A bunch of folks are sending in this News.com story about a draft of the latest cybersecurity bill, that still includes bizarre and totally unnecessary language that would allow the President to declare a cybersecurity emergency and then be able to take control over private computer networks. First, the idea of the whole “cybersecurity emergency” that would require such a thing still remains a science fiction idea. Yes, there can be cybersecurity attacks and they can cause all sorts of problems, but these are problems that generally are not life-threatening or that can’t be handled reasonably.

But the bigger issue is why the government should be taking control over private networks. This is the same gov’t that doesn’t let people in the State Department use Firefox and which thinks that RealPlayer is the state of the art in online video streaming. Even if there were a “cybersecurity emergency,” I would think the last people I’d want to take charge would be the federal government.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Continue reading →

While we definitely knock the major record labels for their legal strategy and occasional business blunders, in the last two years or so, there has actually been some recognition within the record labels that finally they need to focus on giving fans what they want, rather than just suing them and hoping that the old CD business model magically returns to its former highs. There have been hints and glimmers of hope from the major record labels — though, even those inside the labels who seem to get it will quietly admit that it’s sometimes a struggle to get some of this through to “the old guard.”

The question, though, is how much of this is real, and how much of it is the old guard putting on a show, picking up on a buzzword and insisting that this time, they’ve got it. A few years ago, all the talk was about “360 Deals” and how that would get the labels off of the CD revenue IV drip. But, many artists (smartly) balked, seeing such deals not as an industry adapting to change, but one looking to just get a larger piece of the pie — and doing so without adding much value, and after decades of screwing over the artists. So that hasn’t worked out so well for the most part.

It appears that the latest buzzword that the majors are picking up on is this concept of the “direct-to-fan” model. This is a bit of an offshoot of my own mantra of getting creators to connect with fans. And, for more independent artists, a number of platforms and companies have sprung up to help them more easily connect with fans, whether it’s MySpace or BandCamp or TopSpin or TuneCore, or whoever else. And, of course, most of those companies also have relationships or deals with the major record labels, but it seems that the majors are realizing that they need to have a real “direct-to-fan” strategy themselves.

Just recently, we saw Warner Music sign a deal with Cisco to use Cisco’s EOS platform for direct-to-fan efforts. And, more recently, Universal Music announced that it was working with Echospin to provide direct-to-fan offerings. I have no doubt that EMI and (probably way way way at the end of the line), Sony will get around to making similar announcements.

While I think it’s a great thing that the labels are experimenting with smarter models that actually do focus on bringing the musicians closer to the fans and providing a much more compelling offering that goes beyond brochureware, I’m a bit skeptical that they’ll really pull it off successfully in the short term. Direct-to-fan offerings is more than a platform. It’s an actual business model and marketing strategy and it’s unclear if the labels have actually figured that part out yet. Yes, they’re adopting platforms and they’re taking steps in the right direction — so let’s give them some credit. But until they really understand what fans want and how to better help musicians provide it, setting up a “direct-to-fan” platform won’t make a big difference.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Continue reading →

We were a bit confused over the claim recently that Flickr (Yahoo) had taken down a Photoshopped image of Obama as “the Joker” superimposed on a Time Magazine cover. It didn’t make much sense, because it wasn’t clear who’s copyright was even at issue. It didn’t seem likely that Time Magazine would have any claim, even though that’s what many assumed. So, some folks started asking around — and all of the “obvious” candidates said no. Time Magazine, DC Comics and the original photographer who took the image on which the photo was based all insisted they didn’t send the takedown. That resulted in some fingerpointing at Flickr, but some more digging by Thomas Hawk turned up a guy named Edward Przydzial (though Yahoo’s takedown notification called him Przydzia, which resulted in even more confusion initially. But, no one seems to know who he is and what copyright he might hold in the matter, making the whole story quite bizarre. Hawk contacted Przydzial, who responded claiming that he created the image… but also that he doesn’t own the image, and refused to say whether or not he filed the DMCA notice (and some bizarre stuff about needing a court order to find out who filed the DMCA notice). Once again, this highlights some of the inanities of the whole DMCA takedown process.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Continue reading →

