Related link: http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/library_of_alexandria_bookmobile/index.…

The Internet Archive’s Ashley Rindsberg is in Alexandria, Egypt, setting up a print-on-demand system based on the Internet Bookmobile. Check out his progress at his Egypt blog.

The Alexandria bookmobile comes fast on the heel of the bookmobiles deployed around Delhi by the Indian Government.

And just last week, Anywhere Books, a sister organization of the Internet Archive, received funding from World Bank InfoDev to help the National Library of Uganda build a Bookmobile outside of Kampala, Uganda.

Want to help? Email me at richard@archive.org

Related link: http://www.artima.com/buzz/

The way people use the internet is changing. I first heard of RSS less than a year ago when an Artima.com reader emailed me asking if I had considered offering an RSS feed. I replied, “What’s RSS?” The reader pointed me to some information about RSS on the web. I thought RSS was a great idea and within two hours Artima had its first RSS feed, in which I announce new articles at Artima.com.

Since then I have watched my traffic statistics gradually morph month to month. I have added many RSS feeds since that first one. Each month the RSS feeds receive more and more hits. Since I added that first RSS feed to Artima.com last September, I have watched the RSS files bubble up to the top of Artima.com’s traffic reports.

I decided a few months back that this trend was likely here to stay, and that in the future the key to website success will not be so much tied to how many people have bookmarked your homepage, but to how many people have registered your RSS feeds. So I turned my focus to creating interesting RSS feeds at Artima.com.

In addition to my initial articles announcement feed, I added feeds for News & Ideas and Software Releases from Artima.com’s homepage, a feed for Artima Weblogs (inspired by these O’Reilly weblogs), a feed for each individual Artima Blogger, and very recently, feeds for Artima News and Buzz.

What’s the Buzz?

If you have a tech-oriented weblog, take a look at Artima Technology Buzz. You can register your weblog’s RSS feed in any of 28 Buzz communities, each of which are focused on a different topic, such as Java, Python, Design, XML, etc. You can see all the topics here:

http://www.artima.com/buzz/index.jsp

You can register your RSS feeds here:

http://www.artima.com/buzz/seltopic.jsp

Once you register, it may take up to two hours for your first posts to start appearing. I only post at most one entry an hour for each feed, so if like most people your feed contains 15 items, it will take up to 17 hours for all of those items to appear. Patience is a virtue.

But I Blog About Several Buzz Topics

Each user can register as many RSS feeds as they wish, but I allow each feed URL to be registered in only one community. If you post on several Buzz community topics in a particular feed, please join the community on whose topic you post about most in your feed. Or simply join the community that you feel fits you and your feed the best.

I call them Buzz communities, because I want to emphasize that they are not just groups of weblog posts about a topic—they are groups of people. These people are working with and blogging about the Buzz topic (Java, Python, Linux, etc…), but they aren’t necessarily working with or blogging about that topic exclusively. Think of the Buzz communities as water coolers in an office. People interested in Design may gather around the Design Buzz water cooler, where they will talk about design but also other technology topics that interest them.

Don’t worry if you feel you’ll be writing some posts off-topic from the community you join. I expect Buzz communities to have a low signal to noise ratio. They are generated automatically by reading RSS feeds. They are not edited. The reader, therefore, must spend time sorting through and separating the signal from the noise themselves, but in return they get signal that would otherwise be blocked by an editor. That’s the quid pro quo for the reader. What I’ve tried to do is make it as easy as possible for the reader to zero in on the signal among the noise.

Inspired by JavaBlogs

I was initially inspired to create Technology Buzz by the success of JavaBlogs:

http://www.javablogs.com

I found myself going to JavaBlogs several times a day. Even though the signal to noise ratio was rather low on JavaBlogs, I kept finding interesting tidbits of information. This is where I realized the value of weblogs. Yes, they have spelling errors, awkward constructions, and poor grammar. Yes, many posts say very little of value. But buried in the posts flowing through JavaBlogs every day were little nuggets of information that I just never heard about from the edited sites. This is where I realized that by spending a bit of time doing the editing myself as the reader, i.e., sorting though many valueless posts, I got in return information that may not have made it past an editor at an edited site.

