Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

Okay - I'll admit it: it doesn't take much to buy me off. I've bitched about buying and downloading mp3's to Linux machines and Amazon's non-support for a while - in fact those posts are some of the most visited on my site. But still I stick with Amazon. It's like some trailer park relationship. But now I'm willing to kiss and make up because now Amazon Prime memberships get FREE MUSIC STREAMING! (I'm doing the happy dance). I signed up for Prime around Christmas because (I told myself) I needed a package in a hurry. While normally I might have just popped for the extra shipping, the fact that Prime accounts get free 2 day shipping AND video streaming was enough to get me to fork over the cost of a Prime membership. You can do a free one month trial, so why not?  I don't watch a lot of stuff, but I watch some, and it's a nice deal. I even bought myself a Roku device (from Amazon!) for Father's Day this year to make it easier. But fr...

In a delicious bit of irony (at least from where I sit) the Internet is teaching Ron Paul a thing or two about free enterprise in the Net Economy. It seems a collection of his fans registered the domain "RonPaul.com" a while back and have amassed quite a mailing list through it:  170,000+  email addresses. Ron Paul now wants to buy it, but considers their asking price much too high. They generously offered him "RonPaul.org" for free, but he wants the .com version. Such is the nature of supply and demand, Dr. Paul. Refusing the free offer of RonPaul.org, and unwilling to pony up the $250,000 the current holders are asking for RonPaul.com, the libertarian icon is filing his case with the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization, demanding the current holders turn over *both* domains to him. This is, of course, the very same U.N. he was referring to in 1998, when he said: The choice is very clear: we either follow the Constitution or submi...

Perhaps you went to look up something on Wikipedia today, or Google, or any of a number of other sites, only to find them dark. "What the hell is SOPA?" you may be asking. What the hell indeed. SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act (HR3261); PIPA is its lesser known bastard sibling: Protect Intellectual Property Act. Both were drafted at the behest of the Big Media cartels who own the rights to most movies, audio recordings, television shows, and print media. Note I did not say they created these things: they merely own the "rights" to them (whatever that means). Because their business model is broken, they've decided to break the Internet. In it's original form, SOPA criminalizes certain web technologies, whether there are legitimate uses or not. It allow the Justice Department to order the takedown of websites, without any type of due process, and make sites criminally liable for user-created content. A Big Company, irked by a website criti...

This just in from several sources: Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor, failed vice-presidential candidate, political pundit and reality television star, is attempting to trademark herself . No, I am not kidding you. Reuters helpfully points out , "Legal experts said it is relatively unusual for politicians to formally trademark their names because they are generally not associated with commercially valuable products or services." That has to be the money quote for the day. Mainstream Republicans everywhere are probably heaving sighs of relief everywhere since this can be taken as a sign that Sarah Palin the former governor of Alaska has privately concluded she doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being the 2012 GOP presidential candidate, much less a shot at actually getting elected. Henceforth all speaking, campaigning, prophesying and general self-promotion should now be considered commercial activity, not political. While it's doubtful that S...

 Ever hear how Amazon managed to patent the idea of " One-Click Shopping? "  That's right -- they were granted a patent for the idea of pre-entering your credit card info so when you clicked on the "Buy Now" button, you didn't have to re-enter all your financial data.  When Barnes and Noble later offered a similar service, Amazon sued for (get this) patent infringement. Years later, large chunks of the original broad patent were thrown out, but not without a lot of money being flushed down the toilet that is occasionally our legal system. The European Patent Office refused to grant a patent. This sort of nonsense abounds. A couple of weeks ago, a new short documentary was released on-line entitled, " Patent Absurdity: how software patents broke the system. " In it, independent filmmaker Luca Lucarini looks at how our current patent system has managed to screw by issuing patents on the flimsiest of premises and the history of how this sorry st...

Imagine you were a guitar player. You're no Leo Kottke, but you can hold your own on open mike night at the local bar. How would feel if you discovered, buried in the fine print in the owner's manual that came with your Martin D-15, something that said you could only perform with said guitar for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes? Or suppose you were an artist - a painter - and discovered the brushes you used to paint your last masterpiece came with the same restriction: for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes only? Or a writer, with the same restrictions on anything that came out of your word-processor? Freaking ridiculous, eh? Guess what, all you photographers shooting digital video, your camera may have the same restriction. It's about the technology used to encode the video (the "codec"). OS News (one of my favorite technology sites) has a long article about the licensing restrictions placed on one of the more commo...