If there were any gov’t body that you would hope would have a handle on basic things like online streaming of video and audio, it would be the FCC, which is supposed to be regulating communications, right? But… that’s not how the government works. During yesterday’s meeting, in which it announced plans to investigate the wireless industry, apparently the online stream required the use of RealPlayer (welcome to 1999) and only allowed 200 simultaneous connections. Perhaps instead of investigating the wireless carriers, the FCC should investigate its own broadband connections and streaming setup.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Continue reading →

With the rise of the DVR and the death of the captive audience, it’s no surprise that product placement has become more and more popular. But would you believe that ad agencies are trying to patent forms of product placement? Apparently, big ad firm WPP is being sued by a company for violating its patent in an ad campaign run for Microsoft’s Bing search engine. The patent in question (6,859,936) is for “a method and system for producing program-integrated commercials.” Basically, the idea is to use the actors and sets from a TV show to film a regular commercial spot, and then run that during the show itself. Yes, someone got a patent on that. Why? Who the hell knows. This is a perfect example, by the way, of how just because something’s “new” it doesn’t mean it’s not obvious. It’s just that it’s so obvious most people wouldn’t even bother thinking about patenting it.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Continue reading →

There’s been plenty of concern over the past few years with regards to Homeland Security’s claims that it has the right to inspect the contents of your laptop at the border, even without any probable cause. While it may be well established that the 4th Amendment doesn’t apply until you’re actually in the country, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some serious questions raised. I, like many others, have no problem with border searches of actual physical containers and luggage at the border. That makes perfect sense, because it’s physical goods that you’re purposely trying to bring directly into the country. You packed them with the specific idea of bringing them into the country.

But stuff on your laptop is different in two very important ways:

1. You mostly store everything on your laptop. So, unlike a suitcase that you’re bringing with you, it’s the opposite. You might specifically choose what to exclude, but you don’t really choose what to include.
2. The reason you bring the contents on your laptop over the border is because you’re bringing your laptop over the border. If you wanted the content of your laptop to go over the border you’d just send it using the internet. There are no “border guards” on the internet itself, so content flows mostly freely across international boundaries. Thus if anyone wants to get certain content into a country via the internet, they’re not doing it by entering that country through border control.

Thus, it makes little sense for border control to search the contents of your laptop other than if the gov’t wants a random “free pass” at checking out some content about you. DHS’ insistence that it needed the right to search laptops at the border made little sense, and some of our elected officials pushed out bills to curb such border searches, though none have passed.

Instead, the new head of DHS has “revised” the rules for laptop searches, but they’re only slightly better in that the old rules were “anything goes,” while the new rules are “we’re still searching laptops, but we have a few rules.” The main components of the new rules are that you’re allowed to be present in the same room as your laptop, phone or device as it’s being searched — but not necessarily to see what border patrol is doing. Also, they can’t keep your laptop for more than five days, which seems pretty damn long to me. Though, as some note, this basically means that you should make sure any encryption on your laptop takes more than five days to crack.

DHS boss Janet Napolitano’s reasoning for the searches is hardly compelling:

“Keeping Americans safe in an increasingly digital world depends on our ability to lawfully screen materials entering the United States,”

Um… right, but, again, the contents of the a computer laptop can easily enter the United States via the internet with no border control process whatsoever. The whole claim that this has anything to do with screening materials entering the US is totally bogus.