JavaBlogs had what I considered several usability deficiencies that frustrated me, so I set out to fix those. The main frustration I had with JavaBlogs was that they only showed the title of the weblog post, which usually didn’t give me enough information to know whether I cared to read the post or not. So I had to click and wait for the entire page to load before finding out I didn’t care. When you look at a community page for a Buzz community, you get a title plus a Google-like excerpt that will usually give you enough information to know whether you want to read further. Here’s an example:

http://www.artima.com/buzz/community.jsp?forum=121

The other main difference is that each item posted to a Buzz community is actually a discussion forum topic. Just click on (Discuss). So each Buzz community is not only a place to find out what people are talking about in their weblogs, but a central place to discuss the weblog posts.

Also, JavaBlogs doesn’t post more than two entries from a feed on the home page. I found that awkward. What I did in Buzz was only post one entry per hour from any one feed. I figured this would help mix up the posts in a natural way.

I list the bloggers names on the left hand column, because as I mentioned previously, I want to emphasize that these are communities of people who blog. You can click on a name to see posts in that Buzz community by that person, along with a list of the names of the blogs that person has registered. You can click on a blog name to see entries just from that blog. And you can subscribe to RSS feeds for all those views.

I created a very forgiving RSS parser. I do however, require a description element for every item I post in a Buzz community, because I extract the summary from the description. I require a summary because that’s helpful to the reader.

Join the Buzz

Check it out. Click around. Join a Buzz community if you like, and post any feedback to the Buzz Users Forum:

http://www.artima.com/forums/forum.jsp?forum=169

And if you join, feel free to mention it your weblog, to help me spread the word. Thanks.

Related link: http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/062503.asp

Update 19 July

871 federal subpoenas:

The RIAA’s subpoenas are so prolific that the U.S. District Court in Washington, already suffering staff shortages, has been forced to reassign employees from elsewhere in the clerk’s office to help process paperwork, said Angela Caesar-Mobley, the clerk’s operations manager.

Hm. Hmmmmm. They’re doing a DoS on the body whose help they need… Hm…

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The RIAA expects to use the data it collects as the basis for filing what could ultimately be thousands of lawsuits charging individual peer-to-peer music distributors with copyright infringement.

After label heads went on record promising harsher and harsher measures, this is kind of a letdown. Thousands of lawsuits is a pathetic number — if they want to be taken seriously, they’ll need tens of thousands.

Let’s see, there are a hundred million people on the filesharing networks over a reasonably long period of time, according to BigChampagne.com. If the RIAA sues ten thousand, the chance of being sued is one in a hundred thousand. Terrifying.

It’s gratifying when they bring the fight to technical turf, anyway. Concealing the source of bytes is just another information processing problem, so we’re about to have another round of whack-a-mole. Hackers, start your engines.

I’ve attended the last three Flashforward conferences in NYC, and also made it out to the SF show last March. They are consistently interesting, engaging, entertaining, and unparalleled for networking opportunities. Flash Forward 2003 in NYC from July 9th-11th at the New Yorker hotel is sure to be no exception.

Day one features extended 3-hour workshops that go well beyond what most conferences offer.

Kevin Lynch of Macromedia offered some sneak peaks at the SF conference. Norm Myrowitz, president of products at Macromedia is slated to keynote on day two of the conference, and hopefully he’ll have some tantalizing tidbits “from the lab”

The remainder of day two and three are sure to be filled with both technical and design advice galore. The crowd at Flashforward is high-caliber, friendly, informed, and informative. It is worth checking out, especially if you missed the SF show.

Expect to see an impressive line-up of speakers including luminaries such as Hoss Gifford and Branden Hall, plus the always-entertaining and insightful Eric Natzke.

For a taste of what you can look forward to, see my notes from day 1, day 2, and day 3 of the SF show in March.

