ARTS & FARCES internet

Censorship

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed an amicus brief (.pdf; 123KB) in the case of two domain names seized by the US government in a flawed anti-infringement action on behalf of the entertainment cartel. “This misguided intellectual property enforcement effort is causing serious collateral damage to free speech rights,” said Corynne McSherry, EFF intellectual property director. “These domain seizures should cease unless and until the government can fix the First Amendment flaws inherent in the program.”

ESRD

Just when the dialysis providers in the US are no longer allowed to bill for Epogen separately, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announces that there are “no risk-free doses of Epogen, Aranesp, and Procrit.” These drugs are used to treat severe anemia in kidney failure, cancer, and other patients. As I’ve written, repeatedly, I cannot function when my hemoglobin falls below 11 g/dL and I’m feeling pretty craptastic when it falls below 11.5 g/dL. As everyone and their brother, including Gardiner Harris, writing for the New York Times, continually likes to point out, these drugs are expensive; they’ve cost the US government more than US$60 billion since 1989. In my experience of more than 11 years on dialysis, I’ve never been over-prescribed Epogen. I don’t doubt that over-prescription happens—I know it happens; I’ve written about it extensively here—money is involved, so the question is self-answered. What I’m saying is, it’s never happened to me.

Intellectual property

Glenn Fleishman, writing for the Economist, has a remarkable overview of sound recording copyright in the US. “A quirk of the federal copyright law with regard to recordings means that nearly all music, spoken word, and other aural treats produced before the early 1970s are currently protected until the second half of the 21st century,” writes Fleishman. This is a result of two sets of rights for audio recordings; one for the underlying work, and another for reproduction and distribution. This second set of rights is governed by state, not federal, law. In most cases for recordings made before 1972, the rights are perpetual and whoever has physical possession of the masters owns the reproduction rights.

A US federal appeals court has ruled (.pdf; 184KB) to mostly overturn the hot news doctrine recognized by the US Supreme Court in 1918, ruling that a website is within its rights to publish the recommendations of stock analysts in near-real-time. “... a firm’s ability to make news—by issuing a recommendation that is likely to affect the market price of a security—does not give rise to a right for it to control who breaks that news and how,” wrote the judges in their ruling. Joe Mullin, writing for PaidContent, notes that corporate news organizations supported the decision on the grounds that the court didn’t do as Google and Twitter asked, and eliminate the hot news doctrine completely.

Just when you thought the Righthaven case couldn’t get any weirder, it does. US District Judge Philip Pro ruled (.pdf; 373KB) this week that an unauthorized publication of an entire article was allowable under the fair use exception to US copyright law. The copyright infringement lawsuit was brought by Righthaven on behalf of its partner, Stephens Media, against Wayne Hoehn who posted an entire Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial on a website of which he was not an employee. “Righthaven did not present any evidence that the market for the work was harmed by Hoehn’s noncommercial use for the 40 days it appeared on the website. Accordingly, there is no genuine issue of material fact that Hoehn’s use of the work was fair and summary judgment is appropriate,” wrote Pro in his ruling. Pro went on to cite Hoehn’s noncommercial use of the work and found that Righthaven, once again, did not have legal standing to bring the lawsuit.

In yet another illustration of how the US copyright system has jumped the tracks, Andy Baio was threatened with an infringement lawsuit over the cover art for Kind of Bloop, an eight-bit “chiptune” tribute to Miles Davis’s most incredible Kind of Blue. Baio licensed all the music and figured he was in the clear—via the fair use exception to US copyright law—for his cover art which itself was a tribute to Jay Maisel’s iconic photograph of Miles Davis. Maisel wanted US$150,000 for each infringement, attorney’s fees, all of Baio’s profits, and a US$25,000 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) violation cherry on top. After seven months, the parties settled and Baio paid Maisel US$32,500. Baio has documented the ordeal and his reasoning in “Kind of Screwed.” Highly recommended.

AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon are preparing to join the entertainment cartel’s antipiracy fight in the US. So reports Greg Sandoval, writing for CNET. Sandoval writes that under the plan, the top three US internet service providers (ISPs) “would adopt a ‘graduated response’” for alleged infringers. “ISPs would first issue written warnings, called Copyright Alerts, to customers accused by content creators of downloading materials illegally via peer-to-peer sites. Should a subscriber fail to heed the warning, an ISP could choose to send numerous follow-up notices. The plan, however, requires ISPs to eventually take more serious action.” The more serious action proposed by the cartel includes throttled bandwidth, access limitations, mandatory re-education participation, and seemingly everything and anything else shy of outright banishment. Even the rumor of this should be sufficient for consensus that internet service providers be regulated under current common carrier law.

Internet

Last Sunday, anyone on the planet could access any of the 25 million Dropbox accounts by entering any—any—password for a period of four hours, from 3:54-~8:00PM CDT. Arash Ferdowsi, Dropbox chief technical officer acknowledged the security failure was related to a code update and less than one percent of its customers were affected. Ryan Singel, writing for Wired, reports the security failure was possible because Dropbox elected to have encryption and decryption take place on its servers instead of its customers’ computers, with the encryption keys in the hands of Dropbox, not its customers. The security failure was first reported by Christopher Soghoian, the person who filed a US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint against Dropbox for overstating the security of its service. Looking for a Dropbox alternative? Take a look at SpiderOak.