Jailbreaking iPhones is apparently the national pastime. I wouldn't know, since I'm a Nokia man myself (T-Mobile has me by the short hairs). Since the iPhone's launch in 2007, Apple has had a running battle with hackers who like the cool factor of the iPhone but chaff under the restrictive controls imposed by Apple on how owners can use the freaking thing. Hackers defeat controls, Apple pushes a firmware update to lock things down: repeat ad nauseum. Now, as a response to the Electronic Freedom Foundation's petition to legalize jailbreaking, Apple is screaming that the modified devices could possibly, maybe be used to disrupt cell phone tower software and create a denial of service. Never mind that millions have already unlocked their phones and we don't seem to have a problem. Oh please. I don't know which is more lame -- that Apple would be so desperate as to play the "terrorist card" -- so Bush era -- or they would be so arrogant as to t...

Warner Bros. has probably issued many a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice against people's web sites. This time they may have screwed up: they did it against Lawrence Lessig .

At first glance, there is much to admire about California's senior senator, Dianne Feinstein: first female President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, San Francisco's first female mayor, first woman to serve in the Senate from California, first woman on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and first woman to chair the Senate Rules Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee. During the 1990's she led the fight to ban semi-automatic weapons and supported a number of environmental issues, including bills to protect the California desert. Lately she seems to have turned to the dark side. In August 2007, she voted with Republicans to modify the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) making it easier for the government to monitor phone calls and email messages of American citizens. In February 2008, she again joined Republicans in voting to grant immunity to telecommunication companies for illegal wiretapping for Government agencies. In December 2005 she stated, ...

Despite the fact that much evil stupidity pervades the web, there is a lot of good stuff out there as well. Here's a random assortment of free books (in PDF form) you may or may not find interesting. Copyright and Intellectual Property Lessig and Boyle may well prove to be some of the most important writers about the Internet Age around. Free Culture (Lawrence Lessig) The Future of Ideas (Lawrence Lessig) Code Version 2.0 (Lawrence Lessig) The Public Domain (James Boyle) Bound by Law? (James Boyle) Tech/Web books Web and computer books seem to have a shorter shelf-life than fish. Electronic books make lots of sense. Mastering Java Beans, 3rd Edition Ubuntu Pocket Guide Sitepoint books - numerous excellent sample chapters available on web technology, including CSS; occasional free offers. The Definitive Guide to Linux Network Programming Literature We all have to relax a little, right? Chess books PlanetPDF classic literature Penn State electronic classics Planet eBook Humor Pillar...

Lawrence Lessig, one of my heroes, was on Colbert Report last night, pushing his new book, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy , about how current copyright law is hampering creativity and commercial opportunities, as well as criminalizing our youth. Lessig has written for years about copyright and intellectual property issues. His last 3 books are available for purchase as hard copy or free PDF download . The man walks the walk, not just talks the talk. Damn -- he gave as good as he got from Colbert, not an easy thing to do. Enjoy. The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Lawrence Lessig Colbert at Christmas Colbert Christmas DVD Green Screen Bill O'Reilly Interview Here's a more extended presentation by Lessig (about an hour) from November 2008 at NYU.

Lawrence Lessig , one of my heroes, has an essay at Newsweek.com on why we should shut down the Federal Communications Commision. While this sounds a lot like something some of my loopy Libertarian friends would preach, I have a lot of respect for Lessig so I'm willing to reserve judgment -- for now. His main contention is that the FCC enables monopolies (bad) which stifle innovation. In its place, he proposes: Congress should create something we could call the Innovation Environment Protection Agency (iEPA), charged with a simple founding mission: "minimal intervention to maximize innovation." The iEPA's core purpose would be to protect innovation from its two historical enemies—excessive government favors, and excessive private monopoly power. Lessig has been mentioned as a possible head of the FCC ; he's known Obama since the two of them taught together at the University of Chicago. In the past Lessig has been a big proponent of net neutrality and has also w...

There is an assault on the freedom of ideas these days. The weapons on this assault are copyright laws and the murky idea of "intellectual property," Rich powerful corporations hiding behind familiar and friendly names are leading this assault. It pains me to say, this unsavory alliance cuts across political lines: Democrats and Republicans are both guilty. A little history: " copyright " is the right of a creator of an original work to control distribution for a certain time period, after which it falls into the "public domain." The Copyright Clause of the United States Constitution (1787) authorized copyright legislation: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The founding fathers set the term to be 27 years. The idea was that the author was protected during the period of the copyright against unauthorized co...