Related link: http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/ca16_lofgren/pr_030618_DMCA.html

Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Rick Boucher issued a press release yesterday calling on Congress to fix DMCA, in light of information that doing so would not put the US in treaty violation.

In May and June, the US signed treaties with Singapore and Chile which included language taken right out of the DMCA. Would those “free trade agreements” mean that if Congress ameded the DMCA, the US would be in breach? The Office of the US Trade Represntative said yes. But yesteray, Lofgren announced that according to Secretary of Commerce Don Evans, Congress’ right to amend laws would not be affected.

As the administration pushes more of these free trade agreements, DMCA will become more and more pervasive around the world. Even after (and if!) the US amends DMCA, like a particularly nasty virus it will have already infected the rest of the world, limiting people’s rights, even as the US decided its too onerous for its own citizens. I’m envisioning Big Copyright as Big Tobacco.

In the meantime, Lofgren and Boucher have yet to get hearings on their bills, so the chances of movement here are still a very long shot.

For more on the US export of copyright law, see my interview with Robin Gross

Related link: http://news.com.com/2100-1042_3-1019444.html?tag=lh

want one?

Related link: http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-1018845.html

You know that everyone would be sifting through Hatch’s website, didn’t you? Looking for proof of the senator’s duplicity, his hypocrisy. Personally, I think he’s gone a little goofy. Perhaps Alzheimers’ is settling in.

In my interview with Robin Gross [just search on her name] she mentioned that the Clinton Administration pushed China to add copyright infringement to their list of capital crimes. Capital punishment for your computer is just the watered down, American version of the same thing.

The copyright industry apparently really hates piracy. It makes them really mad. So much they want to kill. They want to kill! I mean, they really want to KILL somebody (apologies to Arlo).

This is a joke, and as Declan reports his office is already backing off. What’s interesting is how the music biz is embracing Apple’s music service, desparately, eagerly embracing it. Basically a whole bunch of users have forced a new medium, a new channel, on the most reluctant of industries. The industry will capitulate. They will offer everything online, for a fee. They will offer a huge amount of stuff online for free. Ultimately, the shape of online music will be determined by what users say it will look like. It’s an amazing thing.

go ahead, comment.

Related link: http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-1017988.html

University of Twente in the Netherlands has a 300+ acre wireless hotspot, using 802.11b and a.

Is there a map online of stable hotspots?

Related link: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=495&ncid=495&e=2&u=/ap/20030617/…

Here are some choices quotes from Ted Bridis’ AP report on the Senator’s logical, sensible plan.

The senator, who is a songwriter on the side, acknowledged that Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would warn a computer user twice about illegal online behavior, “then destroy their computer.”

“If we can find some way to do this without destroying their computer, we’d be interested in hearing about that,” Hatch said. “If that’s the only way, then I’m all for destroying their machines. If you have a few thousand of those, I think people would realize” the seriousness of their actions, he said.

What other penalties can you think of for “illegal” downloading? Maybe having to work at a music label?

Related link: http://www.correspondences.org/archives/000051.html#000051

Internet Archive folks are gearing up for a trip to Egypt, to create an Internet Bookmobile for the Library of Alexandria. Internet Archive’s Brewster Kahle recently sent out this missive to friends of the Internet Archive. To join the archive mailing list, send mail to archivists-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

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subject: Internet Bookmobiles: offer and request

Archivists,

Our offer is to have the Internet Bookmobile show up to make books anywhere in they bay area. Our request is that you help with time or money to kick off a separate organization dedicated to building bookmobiles. (for background: Archive site for contributing: Venture Collective site)

In the fall of 2002, as the Supreme Court was hearing arguments in Eldred v. Ashcroft, we put together the “Internet Bookmobile” - a 1992 Ford Aerostar with a net connection, laptops, printers, cutter, scorer and binding machine. We traveled the country from East Palo Alto, California, to Washington, DC, stopping at schools and libraries and making books for kids and adults.

