Stanford Center for Internet and Society

I'm psyched to be speaking on a panel this spring at the South By Southwest Interactive conference. The panel is on Tuesday, March 13, and is entitled Video Mashups: "Please Rolling Stones Don't Sue Us".

I attended the motion to dismiss hearing in the Shloss v. Estate of Joyce case on Wednesday morning. Here a photo of Professor Shloss and two people from the legal team, David Olson (CIS Fellow) and Tony Falzone (Exec. Dir. of the Fair Use Project). (A couple more photos are available in my flickr set.)

Zimbio is a cool web 2.0 collaborative media company, that has developed a great tool for promoting your blog. (Full disclosure: Zimbio is a client of my firm, and it's founders are friends of mine. So perhaps I'm a bit biased here, but I'll let you decide after checking out their new feature.)

This post from the Legal Blog Watch brought a smile to my face. It reports on the wonderful sense of humor of the attorneys over at Second Life.

I was contacted by researchers from the International University Bremen in Germany about a podcast study they are conducting (yes, the survey is in English!) . Please read on and take a few minutes to participate in the survey, post the below announcement it to your own blog, and circulate it in your podcasting groups and communities. With strong participation, the survey is likely to yield some interesting data.

International Podcastersurvey

Media Scientists from International University Bremen (Germany) are currently conducting an international survey among active and formerly active podcasters. The aims of this study are a) to describe and compare the community of podcasters on an international level, b) to better understand podcasting from the sender's perspective (motivations, aims, aesthetical beliefs) and c) to validate some hypotheses about computer mediated communication. Active and formerly active podcasters are kindly asked to support the study by participating themselves and promoting the survey among other podcasters all over the world. The survey is available in English and German. Completing the survey takes between 15 and 20 minutes. All participants will receive a report about the results, if interested.

http://podcastersurvey.com

For questions or comments, please contact:
Dennis Mocigemba
d.mocigemba@iu-bremen.de

I attended a really fun reception last night at the fancy Hotel Vitale in San Francisco hosted by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center. One of the co-hosts was Pam Samuelson, that amazing law and technology professor at UC Berkeley whose work and writings are extremely important in the field of IP and internet rights.

During the reception, Pam was asked to tell us about the most exciting thing she's working on these days. Her answer explained that she'll be heading over to be a visiting professor at Harvard next year (which makes me a tiny bit sad because it means she won't be so close to us here in the Bay Area and I have this little irrational fear she may not come back - gasp!), and that her big project for the next 5 years is to fix the copyright act. Yes, that's right, Pam Samuelson's going to take on the the 200-plus page behemoth, which is filled with special interest carve outs, archane and sometimes seriously confusing language, and -- not unlike the tax code -- is simply unwieldy for something that so greatly impacts our rights to share knowledge, build culture, create beautiful art and astounding new technologies, and (simply) speak freely.

I think her project simultaneous fantastic and so needed on the one hand, and somewhat impossible on the other! And for that, I love that she's taking it on. We should give our support to Pam and this project, and pay close attention to how the parties who stand to gain/lose from changes get involved. Many voices in the debate will, I hope, lead to great results and powerful changes in our copyright laws.

I've been busily working on finishing my new podcast and will have more to say about it very soon... We'll be launching it on the 23rd so stay tuned.

In the mean time, please visit this funny song from David Pogue about the RIAA and its method of curing the world of music piracy (sung to the tune of the ever popular YMCA song by the Village People).

I've been blog tagged by Denise, and I will hereby continue the game. I'm trying not to think of it as a chain letter, because normally I wouldn't further it. But the reason this is not a chain letter (at least in my mind) is that it does not include one of those ominous threats at the end, like "5 bad things will happen to you in the next year if you fail to forward this to at least your 100 closest friends."

So, the way this works is that if you're tagged, you're supposed to list 5 things about yourself that you think most people will not know. Here are my 5 things:

1. I have a tattoo of a turtle on my left ankle, which is there to remind me to be patient.
2. I'm a dual citizen with Switzerland and the US being my homelands. I'm not very neutral or good at yodeling, though I can cook up a pretty tasty fondue and rarely turn down chocolate.
3. I thought seriously about leaving my law practice a few years ago and starting a wine & travel business. I'm very happy with my decision to keep practicing law.
4. Before my tattoo (see #1) was a turtle, it was a smaller tattoo of sorority letters. An unimaginative choice I regretted ever since I "deactivated" from the sorority.
5. Eating raw carrots almost always gives me the hiccups.

I've tagged 5 other people: 3 CIS-ers, and two of my other favorite bloggers. So let's see who among them will continue this blogging game... Elizabeth Townsend Gard, Dave Levine, Joe Gratz, Dinah Sanders, and Colin Rule

Thanks to Evan Brown, I learned of the N.D. Texas opinion in Live Nation Motor Sports v. Davis. The case is about whether "webcasts" (or perhaps just a link) posted by www.supercrosslive.com infringe the copyright of SFX, a division of Clear Channel.

The opinion is disturbing for those involved webcasting or those making any distribution of on-line media by way of linking, framing, streaming or webcasting. The reason the opinion is disturbing is its ambiguous recitation of the critical facts in the case. Evan explains the confusion and points to the Perfect 10 v. Google case that was recently argued at the 9th Circuit. William Patry also finds the opinion "somewhat ambiguous" and has an excellent explanation about why the missing facts are so critical (and the comments on Patry's blog are insightful too). (See also others discussing this from Techmeme.) (Click on the read more link for more.)

Pandora, one of my favorite music discovery sites is going social. I'm psyched about it.