Spidering The Web

Front porch tenant (family Araneidae, I believe)

Here Comes The Son

"Beggin' your pardon ma'am, I'd be much obliged if y'all could please tell my mama real cowboys think twice about going with the satin and sequins."

P2P You And Me

My Wired CD arrived yesterday, what tasty goodness. Then, more good news re Creative Commons came in today's L.A. Times business section, Musicians to Place Songs on File-Sharing Network:

The musicians who license their works with the help of the Creative Commons advocacy group will soon have their songs spotlighted on a new version of the Morpheus file-sharing network, which has been vilified by the mainstream entertainment industry.

The Times biz section just doesn't seem complete these days without a P2P story. Yesterday's was Sony BMG, Grokster Join Forces, about MashBoxx.

Hi And Bye, Digital ID World!

It's disappointing to have to make such a surgical strike appearance at Digital ID World, but I'm glad at least to have an unbroken attendance streak at this event. It's an important conference that still flies somewhat under the radar. And Doc's keynoting tomorrow, which is inevitably a "Don't Miss."

Phil Windley did a great job blogging our panel, and asked me to take a look to make sure he got the message across. He did, with one clarification: Courts have been surprisingly active lately in upholding, defining, and enforcing fair use rights (Kelly v. Arriba Soft; Lexmark v. SCC; OPG v. Diebold). The Betamax doctrine has also been confirmed, and software that has been characterized as potentially a copyright violation in its own right has been found legal (Grokster). There has been enough of this in evidence lately that it begs the question what courts will think of hardware that gives software and content creators the ability to undermine the recent clarifications to these doctrines.

Boarding, see ya.

Sounds Like A Job For Corduroy

Traveling tomorrow to Digital ID World, just for the day (unfortunately). Sez Marc: "Meanwhile this place is filled with suits."