On top of this, the other thing that’s not at all clear is how far the “search” can go. With a growing number of “cloud” based services in use, many of which act as if they’re local, can the border patrol search those as well? For example, I use Jungledisk, which gives me a virtual drive that shows up in my file system as if it were a local hard drive, even though it’s hosted in some data center somewhere. It looks like a local drive… but it’s not actually on my laptop. Would border patrol have the right to search that, even though the contents of that drive are not actually traveling across the border?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Continue reading →

Yahoo has begun bringing its BrowserPlus technology to a broader audience, making installation of the browser-boosting plug-in a default part of installing the beta of the new Yahoo Messenger 10 that emerged this week.

BrowserPlus gives Web sites some better abilities taken for granted in applications that run natively on a computer, and because it’s a framework, new abilities can be added later. Among the current features are the ability to drag files from the desktop to the browser, to read accelerometer data to judge a computer’s orientation, to edit images, and to upload many files at once.

BrowserPlus is installed by default during the installation of the Yahoo Messenger 10 beta. Those who don’t want it can deselect it through the custom installation path.

Yahoo announced BrowserPlus in May 2008, then upgraded it and made it open-source software in November.

BrowserPlus is one of many extras that can be disabled in the custom section of the Yahoo Messenger 10 beta installation.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Adobe Systems’ Flash Player plug-in is widely installed, but plug-ins in general are hard to propagate enough that Web site programmers can safely assume they can be used. One way to tackle the issue is to piggyback on the distribution of other, popular software–a technique long employed to encourage adoption of browser toolbars.

Many companies are working hard on the “Open Web,” in which advanced abilities are built directly into Web standards such as HTML 5. However, plug-ins such as Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, BrowserPlus, and Google’s Gears can advance the state of the art faster.

Update 4:55 p.m. PDT: Yahoo said it does in fact plan to include BrowserPlus in the final version of Yahoo Messenger. Also, it shared this list of the browsers and operating systems the plug-in supports:

• Windows XP: supports Firefox 2 or newer, Safari, IE6 or newer, and Google Chrome

• Windows Vista: supports Firefox 3 or newer, Safari, IE6 or newer, and Google Chrome

• Windows 7: Same as Windows Vista, in experimental status

• Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5: Recent versions of Safari and Firefox 3 or newer

• Mac OS X 10.6: Firefox 3 or better (Safari support in the works)

Updated 1:58 p.m. PDT to correct the initial release date of BrowserPlus.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Continue reading →

It’s really funny to watch the old record labels try to understand the whole music blogging culture. The folks in the promotions department send music bloggers mp3s and encourage them to post them, knowing that it’ll get the musician attention. That’s a good thing. But the folks on the legal side go the other way… often sending takedowns to the very same bloggers. Rafi Kam points us to a ridiculous situation involving Warner Music Group, who hired a firm called Gray Zone to help “deal with” unauthorized tracks being shared online. Apparently Gray Zone tracked down a song by Gucci Mane that was on well-known music reviewer Andrew Noz’s website and sent an angry cease-and-desist to both Noz and his hosting company using all capital letters, including the phrase: “IMMEDIATELY REMOVE ALL LINKS, REFERENCES, DOWNLOADS, VIDEOS, STREAMING AUDIO, AND MP3 FILES ASSOCIATED WITH GUCCI MANE.”

Noz didn’t see the email, which his filter assumed as spam, but his hosting company did and suspended his entire site. Nice of them. When Noz contacted them, they told him that, based on the above sentence, he needed to go through his blog and remove every reference to Gucci Mane (after all, that’s what letter said). Apparently, Noz had written about Gucci Mane quite a bit, so that was a lot of work. Of course, the letter is wrong. While there may be a copyright issue with downloads, it’s difficult to see where there would be any copyright claim at all when it came to links, embedded videos (hosted elsewhere) or references. That’s actually copyfraud by Gray Zone, on behalf of Warner Music Group, by claiming copyright on things that it does not have rights over.

