Discussion of all things related to Public Domain

[tom poe <tompoe AT amihost.com>]

OPEN STUDIOS: RUNNING BOARD 

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If you're wondering where Newsletter Issue #2: February, 2005 is, . . .
it never happened.  And, believe me, you don't want to know why.  :)
The Newsletter Team 
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CONTENTS: 
ENTERTAINMENT NEWS 
COMMUNITY SCENE 
HOW THEY DID IT 
FEATURED ARTISTS 
COLUMNS 
Anatoly Volynets 
COMMONS GALLERY BEST OF THE BEST 

Open Studios continues its registration process with states throughout
the country.  As a nonprofit organization, we seek donations and
contributions from the public.  Many states therefore, require that we
register with them.  Some five states permit registration without fees,
or don't require registration at all at this point.  The rest,
apparently, require fees of $10, $15, up to $80 USD or more.  We view
this process as an important and necessary, if not onerous, burden.  Can
you help?  The full story is at:
http://www.ibiblio.org/studioforrecording/statereg.html .  We call it
our SPONSOR A STATE PROJECT. 
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ENTERTAINMENT NEWS: 
Each month, we'll highlight a few of the previous month's news articles
(hopefully with active links).  Subscribers and supporters are
encouraged to email us with links you found to be interesting.  We'll
add them here.  It's a good way for collecting an archive you can refer
to when you need it as part of your Internet business strategies. 
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http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_1/kretschmer/
Artists' Earnings and Copyright:A Review of British and German Music
Industry data in the context of digital technologies
by Martin Kretschmer

 Digital technologies are often said (1) to enable a qualitatively new
engagement with already existing cultural materials (for example through
sampling and adaptation); and, (2) to offer a new disintermediated
distribution channel to the creator. A review of secondary data on music
artists’ earnings and eight in–depth interviews conducted in 2003–04 in
Britain and Germany indicate that both ambitions have remained largely
unfulfilled. The article discusses to what extent the structure of
copyright law is to blame, and sets out a research agenda.
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http://www.boingboing.net/2005/01/05/bill_gates_free_cult.html
Bill Gates: Free Culture advocates = Commies
I imagine my blog-mate Cory might have a few things to say about this
when he's online again. :-) In an interview on news.com, Microsoft
co-founder Bill Gates described free culture advocates as a "modern-day
sort of communists." Well now.
Q: "In recent years, there's been a lot of people clamoring to reform
and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a
few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, 'We've got to
look at patents, we've got to look at copyrights.' What's driving this,
and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?

A: "No, I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe
in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in
the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of
communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and
moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think
that those incentives should exist.

And this debate will always be there. I'd be the first to say that the
patent system can always be tuned--including the U.S. patent system.
There are some goals to cap some reform elements. But the idea that the
United States has led in creating companies, creating jobs, because
we've had the best intellectual-property system--there's no doubt about
that in my mind, and when people say they want to be the most
competitive economy, they've got to have the incentive system.
Intellectual property is the incentive system for the products of the
future." 
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EFFector 18.1: Music Industry Must Respect Privacy of Filesharers
January 6, 2005  donna AT eff.org

EFF's EyeTV Review: Free Your Digital TV Before It's 
Too Late! 

There's only half a year left before the Federal 
Communications Commission (FCC) takes away your right 
to watch digital television on a device that isn't 
Hollywood-approved.  Under the new "Broadcast Flag" 
regime, the FCC will mandate that every digital 
television device include the kind of technology that 
we see in cable personal video recorders (PVRs) and
media center PCs - technology that allows entertainment 
companies to do things like arbitrarily erase your 
stored episodes of "Six Feet Under" after two weeks 
so that you'll be forced to pay-per-view your 
end-of-season marathon, or stop you from burning "The 
Sopranos" to DVD to force you to buy the DVD boxed 
sets.
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U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals

IN RE: CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS, INC. (01/04/05 - No. 03-3802)
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. section 512(h), does not
permit copyright owners and their representatives to obtain and serve
subpoenas on internet service providers (ISPs) to obtain personal
information about an ISP's subscribers who are alleged to be
transmitting copyrighted works via the internet through file sharing
programs. 
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/8th/033802P.pdf [PDF File]
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http://www.counterpunch.org/glahn09062003.html
RIAA WATCH     September 6, 2003
Slumlords of the Internet
By BILL GLAHN

