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.
All in Copyright
If I write something that is likely to be changed by the distribution system or by the actions of collaborating authors, what do I own? What if, when I write a blog article I come back and regularly change, update, and correct the original, and add comments? Do I have a way of knowing if people who read the original will know that I've made corrections or changes? These are difficuly questions, and one way to help answer them is to develop registration systems to help identify and describe works and their owners (or creators).
Part of the evolving Web 2.0 environment is the collection and redistribution of original content and conversations as well as meta-information (tags etc.) relating to that content. What we are seeing are not only the easy creation of online content and media but also the sharing of that content and associated information and conversations. Functions such as aggregation of feeds and mash-up of application services are examples of operations that take place where original content and functionality may be combined and recombined in new, unique, and potentially powerful ways. We need to make sure, though, that in the process we don't destroy the integrity of the intellectual property we now find it so easy to copy and manipulate.
Collaborative Deconstruction of DRM
There's a terrific series of articles and comments over at Freedom to Tinker that involves the authors' pre-publication of a detailed analysis of DRM technology. Some of the stuff is pretty technical, but if you take the time, you'll be impressed with the analysis and with the many intelligent comments that are being left (I left one, for example!)
Fellow blogger Martin McKeay (this links to his blog) recently commented on "feedjacking" of podcasts and RSS feeds. He recently started podcasting and has been researching where links originate. He and others (just do a Google search for "feedjacking" to find out who) are noting that it is possible to "feedjack" links to podcasts and RSS streams.
Technology, Copyright, and Fair Use
One of Gillespie’s themes is that Fair Use made a lot of sense when obtaining permissions was cumbersome and onerous. According to Gillespie, this justification is becoming less valid given that systems such as those developed by the Copyright Clearance Center are so easy to use. He then goes on to discuss the arguments for Fair Use that relate to support for free speech and criticism.
Today BBC Online published an interesting editorial about the Google Print Library project by Bill Thompson, a digital author, editorialist, and blogger. Thompson comes down against "authors" and for Google and offers some interesting views on copyright, including a statement that it is a mistake to compare copyright with "traditional" concepts of ownership and property.
Perhaps the controversy that is raised by this Google project will be addressed by the development of an appropriate payment scheme agreeable to all whereby copyright owners are explicitly compensated for the value contributed to Google services, as measured by their sharing in the ad revenues generated by use of the search system. One can envision, too, a pool of money generated by advertising related to hits on works whose owners cannot be found, a pool which could be distributed through an industry or nonprofit group specializing in such issues.
Identity Theft and the Licensing of Personal Information
Many companies benefit from the buying and selling of personal, financial, and medical information about individual US citizens. Usually these companies behave in a responsible, law-abiding fashion.