Read more at Lifehacker’s All About [...]]]> Congress today is working to pass SOPA (The Stop Online Piracy Act). SOPA would empower music and movie companies to essentially turn off sites deemed to be “enabling or facilitating” copyright infringement. This is broad language. Google, Facebook, Twitter and many others are trying to stop this from passing.

Read more at Lifehacker’s All About SOPA, the Bill That Wants to Cripple Your Internet.

Tumblr set up this page to call your representative:  http://www.tumblr.com/protect-the-net/

Video from the Song-a-day guy, Jonathan Mann:

This Wednesday, Comcast changed most of their analog [...]]]> Not that it’s surprising to anyone who has worked with them, but Comcast regularly lies. They do whatever they can to perpetuate the idea that there is no such thing as over-the-air digital TV, which is available for free if you have a TV and a small antenna.

This Wednesday, Comcast changed most of their analog cable channels in the Arlington, Virginia, area to present the following message.

Comcast has been doing this around the country for years, shutting off analog cable and moving customers to Comcast digital boxes so that they can charge more for each TV in the house and upsell pay-per-view content.

So an Arlington client of mine decided to cancel their Comcast cable instead of going through the hassle of a cable box or cable card. Given that the client watches the major network channels, they are okay with just using digital TV over-the-air for free.

When we called Comcast, Sam (Comcast Employee ID HEI) asked how the customer would watch TV without Comcast. “Over the air for free,” I said. Sam said that even if that was possible, it wouldn’t last long since all over-the-air was going away. So Sam was outright lying to us. Sam asked why we didn’t want a Comcast box since we’d need some kind of box to watch TV. I said that digital over-the-air can be plugged directly into a TV without a box.  Sam said that he had no idea about that. He spoke with a tone of disbelief as if I was making it up.

Had I not been on that call, the customer would have been bullied into buying Comcast digital cable after being told that was their only option.

I find that most people have no idea about digital over-the-air, which in the DC metro area has about 20 channels. During the over-the-air TV conversion from analog to digital, Comcast mailed advertisements telling people to convert to digital TV from Comcast. This confused people into thinking that the digital conversion meant that you needed to get Comcast digital TV.

This is why I use the word “Comcastic” as a derogatory term. As in, “That guy just stole my wallet. Comcastic.”

Probably best for your iPad if you have a declawed cat or a screen protector.

Whether you can’t stand working in the office, or you just need to find a place to get online and have a drink, you will at some point find yourself looking for a work-friendly coffee shop nearby.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has before it a bill called “Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act” or COICA that would allow censorship of the Internet.

This is a draconian law that one would expect from a dictatorship. It is supposed to stop copyright infringement, but it will only impact honset people. People who are really trying to steal [...]]]> COICA Bill

The Senate Judiciary Committee has before it a bill called “Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act” or COICA that would allow censorship of the Internet.

This is a draconian law that one would expect from a dictatorship. It is supposed to stop copyright infringement, but it will only impact honset people. People who are really trying to steal content will have no difficulties getting over these technical hurdles.

If this passes, our Internet could theoretically become like China’s, with sites taken down without any due process. Only our rulers will be the commercial interests who are behind this bill.

From the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation):

The “Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act” (COICA) is an Internet censorship bill which is rapidly making its way through the Senate. Although it is ostensibly focused on copyright infringement, an enormous amount of noninfringing content, including political and other speech, could disappear off the Web if it passes.

The main mechanism of the bill is to interfere with the Internet’s domain name system (DNS), which translates names like “www.eff.org” or “www.nytimes.com” into the IP addresses that computers use to communicate. The bill creates two blacklists of censored domains. The first is longer, and includes any sites where the DOJ decides that infringement is “central” to the purpose of the site. The bill gives ISPs and registrars strong legal incentives to censor the domains on that list. The Attorney General can also ask a court to put sites on a second, shorter blacklist; ISPs and registrars are required by law to censor those sites.

If this bill passes, the list of targets could conceivably include hosting websites such as Dropbox, MediaFire and Rapidshare; MP3 blogs and mashup/remix music sites like SoundCloud, MashupTown and Hype Machine ; and sites that discuss and make the controversial political and intellectual case for piracy, like pirate-party.us, p2pnet, InfoAnarchy, Slyck and ZeroPaid . Indeed, had this bill been passed five or ten years ago, YouTube might not exist today. In other words, the collateral damage from this legislation would be enormous. (Why would all these sites be targets?)

There are already laws and procedures in place for taking down sites that violate the law. This act would allow the Attorney General to censor sites even when no court has found they have infringed copyright or any other law.

How You Can Help

For more information, go to the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) COICA page.

To help stop this, click “Take Action” on the right side of the EFF page to email your Senator.

