ZDNet prognosticates on the eventual acquisition of YouTube.
I still think Yahoo! would be the most logical acquirer.
I’d throw in another: Apple, for a future Mac-platform and iMovie/iTunes integration.
Yahoo! is a good choice, but acquisitions should cut both ways. YouTube has to find the best *partner* for the acquisition. This makes it much more difficult to predict.
I like the shot NewsCorp has with making an argument for a YouTube/MySpace integration, though I’m not sure how good the corporate/ownership fit will be. In this latter sense, Google or Yahoo! might be better partners, as they know the Internet space and tend to treat their acquisitions very well.
The other potential acquirers listed in the article are (in descending order): NewsCorp (MySpace), Google, Sony, TimeWarner (AOL), and Adobe.
The Man Who Put Al-Qaeda on the Web
Article originally from newsfactor.com about Younis Tsouli, a Brit who is allegedly a prominent forum administrator and webmaster for al-Qaeda-related web sites.
I found it interesting how the US administration defends keeping alive terrorist-related web sites as useful information sources or honeypots instead of wondering if they can shut down foreign web sites on foreign servers.
I also find it interesting how people pu-pu online aggrivators for being “not as technical me.” I hearken back to the days when the Web was built by Geocities and other half-cocked WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) page builders. Or now with MySpace. LCD (lowest common denominator) technologies are adopted by people who need them and will use them to the limits of their functionality and beyond.
Sure, maybe Al-Qaeda should switch to Tor networks for anonymity (or rather “security through obscurity”) or FreeNet or WASTE, but that limits their main goal: information dispersal and recruitment. Anyways the anarchic structure of their online networks and web sites is also the inherent structure of their global organization.
Swarms work, especially when you have a high demand to feed and seed nodes. Trying to stop them is like swatting gnats away from your face. You sweep through, the gnats disperse, and then they instantly reform untouched by your heavy hand.
One of my favorite artists, Billy Bragg, blogs his approval of MySpace’s update on who owns artistic content on the social networking site.
I am very pleased to see that MySpace have changed their terms of agreement from a declaration of their rights into a declaration of our rights as artists, making it clear that, as creators, we retain ownership of our material. Having been adopted by the biggest social networking site on the block, I hope their recognition of the right of the artist to be sole exploiter of their own material now becomes an industry standard because there is much more at stake here than just the terms and conditions of a website.
From the MySpace legal language:
Proprietary Rights in Content on MySpace.com.
MySpace.com does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, “Content”) that you post to the MySpace Services. After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Content, and you continue to have the right to use your Content in any way you choose. By displaying or publishing (“posting”) any Content on or through the MySpace Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com a limited license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Content solely on and through the MySpace Services.
Go, MySpace! Respect your artists, and they’ll continue to use you and music appreciators will continue to look to you for new music!
See also my other post on how the Industry’s shutting down of Kazaa is only going to hurt them.
Familiar with the perfume Dune?Â
It appears Dior’s uber-fragrance (popular in the 90’s, I believe) was at the center of a recent legal battle in France when Nejla Bsiri-Barbir, a former nose* with Haarman & Reimer, sued the fragrance compounding house. In her bid for the continuation of royalties received while employed with H&R, Ms. Bsiri-Barbir claimed to be the perfume’s “creator.”
This past June, the highest court in France ruled against Ms. Bsiri-Barbir, finding that perfume is not art and therefore could not be protected like a “work of the mind.” Â
Oddly enough, this latest ruling was in total opposition to a decision made earlier this year by a French court of appeals. There, the court found a Belgium company, Bellure, guilty of producing counterfeits of L’Oreal perfumes and ordered that damages be paid.
What I found most intriguing is that, unlike a ruling by the US Supreme Court, this recent decision of the French high court would not trump the previous verdict of the court of appeals. Â
That both rulings hold only complicates the situation for the experts of the olfactory industry.
* nose: a perfumer.
 http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F00B10F73A540C708DDDAE0894DE404482Â
Note: Ms. Bsiri-Barbir was fired from H&R in 1999.
Luis Villa provides some links to this release, and the Center for the Study of Digital Property goes in-depth and explains the changes.
The main substantive change seems to be in preventing DRM from restricting the sharing or modification of GPL software. In other words you can protect and encrypt files and code, but not in a way that stops someone from viewing the source and modifying/sharing it.* It again clarifies the core of GPL–making software “free as in speech” and not making everything “free as in beer.”
GPL is not anti-DRM, though I’m sure many people really want it to be. The FSF realizes the commercial needs of the GPL community and needs to finely skirt that line between free software and free of cost.
* I hate the phrase “in other words” because it necessarily begs the question, “Why not just say Y instead of X and Y?” But with so many things legal, translating rules to reality demands specific facts which disinter latent exceptions and fence in the broadness of the rule. Blows.
I’ve looked at a number of posts, and they mostly seem to affirm that dark roasts of coffee have less caffeine than lighter roasts.
On the other hand: Kitten War!
Among many others, Ars Technica is reporting on Kazaa’s $115 M settlement. (Or read the short and sweet summary at Boing Boing.)
They make the good point, questioning how Sharman Networks (who owns Kazaa) can survive on a “legitimate” business model–selling themselves as a licensed content server. Consumers who want to buy licensed content will move to iTunes, et. al.; those who still want free music and movies will move to BitTorrent, et. al. What market does that leave for Kazaa?
Perhaps now that Kazaa has been stuffed into the change pocket of the music/film industry, they’ll pump money into Kazaa and continue throwing away their profits in their megalomaniacal need to control everything.
I’d like to see MySpace set up a file-sharing service for kids to share freely-offered MP3s from the independent and semi-independent bands that can thrive in that space. What if they educated the kids on BitTorrent–and then the kids found they can get even more from other BitTorrent trackers?
That could be a double-whammy to the Man. Keep the kids from the industries’s content services as well as take over promotion and distribution of the industries’s talent.
Furthermore, this is actually exciting to me–at least in an academic sense. Now that all the “easy” copyright-infringement targets are gone, what *is* the industry going to do to fight small, “dark” file-sharing communities or BitTorrent/Tor-based networks? Are they just going to shut down the trackers? How does the Grokster case apply to trackers?
Who knew that anyone in L.A. was actually thinking? (I’m kidding.)Â
Let’s rewind. It is 2004 and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has just made a decision in Jeff Grosso v. Miramax Film Corporation which, in short, eased the difficulties faced by writers when claiming copyright infringment.  Bolstered by this 2004 win, Attorney John A. Marder is still crusading against the Big Studios on behalf of the slighted (or if you prefer…the opportunistic.) Â
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/movies/27gadf.htmlÂ
Â
For those who, like me, tend to vacillate about the ills of fierce IP protection, Mr. Zasada’s article provides no resolution. But, it’s a good read if you’re interested.
Just Whose Idea Is It Anyway? (reg. req’d)
Ian Best, at the 3L Epiphany Blog, posted a great resource for legal blogs:
A Taxonomy of Legal Blogs
It’s growing rapidly, and hopefully we’ll be on there as an additional resource.
Internet, News | paul | 
July 31, 2006 5:15 pm | 
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