense. As Microsoft described in FCC hearings, increasingly, cable companies are beginning to assert the right to decide which applications will run on their cable networks. Microsoft faced this when they tried to deploy Xbox technology. Tim Wu has other examples of this control here.

Declan quotes many who say, hey, no reason to worry. There's no good evidence that there is any significant discrimination -- yet.

But this is the part of this argument that convinces me Declan is spending too much time in Washington, and should go back to his CompSci roots. The issue here is not "regulation vs no regulation"; the issue here is the continued viability of any end-to-end architecture to the Internet.

If in fact networks are allowed to decide which applications and content can run on the network, then "the Internet" is dead. Sure, there will be a network out there -- the cable network, or whatever you want to call it -- but it will no longer be "the Internet" that Saltzer, Clark and Reed wrote about.

And, more importantly, and completely contrary to the non-thought that now reigns in Washington about this: the very possibility that this is the future of the Internet is having an effect on investment right now.

The point is obvious (save to those who inhale the DC air): Investments in technologies for the Internet are being made today, based upon the expectations about what the Internet will be in 3-5 years. If cable companies are allowed to decide what applications and content gets to run on that network, then the cost of innovation has been increased right now. If everyone with an Xbox technology needs permission to use the Internet, then what everyone should begin to recognize is that only Microsoft -- and others with their money and power -- will have permission to use the Net.

Maybe that's ok with Declan and the Cato types. After all, they're fighting for a principle -- "no regulation." Ah yes. "No regulation."

What planet do these guys come from?

I don't even know how to begin this story, so stupid and extreme it is.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was convinced by Jamie Love and others to hold a meeting about "open collaborative models to develop public goods." One of those models is, of course, open source and free software. Lobbyists for Microsoft and others apparently (according to this extraordinary story by Jonathan Krim) started lobbying the US government to get the meeting cancelled. No surprise there. Open source and free software is a competitor to MSFT's products. Lobbying is increasingly the way competition is waged in America.

But the astonishing part is the justification for the US opposing the meeting. According to the Post, Lois Boland, director of international relations for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said "that open-source software runs counter to the mission of WIPO, which is to promote intellectual-property rights." As she is quoted as saying, "To hold a meeting which has as its purpose to disclaim or waive such rights seems to us to be contrary to the goals of WIPO."

If Lois Boland said this, then she should be asked to resign. The level of ignorance built into that statement is astonishing, and the idea that a government official of her level would be so ignorant is an embarrassment. First, and most obviously, open-source software is based in intellectual-property rights. It can't exist (and free software can't have its effect) without it. Second, the goal of WIPO, and the goal of any government, should be to promote the right balance of intellectual-property rights, not simply to promote intellectual property rights. And finally, if an intellectual property right holder wants to "disclaim" or "waive" her rights, what business is it of WIPOs? Why should WIPO oppose a copyright or patent rights holder's choice to do with his or her rights what he or she wants?

These points are basic. They should be fundamental. That someone who doesn't understand them is at a high level of this government just shows how extreme IP policy in America has become.

The thread about Ms. Boland's (mis)characterization of open-source software (remember the days when statements were either true or false?) reminded me of an odd fight I found myself in the middle of at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva in February.

I was asked to give one of three keynotes launching the second preparatory conference. At a press conference before the keynote, a reporter asked what I was going to talk about. I indicated vaguely I would discuss the importance of the public domain to innovation, etc. (same old boring stuff). But I was then astonished when the moderator of the event, Maria CATTAUI, Secretary-General of the International Chamber of Commerce, scolded me that issues of "intellectual property" were not to be discussed because they were "exclusively" the concern of WIPO.

I promptly threw away the talk I had intended to give, and gave a completely different talk about how -- Ms. Cattaui's scolding notwithstanding -- it was crucial that a summit on the world "information society" consider the role of the public domain in spreading knowledge and culture even if WIPO claimed exclusive jurisdiction of the matter. That assured I won't be invited back to WSIS anytime soon (or at least by Ms. Cattaui).

It is therefore extraordinary now that people purporting to speak for WIPO would say that WIPO too is not to consider issues about the public domain. Neither at WIPO, nor at WSIS, nor apparently anywhere. Except among us commies I guess. (Fellow travelers, for our next secret communist meeting, be sure to read the latest great work by some of the most prominent IP commies out there. Linked here.)

The battle against software patents is coming to a head in the EU. (Not that much of the support for software patents has come from the head.) As these articles (News.com, TheRegister, and Slashdot) describe, the battle has become quite heated, with the side of right not expected to prevail.

A large number of F/OSS-related sites are shutting down because of the move. See, e.g., Gimp. And those amazing Europeans are actually marching in the streets about this threat to the freedom to innovate.