Either way Noz scrambled and spent hours deleting everything on his site about this particular artist. After all of that, he spoke with a VP at Gray Zone who said that Gray Zone and Warner were really only demanding that he take down a single track. But, of course, that’s not what the takedown notice said. Noz points his anger at Warner Music, asking why folks from Warner Music email him tracks all the time… but then get his entire site taken down for those very same songs? This isn’t just the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, it’s the right hand shaking someone’s hand, and the left hand smacking that guy in the face for shaking the right hand. And people wonder why the big labels are so hated?

I actually spoke with both Warner Music Group and Noz to try to find out more about this. Noz says that he’s not sure if the one particular song was actually sent by someone from WMG, but that he gets hundreds of songs a week, many of which come from WMG, and he helps promote many of those tracks, so he finds it pretty ridiculous that rather than just contact him and politely ask him to take down the song, they had his entire site taken down. WMG noted that it, as a corporate entity, wasn’t directly involved with this, but that it was handled by a subsidiary, Asylum Records. Asylum then sent over a statement:

Apparently, unauthorized copies of the unfinished and unreleased track “I Got All Of That” by Gucci Mane have been stolen and sent out to certain websites by parties unknown to us. In cooperation with the artist and his manager, we instructed our third-party vendor to notify websites to take down the unauthorized track from their sites immediately. We appreciate the cooperation of sites that recognize that this unfinished song does not represent the artist’s complete vision and may have been obtained illegally.

Of course, that doesn’t really address the issue. The complaint from Gray Zone didn’t just target that one song, but all content related to this artist, and because of that, it forced the guy’s blog offline — all the while he’s receiving plenty of songs directly from the record label. You can understand where there might be some confusion there. At the very least, someone should have just contacted the guy directly with a friendly request, rather than sending the immediate ALL CAPITALS cease-and-desist threat.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Continue reading →

Shmoop, an online learning tool designed for high-school students, has unveiled several new categories and a whopping 115 iPhone apps.

The site now features study guides on poetry, bestselling books, civics, and biography. It already offered in-depth information on U.S. history and literature.

The timing on Shmoop’s announcement is certainly appropriate. School is about to be back in session. Students will be needing Shmoop’s online offerings to help them get through class.

But just how they use Shmoop’s features is up for debate.

The basics

Shmoop is basically a study guide, although the site’s founder Ellen Siminoff, said that it aims to become the first online textbook for high schools all over the U.S. In either case, it provides in-depth information on topics ranging from the basics like what’s in the Bill of Rights to more obscure topics like the U.S. Gilded Age. The site does remind me of a textbook on topics like U.S. history, biography, and ethics.

Shmoop provides in-depth information on great novels.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

But I’m not necessarily convinced that Shmoop is as useful to educators as the company wants everyone to believe. Siminoff was quick to point out that several teachers have been using Shmoop in the classroom. But when pressed about the possibility of students using its material to help them cheat or not complete assignments, Siminoff said that her company’s focus on reading battles that.

“Shmoop starts out every section with a ‘Why you should care,’ item,” Siminoff said. “We sell reading the book.”

I’m not convinced of that. Although Shmoop does provide a nice resource for kids who have already read a book for literature class, it also provides a fine resource for kids who decide they don’t want to read the book and would rather use Shmoop to learn all about it.

Each book listed on Shmoop’s site includes a basic summary, in-depth analysis, themes, and other information that practically every teacher is referencing when they ask students to write essays on those topics. Similar to CliffsNotes, Shmoop can be used as a free alternative to actually reading the book. It’s an intrinsic issue with Shmoop that I just don’t see the company fixing. It’s a necessary cost of doing business for a site like this.

Information overload

Outside of that, Shmoop’s content is extremely informative. In fact, the company hires Ph.D. and master’s students to write the content on the site. Siminoff wouldn’t say how much they pay those students, but once they write an in-depth analysis, all ownership is transferred from the graduate student to Shmoop, so it can do what it wants with the content.

Shmoop features some interesting biographies.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

As good as the content is, it’s limited. You won’t find math help. You won’t see any science topics. So far, the company has decided to stick to novels, poetry, and general history, including biography and civics. That’s a problem. Until Shmoop can offer all kinds of subjects, the chances of it gathering significant support from the educational community are limited.