"I won't even get into "is a limited license to the public a rental?" If
it is, the whole download-for-dollars scheme would be illegal. 'Cause
the RIAA made sure of that when the greedy bastards lobbied to outlaw
music rentals with the 1985 Record Rental Act."
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http://tinyurl.com/52nut
How copyright could be killing culture
The high cost of getting permission to use archival footage and photos
threatens to put makers of documentaries out of business

By GUY DIXON
Monday, January 17, 2005 - Page R1 

"As Americans commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. and his legacy today,
no television channel will be broadcasting the documentary series Eyes
on the Prize. Produced in the 1980s and widely considered the most
important encapsulation of the American civil-rights movement on video,
the documentary series can no longer be broadcast or sold anywhere."
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". . . with the introduction of the Internet and the World Wide Web,
students are able to research and then publish their ideas."
http://wonders.eburg.wednet.edu/Topics/GMMIE/shortHist2.htm
history of educational computing 

http://wonders.eburg.wednet.edu/Galleryw.htm
This page illustrates that not all schools are created equal.
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http://www.freepress.net/news/6304
Shan't!
>From The Economist, January 6, 2005
"Take, for example, the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network
(CUWiN), in Illinois. This group is trying to create a so-called meshed
Wi-Fi network. Wi-Fi is a wireless technology that allows broadband
internet communication over a range of about 50 metres. That range
could, however, be extended if the devices in an area were configured to
act as “platforms” that both receive and transmit signals. Messages
would then hop from one platform to another until they got to their
destination. That would allow such things as neighbourhood mobile-phone
companies and a plethora of radio and TV stations, and all for almost no
cost. But to make such goodies work, CUWiN needs to tweak the underlying
capabilities of Wi-Fi chips in special ways."
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http://www.eff.org/endangered/
Help EFF Protect the Environment for Innovation!
Endangered Gizmos

The result is a world in which, increasingly, only industry-approved
devices and technologies are "allowed" to survive in the marketplace.

This is bad news for innovation and free competition, but it also
threatens a wide range of activities the entertainment conglomerates
have no use for -- everything from making educational "fair" use of TV
or movie clips for a classroom presentation, to creating your own "Daily
Show"-style video to make a political statement, to simply copying an
MP3 file to a second device so you can take your music with you.

Rather than sit back and watch as promising new technologies are picked
off one-by-one, EFF has created the Endangered Gizmos List to help you
defend fair use and preserve the environment for innovation.
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http://news.corporate.findlaw.com/ap/a/w/1154/1-25-2005/20050125131504_05.html
Olson, Hollywood Team Up at Supreme Court
Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2005 - AP

"The world is watching to see whether we really mean what we say when we
promise protection to innovation and the creative process," Olson, who
filed arguments on behalf of the Defenders of Property Rights, said
Tuesday at a news conference.

"Now he's [attorney, Theodore Olson] at the Supreme Court again, this
time on the side of artists including Jimmy Buffett, Sheryl Crow, the
Dixie Chicks, the Eagles, Reba McEntire, Avril Lavigne and Kenny
Rogers."

"The Supreme Court's landmark decision in Sony Corporation of America v.
Universal City Studios, Inc. (a.k.a. the "Sony Betamax ruling") held
that a distributor cannot held liable for users' infringement so long as
the tool is capable of substantial noninfringing uses." 
from http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/MGM_v_Grokster/, and this,
"In MGM v. Grokster, the Ninth Circuit found that P2P file-sharing
software is capable of, and is in fact being used for, noninfringing
uses. Relying on the Betamax precedent, the court ruled that the
distributors of Grokster and Morpheus software cannot be held liable for
users' copyright violations. The plaintiffs appealed, and in December
2004 the Supreme Court granted certiorari."
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http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_2/beer/index.html
Reflecting on the Digit(al)isation of Music
By David Beer
"This paper is a collection of notes written in response to the main
themes contained in Martin Kretschmer’s essay "Artists’ earnings and
copyright: A review of British and German music industry data in the
context of digital technologies" (2005), which was published recently in
First Monday. These notes are intended to focus briefly on the
exploration of these themes with the intention of generating and
developing questions that may open doors for future study. The objective
of this piece is not the review of Kretschmer’s essay; rather it is an
attempt to probe, to examine, and to question its findings and guiding
themes. These notes, therefore, are left as a set of open suggestions
rather than defining statements. It is hoped that this fits with the
emergent and yet to be embedded field of study to which they relate."
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http://news.findlaw.com/andrews/bt/int/20050210/20050210napster.html
Federal Court Allows Investor Antitrust Suit Over Napster Failure
By Deborah Nathan, Esq.
Intellectual Property Litigation Reporter
Thursday, Feb. 10, 2005

" The venture capital company that invested $13 million in Napster Inc.,
the bankrupt peer-to-peer network company, can pursue its antitrust
action against the music companies whose suit brought Napster down, a
federal court in California has ruled."
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THE COMMUNITY SCENE: 
Open Studios works with communities around the country and around the
world to build and operate community-based recording studios.  You can
keep up with the latest happenings by checking this section each month. 
Learn what others are doing, and get ideas for your community. 

