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Untold Stories: creative consequences of the rights clearance culture for documentary filmmakers

The problems that documentary filmmakers face in getting and controlling rights for their creative work — and the consequences for cultural creativity — are the subjects of this study. It explores the effects of the current terms of rights acquisition on documentary filmmaking. It makes recommendations to lower costs and promote creativity. It focuses on the lived experiences of independent documentary filmmakers who work within broadcast (sometimes with a theatrical 'window'), in coping with the challenges created by acquiring (and granting) rights. [Untold Stories: Creative Consequences of the Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers] [Center for Social Media] [Buttonpusher]

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Sony proposes iTunes-for-movies

Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment group plans to digitize Sony Pictures' top 500 films and make them available for the first time in various digital environments within the next year. Distribution for films like Spider-Man 2 will go beyond just Movielink: Sony plans to sell and make films available in flash memory for mobile phones in the next year. It also will further develop its digital stores for downloading and owning films on the PC. [C|net]

Lafayette Fiber to the Home

Local businesses back project. Planners of a Lafayette community run residential fiber project - which Cox and BellSouth have fought tirelessly to shut down - have a new ally. The Lafayette Chamber of Commerce - 2,400 members strong (ironically including Cox) - is urging voters t..

WordPress Spam–Blog Herald Response

Duncan Riley (someone I’ve come into interaction with a few times over the past few months, someone who I’ve also come to respect) has decided to pull the post on WordPress spamming the search engines, and defend Matt’s (the creator of WordPress) reputation:

What is clear though that today on the Blogosphere we have experienced the crucification of the reputation of a formerly well respected blogger, Matt Mullenweg, the genius behind WordPress. I suppose that if the Blogosphere takes delight in crucifying people in the mainstream media, rightly or wrongly, then I suppose its only natural that we’ll eventually turn on one of our own.

I agree with what Duncan is saying–but I think he’s missing the point. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love WordPress. It’s done wonders for the blogging community–and is a solid, fast, easy to use blogging platform. Matt has done amazing things with this project–there’s no question about that.

The point is, what Matt was doing was un-ethical. As a web developer–he knew what he was doing was questionable. However, he continued to do it. This doesn’t change my view on Matt (as a person or as a developer). As I said in the update in the entry about it here on BlogosphereNews, I can relate to the problems facing web developers when it comes to raising money–especially for a free product. The fact is, Matt made a mistake. And that’s OK. Everyone makes mistakes.

I certainly agree with this point in Duncan’s post:

Matt has made a mistake, we all make mistakes, but is this really necessary? Is it right to destroy the reputation of one who has given so much to the Blogosphere without greed nor profit?

My point is–Matt is too smart of a guy to be involved with things like this. Yes–he needs to make money. There’s no question about that. But there are better ways to do it. I agree that Matt’s reputation shouldn’t be “crucified”–as Duncan put it–by the Blogosphere for this incident. But that’s not to say that it should be ignored.

I truly wish Matt all the best. I hope WordPress doesn’t suffer from this. It is truly a great product. As Matt said, donations were slipping while expenses were rising. If you use WordPress, and would like to donate to help out–please visit the donate section on WordPress.org. We (the Blogosphere) can turn this situation into a positive one–and help keep Matt from having to making hard decisions such as whether to spam search engines to make money.

Update: I’d also like to point out that Matt is out of the country right now–traveling in Europe. In his absense, the first employee to work at WordPress Inc. has given his view on the whole situation.

Brand X: The Wait

Jeff Pulver notes that, amid all the hoopla surrounding the Supremes hearing the Grokster case on Tuesday, the coverage of the Brand X case was rather muted. I'm with him when he says the "less visible Brand X ruling might prove to have more sweeping effects on the future of one's Internet experience."

Of course, no one has any idea of what the ruling, which will probably come in June, will be. And the media coverage of the issue doesn't help much (though there were several set-up pieces, including one from James Granelli in the Los Angeles Times, which we talked about last week, and another from the Baltimore Sun's William Patalon III, that were well done) . The issues are described as complex, the justices are described as scratching their heads over aspects of the case, and there's very little critical analysis of how the arguments went (one exception is the Progress and Freedom Foundation, which is fighting for deregulation of broadband: The group expressed some concern that the government didn't strongly assert the FCC's primacy -- as opposed to the courts' -- in setting the rules for the broadband playing field).