Has the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization that supervises the internet domain name system (DNS), outlived its charter? Dan Gillmor, writing for the Guardian thinks so. Gillmor describes ICANN as “an enterprise that can essentially tax the internet and is simultaneously accountable to everyone and no one.” Nice work if you can get it. ICANN solely decides if and when new “top level” domain suffixes may exist and who’s responsible for selling and administering them. This week, ICANN announced a plan for anyone to be able to create any kind of “top level” domain suffix. Well, anyone who can afford it, that is. Prices for a “top level” domain suffix are US$185,000 plus US$25,000 annually. When was the last time you played domain name bingo? Don’t you just use Google?

Law

In an unrelated raid to bust an international “scareware” operation, the online bookmarking service, Instapaper, had its user data and part of its codebase illegally confiscated by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). DigitalOne’s data center in Reston, Virginia was the focus of the raid and the FBI apparently overreached in grabbing more servers than targeted. The Instapaper server was returned two days later. It’s unknown whether or not the FBI copied the data from the server.

Media

At the end of April, Michael Arrington, founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, announced he was returning to investing in companies (and their competitors) that he covers, ensuring everyone that he’d be sure to disclose any conflict of interest. Never mind that seven months before that, Arrington sold himself and his publication to AOL for something between US$25-US$40 million. Now here comes Arrington again, this time railing against a serial entrepreneur for having the temerity to announce her newest endeavor on her own, without him or his publication. In an unveiled threat to every other tech entrepreneur, Arrington is clearly warning everyone to play ball with him, on his terms, or else. It’s high time for the tech industry to break its sycophantic spell and call Arrington out—you don’t need him, you have the internet for pete’s sake—and just ignore his sharpened elbows. John Hudson, writing for the Atlantic, has a partial—yes, it’s only partial—scorecard of Arrington’s elbow throwing.

Apple is getting even deeper into the media business. This week it released a free iOS app that will stream live performances from the iTunes Festival London 2011, running throughout July. While most of the musical artists aren’t representative of what Blair Jackson calls “my people’s music,” it’s an impressive lineup nonetheless.

Politics

Last weekend, Netroots Nation took place in Minneapolis. But, from the Twin Cities corporate media, you would have never known. The Star Tribune, which used to be one of the best papers in the US, completely ignored the event—never mind that both Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) and Representative Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) gave keynotes. Instead, the local paper of record fawned all over RightOnline. David Neiwert, writing for Crooks and Liars, points out this is precisely why corporate media has become irrelevant.

Publishing

Last weekend the New York Post began blocking access to its website by users of Apple’s iPad Safari browser, forcing them to purchase the publication’s US$7 per month iPad app. I’m not sure if this is breaking the web (as Dave Winer wrote) or breaking the Post (as Dan Gillmor tweeted), but I can’t see that it’s good precedent for anyone.

In the continuing death spiral that is corporate newspapers, Gannett Co. this week announced it was cutting 700 positions from its US Community Publishing division—almost all of its newspapers except USA Today. That’s just over 2 percent of Gannett’s total. Meanwhile, as Erik Sass, writing for MediaPost, reports, Craig Dubow and Gracia Martore, Gannett’s chief executive and chief operating officer, each received “all-cash bonuses of US$1.75 million and US$1.25 million, respectively, for implementing cost-cutting measures, including layoffs, in 2010. In March, Gannett disclosed that it paid Chairman-CEO Craig Dubow US$9.4 million last year—double his 2009 pay—as the company laid off hundreds of workers and imposed wage cuts on thousands more. COO Gracia Martore got US$8.2 million, more than double her US$4.0 million in 2009. (The bonuses were part of their pay package.)” If these folks are worth this much, why didn’t they come up with craigslist and all the other (Groupon?) newspaper revenue killers?

The New York Times, through Art Brisbane, the paper’s public editor, announced that it would not maintain a record of changes made to published stories. “Right now, tracking changes is not a priority at the Times. As Ms. Abramson told me, it’s unrealistic to preserve an ‘immutable, permanent record of everything we have done,’” writes Brisbane. As Scott Rosenberg points out in Wordyard, “By making story versions ‘not a priority,’ the Times is essentially abdicating its longstanding status as our paper of record as it makes the transition from paper to digital. I doubt that’s what its leaders intend to do.”

Sustainability

The World Resources Institute has published Reefs at Risk Revisited, a detailed assessment of the world’s coral reefs and an update to its 1998 report. It’s of probably no surprise that overfishing, local pollution, and the warming and acidification of the globe’s oceans continue to threaten the existence of coral reefs. Lauretta Burke, a senior author of the assessment, says that “Currently, we find 75 percent of the world’s reefs are threatened by a combination of local and global threats. By 2030, the percentage will rise to 90 percent. By 2050, virtually all reefs will be threatened.” The 1998 assessment found 60 percent of the world’s reefs were threatened.

User experience

A List Apart has published the findings from its latest web design survey. Better late than never, the 2010 survey shows no real surprises—and that’s probably a good thing.