Hooked On Both

The March issue of Wired is out, themed "The End of Radio." Unlike the Los Angeles Times, Wired knows better than to take on such a theme without discussing podcasting. Adam Curry Wants to Make You an iPod Radio Star: "The podcasting scene is reminiscent of the early, heady days of blogging, circa 2001, a time before Wonkette made the cover of The New York Times Magazine. Like bloggers in the good old days, podcasters are obsessively internecine and gloriously, honestly unprofessional."

[Update:] Oops, meant to also highlight this exciting bit of news: "Ourmedia (ourmedia.org), a grassroots media project backed by the Internet Archive, will provide free podcasting tools and permanent hosting for podcasts beginning in mid-2005."

Today's New Blawg

Meet University of Richmond School of Law student Brandon Rash, author of the EEJD Blog: "The 'EE' stands for electrical engineering, and the 'JD' stands for juris doctorate..."

Scan't Resist

If you've been following along at home, then you know:

1. The need to spring clean has struck me unaccountably early this year, and


2. The Support Economy has a new toehold in my neck of the woods.

So, I dropped off a few things to be auctioned, and they're starting to make their way online. The first is a scanner that was highly reviewed by California Lawyer's Sandra Rosenzweig, which is probably why I went overboard and bought two, one for the office and one for home. Though it's a fine product it turned out I didn't need both, so this little item has a starting bid of $9.99, roughly 30x less than its cost. It's a good bargain, have at it, bidding closes in six days.

Perhaps more important and almost certainly more interesting, I continue to be fascinated by what my neighbors are unloading. Hookha, anyone?

AutoLink: Unlicensed Derivative Work?

I was listening to Dave Winer's 2/18 Morning Coffee Notes, and he's more than a little exercised about Google's AutoLink. I haven't downloaded the updated toolbar or seen it in action, but I'm getting an idea of what AutoLink does thanks to Dan Gillmor and others. Aside from competition related legal considerations (thanks, Tom, for the pointer), I smell a copyright brouhaha. (Yes, sorry; we see lawsuits, the dead people come later.) Why? Listen to Dave's podcast. He's ticked about his writing being altered without his permission and saying an "opt out" is in order. And read the Rogers Cadenhead post he points to today: "Autolink edits Web pages, making subtle inline changes to text while presenting them at their original URLs, which implies the original author created the transformed work." (That smacks of trademark trouble too, methinks? Yep, as Marty ponders, and he discusses the potential derivative work issue as well.)

I think this is something that hasn't been addressed in the post-Feist linking cases. Linking to a Web page is one thing; adding unauthorized links to a Web page is another. Anil Dash makes the "Rip, Mix, Burn" analogy, which is probably apt on some level and just underscores the copyright issues — 321 Studios, for example, lost at trial and went out of business before it could pursue its appeal.

SpLawdio?

I had to laugh when I saw "SpAudio, The World's Greatest Underwater Symphony" on a late night commercial. Sounded like some godawful conflation I might throw out.

(Woah, can you believe that? 299,000 hits for "blawg.")