I'm inclined to agree with Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America: Let's hope the court comes down on the side to open access to the cable broadband pipe. Otherwise, the market will be reduced to "a crummy duopoly" (cable firms on one hand, telcos on the other).

Guide To Finding Information: Search Engines

Phil Bradley has complied an excellent list of search engines with their best of utility value identified.This is a collection of search engines and similar resources that phil says he uses on a regular basis when looking for different types of information. Excellent list indeed.

New York Times Editorial Board Blows It on Grokster

Today, the New York Times (reg. req.) editorial board's lead editorial is on MGM v. Grokster. They manage to all but regurgitate Hollywood's talking points on the issue (When David Steals Goliath's Music):The battle over online music piracy is usually...

MGM v. Grokster: A Field Guide (Donna Wentworth)

As Ed Felten suggests, there is, not surprisingly, a lot of "generic" scene-setting press coverage of MGM v. Grokster of late, with a few pleasing exceptions scattered here and there. Luckily, we also have a handy Field Guide (unpardonable pun intended) -- a tour of the current crop of articles with the more relevant/interesting bits excerpted for our perusal.

Update: Andrew Raff of IPTABlog also has a useful tour, including a podcast program he recorded that goes step-by-step through the oral arguments before the Ninth Circuit, elucidating points of law all the way along.

Update #2: Ernie Miller provides a bit of, shall we say, critical analysis of The New York Times editorial on the Grokster showdown: "Brilliant editorial New York Times, bravo. Cheap rhetorical tricks, unsubstantiated statistics, and complete lack of an actual solution. Is there any error that wasn't made?"

Python script for uploading to Flickr

"This is just a simple python script that looks in a directory, and will upload what ever is there to your flickr account. It keeps track of what it has uploaded, and that is about it for features. The code is available to do whatever you wish with it." Link (Thanks, CJM!)

Update: Antrix sez, "Michele Campeotto has written the nice FlickrClient interface for those with more ambitious visions of mating Python and Flickr."

Via Boing Boing

A Snake-Shaped Serpentine Robot

Engineers from the University of Michigan have developed a snake-like robot that conquers obstacles. It is composed of 5 segments of 8-inch diameter each and weighs 26 pounds. It is currently piloted by a human operator. And it can maneuver in extremely rugged terrain, climbing stairs and pipes. "It moves by rolling, log-style, or by lifting its head or tail, inchworm-like, and muscling itself forward."

This robot will be used for industrial inspection and surveillance in hazardous environments, and also for military and urban search and rescue operations. Read more for other details, pictures and references.

The rise of camera phone snaps

Antonio in Ion's Blog points to an impressive picture in El Mundo that demonstrates better than any discourse the growing trend to snap pictures with a camera phone instead of a traditional camera at major events. Here during a procession in Sevilla (Spain)

Audacious: Our Media

Congrats, as Dan says, to the folks behind OurMedia. A very audacious plan. From their site:

We provide free storage and free bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text or software. Forever. No catches.

Has HP Patented Refilling Ink?

In a case that sounds somewhat reminiscent of Lexmark's (failed) attempts to use intellectual property law to block the competition, HP has decided to sue two companies that offer refilled ink cartridges for their printers. The ink business, of course, is big business -- with ink costing more than vintage champagne or high end perfume (depending on whose study you want to read). HP claims that they have nothing against customers choosing to buy refilled cartridges, but they have problems with these two refilling companies. The first one is accused of patent violations, which seems like an odd issue. The details (buried all the way at the end of the article) say the patents are about the type of ink -- which seems bizarre. Even more bizarre is that HP seems to make it very clear in the filing that if the three patents they've picked out don't stick, they have another 9,000 to choose from (which sounds eerily like IBM's patent attack on Sun years ago: "OK, maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"). The other claim makes a bit more sense, as HP says the second firm is packaging the refilled cartridges as if they were new -- which could lead to consumer confusion. Still, these lawsuits do seem like a simple attempt to scare off certain ink refillers.