It worked remarkably well. At $1 per book, $5k for the printing&binding equipment, and $15k for a full bookmobile– this could be a wonderful thing. Currently there are about 20k books on the Internet, and we are part of a project to scan 1 million. The dream is that every kid would have access to a million book library through the Internet and print-on-demand bookmobiles and stationary facilities.

To make this opportunity a reality, the bookmobilist and a group of volunteers, have created a separate nonprofit organization, Anywhere Books, as a project of the Rudolf Steiner Foundation. Their mission is to deploy 5,000 systems in 5 years, to make a difference in literacy and poverty around the world.

And exciting things are happening. On a recent trip to India, we described the Internet bookmobile to some folks in the government, and within two days, the Ministry of Information Technology had approved the funding for two bookmobiles, which are currently in service around Delhi. They are now building one bookmobile for each of the 30 Indian states.

And the Library of Alexandria in Egypt - which hosts a complete copy of the Internet Archive - has also agreed to create an Internet bookmobile. Clearly, the idea of the bookmobile - putting the public domain into action by creating books - has potential, especially in the developing world.

Any amount will help; we’re hoping to average $100 or more. We’re shooting for $50,000 to increase our book production capabilities and build partnerships for long-term funding. Given the support and enthusiasm we’ve gotten from many of you already, we think this is attainable. (venture collective is helping with a donation system https://www.venturecollective.org/donate.html?proj=bookmobile&id=149 )

Onward!

-brewster

Digital Librarian

Internet Archive

Related link: http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/intprop/records.pdf

Update June 5: A report by The NPD Group comes to more or less the same conclusion as Liebowitz — that filesharing is part though not all of the decline.

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An economist who had previously argued that there was no evidence of filesharing hurting the CD business now says there is evidence:

The bottom line: MP3 downloading is harming sales. No other explanations that have been put forward to explain the recent decline hold up under analysis.

Liebowitz has seesawed back and forth, but as far as I know he is the sole source of non-crap economics related to filesharing. Anything that brings down the hysteria is a good thing, so I’m happy to see even news that could hurt us in the short run.

Liebowitz’ paper is worth the read if you have time. It’s long but not dense, and it’s full of interesting nuggets of information. Also, something you get from reading the whole thing that you won’t from reading the headline is how hard it is to figure out whether MP3s hurt RIAA members.

.

Two key quotes from the paper:

If the analysis in this paper is correct, MP3 downloads are causing significant harm to the record
industry. It is not clear, however, whe ther such downloading in our current legal environment will
cause a mortal blow to the industry. I suspect that the worst damage to the industry is behind us, but we
will know soon enough as new data are made available.

and

The goal of this paper was to
provide some empirical analysis to replace what has often been little more than emotional wrangling
and haranguing on both sides. Answers to difficult policy questions are not likely to be well informed
without such an understanding of the empirical backdrop to the issues.

Related link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-scotus3jun03,1,2585043.stor…

So 20th Century Fox made this movie, “Crusade in Europe,” which many years ago entered the public domain. Along comes a company called Dastar and takes this PD movie, cuts in some other war footage and releases a new movie. Is there anything wrong with this? Did Dastar owe consumers or Fox notification that the original footage came from the Fox movie?

California courts had said yes, that consumers have a right to know the “origins of goods” — and awarded ALL of Dastar’s profits to Fox. Consider: Fox was awarded $1.5 million based on violation of nonexistent property rights: no one disputes that the original film is in the public domain.

Enter Justice Scalia and the Supreme Court, ruling 8-0 that there is a clear distinction between copyright and trademark, and that trademark exists to protect consumers from being tricked into thinking that Company A’s product is really Company B’s. (That is, Company A can’t market a cheap, shoddy watch called Rolex, because the original Rolex Co. holds a trademark on that name.)

Trademark is NOT, the court argued, for the benefit of companies trying to stop competitors from selling competing products. Since no consumers are buying “Campaigns in Europe” thinking that are buying “Crusade in Europe,” there is no trademark case, according to the courts.

“Once the patent or copyright monopoly has expired, the public may use the invention or work at will and without attribution,” Scalia said.

were the supremes right?