Letter From Internet Engineers

Here’s a letter from Internet Engineers (basically the people who invented the Internet):

We, the undersigned, have played various parts in building a network called the Internet. We wrote and debugged the software; we defined the standards and protocols that talk over that network. Many of us invented parts of it. We’re just a little proud of the social and economic benefits that our project, the Internet, has brought with it.

We are writing to oppose the Committee’s proposed new Internet censorship and copyright bill. If enacted, this legislation will risk fragmenting the Internet’s global domain name system (DNS), create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure. In exchange for this, the bill will introduce censorship that will simultaneously be circumvented by deliberate infringers while hampering innocent parties’ ability to communicate.

All censorship schemes impact speech beyond the category they were intended to restrict, but this bill will be particularly egregious in that regard because it causes entire domains to vanish from the Web, not just infringing pages or files. Worse, an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites can be blacklisted under this bill. These problems will be enough to ensure that alternative name-lookup infrastructures will come into widespread use, outside the control of US service providers but easily used by American citizens. Errors and divergences will appear between these new services and the current global DNS, and contradictory addresses will confuse browsers and frustrate the people using them. These problems will be widespread and will affect sites other than those blacklisted by the American government.

The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open Internet, both domestically and abroad. We can’t have a free and open Internet without a global domain name system that sits above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry. To date, the leading role the US has played in this infrastructure has been fairly uncontroversial because America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a neutral bastion of free expression. If the US suddenly begins to use its central position in the DNS for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.

Senators, we believe the Internet is too important and too valuable to be endangered in this way, and implore you to put this bill aside.

I recently helped install a stereo system for a retail store in Virginia. They wanted to play background music for their customers but weren’t sure what they could play. In the US, it’s illegal to play the radio or regular CDs because those songs aren’t licensed to be played for [...]]]> Background Music at the Store

I recently helped install a stereo system for a retail store in Virginia. They wanted to play background music for their customers but weren’t sure what they could play. In the US, it’s illegal to play the radio or regular CDs because those songs aren’t licensed to be played for “public performance.” (UPDATE: Thanks to John Kaufeld who corrected me in the comments regarding radio play)

What happens if you play regular music CDs at your business? You might get a visit from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI), or the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers (SESAC). One retailer I know of was fined $7000 by ASCAP for playing music which was not properly licensed.

Legal Options

So how do you play music legally in the public? Here are some options.

1. Purchase business-licensed music CDs. Many retailers buy muzak, the horrible elevator music, because it’s cheaper to license than the actual songs. Please don’t do this.
2. Get XM Radio for Business, costing $40/month.
3. Download free music from Jamendo which is under a Creative Commons license.  This music is uploaded by artists that are not represented by ASCAP/BMI/SEAC. I am amazed at the number of high quality albums listed on Jamendo. My Virginia client found lots of great jazz at Jamendo and will play that at their retail store.

ASCAP is Nuts

As a side note, I am all in favor of musicians getting their due. But hearing background music in a store falls under “fair use” to me. From a music business prospective, I don’t think that many people will chose to listen to music in a store as a replacement for buying music. “Hey honey, let’s go to the mall. I feel like listening to some Lady Gaga.” Hearing music at a store promotes music purchases just like hearing it on the radio.

ASCAP goes way too far. They’ve sued Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts for singing camp songs. They’ve sued cell phone users for playing ring tones. They want fees from YouTube for having background music in videos. They want fees from iTunes and Amazon for 30-second song previews. That’s not just silly. It hurts the musicians.

Sheila Bowman of the Monteray Bay Aquarium said that they created a Seafood Watch iPhone app for people to easily find what seafoods are considered good and bad from a fish sustainability perspective. [...]]]> On today’s Kojo Namdi show on WAMU, the topic was Local Seafood Markets & the Gulf Oil Spill.

Sheila Bowman of the Monteray Bay Aquarium said that they created a Seafood Watch iPhone app for people to easily find what seafoods are considered good and bad from a fish sustainability perspective. It’s a simple program for looking up fish when you are at the restaurant or grocery.

From the EPA’s eCycling Day 2010 page:

Join us in celebration of Earth Day as we host our 4th annual eCycling event. Bring your unwanted computer and computer-related equipment (computers, monitors, keyboards, printers, etc.) and cell phones for free recycling. This year, EPA and cooperating organizations [...]]]> Celebrate Earth Day by Recycling Computer Equipment this Saturday

From the EPA’s eCycling Day 2010 page:

Join us in celebration of Earth Day as we host our 4th annual eCycling event. Bring your unwanted computer and computer-related equipment (computers, monitors, keyboards, printers, etc.) and cell phones for free recycling. This year, EPA and cooperating organizations will collect unwanted computer equipment on Saturday, April 24, 2010, from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. at the Plateau, National Harbor (PDF) (1pg, 147 KB, About PDF) in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Don’t forget you are responsible for removing data from computers before drop-off.