Stanford Center for Internet and Society

The Copyright Office periodically sends out a summary of notices and upcoming dates and deadlines from its News Net service. News Net Issue 304, which I received today, made me pause. It's chalk full of upcoming roundtables and opportunities to comment and take an active role on policy matters. These issues cover the span of international questions about broadcasting rights to looking at exceptions to copyright for libraries and archives. Here's the complete rundown of what's on tap for early 2007 (click on the "read more" link):

Jason Van Orden brought an issue about FTC rules as they apply to "affiliate marketing" to my attention today. He writes about an issue raised by Gary Ruskin of Commercial Alert with the FTC about buzz marketing and it's potential harms on children.

The Future of Music Coalition holds a policy summit each year. Last October the summit was convened in Montreal, Canada, in conjunction with Pop Montreal and McGill University's Schulich School of Music. If you were like me, and couldn't attend this year's summit, never fear: the FMC has fully archived the conference and you can listen to podcasts and webcasts of the various speakers, panels and discussions. This is bound to be a great resource for those interested being part of the "forum for musicians, lawyers, academics, policymakers and music industry executives to come together to discuss and debate some of the most contentious issues surrounding digital technology, artists’ rights and the current state of the music industry." Great job FMC, and thank you for the excellent archive.

Just received a link to this article which reports on the outcome of the Japanese version of our Grokster case, only this case is in the criminal context (rather than civil). The Kyoto District Court convicted Isamu Kaneko, a former teaching assistant from the University of Tokyo and the creator of "Winny" a pear-to-peer file sharing program, of inducing others to infringe copyright. He's been fined nearly $13,000, and now holds the unique place in history of being "the first software developer to be held responsible for the unlawful activities of others." The article reports Kaneko's statement:

"I regret, more than anything else, that the verdict could cause Japanese software engineers to fear accusations of possibly assisting (in criminal activities) and prevent them from developing useful technologies," Kaneko said in a statement.

The article further states:

Based on Kaneko's statements during the investigation and those posted on his Web site, the court acknowledged that he did not actively encourage copyright infringements over the Internet.

But the court ruled that the defendant promoted his program among general users, and that he took no action to prevent copyright violations.

The ruling also pointed out that Kaneko enabled an unspecified number of users to use the Winny program knowing full well that many of the files exchanged were under copyright.

For those reasons, the court said Kaneko's actions helped Winny users conduct illegal activities.

I share Kaneko's concern that widespread prosecution of "inducement" claims in copyright could harm innovation and development of important new technologies. Kaneko is appealing the verdict.

Rob Welch, author of Tricks of the Podcasting Masters, interviewed me recently about the Podcasting Legal Guide and my forthcoming podcast series that will address the legal questions of podcasters and video bloggers. (Yes, you read that correctly... I'll soon move from just speaking about podcasts and law, and actually enter the ranks as a podcaster myself.)

The Rise of Participation Culture reports and summarizes a number of trends and explains "why the Internet and a new wave of Web applications have been embraced by a tech-savvy generation and spawned a culture of participation". Steve Borsch does a thoughtful job of reviewing (albeit at a high level) a number of aspects of the new web (or Web 2.0, the LiveWeb, NextGenWeb, or whatever else we want to call it) in three broad categories: Internet as Platform, Participation Applications and People. (Also available from Borsch's blog, Connecting the Dots.) This report hits all the highlights and is worth a read if you're looking for the big picture... you know, that proverbial forest through the trees.

This is too funny. I had to share it here. Check out Chris Pirillo's comparison of YouTube vs. GoogleVideo vs. Revver. When I do the comparison from my DSL w/ a macbook, it seems like the YouTube and Revver sites load and run fine. The Google Video one (in the middle), however, keeps buffering and stalling... In a

Last week the Pew/Internet & American Life Project issued a Data Memo about Podcast Downloading. It concludes that 12% of internet users have dowloaded a podcast and notes that men (15%) download more than women (8%). The study also compares an analogous survey from February - April 2006 with results from the more recent survey of August 2006. With the exception of users aged 65+, which remained the same (4%), in every demographic group they studied, the percentage of people who have downloaded a podcast has increased.

Watch the new "Wanna Work Together" video (3 min), and click on the ad!

In catching up on some email and other odds and end this holiday weekend, I came upon this totally cool email from Larry Lessig about how Creative Commons is fund raising through Revver. Lessig writes:

We have a new site here at CIS and it's tripped out with a number of cool features. I'm going to play with the tagging and will do my best to figure out how drupal works. So far, so good.

In the two days since the site launched there have been a number of things I've wanted to post about. I was unable to log in to the site due to some special "features", eh hem, but that's all fixed now... So, without further ado, here are a few things I wanted to jot down: