So the price war for broadband continues here in Japan. This snippet, shot from Jiro Kokuryo’s phone, tells it all. NTT now offers 12 mbs for about $20/month. And 100 mbs (fiber) for $46/month. According to LowerMyBills.com, I can get 1.5 mbs for $50/month in San Francisco. Where is war when you need it?
Stanford’s recent stand in favor of knowledge is wonderful. The criticism needs to be matched by strong support. I, for one, a recent transplant to paradise, am proud of my University.
I received an email from Eben Moglen today. Eben’s been donating his time and legal talent to the Free Software Foundation for a very long time. (He, unlike some of us, is a real coder as well as legaloid, and he’s about the most impressive and passionate speaker I’ve ever seen).
Eben’s missive was a request for money for the Free Software Foundation. He has put his money where his missive is. Though he has given many times this amount in his own time, he wrote a check this month to FSF for $20,000.
At about the same time I heard about that, I receive a notice from the treasurer of the Eldred Legal Defense Fund (which does not need money at the moment), that we had received an extremely large contribution from “someone in Japan.” I tracked it down, and discovered that the incredibly talented Mr. Yamagata, who has translated tons of great stuff, and also has translated my books, has a policy of giving “50% of the money [he] earns from free-software related translation to free-software related projects.”
And on the very same day I learned about this gift from Yamagata, I learned of the work of Luke Francl to take a bit from my OSCON speech and try to do some good with it.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching, and tinkering, in this web-log space, it is that the many tiny brushstrokes of thousands paints more and more powerfully than the blast of even the most important and powerful papers. (This is especially true here in Japan, as innovators such as Joi have tried to show.)
But just as these words are important to reason, so too is the support of right-acting organizations important to getting good done. Social entrepreneur Henri Poole (another strong FSF supporter) has built a powerful tool to translate reputation into support. (See the description here.) But whether you use his tools or not, it is at this time of the year when donations are crucial.
As I indicate on my Affero page, I count FSF and EFF as the two key players to support. But whether these two, or two others, do something now. If not as much as Eben, or as principled as Hiroo, then at least enough to show that reason has support.
Doc reports being Comfort[ed] by free-IP. Soon hotels will post “Free IP” on their signs, and just as “Free TV” signs seems silly to us today, an optimistic sort might imagine our kids laughing in the future, “how silly, of course IP is free.” If only we could find optimism… seesupra.
We’re holding a conference on March 1 at Stanford about spectrum policy. If that sounds boring, then you really need to pay a bit more attention to the next extraordinarily important policy issue affecting innovation and growth. There is about to be a very significant shift in how spectrum is managed. One school says it should be propertized; another says it should be treated as a commons. Read: auctions vs. WiFi; or more auctions vs. mesh networks. The question for the conference is which model makes most sense. The day will end with a “moot court” which will be judged by FCC Chairman Powell, Judge Alex Kozinski, economist Harold Demsetsz, and possibly Senator Barbara Boxer. Go here to learn more.
Jason Schultz has done more amazing work calculating any “chaos” that would come from striking the 1976 Act. Using the Internet Movie Database, he confirmed the Copyright Office’s numbers that about 37,000 movies were released in the period 1927-46. (IMDb reports 36,386). Of those, only 2,480 are currently available in any format, or 6.8%. 93.2% of the films during that period are are commercially dormant. Another way to put this: Jack Valenti’s crowd says exclusive rights are the only way to assure content gets distributed. So we have a nice experiment: For the films between 1927-46, exclusive rights fails to make available 93.2% of the content produced. Does anyone really doubt the public domain would do better? Jason’s email is here.
In an otherwise great piece for CNET (not run on his list), Declan reported last week that Judge Posner expressed skepticism about expanding IP rights, and that he “praised [me] for challenging the CTEA.” Declan’s a careful reporter, but there is exactly zero chance that Posner said that. Whatever his views about the economic merits of the Sonny Bono Act, federal judges (and especially this seasoned and careful federal judge) don’t go around expressing personal views about the merits of pending lawsuits.
Declan has a nice article which cozies up a bit more to the idea of Geeks (and geeks-wanna-bes, like me) getting more involved in the political process. That’s progress from where he was last summer. But I was surprised to read his criticism this morning of Amnesty International, which has criticized those who provide technology to enable Chinese censorship. Declan thinks it better for AI to “focus its otherwise good work on the real culprits: The Chinese government.” Apparently, while Geeks are unlikely to persuade Washington to call off the war that is killing IT, AI is likely to persuade China to reform civil rights.
a great article about one of the most important reasons that this side will win.
In Eldred v. Ashcroft, we challenged the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. During oral argument, the Court asked whether our rule would affect the 1976 Act’s extension. Though this issue had not been briefed, we indicated that it would, but that the Court’s own caselaw gave it a way to strike the 1998 Act without striking the 1976 Act.
Justice Bryer in particular was concerned about the effect on contracts entered into in reliance on the 1976 Act. His view seemed to be that there would be “chaos” if those contracts were invalidated.
Jason Schultz of Fish and Richardson and Deirdre Mulligan of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology (both of whom worked on a great amicus brief in the case) have now looked at the numbers. Their work is great, and the numbers surprising. See the chart on books here and the brief analysis here. Bottom line: a surprisingly small amount of work would be affected.
