Science and Technology

It’s really very simple: the DMCA prohibition against circumventing DVD copy-control is a clear violation of consumer fair use rights. What do citizens do when the law clearly violates their rights? They ignore it: A little program called DeCSS caused a lot of commotion when it surfaced on the Internet …

What with investigating and preventing terrorism and other somewhat important things, you would think we wouldn’t want the FBI distracted by tracking down Kazaa users. Not according to these two entertainment industry ass-lickers: A bill introduced in Congress on Thursday would put federal agents in the business of investigating and …

Exclusive 30-second clips of most of the songs from Warren Zevon’s brilliant forthcoming album The Wind are now up on the MSNBC story. It’s an excellent way to get a head start and this fateful disc. Please check it out – the Internet is a very cool thing.

Let it never be said that our Blogcritics aren’t newsworthy. Ryan Irelan was featured in the NY Times yesterday – how cool is that? The compulsion to get noticed by some of the big fish in the blogging world is tempting for many, however, because it can lead to significant …

Time’s new list of the 50 Best Websites is pretty standard fare: most of the ususal reference, info, shopping standards that are pretty hard to argue with. But then we come to the Blogs section. There is only one. It is Gawker. Let me think of how to put this …

A gathering to explore the future of P2P in L.A. Auguest 8: P2P Summit announced today its formation and date for the upcoming summit focused exclusively on the explosive file sharing phenomena and its impact on the future of entertainment. P2P Summit is seeking speakers, sponsors and exhibitors for the …

RIAA treading lightly with the four Verizon uploaders plus one Earthlink customer: Four Internet users at the center of a legal battle over copyright violations will receive cease-and-desist letters demanding they stop illegally offering free music for downloading, the Recording Industry Association of America said Wednesday. A U.S. appeals court …

Our own Dazzling David Weinberger featured in an anti-DRM essay by Steve Levy in Newsweek: When Steve Jobs introduced the iTunes music store a few weeks ago, the acclaim was nearly universal. Nonetheless, a small but vocal minority viewed the online emporium as a menace – because the iTunes program …

More copyright nightmares: Fan fiction – fiction created using characters and scenarios from books, TV, film, etc., is flourishing due to the Internet, and the largest body of all centers around Harry Potter. J.K. is tolerant unless the material veers into the “adult” range: As fans await the June 21 …

This is very interesting: My name is Jed Horovitz. I run a very small company that distributes the movie previews you see in your local video store. We have about a half dozen employees. We’ve been doing that for 16 years. In 1998, we started to help retailers like Netflix.com …