A neat technical caper, the psychology of Creative Commons advocacy tells us plenty about how real creativity is valued.

Or more accurately, how it isn't.

Bill Thompson was quickly slapped into line after asking what Creative Commons does for moral copyrights. (Quick answer: nothing).

So Creative Commons is emblematic of how even the best of the US fails to understand how the rest of the world works. Is this a failure of empathy? Or a deeper philosophical failure which places too much emphasis on the law, and therefore "hacking" the law? As we know, you can't throw an iPod in the United States without it hitting either a lawyer or an economist. And look where they've got us.

The price of membership of this ideological appears to be exaggerated deference.

A quite extraordinary e-mail arrived one day, from a K-12 school in Kentucky

p2p fs is leagal its already bought its in the air how can it be illegal i looked into it and the courts just want money

Jim explains what carrots will bring the copyright holders to the negotiating table. One of the longest pieces we've ever run at The Register. You'll see why. "When I was 14, I told girls I loved them to sleep with them too. It was a fiction. Steve Jobs just leaves a little money on the table."

Preview of William Fisher's alternative compensation model.

The RIAA's president Cary Sherman is lamenting that there's a lack of civility in the debate over sharing the music we love. He's complaining that people object to his effort to plant bombs in your computer. He says such people are irrational.

The New York Times reveals that the record companies are preparing a program called "silent", which "Locks up a computer system for a certain duration - minutes or possibly even hours - risking the loss of data that was unsaved if the computer is restarted," the Times tells us. "It also displays a warning about downloading pirated music."

This latest bombing campaign follows the RIAA's attempt in October to get bombing prohibited from limited damages: a daring and unusual move for a bomber. Bombers usually light a fuse and then run away, or fly away at a very high altitude, but this bomber wants to return to the scene of the crime and deny the victims their right to get recompense for the destruction. That was the Berman Bill.

Gene Mosher's great letter defending his right to enjoy his culture.

"Under Iraqi copyright legislation, passed by The Revolution Leadership Council in 1971, a copyright lapses 25 years after the death of the author, but no more then fifty years after the publication of the work. It's shorter for private works, and there are several public interest exemptions.

We wonder which member of The Revolution Leadership Council penned this, or whether someone wrote it for them, but the real author of this enlightened document ought to step forward. Maybe they could help liberate the USA - which extended copyright to seventy years after the author's death - from Hollywood?

The discovery of Hollywood's attempt to copy control hardware (by putting CPRM in the ATA hard drive specification) ultimately failed, but was the first widespread public awareness of the Evil That Men Do. Palladium, or share-denial "by consent" followed.

Why the silly name? The Register broke this story just before Christmas, and held the fort for ten days while reaction made its way around the Internet. On December 29, Dawn C. Chmielewski of the San Jose Mercury wrote a front page lead about the plan. The consternation created by the story had by then reached boardroom level at IBM and Intel, who quickly sought a compromise measure. ZDNet covered it a month later. No series has ever had such an impact on traffic, which trebled over the period.

The Scientific American
The Industry Standard
Counterpane - Bruce Schneier
... A list of CPRM stories at The Register from December 2000 to March 2001

An open letter by the chair of the standards committee, Hale Landis was prescient. "Basically your 'general purpose personal computer', aka 'home computer', is history. This should not surprise anyone since Microsoft has done everything in its power to convert the home computer into an Internet appliance. And Intel still thinks it can convert home computer into the central house and consumer electronics 'control center'. But I think both Intel and Microsoft will find they can't fight the entertainment industry either. They too will end up doing anything so they can continue to sell hardware and software to the 'home computer' market. But we probably should start talking about the 'computer enhanced consumer electronics' market."

"CPRM is alive and well: as we reported in October it's being built into anything that supports a SD card. Microsoft, Palm and the Symbian operating systems all support, or will support, CPRM. That's where most people would agree it belongs. ...

The future of the PC however, looks bleaker. The righteous crusade against CPRM by the EFF may have made detecting and blocking CPRM a lot more difficult, some EFF members now privately acknowledge. In March, the T.13 committee blocked a proposal erroneously described as 'son of CPRM' but which was simply documented an interface where otherwise hidden commands may be detected. The important context in all this, is that with much of each hard drive's command set undocumented, the DRM-lobby never needed to approach the standards body at all."

A discussion on the viability of post-Palladium open hardware. If we build it, will they come?

This coincided with an orthogonal series of articles by Bill Thompson at The Register and The Guardian: Damn the Constitution: Europe must take back the Web Bill Thompson, The MeatSpace Mailbag and Bill Thompson answers critics. There's a Wiki entry you might want to help along here.

"The Webcaster Alliance has filed a suit against the Recording Industry Association of America and five major record labels for anti-competive behavior. The case arises from a deal last year, details of which were first reported by The Register, between a handful of small webcasters and the RIAA to set performance royalty rates.

"The WA alleges that the plan was part of a strategy to wipe out an entire industry at birth - the independent webcasters - and the suit has explosive political implications for senior Congressman Sensenbrenner who forced the deal. Sensenbrenner later admitted taking $18,000 from the RIAA for a trip to the Far East."

"We believe RIAA and members control 85 to 90 per cent of the dominant market for music. They're seeking to eliminate a distribution channel that is absolutely vital to competing music from independents," he argues. "Music has a very difficult time getting exposure through traditional means. And yet the regulatory barriers are very low - Internet radio is a great way to distribute music in a convenient fashion." Raising the barrier to entry cuts off the air supply to thousands of smaller webcasters.

The smallest, non-profit webcasters accuse a cabal of thirteen small commercial operations of misleading Congress and the public by negotiating a deal which saves the wealthier stations from performance royalties, while many smaller operations, college stations and amateurs - the core of the grass roots broadcasters - will go to the wall.
Privately, even members who support HR.5469 agree that it will "seal the fate of this industry to be dominated by big webcasters," according to correspondence seen by The Register.
So behind the closed doors, the two paragraph measure intended to buy the nascent industry a six month breathing space before royalties became due, was mushrooming into a thirty page royalty plan. Net casters only found out minutes before the Congress vote, giving them little time to react.