Hold The Mustard

An ocean of mustard appeared last week.

Linkin' Blawgs

Blawg Review #56: Sex, Virtual Weddings, and Baseball. (Need I say more?)

Justice Bedsworth on divorce in California — Still Another Modest Proposal — is not to be missed.

"I sometimes snap pictures of strangers and post them on my blog and Flickr. Could I get into legal trouble for violating their privacy?" Clive Thompson gives his answer in Wired 14.05.

And finally, if you're not already wearing enough of it on a regular basis, the good folks at Demeter (who understand the concept of variety like few do) will help you smell like Play-Doh.

[Technorati tag: links]

The Long Tail Of Infringement

With Chris Anderson's book coming out, I was thinking about how marketplaces and commerce don't by any means have a lock on the long tail. The dynamics of copyright infringement must also follow a power law curve, with massive bootleg software/music/movie operations situated somewhere near the top, but the majority of infringing acts happening out among the rank and file — probably largely unknowingly, certainly without harmful intent — on the tail.

As a rule, these long tail infringers aren't out to do something unlawful; they're out to do something (e.g. use, time and/or place shift, create), and, to the extent they're aware of potentially running afoul of copyright laws, a quick cost-benefit analysis tells them that out there on the tail they're likely to fly under the radar. To the extent they know something might be amiss, they'd prefer not to have to operate on the fringes of the law. But, they're practical — and driven by the prime directives of convenience and speed.

David Prager has some dead-on insights along these lines in TWiT Episode 51. David is the practical, business manifestation of something I've realized for a long time: that those adopting Creative Commons and other permissive licensing models are going to start sucking market share away from from locked-down media faster than an eight operator HSI with QLP pulse jet filter. David isn't about about, "let's give it away for the common good." David is about, "let's exploit this undeniable opportunity." He and his colleagues at Revision3 have the long tail of infringement squarely in their sights in precisely the way smart businesspeople should — not as potential defendants, but as potential customers.

[Technorati tags: long tail, copyright infringement, chris anderson, david prager]

San Francisco Vignette

Study in contrasts: Stopped at Sacramento and Sansome. (No scooting through a yellow in SF, unless you're a complete jerk, and one with a death wish to boot.) Crossing paths in the crosswalk — (1) homeless man wearing a boxy jacket of chartreuse felt, tied round the waist with a black cord, pushing an upright cart bearing his belongings in two cardboard boxes with the world's tiniest boombox perched atop, and (2) male financial district worker in shirtsleeves, loose tie, and slacks, pushing a tags-still-dangling new office chair in the precise chartreuse as the homeless man's boxy jacket.

(I suppose as a function of being in a suit-rich environment this week, I realized the contrast was made more complete by the worker's casual appearance than it would have been by a more buttoned up/buttoned down look.)

Slides From My iTechLaw Talk

Here are the slides from my talk yesterday on Blogs+IP.

[Technorati tags: itechlaw, blogs ip]