Adult Entertainment on a Cell Phone Near You

"Unlike the Internet, there is virtually no free adult content available via mobile wireless devices," said Jupiter Research's Windsor Holden. As a result, anyone who acquires the materials must engage in a commercial transaction, and these transactions can be traced. [via TechNewsWorld ]

"One reason the Internet gained as much interest as it did in its early days was the convenience that it offered individuals interested in pornography. No longer did they have to visit adult bookstores in person; with a few keystrokes the materials were delivered directly to their personal computers.

[...] Companies such as Hotphone (gay phone sex), Pornforyourphone , Private and Voooyeur started out offering still images to mobile phone customers but have recently been moving to video clips and video streaming. Available content now ranges from models disrobing to hard-core pornography.

[...] Jupiter Research Inc. estimates that worldwide revenue from this market segment will jump from US$500 million in 2004 to $2.5 billion in 2009".

Anonymity and the Internet

From Slate:

Anonymice on Anonymity Wendy.Seltzer.org ("Musings of a techie lawyer") deflates the New York Times' breathless Saturday (March 19) piece about the menace posed by anonymous access to Wi-Fi networks ("Growth of Wireless Internet Opens New Path for Thieves" by Seth Schiesel). Wi-Fi pirates around the nation are using unsecured hotspots to issue anonymous death threats, download child pornography, and commit credit card fraud, Schiesel writes. Then he plays the terrorist card.

But unsecured wireless networks are nonetheless being looked at by the authorities as a potential tool for furtive activities of many sorts, including terrorism. Two federal law enforcement officials said on condition of anonymity that while they were not aware of specific cases, they believed that sophisticated terrorists might also be starting to exploit unsecured Wi-Fi connections.

Never mind the pod of qualifiers swimming through in those two sentences -- "being looked at"; "potential tool"; "not aware of specific cases"; "might" -- look at the sourcing. "Two federal law enforcement officials said on condition of anonymity. ..." Seltzer points out the deep-dish irony of the Times citing anonymous sources about the imagined threats posed by anonymous Wi-Fi networks. Anonymous sources of unsubstantiated information, good. Anonymous Wi-Fi networks, bad.

post from wendy.seltzer.org:

The New York Times runs an article in which law enforcement officials lament, somewhat breathlessly, that open wifi connections can be used, anonymously, by wrongdoers. The piece omits any mention of the benefits of these open wireless connections -- no-hassle connectivity anywhere the "default" community network is operating, and anonymous browsing and publication for those doing good, too.

Without a hint of irony, however:

Two federal law enforcement officials said on condition of anonymity that while they were not aware of specific cases, they believed that sophisticated terrorists might also be starting to exploit unsecured Wi-Fi connections.

Yes, even law enforcement needs anonymity sometimes.

tworks are a good thing. Yes, they allow bad guys to do bad things. But so do automobiles, telephones, and just about everything else you can think of. I like it when I find an open wireless network that I can use. I like it when my friends keep their home wireless network open so I can use it.

Scare stories like the New York Times one don't help any.

GAO's Report on Secure Flight

Sunday I blogged about Transportation Security Administration's Secure Flight program, and said that the Government Accountability Office will be issuing a report this week.

Here it is.

The AP says:

The government's latest computerized airline passenger screening program doesn't adequately protect travelers' privacy, according to a congressional report that could further delay a project considered a priority after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Congress last year passed a law that said the Transportation Security Administration could spend no money to implement the program, called Secure Flight, until the Government Accountability Office reported that it met 10 conditions. Those include privacy protections, accuracy of data, oversight, cost and safeguards to ensure the system won't be abused or accessed by unauthorized people.

The GAO found nine of the 10 conditions hadn't yet been met and questioned whether Secure Flight would ultimately work.

:

• TSA plans to include the capability for criminal checks within Secure Flight (p. 12).

• The timetable has slipped by four months (p. 17).

ight not be able to get personally identifiable passenger data in PNRs because of costs to the industry and lack of money (p.18).

• TSA plans to have intelligence analysts staffed within TSA to identify false positives (p.33).

HS Investment Review Board has withheld approval from the "Transportation Vetting Platform" (p.39).

