Check it out on the Borowitz Report

Few people I know watch Bill Moyer's Journal. His broadcast last week was really thought provoking. He first interviewed Professor William K. Black, a one time bank regulator link here and then FCC commissioner Michael J Copps link here, each with videos followed by transcripts. Both were thought provoking, as is usually the case. Black slams all the regulators for failing to stop the financial community which either caused the financial disaster or greatly worsened it. One quote that will leap out at you, "The Fed had unique authority. And it had it since 1994 to regulate every single mortgage lender in America." Which implies it still does. I haven't been able to confirm that but elsewhere Black notes that with the end of Glass-Steagall, the authorities were indicating their disinclination to regulate and had concluded that all was for the best in unregulated markets.

Copps never mentions the Citizens United case by which the Supreme Court took away the FCC's authority to regulate the internet because the Commission had decided years back that the internet was entertainment, not communications (probably in cahoots with the companies) and the FCC did not have authority to regulate entertainment. The simple solution is to go back to the old definition of the internet as communication so that the FCC can reclaim its authority. But like so much involving making the internet more competitive, it is strongly opposed by most of the industry.

The broadcast next week will be Moyer's last. He says he wants to retire and do a few things with the rest of his life. PBS is supposed to be finding a replacement. We will see with what success.

Matt Berninger, "The National"'s vocalist, is quoted in today's New York Times Magazine:

People seemed to fall for us after listening to our records many, many times. The corporate model has collapsed, but small-label bands playing to 200 people a night can pay the bills and raise a family on it. That's why we'll have better and more interesting innovations

Hitler, as "Downfall producer" orders a DMCA takedown from Brad Templeton on Vimeo.

Update: This is also worth taking a look at -

http://ideas.4brad.com/studio-does-content-id-takedown-my-hitler-video-about-takedowns

The Guardian newspaper reports:

In a landmark ruling, the UK Information Commissioner's Office has ruled that Queen's University Belfast must hand over data obtained during 40 years of research into 7,000 years of Irish tree rings to a City banker and part-time climate analyst, Doug Keenan.

This week, the Belfast ecologist who collected most of the data, Professor Mike Baillie, described the ruling as "a staggering injustice ... We are the ones who trudged miles over bogs and fields carrying chain saws. We prepared the samples and - using quite a lot of expertise and judgment - we measured the ring patterns. Each ring pattern therefore has strong claims to be our copyright. Now, for the price of a stamp, Keenan feels he is entitled to be given all this data."

Read the whole thing here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/20/climate-sceptic-wins-data-victory

Via Michelle Geis, Uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan gets on board with links to a new report in Genetics in Medicine suggesting that "exclusive licensing of gene patents does more to block competition and decrease patients' access to testing than it does to spur innovation."

Read his post here:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/04/when-patents-kill-innovation.html

The report itself can be found here:

http://journals.lww.com/geneticsinmedicine/toc/2010/04001

And, in the words of Groundhog Day's Ned Ryerson, "It's a doosy".

As noted previously (see Stop the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement)), this treaty was being negotiated in secret and is an attempt to extend the reach of the west's horrible and draconian IP (patent and copyright) regimes to other countries. As I noted, the

ACTA is also similar to another arcane law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which, under the guise of protecting "property rights," snuck in provisions that criminalize even the mere possession of technology that can be used to circumvent digital protection systems (see, e.g., my post TI Uses Copyright Law to Attack TI Calculator Enthusiasts). Likewise, under the guise or protecting property rights in inventions and artistic works (patent and copyright), it "seeks to provide legal authority for the surveillance of Internet file transfers and searches of personal property". As one group notes, "ACTA goes way, way beyond the TRIPS (the copyright/patent/trademark stuff in the World Trade Organization agreement), creating an entirely new realm of liability for people who provide services on the net". More invasion of personal liberty and property rights in the name of false, artificial property rights.

The draft text has now been released, under pressure from the European Parliament (see Declan McCullagh's post, ACTA treaty aims to deputize ISPs on copyrights; see aslo Michael Geist's analysis of the draft text). As I suspected, the text (available here) reveals, as McCullagh notes, that ACTA "seek[s] to export controversial chunks of U.S. copyright law to the rest of the world," such as the DMCA's "'anti-circumvention' section, which makes it illegal to bypass copy protection even to back up a Blu-Ray disc" (see, e.g., my post TI Uses Copyright Law to Attack TI Calculator Enthusiasts). This is a horrible US law that was snuck in the DMCA that may now become part of other countries' laws. It prohibits not only copyright infringement but also makes it illegal to sell devices that could be used to circumvent encryption of DRM'd information.

Now, the DMCA also contained a "safe harbor" for ISPs that probably would not pass now (since it gave ISPs an exemption for liability that turned out to be broader than initially realized when the DMCA was enacted in the 1990s). I was concerned that ACTA would contain the anti-circumvention provisions but not the ISP safe-harbor rules--but some version of this does, at least, seem to be contemplated in the ACTA text (see pp. 20-21).

In any case, this horrible treaty needs to be stopped.

Links and analysis at Ars Technica.

For those of you who would argue that copyright doesn't need major reform because it already provides for exceptions such as "parody", here is an example to demonstrate how hollow such arguments can be in terms of how the law actually operates on a practical level for everyday users:

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/04/youtube-removes-hundreds-of-those-hitler-is-speaking-german-parody-videos.html

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/19/hitler-parody-takedown/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8617454.stm