Idea Lawyer Blog

ASCAP is thrilled estimating as much as $100 million in payments covering 7 years period ending in 2009; Digital Media Assoc., repping internet services, declines comment.

U.S. District Judge William Conner's 153-page decision didn't specify the total amount owed to the ASCAP members, but he provided an example on how the formula would apply to the music royalties owed by AOL and Yahoo for 2006. Under the formula endorsed by Conner, AOL owed 2006 fees of $5.95 million and Yahoo owed $6.76 million.

Read the whole story all over the net, including
HERE

Malware is an ugly reality in cyberspace. Hackers ceaselessly barrage us with incendiary code calculated to thwart break or pervert our software.
A new threat: violate our copyright, and we'rr report you to..to..to US!!!

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_9111031

Continue reading "Copyright for Code Thugs" »

Who says the Internet is over-hyped, brain mushifying and de-humanizing?
See
DOGSTER
and if you're feeling click-happy, try
CHESS
and if you are inclined to "share a stash" (or want to know what it entails)
try
RAVELRY

Silicon Valley seminar...
FWE&E
Ustreamtv

First speaker Ross Mayfield
Edleman Survey Trust Peers

Second speaker Jeremiah Owyang, presented Online Community Best Practiceshttp://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0.7211,44795,00.html

Open Social
[Neville Note: and at this point the tv disconnected....bleeeeeeeh
reconnected through webcommunityforum ... lost 40 minutes, but will be archived on FWE&E site]

Check Out these sites:

TeeBeeDee

Ning

And don't forget to see
Danah Boyd and Lucy Gray two social network gurus

Inquiring minds: this is me playing GH in Second Life :)

check out the newly launched
http://wowowow.com
and the NYT coverage
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/fashion/06WOW.html
I did write in and comment about the silly high-heeled shoe icon as the tag for "The Women"...am I the only one of the opinion they could come up with an icon that was not emblematic of gender specific torture and bondage and many trips to the chiropodist/chiropractor?

The proper use of honorifics is no small matter in Germany, a society given to formality where even longtime neighbors insist on addressing each other using their surnames. Those with advanced degrees like to show them off, and it is not uncommon to earn more than one. A male faculty member with two PhDs can fully expect to be called "Herr Professor Dr. Dr. Schmidt," for example.

Stanford attracted a full house at the "free to the public thanks to the generous support of GOOGLE" Legal Futures conference Saturday March 8, 2008. It followed an all day "invitation" session and one could detect that more than a few participants referred to Friday and continued discussions to which most of the "public" (read: not invited to Friday) were not privy.
The weather: delicious!!!
The food: yummy (see photo post below) The seating: ergonomic The discourse: temperate as the weather

The first "Foo session" after the oft imitated, never duplicated O'Reilly Foo Camp

The Future of Professionally Created Content. OR
Critical Thinking and Learning to Triangulate from various sources of questionable veracity.
The Honorable Alex Kozinski primed the discussion by posing where will the objective (read "professional") news gathering come from now that the 60 feet on the ground in Bagdad are not paid for by the NYT. Although largely limited to the predictable gab about cost of distribution of mass consumed content (a la Lord of the Rings thanks to Cappucio of Time Warner) some panelists did go a bit deeper. Lessig tossed out Sandler's Foundation: journalism in the public interest. Microsoft Assoc. GC Tom Rubin dubbed the internet "short form creativity".
UC Berkeley prof and Google Chief economist Hal Varian quipped that folks pay to support a NY Yankee but not a NY Times Reporter and hey, that's just the market.
How can you get your news (pudding) if you don't read the paper (eat yer meat- apologies Pink Floyd)

Allusions were made to the age of NY Times readership (54) and the source of news to the YouTube generation: The Daily Show.

On truthfulness: my scribbles lead me to ascribe Cappucio with a story of news in cold war Russia, where a reader assumes everybody is lying and therefore the reader "triangulates" from a variety of "untrustworthy" sources to figure out the truth.
So is the moral of the story, don't believe everything you see on YouTube and the Daily Show?

Noteworthy:
Paul Cappucio, General Counsel of Time Warner said the music industry is doing FINE. !?!!?

Larry Lessig seemed intent on brawling with ALEX KEEN (whose business card dubs himself "the antichrist of silicon valley") on matters in Keen's book, "The Cult of the Amateur: how today's internet is killing our culture." Foo Session or not, participants deserve to be let in on what took the appearance of a domestic squabble, with most of the action offstage.

For a different take, see:
Valley Zen coverage of Professional versus Amateur Content

Panelists (L to R) : Lawrence Lessig, Andrew Keen, Hal Varian, Tom Rubin, Paul Cappuccio, and the Honorable Alex Kozinski

Or is it Center for Internet and Society? After a full day Saturday, I have a stack of cards, and a jumble of notes. Then there was the Open Source reception..followed by the sale at Tommy Bahama on Sunday....a busy weekend it was .......up next: our interview with Andrew Keen, author of the controversial "The Cult Of The Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture"
Followed by World of Warcraft.....who said we're not eclectic :)

FREE RICE

TEST Build Your LEGO MASTERPIECE

And the url (reachable via a link in the above article) for the Mac
download. The program's apparently from Lego itself, and v. 2.0 just
released a few days ago:

LDD

Post-Writer's Strike comments re-hash the same old tune: there's gold in the new and different; Yes thanks so much for sharing...and those who are betting on the web for media, marketing and advertising (see www.mediapost.com) tout web based "content" as the SOURCE
MEDIAPOST editor writes:

The Big Media companies need to get over their obsession with their own series. They need to put their resources and brand muscle behind unconventional development online and on air. They need to stop relying on the 90/10 or 75/25 splits with online distributors of their existing content. It’s easy, but it’s not the future. As long as the network companies can collect $10 to $50 CPMs for advertising on their familiar programming streamed online, they won’t be motivated to engage in anything more enterprising than Hulu, Veoh, Joost and their own branded sites.