• TSA doesn't know how much the program will cost (p.51).

privacy rule to be issued in April (p. 56).

u who read the report, please post other interesting tidbits as comments.

As you all probably know, I am a member of a working group to help evaluate the privacy of Secure Flight. While I believe that a program to match airline passengers against terrorist watch lists is a colossal waste of money that isn't going to make us any safer, I said "...assuming that we need to implement a program of matching airline passengers with names on terrorism watch lists, Secure Flight is a major improvement -- in almost every way -- over what is currently in place." I still believe that, but unfortunately I am prohibited by NDA from describing the improvements. I wish someone at TSA would get himself in front of reporters and do so.

Billionaire Mark Cuban underwrites Grokster in file-sharing case

Mark Cuban explains why he will underwrite the defense of file-sharing in the upcoming showdown at the U. S. Supreme Court: … It doesn't matter that the RIAA has been wrong about innovations and the perceived threat to their industry, every single time. It just matters that they can spend more then everyone else on lawyers. Thats not the way it should be. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and others came to me and asked if I would finance the legal effort against MGM. I said yes. I would provide them the money they need. This isn't the big content companies against the technology companies. This is the big content companies, against me, Mark Cuban, and my little content company. It's about our ability to use future innovations to compete, versus their ability to use the courts to shut down our ability to compete. It's that simple. [p2pnet.net]

• Supreme Showdown for P2P's Future. The entertainment industry goes head-to-head against file-sharing services at the Supreme Court this week. Some fear the Grokster case could have a devastating effect on development of new technologies. By Katie Dean. [Wired News]

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Ubuweb audio and video archives

At Ubuweb you can find audio and video archives of radio, films, sounds, visual and concrete poetry, literature and other, related subjects. One of the new features, Film, has some surrealistic silent movies from Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Luis Buñuel and the photographer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and 37 Short Fluxus Films. Many more good things: read from Eugène Ionesco works, listen to Antonin Artaud declaiming poetry, interviews with Jean-Luc Godard, Marshall McLuhan, and Alberto Giacometti. [Bibi's box]

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Phishing Your Yahoo! Account

More evidence that phishers are widening their net. Munir Kotadia of ZDNet Australia reports that Yahoo's free instant-messaging (IM) service is being targeted by phishers in an attempt to steal usernames, passwords and other personal information.

Yahoo confirmed on Thursday its service was being targeted by a phishing scam. According to the search giant, attackers are sending members a message containing a link to a fake Web site that looks like an official Yahoo site and asks the user to log in by entering their Yahoo ID and password.

The scam is convincing because the original message seems to arrive from someone on the victim's friends list. Should the recipient of the phishing message enter their details, the attackers can gain access to any personal information stored in their profile and more importantly, the victim's contact lists.

The bigger point about this is that any kind of password may be enough for the phisher. WIth Yahoo! the successful phisher may be able to get quite a lot of personal data for a future social engineering attack, and may even be able to access payment details such as addresses from within the profile. A phisher could also access the user’s Paypal account, redirect shipments, learn about the user’s investments, impersonate the user in auctions, etc etc. I’m not sure whether the phisher could access credit card details, but it’s feasible, I guess.

Net stocks now lead, but GOOEY or GERQY?

ThinkEquity's Michael Moe argues that the US economy is now dependent on the health of Internet companies rather than industrial companies like GM:

Our view is that in the knowledge economy and global marketplace, growth will be driven by intellectual capital. The general ecosystem of Silicon Valley attracts brainpower, entrepreneurism and capital – all necessary to propel the next “big thing.” ...Specifically though, the ecosystem to support the “Big 3” of Google, eBay and Yahoo! (GOO.E.Y.) will be a feeder of business opportunity for the next 20 years.

Quick comment:
Similar to Jim Cramer's argument that the new economic and stock market leaders are GERQY - Google, eBay, Research-in-Motion, Qualcomm and Yahoo. But Cramer's argument was more thought provoking: he was contrasting GERQY with Cisco, Intel, Dell, EMC and Microsoft. Note also that Cramer includes the fastest growing wireless stocks.

