All in Copyright

I'm listening to another one of Command Line's podcasts, this time Rant: Is Fair Use a Right? (Command Line produces one of my five favorite podcasts.) Despite the logical nature of Command Line's thesis (he believes that copyright Fair Use is a "right," not just a legal defense) I'm still skeptical about being able to unambiguously explain to people what their "fair use" rights actually are.

Apple, iPods, and Personal Data Portability

I've been busy lately. My blogging has suffered. I've tried to update my blog's "daily notes" (located on my home page and archived here) but that's about it. I'm working offline on some longer white papers, I'm starting a new client project next week, I've been involved in a non-stop series of proposals and statements of work, and I've had to keep my plants watered during the drought here on the U.S. East Coast. Meanwhile, there are some really interesting "tech" things going on.
I’ve always been a frequent user of public libraries. In fact, I paid my high school and college tuition by working at the Bexley Public Library in Columbus, Ohio. We have a great public library system here in Alexandria Virginia. I’ve been using it steadily ever since my kids were little and we took them to weekly story hours at the Queen Street Branch.
Ed Felten, in Judge Geeks Out, Says Cablevision DVR Infringes, provides an overviw of how technology played into a recent court decision on a case where Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. was pitted against Cablevisions Systems Corp. (2007 WL 867093). The issue:
Blogger Joe Gratz on July 9 reported that United States District Court for the District of Colorado has found that a company called "CleanFlicks" infringes copyright. CleanFlicks, without authorization of copyright owners, has been creating and renting censored DVD-R copies of movies that it created through modification (censoring) of the original audio and/or video.
"Web 2.0 and Maintaining the Integrity of Online Intellectual Property - Is 'Meta-Information' the Answer?" is a Sys-Con "Web 2.0 Journal" article, published March 3, 2006, that addresses what happens when individual writings become modified and changed -- sometimes accidentally, sometimes on purpose -- through the collaborative and transformative functionality of content-oriented Web 2.0 applications.
J. Alex Halderman and Edward W. Felten have published their "Lessons from the Sony CD DRM Episode" after an open and collaborative publishing and review cycle on their Freedom to Tinker blog. In my review I've tried to hit what I think are the high points. I recommend the entire paper to anyone interested in the complex relationship between the music business and technology given continued erosion of the music CD's market viability.