Bravo’s recent acquisition of the whimsical series “Television Without Pity” is a measured step in the direction of original creation. But it’s still too safe. Surely, dozens of new viable online showcases for incubating premium Internet talent and product (such as 60Frames, Channel 101, Funny or Die) will help Big Media find new ways to place financial bets on original fare. The strike has also encouraged venture capital and other funding sources to get behind new online homes–such as Visual Arts–for professional TV and film writers.

Vuguru’s “Prom Queen” has provided a skillful template for creating original, appealing short-form fare for a demographic wedded to their mobile phones and social networks. What about a witty video blog journal that captures daily commuting, grocery shopping, or chauffeuring kids, and blends grassroots and professional contributions?

NEW BREEDS DEBUT AT WESTMINSTER DOG SHOW

Google Millionaires and their Second Life

Corporate theft of amateur photos is "exposed" in this rollicking Washington Post article
Stolen Web SnapShots
From theft to teen photos posted on Flickr causing suit against Virgin Mobile Australia (alleging invasion of privacy of the teen girl, whose light-hearted photo taken at a church car-wash is plastered all over advertisements without her family's consent, and failure to credit the amateur photographer, a violation of Flickr policy) to repeated posting of stolen pictures on Babble (blamed on an intern intractably oblivious to copyright law and who, according to the article, was fired because of the copyright flap).
Larry Lessig of Stanford University and founder of The Creative Commons, opines that as average folks have their own material appropriated, it will eventually results in better behaved individuals and corporations.
To understand the "Microsoft was mooned" reference, we commend you to this amusing article.
We find the solution one photo-filching victim employed gives a new slant on "self-help."

Stanford offers so much to us here in Palo Alto/Silicon Valley. If you missed this talk, see the Dec 6 (below) on facial recognition cues. Perhaps by then I'll have played to oft touted new games, and some discourse informed by experience will ensue.

***SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM***
( http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_static?page=forum.html)

How Science Thinks: The Science and Engineering of Science and Engineering

Prof. Jeff Shrager
Associate Professor in Symbolic Systems, CommerceNet

Thursday, Nov. 29th, 2007
4:15-5:30 pm
Building 380, Room 380C (Math Corner)
MAP: http://campus-map.stanford.edu/index.cfm?ID=01-380
(Parking in nearby lots at no charge after 4 pm)


ABSTRACT:

For over three decades cognitive scientists have been studying how science works and how scientists think. What have we learned about scientific cognition and about science as a human activity? How has this informed cognitive science more generally? How has it helped us build semi-automated discovery systems and better tools to support scientific practice and facilitate discovery? How does this all play with the Web 24.0 vision? (**) In this talk I'll use some of my own, and a lot of other people's research to lead a guided tour to some partial answers to these interesting questions.

Jeff Shrager is consulting associate professor of Symbolic Systems. His work spans human and machine learning and development, and both computational and "wet" marine biology and drug discovery. He current leads the Health Care Initiative at CommerceNet which is using Web 24.0 technology (**) to build Virtual Pharmaceutical Companies to address rare and orphan diseases.

(** If Web 1.0 is the current web, Web 2.0 the social web, Web 3.0 the semantic web, and Web 4.0 the programmable web, then Web 24.0 (1*2*3*4) is be the programmable social semantic web. I just made this term up for this talk, but it's actually rather appropriate, as you'll see!)

***

More upcoming events:

Dec. 6 SSP Forum: David C. Wilkins, Symbolic Systems Program, "Learning to Recognize Facial Emotions: Art Versus Psychology", 4:15-5:30 pm, 380-380C

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Today's New York Times has an article on stem cells, and an interesting issue concerning whether or not state research facilities will be liable for patent infringement on work that is close to cosmetic application (read: cash generating applications!). So look for a posting on this here soon.
Also coming soon: a parent of teenage son weighs in on Facebook, its use by teens, and observes how parents need to teach their daughters and sons about Internet safety.

Social networking is not just for kids. Cybersocial -ism (my word - use with attribution please) is growing into a solidly middle age activity. According to comScore, MySpace is 41% aged 35-54! So where is the basis for the "sell" that MySpace is so very edgy, hip, slick and cool? What of Friendster, Facebook, and Xanga? Will they also drift from their respective initial targets of college and young teens. And is this merging of social tectonic plates a good thing? Wherever the networking equivalent of the Galaphagos floats away from the uni-continental mass of cybersocializing, the question is" who will seek refuge? Those with or without their night license?"