Telcos trailing Cable in Broadband

Telephony quotes The Convergence Consulting Group Ltd., a Canadian consultancy as saying that if Phone guys want to compete, they really need to cut prices, now.

In ‘The Battle for the North American Couch Potato: Bundling, Internet, TV, Telephone,’ TCCG examined the strategy, prices, products and technology of telcos, cable companies, satellite providers and others in both the U.S. and Canada. Its analysts believe that, in the U.S. particularly, cable companies are well positioned to stem the tide of basic cable subscriber loss and to continue dominating broadband usage through well-priced service bundles.”

The price cuts over at SBC indicate that phone operators might be getting aggressive in chalking up numbers, worried about the cable operators superiority …. for now.

Broadband Grows, Gear Doesn’t

Despite a growing demand for broadband, the equipment sales for all sorts of broadband gear will decline for near foreseeable future. Synergy Research Group forecasts that revenues of broadband gear is going to decrease 5.4 percent to $6.0 billion in 2005. By 2009, decreasing prices will cut the market to $5.2 billion annually, a CAGR of negative 3.4 percent. IMS Research forecasts nearly 400 million broadband users by end of 2009, up from 150 million at end of 2004. Asia is supposed to super charge the growth, primarily in new markets like China which are adopting DSL and its future variants quite aggressively.

Nobel laureates warn against China currency revaluation

Nobel Prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Mundell agree that a China currency appreciation would not be helpful to either China or the US. Here are the key points:

The United States blames foreign countries for its trade deficits:

• In the 1980s, the US blamed Japan for its massive trade deficit.
• Today, China is blamed.

America's real problem:

• The root of America's economic problem results from the imbalance between savings and investment.

Will a China currency appreciation fix the imbalance?

• According to both economists, the answer is NO.
• According to Stiglitz: "A 3% change on the foreign exchange rate does not have a significant effect" on the US trade deficit with China".
• Factories are not going to move production to the United States because of the change.
• The problems of outsourcing, manufacturing, and China's global advantage would not be affected by a moderate change in the foreign exchange rate.

What would a China currency appreciation do to the Chinese economy?

• It would have an adverse effect on Chinese farmers.
• It would also negatively effect China's bid to narrow the rural-urban income gap.
• It could undo some of the progress China has made in reducing poverty in rural areas.

According to Stiglitz, China would benefit in one way from a currency appreciation:

• "A revaluation of the Yuan would get political pressure off the back of China for a couple of months".

Paul Graham On Startups

Paul Graham, author of the book Hackers & Painters gave a talk recenetly at the Harvard Computer Society about building Startups. Excerpts with edits:

- You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed.all three are doable. Hard, but doable. And since a startup that succeeds ordinarily makes its founders rich, that implies getting rich is doable too. Hard, but doable.

- You don't need a brilliant idea to start a startup around. The way a startup makes money is to offer people better technology than they have now. But what people have now is often so bad that it doesn't take brilliance to do better. Google's plan, for example, was simply to create a search site that didn't suck. They had three new ideas: index more of the Web, use links to rank search results, and have clean, simple web pages with unintrusive keyword-based ads.

- An idea for a startup, however, is only a beginning. A lot of would-be startup founders think the key to the whole process is the initial idea, and from that point all you have to do is execute. What matters is not ideas, but the people who have them. Good people can fix bad ideas, but good ideas can't save bad people.

- It's no coincidence that startups start around universities, because that's where smart people meet. It's not what people learn in classes at MIT and Stanford that has made technology companies spring up around them. If you start a startup, there's a good chance it will be with people you know from college or grad school.

- If you work your way down the Forbes 400 making an x next to the name of each person with an MBA, you'll learn something important about business school. You don't even hit an MBA till number 22, Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike. There are only four MBAs in the top 50. What you notice in the Forbes 400 are a lot of people with technical backgrounds. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Gordon Moore. The rulers of the technology business tend to come from technology, not business. So if you want to invest two years in something that will help you succeed in business, the evidence suggests you'd do better to learn how to hack than get an MBA. There is one reason you might want to include business people in a startup, though: because you have to have at least one person willing and able to focus on what customers want. Some believe only business people can do this- that hackers can implement software, but not design it.There's nothing about knowing how to program that prevents hackers from understanding users, or about not knowing how to program that magically enables business people to understand them.