NO ENTRY THIS MONTH
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HOW THEY DO IT: 
This on-going series explores potential business strategies and ideas
for musicians, artists, and authors interested in pursuing careers
outside mainstream industry practices: 

As technology advances, community-based recording studios will become
more and more sophisticated, and the day is not far off, when you and I
will expect to be able to create DVDs, or tv shows, or radio shows as
easily as we create documents and web sites, today.  However, there are
those who refuse to accept the inevitable, and are attempting to stop
the flow of technology to you and I.  Case in point:
http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/cookbook/
" . . . . the Broadcast Flag will outlaw the manufacture and import of a
whole host of TiVo-like devices that send DTV signals into a computer
for backup, editing, and playback."

As musicians, artists, authors seek to discover the wonders of using the
Internet to create, and implement, strategies to support their careers,
one consideration looks to the future.  When the day will come, who
knows, but it will come, and soon, when each of us can create the
equivalent of today's high quality broadcasts on television, easily. 
When that happens, the message can be transmitted to a worldwide
"television audience", the same as we see emails circulating, and web
sites presenting products and services and information, today.

So, preparations are ongoing, as-we-speak, to provide alternatives to
corporations that do not want you and I to be able to engage such
technology.  I hope you will spend some time with the information at
EFF.org, and I hope you enjoy reading about the marvelous PVR activity
they are supporting and encouraging.  PVR is coming to your
community-based recording studio, soon.
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FEATURED ARTISTS: 

NO ENTRY THIS MONTH
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COLUMNS: 
A]  Anatoly Volynets - Culture vs. Copyright 

NO ENTRY THIS MONTH 
Anatoly Volynets, Board member of Open Studios, and President of
Total-knowledge.com, will continue his thoughts next month about the
copyright implications on culture.  You can contact Anatoly at: 
av AT total-knowledge.com
*** 
This article licensed under Authoright: 
http://www.culturedialogue.org/ 
*** 
Literary editing by Alexandra Volynets 
*** 
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COMMONS GALLERY BEST OF THE BEST: 
The Creative Commons Project offers musicians, artists, and authors a
nifty way to meet their legal needs for licensing their works for
distribution across the Internet.  If readers discover interesting
material that sports the Creative Commons tag, let us know, and we'll
link it here.  Attach your photo with your suggested link, to be added
to the gallery.  Let's spread the word! 

NO ENTRY THIS MONTH 
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Remember when cars sported running boards out of practical necessity? 
Most roads back then weren't paved like our roads, today. 

The Digital Age, still in its' infancy, requires the use of electronic
running boards.  People are out there that have never used a computer. 
Most people don't understand how computers work [I just raised my hand],
let alone how to make CD's, DVD's, MP3's, OGG, WAV, and the list goes
on. 

And, in the arts and sciences, from musicians to artists to authors, the
knowledge that recordings no longer requires an expensive recording
studio is restricted to just a few.  This newsletter intends to help
musicians, artists, and authors to step out and enter the Digital Age. 
We'll provide the running board to help you avoid the "mud".  If you're
involved in the arts, we hope you'll join us each month. 
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OPEN STUDIOS:RUNNING BOARD is available as a loose-leaf binder
subscription for your home or office.  Tastefully done, I might add, to
impress your friends and visitors, or to give as a lovely gift to
friends and relatives.  Help support Open Studios by ordering your
subscription, today.  Visit our online gift shop at:
http://www.cafepress.com/openstudios/ 
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http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/community_studios
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send email to tompoe AT studioforrecording.org
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http://www.ibiblio.org/studioforrecording/
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and let us know what you'd like to do. 
- - - 
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and click on the DONATE NOW link.  Or, if you prefer, send a check or
money order to: 
Open Studios 
P.O. Box 7202 
Reno, NV 89510-7202 
NOTE:  Check our wish list for contributions we need:
http://www.ibiblio.org/studioforrecording/wishlist.html
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Licensed as Public Domain with the Creative Commons Project, August 1,
2003. 
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