Cyberspaces.org

WE HAVE MOVED

14 March '07 - 09:24. Category: default

We have moved to a new blog: THE SUPREME COURT TECH LAW Blog. CLICK HERE, Please.

...thoughts on music...

07 February '07 - 07:55. Category: default

On February 7, 2007, Apple's chief executive, Steve Jobs, posted a few thoughts on music, including the idea that if the music recording industry would "abolish DRMs entirely," Apple "would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store."

Jobs proposes that we imagine "a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple..."

Jobs makes a number of interesting points, but his emphasis seems to be primarily on heading-off potential anti-trust and anti-trust-like challenges from Europe to Apple's dominance in the portable music player market and how sales of the ipod are closely tied to the iTunes music store.

I would have preferred that Jobs make more persuasive arguments against the use of DRM than he did. Once you get over the euphoria of having Jobs come out against DRM and measure his argument for what it says, the argument seems rather simplistic and inconsequential; the concession that if a copyright holder (the music recording company) stopped requiring a licensee (Apple) use DRM, then the licensee would stop using it isn't much of an argument against the use of DRM. As for the comparisons between what music companies do online with what they do in selling CDs without DRM, this point only goes so far in that it could be used to suggest that the music industry tighten up its protection of music on CDs. There are better arguments to make and perhaps Jobs has started a new dialog on the misguided use of DRM in music distribution.

For more, go here!

...the iPhone a disruptive technology...

06 February '07 - 08:32. Category: default

So says Jason Snell on Macworld.com the iPhone is disruptive because it’s an extension of Apple’s design philosophies. That means it’s a tightly integrated package of hardware and software. Apple’s consumer-electronics products are meant to be easy to use, to be a pleasure to use — so much so that regular people actually enjoy using them and feel an affinity for them. Snell may be right, but there is another consequence of the June entry of iPhone to the smartphone market: there will be an incredible number of used Treos selling on websites like ebay. The Palm Treo will suffer from the competition from Apple and Palm's move to align with Microsoft may prove to have been wrong-headed afterall.

Lawyers Should Examine 'Hidden' Metadata in Electronic Documents

30 January '07 - 21:54. Category: default

Lawyers who share documents through e-mail or electronic filing need to be aware of the existence of metadata or information that is embedded in computer-generated documents, which can reveal information the writer did not intend to disclose.

Metadata in legal work has been the source of some controversy. Lawyers who receive electronic documents are free to look for and use information hidden in metadata even if the documents were provided by an opposing lawyer, according to ethics opinion from the American Bar Association. During litigation, for example, it is unclear whether documents produced in discovery may be scrubbed of metadata, or whether the electronic documents must be produced in their original form. There are conflicting opinions on this.

Similarly, the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct do not contain any specific prohibition against a lawyer reviewing and using embedded information in electronic documents, whether received from opposing counsel, an adverse party, or an agent of an adverse party, but state bar rules may provide otherwise.

A lawyer who is concerned about the possibility of sending, producing, or providing to opposing counsel a document that contains or might contain metadata, may be able to limit the likelihood of its transmission. By scrubbing metadata from documents or by sending a version of the document without the embedded information the lawyer reduces or removes the potentially harmful consequences of its dissemination.

obsessed with American Idol?

21 January '07 - 22:58. Category: default

Why is America obsessed with American Idol?

Since I do not share in the obsession, I have no idea why. Actually, I have a couple of ideas why, but so do the folks at GravityLab. They have looked into the reasons behind the American Idol phenomenon to examine why the show is so influential, and what's interesting about how it embraces failure, notwithstanding that the show is simply a blip in a long tradition of American amateur talent contests.

Apple, Inc.

09 January '07 - 17:07. Category: default

In addition to announcing that Apple is dropping "computer" from its name - something most of us have done informally long ago - Apple uses its Macworld conference to annouce a number of new long-awaited products. The iPhone sounds particularly exciting...although it seems expensive. Call it truthiness - because it feels right - but I think Apple is going to do well with its iPhone. However, I cannot grasp what the big deal is about Apple TV. Apple TV is a set-top device that lets you view iTunes video downloads directly on your widescreen TV and view other media that is downloaded on your computer on your television. Why is this something I want? I download a crappy video podcast on my Macbook and now I am supposed to want to view this on my HDTV? Or, I download the television show Office from Apple's iTunes and after watching the show on my iPod and my Macbook, I am supposed to want to view this on my television? Why wouldn't I just watch Office on NBC in the first place? Who needs this device?

Public Comments on Whois

08 January '07 - 08:08. Category: default

ICANN is launching a public comments period on the Preliminary Task Force Report on Whois Services. This report forms part of the GNSO policy development process (PDP) on Whois which seeks to build consensus on policy issues in the generic top level domain (gTLD) space. The public comment period will last from 24th November, 2006 to 15 January, 2007.

After the public comment period, the Whois Task Force will consider the public comments received and prepare a final task force report for submission to the GNSO Council. The Council is expected to deliberate on the final task force report in early 2007, and work to achieve a super-majority vote on a recommendation to the ICANN Board. The GNSO Council will then submit a report to the ICANN Board, and the Board will then carry out its own deliberations and voting.

My public comment follows:

The volunteered efforts of those who worked to produce the recent Whois report for ICANN's GNSO are certainly laudable, notwithstanding that I am disappointed in the outcome.