-The difficulty faced in a startup would not be more than you'd endure in an ordinary working life. It's probably less, in fact; it just seems like a lot because it's compressed into a short period. So mainly what a startup buys you is time. That's the way to think about it if you're trying to decide whether to start one. If you're the sort of person who would like to solve the money problem once and for all instead of working for a salary for 40 years, then a startup makes sense.

- Starting a startup is not the great mystery it seems from outside. It's not something you have to know about "business" to do. Build something users love, and spend less than you make. How hard is that?

Category : Startups.

When IP kills (Alan Wexelblat)

...and I don't mean that metaphorically. I don't really have the energy for another Big Thoughts post, but this story deserves a lot more thinking than I've been able to give it. So I place it out here for your consideration.

Bare bones: as a precondition for getting into WTO, India's lower house of parliament has passed a law prohibiting copying of patented drugs. It's expected to go through the upper house and be signed into law shortly.

Unless you've been hiding in a hole for the past few years, you are aware that India is the source for generic copies of life-saving anti-AIDS drugs for literally millions of people in the non-industrialized countries. This bill will put a stop to that for new drugs. If you're up on HIV/AIDS thinking, you know that the virus is very good at developing resistance to drugs and a fairly steady flow of new treatments is needed to combat this.

Opponents such as Medecins Sans Frontieres, fear that the safeguards that are supposed to operate with the new law (potential for compulsory licensing, for example) could be tied up for years in court challenges. Meanwhile, people die.

That's not hysteria. MSF is not some radical anti-WTO group, nor a radical anti-intellectual property organization. They're a group of doctors, on the ground in dozens of countries, treating millions of HIV/AIDS patients for whom the steep drop in prices over the past few years, as Indian-made high quality generics have become widely available, has meant a new lease on living. Raise the prices even a trivial amount (by Western standards) and you put them out of reach of hundreds of thousands of people, not to mention stalling out efforts to get the drugs to millions more who need them.

Now we face the issue - is this an appropriate use of intellectual property protections? Does the right of a corporation to make a profit for its shareholders trump the right of these people to live for a few more years with their disease kept in check? I hate questions like that.

Drug companies pull out the "funding research" card. It is true that income from patented drugs funds research. It also funds a massive advertising and lobby machine. Last I looked, US drug industry spending on advertising exceeded spending on R&D by a significant fraction. On the other hand, I do not believe that public need destroys business considerations completely. I choose to invest my money in companies that behave in what I consider socially responsible fashion, but I agree there are other ways businesses can operate.

A balance is needed. I'm not comfortable with the mental image of lavish boardrooms and skyrocketing company profits (they're consistently the most profitable industry in the US) as a shining metal beacon in a sea of dark-skinned misery, death, and suffering. Conversely, I'm not comfortable with the notion of a national government appropriating the fruits of labor (corporate or individual) because it has determined that these fruits meet a real human need.

And I hate not having an inkling of how to get progress on this issue at a pace that has even a glimmer of hope of keeping up with this global pandemic.

Cable Equal Access Case Goes to Supreme Court

DCTooTall writes "The FCC has ruled that Cable High-Speed Internet is an Information Service, and therefore not subject to the same equal access regulations that govern DSL. Brand-X Networks sued the FCC for equal access to the Cable Networks and won. The FCC appealed the decision and next Tuesday the case goes to the Supreme Court. The Telco's have repeatedly used the current FCC stance on Cable Broadband in their fight to get the same monopoly on DSL. This case has the potential to not only open the Cable networks to competition, but also prevent the Telco's from further attempts on limiting DSL options."

Canada Says No To DMCA

P Starrson writes " The Canadian government has reportedly said no to the DMCA. It released its plans for copyright reform today with a limited anti-circumvention provision that would not cover the likes of DeCSS. It even avoided the U.S. "notice and takedown system" that has caused a big headache for U.S. ISPs. A good summary is available from Canadian law professor Michael Geist. "

West End Laboratories TagZapper(TM)

West End Laboratories, a division of LDC Security, has also developed a RFID tag zapper designed to disable RFID chips. By killing the radio frequency identification tag, the zapper prevents the unwanted scanning and tracking of people or goods. The...