That there is a threat would be more obvious to WIPO and the US government if it didn't spend its efforts working to remain ignorant about the importance of balance in intellectual property law. But I understand, they're very busy, those regulating sorts. So here's perhaps the most concise and compelling account of just why software patents will harm new innovators (that's you Europe) and benefit old innovators (that's America), written in 1991 by Mr. Gates:

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete stand-still today. The solution . . . is patent exchanges . . . and patenting as much as we can. . . . A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high: Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors." Fred Warshofsky, The Patent Wars 170-71 (NY: Wiley 1994).

Perhaps the F/OSS sites should take more advantage of this unique opportunity for them to quote the wisdom of Mr. Gates.

Krugman is a favorite regular read. His latest is a favorite among favorites.

Apparently, the FERC has now settled with "energy companies accused of manipulating markets during the California energy crisis." Through various price manipulations, those companies cost Californians $8.9 billion -- not including the extraordinarily high prices we now face because of long-term contracts signed at the height of the crisis.

The FERC has now imposed a $1 million fine on the energy companies. As Krugman calculates, though they imposed costs of at least $250 on each Californian by their games, they're required to pay 3 cents.

$1 million for $9 billion in real harm.

Let's put this in some perspective.

Jesse Jordan (the RPI student who ran a search engine and was sued by the RIAA) was, the RIAA claims, liable for $15,000,000 in damages. When you add up the damages claimed against all four of these students (who again had built search engines), the RIAA was asking, on some estimates, for $100 billion dollars. That's because, under our law as interpreted by the RIAA, downloading one song makes you liable for $150,000. Or, on the RIAA's view of the law, cheaper to defraud Californian's of $9 billion than download 10 songs from a p2p server.

"Oh," you say, "but that's unfair. You're comparing actual fines imposed to the maximum fines that could be imposed."

Ok, so let's compare actual to actual.

In January, 2000, MP3.com launched a service called my.mp3.com. Using software provided by MP3.com, a user would sign into an account and then insert into her computer a CD. The software would identify the CD, and then give the user access to that content. So, for example, if you inserted a CD by Jill Sobule, then wherever you were — at work, or at home — you could get access to that music once you signed into your account. The system was therefore a kind of music-lockbox.

No doubt some could use this system to illegally copy content. But that opportunity existed with or without MP3.com. The aim of the my.mp3.com service was to give users access to their own content, and as a byproduct, by seeing the content you already owned, discover the kind of content the users liked.

To make this system function, however, MP3.COM needed to copy 50,000 CDs to a server. (In principle, it could have been the user who uploaded the music, but that would have taken a great deal of time, and would have produced a product of question-able quality.) It therefore purchased 50,000 CD from a store, and started the process of making copies of those CDs. Again, it would not serve the content from those copies to anyone except those who authenticated that they had a copy of the CD they wanted to access. So while this was 50,000 copies, it was 50,000 copies directed at giving customers something they had already bought.

Nine days after MP3.com launched its service, the five major labels, headed by the RIAA, brought a lawsuit against MP3.com. MP3.com settled with four of the five. Nine months later, a federal judge found MP3.com to have been guilty of willful infringement with respect to the fifth. The judge imposed a fine against MP3.com of $118,000,000. MP3.com then settled with the remaining plaintiff, Vivendi Universal, paying over $54 million.

So defraud Californians of $9 billion, pay $1 million. But develop a new technology to make it easier for people to get access to music that they have presumptively purchased: pay more than $54 million.

Such are the values of our time.

Having failed in the Congress, the content industry is now pushing the FCC to take action to mandate the broadcast flag. This bit of government regulated code is a mistake. By imposing a requirement (effectively) in the middle of the network, the broadcast flag will break all sorts of innovative new applications. By permitting only "tamper-resistant" technologies, it will effectively ban all sorts of free and open source projects. Thus, two of the key parts in the history of internet innovation -- end-to-end and free and open source software -- are regulated away by this.

And for what? There has been no showing that this technology mandate is needed. The movie industry (unlike the recording industry) has deployed great new technology (the DVD) that effectively competes with free. (Anyway, apparently according to Jack Valenti the real pirates of the movie industry are members of the Academy.) This is a classic example of regulate first, and ask questions later, and a perfect example of how not to regulate the internet.

Please follow here and do something about this mess. To read more, check out Jonathan Krim's piece in the Post.

Now the FTC too is worried about bad patents.

Roy Mark's got a great piece in InternetNews: Spam Bill is a Turkey. The story of why spam fighting (and free culture fighter) congresswoman Zoe Lofgren voted against this totally useless legislation.

From Michael Geist's BNA's Internet News: This Taipei Times article describes a "warning" from the International Federation of Phonographic Industry to "existing investors and potential investors to seriously consider their investments in unauthorized peer-to-peer network operators." Nice of them to help.