For me, most conspicuously absent from the report is an analysis showing explicit evidence of a substantive deliberation on the world- wide privacy interests of domain name registrants. It is far from clear to me, given the apparent assumptions made by (forced on) the task force, why the task force did not recommend that the Whois database, by default, only include public access to the full name of a domain name registrant - along with, perhaps, operational points of contact. This is not my preference, but it is a reasonable compromise given the wide-ranging and complex issues regarding the future use of Whois.

To obtain additional personally identifying information on domain name registrants, the task force should recommend that interested parties contact registrars and ISPs and/or meet the standards of disclosure of private information typically applied to most businesses under a government's applicable law.

In this respect, the proposal would have provided a reasonable balance among the competing interests of law enforcement officials, intellectual property owners, and individual domain name registrants. Instead, the proposal implicitly rejects this type of balancing by tilting its recommendation far in the direction toward favoring intellectual property owners.

The imbalance of the report is apparent in its content. for example, it is unclear why the proposal does not explicitly address the assumptions its drafters made about the appropriateness of a fully public Whois database in light of the fundamental privacy interests at stake. To wit, none of the specific proposals in the report (the Operational Point of Contact (OPoC) proposal – pages 38 to 42, the Special Circumstances proposal – pages 43 to 49, the five proposals in the discussion on access to data – pages 24 to 27) explicitly identify why only a public Whois database is sufficient to ensure that ICANN and its global stakeholders protect the Internet's ongoing security and stability among the Internet's system of unique identifiers.

Notwithstanding that there are more balanced compromises among the competing interests than those reflected in the Whois report, I suspect the oversight in the report reflects a more fundamental problem with some of the discussions about Whois, generally; namely, the lack of evidence of deliberative discussions on whether ICANN should consider abandonment of the public Whois database entirely.

There is no denying that the dominant preference among businesses in maintaining consumer databases in a wide-range of industries is to store data in private databases, not public ones. And, for businesses recognizing the value of a consumer database, those databases are at least as accurate as semi-public government databases. ICANN should buck the well-coordinated attempts to convince it to stand the traditional framework of privacy on its head.

More likely, however, the Whois report issued by the GNSO is an indication of what is to follow; ICANN seems inclined to force all domain name registrants to continue participating in the public exposure of personal data stored in the Whois database. If this is what must be done, then the task force should reconsider its recommendations and recommend that the Whois database, by default, only include public access to the name of a domain name registrant - along with, perhaps, data on the operational points of contact.

Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M.

how far has technology taken language learning.

08 December '06 - 09:16. Category: default

How far has technology like the iPod taken language learning? One answer: the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, which is operated with U.S. Department of Defense and is, by its own account, the largest language school in the world, once gave students a stack of tapes when they began a class. "Now students receive an iPod crammed full of audio files and video clips. Instructors filmed themselves acting out common scenarios—ordering food at a restaurant, for instance—so that students can see the words at work instead of just hearing them. With the iPod, they can review these at their leisure."

critics of ipod university...

05 December '06 - 21:45. Category: default

Although I am generally impressed with the use of iTunes to promote open access to the video and audio content of higher education, Apple is not without its critics.

"...Stanford iTunes project benefits from goodwill generated by the growth of open source and social software communities, even as it tacitly undermines them. ... I wish they weren't wrapped in an impenetrable cloak of virtue. D'Arcy Norman, a software developer at the University of Calgary, asks whether these objections would vanish if Apple provided a Web front end and offered vendor-neutral MP3 files. For the most part, yes. And if iTunes U also provided Web services interfaces to enable creative remixing, I'd be wholly satisfied." - Jon Udell

iTunes U could "help Apple maintain its dominance in portable music players on campuses. Though the iTunes software works on both Macs and PC's, the only portable players it connects to are iPods; it will not work with players made by other companies." - Chronicle of Higher Ed

But, many seem satisfied:

...Students at the University of Michigan's School of Dentistry use their iPods and MP3 players for more than just listening to music--they also listen to class lectures and review notes with a student-run project that uses iTunes technology for academic purposes.

...95 students in French 76: Advanced Intermediate French took an oral exam using two new technologies that are enhancing the academic environment at Duke and a handful of other college campuses: the 5th generation (video) iPod and iTunes U.

an ipod university...

05 December '06 - 21:14. Category: default

The Internet is providing the tool for genuinely innovative thinking about access and delivery of a product/service called higher education. While no one has developed a viable competing innovation to brick & mortar schooling, the ideas so far seem really exciting. While in the "real world" we take our claims to court challenging school curriculum (science or religion) or protesting access and admissions policies (affirmative action), some are testing new paradigms of open access and content delivery, which could provide opportunities to moot the claims of the present. MIT, Harvard, and Stanford are experimenting with technology and innovation in higher education.

And, the ipod?

You can use an ipod to provide easy access to their educational content, including lectures and interviews, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. "Based on the same easy-to-use technology of the iTunes Store, iTunes U also offers typical Apple simplicity and portability. Through iTunes U, students can download content to their Macs or PCs, regardless of their location. They can listen to and view that content on their Mac or PC, or transfer it to iPod for listening or viewing on the go. Instructors can easily post and change content on their own without impacting the IT department. And, of course, students can upload their own content to share with professors or with the class."