CITIZEN MEDIA INITIATIVES LIST

So many citizen journalism initiatives are cropping up now it's hard to keep track, so CyberJournalist.net has begun keeping a list.

Here are some of the more ambitious citizen's media efforts that have launched or are in the works. Click on the links for more information and to post your comments about each one.

Signal or Noise 2k5: Creative Revolution?

Register today to attend Signal or Noise II: Creative Revolution? on April 8. While DJS and musicians spin their works and machinima creators demo film segments, conference panelists and participants will discuss how digital technologies are enabling new forms of creativity by a broader group of people.  Cultural, business, legal and ethical implications of new genres and new forms of authorship will all be covered.

Join panelists for dinner and discussion after the conference -- sign up for Food for Thought, a Berkman tradition. 

Signal or Noise 2K5 is hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, and the Harvard Committee on Sports and Entertainment Law.

Real-Time Car Tracking with EVDO

This is why EVDO cellular internet is cool: the guys from EVDOInfo.com rigged together a little application using off the shelf parts to display on a web page their car, its exact location and velocity, as well as the current view out their window. It's tricks like these that will make EVDO (and UMTS, if Cingular ever gets it deployed) a standard feature for "carputers" before long.

And to think, just a few short years ago these technologies were reserved for child molesters and enemies of the state.

EVDO GPS WebCam Mapping [EVDOInfo]

New Model For Start-ups?

: Jeff Clavier looks at Topix.net through the VC lens as "yet another Internet startup to develop a meaningful presence without any VC financing, and end up being taken out - at least partially. These exits would not make sense for 'traditional' VCs that need to deploy at least $5 to $10M per deals, and need to generate a bare minimum 3X to 5X on that capital. But it makes sense for angels and founders -- and people helping them develop the shop like yours truly, who have to accept to live for some time on "Macaroni and Cheese". Alternate model ? Hmmm."< br>This dovetails with what we've been writing about as these deals roll out.

Jupiter Research For Sale?

: Update: Meckler writes in to us: "These have been going on since Gartner announced the Meta deal. We have no deal going on -- however we are always for sale as a company -- that is the fiduciary obligation of a CEO for a public company. We also owe to stockholders to listen to any offer. Are you a buyer!" Ah, well..
Jupiter Research, part of Alan Meckler's Jupitermedia, is up for sale, according to Silicon Valley Watcher, with multiple bidders for it.
The sale of Jupiter would further consolidate the market research analyst community, which is down to a handful of companies dominated by Gartner, the largest, according to the story.
Meckler's a master at mixing and matching businesses, and has had the golden touch of getting out of business at the right time. He bought the entrails of Jupiter Research (then Jupiter Media Metrix)for a mere $250K in 2002, and has gone on to rename his company based on it.
The research firm has been doing well, at least according to Meckler himself, who wrote up a post titled "Jupiter Research Rising", a week ago on his blog: "Syndicated research clients hit 297 the other day (up from 241 at this time last year). Contract value renewals have climbed to close to 100%. JR is now profitable and we expect healthy financial growth this year."
For some performance history of JR over the last year, read the latest 2004 10-K, here...

Hartford To Build Free Citywide Network?

Hartford's mayor promised free Wi-Fi access to residents citywide in his state of the city address: The Hartford Advocate looks into this network's feasibility. The mayor proposes to not just provide a free network, but also to give computers to less-advantaged local residents. Hartford has had a problem for decades and decades with "rich flight": it may be divided across racial lines, but anyone with any money moved across city lines. The county structure in Connecticut is very weak providing no shield to a big city with big problems. (My wife grew up in West Hartford; I spent five years in New Haven. It's pretty clear that wealthy suburbs can suck a city dry in a way that's not quite the same in other parts of the country.)

Comcast played its hand pretty broadly when the Advocate reported asked for comment. Declining, the spokesperson suggested an analyst at The Heartland Institute, a group I've written about extensively on this site which doesn't disclose funding and released a report rife with direct ties to Verizon and Issue Dynamics, an incumbent telecom and cable PR and lobbying firm.