I also wonder if Shmoop will eventually expand its focus. The company currently only caters to high-school students. Some of the content, Siminoff claims, can also be used in first-year undergraduate programs. I believe it. Considering the sheer breadth of the content the site offers on important topics, I could see a freshman U.S. history class analyzing some of the content the site offers. But what about younger kids? Middle-school students are just as much in need for this kind of service. Hopefully Shmoop will offer content for them, as well.

I was also surprised to learn that Shmoop, which already features study guides for the Kindle, has delivered 115 apps for the iPhone. Those apps offer the same basic function as the site–study guides for great novels. Considering Apple’s troubles with developers in the past, getting 115 apps in its store is quite a feat. It underscores Shmoop’s desire to bring its offering to as many places as possible.

Shmoop is on the iPhone too.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Looking ahead

Shmoop is a fine study guide for students, but it also has the potential of being an assistant for those who don’t want to study. It has interesting content, but its content won’t appeal to many people outside of high-school age. And its coverage is great for history and literature buffs, but math and science lovers are left out in the cold.

So it seems that Shmoop is a little perplexing. On one hand, it has the features users want. On the other hand, it’s lacking many other features those same users are looking for. But since Shmoop is still in its early stages, it’s hard to fault a company that has provided so much great information to students. From the common topics to the obscure, Shmoop provides every last detail. That counts for something.

If you’re a parent or a teacher, Shmoop is worth checking out. Just make sure to monitor your students to ensure that they’re not using it for anything other than a study guide.

Continue reading →

Time and time again, we’ve heard about people claiming “plagiarism” when the truth is that it’s just someone else who happened to have the same, or a similar, idea. It often happens with books and movies. For example, multiple people are suing over the claim that only they could have come up with the idea of a child who has a secret life as a rockstar, and Hannah Montana stole their idea. But actual copyright infringement or plagiarism (two different things) require some actual copying — not just people having the same idea. Given that, it’s not entirely clear what’s going on with the claim (found via Michael Scott) that the ex-wife of the singer Usher, Tamika Foster, may have “plagiarized” a self-published author when she wrote a blog post for the Huffington Post called “She’s Pretty for a Dark-Skinned Girl…” The author claiming plagiarism had written a book, similarly titled “Pretty for a Black Girl.”

But is it plagiarism, or just two people coming up with the same idea? Unfortunately, the report at the link above never bothers to tell us! It simply repeats the claim from the woman that it’s plagiarism, but her quotes suggest that it’s not:

“My heart sank into my stomach. All the hard work, all the sleepless nights I had endured was playing back in my head as I read this article written by a woman I didn’t even know,” [Aisha] Curry told BV Buzz. “Why did I feel so connected to this article? Suddenly, it came to me. It was my work! It was my work, my voice, but in her words.”

Well, there’s a problem there. If it’s her words then it’s not plagiarism. Also, Curry seems to undermine her own argument in explaining how she came up with the idea for the book:

“One day about five years ago, I was absolutely tired of being told that I was pretty for a black girl,” she explained. “I started asking my friends if they had heard this statement before, and as time went on, I realized how prevalent the issue was.”

Right. The comment is apparently prevalent, meaning that Tameka Foster certainly could have heard the same thing on her own, and could have decided to write her own essay about it. That’s not plagiarism. That’s multiple people recognizing something that’s prevalent and deciding to write about it. Foster’s representatives claim they’ve never heard of the book. But the real question is whether or not it’s actually plagiarism, and that could have been determined by finding out if there were any passages actually pulled from the book. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like anyone actually decided to do that. However, as you read Foster’s article, much of it seems to be about her own personal experiences, not Curry’s, which again suggests this isn’t plagiarism at all, but two people writing about a similar concept that is (as admitted by Curry) already “prevalent.”

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Continue reading →