I've got a column in the January Wired (not yet online) attacking farm subsidies. Actually, more precisely, attacking farm subsidies when, simultaneously, in the name of "free trade" we demand developing nations protect our IP. (You must protect the market for our Mickey, while we destroy the market for your wheat.) This has excited a flurry of farmers to write angry letters about national security (yep, bin-Laden is terrified by cheap wheat). Indeed, one "film maker - farmer" wrote to say it was more important to protect farmers than IP.

Anyway, when the article appears online, it won't include an error that is in the printed edition. I was drafting between attacking the policies of industrialized nations in general, and America in particular, and the statistics got mixed in the end. It is the industrialized nations together that spend $300 billion a year on farm subsidies -- six times the aid to developing nations. Obviously, the US doesn't spend that much alone.

I apologize for that stupid error, which is totally my fault. But I won't apologize for attacking farm subsidies.

From the dissent of this amazing opinion: "They approve an ordinance which literally forces a “Big Brother” style telescreen to look over one’s shoulder while accessing the Internet."

JD's got a nice piece about Australia's caving to US pressure re copyright. The result: Australian film and culture will be harder to spread and preserve; Hollywood will get richer. I hope the voters in Australia are ok with that, because god knows, we Americans need lots of help with our balance of trade debt.

By far the most constant and effective (in these hopeless wars) critic on this has been Matthew Rimmer. Awaiting permission to post his missives to me. Meanwhile, here's a very strongly worded report from "The Age."

So after being battered down again and again, the database bill is back. Congress is again being pressed by IP extremist lobbyists to "solve" the "problem" of "inadequate legal protection" for databases by adding a raft of IP lawyers into the mix.

This is an awful law, and were the attention of good people everywhere not focused upon the many awful things happening in DC, it would be dead on arrival. But unfortunately, it lives. PublicKnowledge is doing its part to stop it. Please do something to help stop it again.

I wrote yesterday about Australia's decision to cave to US pressure on matters copyright. Matt Rimmer has been a valuable correspondent on the issue. With permission, in the extended entry, I include a couple of his missives to me. The story is truly amazing, though there may be some hope. Meanwhile, I think we Americans should write the Australian government to thank them for helping our economy at such a desperate time.

Jamie Knox sent along Iraq's newly amended copyright law (as if THIS was where we needed to worry about rule of law in Iraq). I've just begun going through it, but there are favorite tidbits so far: collections of data can be protected; readings of the Koran are protected; and collections of government documents can be protected. But significantly, the term is life plus 50! More disharmony...

As reported by Ernie, Disney is lobbying to get indecency regulations applied to cable -- yet another example (after the Sonny Bono Act) to use law to protect itself against competition. When your movies flop, and you've driven away the greatest animation company in the world, I guess there's not much strategy left.

This comes to me from a reliable source, though I would very much like it if it were mistaken.

Apparently Microsoft has taken the first steps to filing a criminal defamation action against a Brazilian government official who was quoted criticizing Microsoft in a magazine article. Sergio Amadeu, head of the agency responsible for spreading free software within the Brazilian government, is reported to have accused "the company of a 'drug-dealer practice' for offering the operational system Windows to some governments and cities for digital inclusion programs. 'This is a trojan horse, a form of securing critical mass to continue constraining the country'."

He's also quoted characterizing Microsoft's strategy as a "strategy of fear, uncertainty and doubt."

These statements have apparently earned Mr. Amadeu the right to defend himself in a defamation action. Microsoft characterizes Amadeu's statements as "beyond being absurd and criminal" and as evincing an "excess in freedom of speech and freedom of thought." "Freedom of speech and freedom of thought" is, Microsoft apparently believes, properly prosecuted in Brazil, and so it has brought this first step to prosecute the "felony of defamation" evinced by Amadeu's words.

Such words could not rise to the level of defamation in the United States; I would be surprised if they were defamation in any sane state. But whether they are defamatory in Brazil or not, it is wrong for this company to use the law to silence a critic. In the American tradition, we meet bad speech with more speech, not with more lawyers. We should all teach Microsoft something of our tradition, by meeting its bad speech -- a defamation action against a critic -- with lots more speech criticizing it.

Senator Hatch (who used to understand stuff) has introduced the INDUCE Act, which will criminalize the act of inducing another to commit a copyright violation. This is a brand new theory of copyright liability, which, as this floor statement makes clear, is directed at overturning Sony with respect to p2p.

The proposal alone is troubling enough. But the outrageous part is that there is talk that this massive new layer of federal regulation of technology will happen without hearings -- indeed, that it will be passed in the next weeks.

Whatever the merits of this new regulatory program are (and, imho, there are not many), it should not happen without an opportunity for Congress to consider the full implications of this new regulation. The ramifications of this reach far beyond p2p.