The work is still in the planning stages, but with only a third of Hartford residents hooked up to the Internet--and 83 percent of the poorest family not surprisingly having no computer--the city sees this as a critical gap they want to close.

Yahoo Ups Mail Limit to 1 GB

Starting next month, Yahoo Mail will go to one gig. Platform wars, Ho! Release in extended, I don't have a link for the news, save the mail site, which does not mention it yet. One thing to note: According to figures I've seen lately, mail is about 40% of all Yahoo page views, it's the silent driver of profits at that company. And that's why Google is pushing Gmail so hard lately - those pageviews drive profits.

Can You Patent Online Fundraising?

Plenty of people have started to realize that, instead of encouraging innovation, many are using the patent system as a sort of legalized shakedown. Software patents are bad, but business model patents are downright scary. The folks over at the EFF point to one pending patent that tries to patent the process of fund raising online: "A method for conducting a fundraising campaign by an organization or person over a wide-area network, comprising the steps of: hosting a website including a plurality of linked web pages, the website providing information about the fundraising campaign and soliciting potential donors to make a charitable contribution to the fundraising campaign; registering on the website; contacting third parties via email messages soliciting charitable donations; and providing one or more reports, on the website, including information on the status of the fundraising campaign." Where's that guy with the patent on stupid patents?

The Silliness of Secrecy

This is a great article on some of the ridiculous effects of government secrecy. (Unfortunately, you have to register to read it.)

Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, the federal government has advised airplane pilots against flying near 100 nuclear power plants around the country or they will be forced down by fighter jets. But pilots say there's a hitch in the instructions: aviation security officials refuse to disclose the precise location of the plants because they consider that "SSI" -- Sensitive Security Information.

"The message is; 'please don't fly there, but we can't tell you where there is,'" says Melissa Rudinger of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, a trade group representing 60% of American pilots.

Determined to find a way out of the Catch-22, the pilots' group sat down with a commercial mapping company, and in a matter of days plotted the exact geographical locations of the plants from data found on the Internet and in libraries. It made the information available to its 400,000 members on its Web site -- until officials from the Transportation Security Administration asked them to take the information down. "Their concern was that [terrorists] mining the Internet could use it," Ms. Rudinger says.

lockquote>For example, when a top Federal Aviation Administration official testified last year before the 9/11 commission, his remarks were broadcast live nationally. But when the administration included a transcript in a recent report on threats to commercial airliners, the testimony was heavily edited. "How do you redact something that is part of the public record?" asked Rep. Carolyn Maloney, (D., N.Y.) at a recent hearing on the problems of government overclassification. Among the specific words blacked out were the seemingly innocuous phrase: "we are hearing this, this, this, this and this."

Government officials could not explain why the words were withheld, other than to note that they were designated SSI.

School Killer's Animated Terror

Minnesota teen posted bloody Flash film late last year

Yahoo's New Confidence (& Google's Fatal Flaw)

It is fairly remarkable how the winds in search (and related) markets have shifted. While Google had the wind at its back for almost a year, it now feels like the momentum is behind Yahoo. From the Flickr acquisition, to...

DVD Blowing Away Box Office

No wonder that the intervals between screen release dates and DVD release dates are getting shorter. Although box-office revenue has remained steady at about US$9.2 billion a year in recent years, since the mid-1990s, home video sales have surpassed the domestic box office. Last year, DVD sales alone — not counting the VHS format — skyrocketed to US$15.5 billion. [Hacking NetFlix]

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Movie downloading is the Internet's fastest-growing sector

Grabbing movies and TV shows off the Net for free is the fastest growing activity in cyberspace. [Hollywood Liberation Army: Chronicling the Internet movie revolution]

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Ireland going all-digital in theaters

Avica Technology has embarked on a mission to outfit 515 screens throughout Ireland with a digital delivery and presentation system. The system uses a network to distribute the movies in digital format, with an encryption technology developed by Digital Cinema Initiatives. DCI (can we call it that?) is a joint venture of Disney, Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros. They hope the new distribution and projection technology will reduce operational costs while making Tom Cruise some extra Irish cash. They plan to have all of Ireland outfitted in about a year. [Engadget]

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