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Declan McCullagh | 6 Jan 2005 15:45
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Happy New Year, and some provocative statements

John Brockman, a literary agent and publisher of Edge, a science 
website, collects an annual list of provocative responses to provocative 
questions. This year his question is: "What do you believe is true even 
though you cannot prove it?" and it's an excellent way to begin the new 
year.

An abbreviated list of responses is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/science/04edgehed.html?oref=login

The full list:
http://edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html

-Declan
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Declan McCullagh | 6 Jan 2005 15:46
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Weekly column: With new fees, ICANN's partying like it's 1999


http://news.com.com/ICANN+partying+like+its+1999/2010-1071_3-5495758.html

ICANN partying like it's 1999
December 20, 2004, 4:00 AM PT
By Declan McCullagh

It's been five years since Internet users had to worry about paying an 
extra $1 or so annual fee--akin to a tax--for each .com, .net or .org 
domain name they own.

Now the international organization that oversees domain names has 
rediscovered the idea. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and 
Numbers (ICANN) believes it needs a fatter budget funded by domain name 
fees--and plans to start charging domain name owners in a process that 
will begin next year.

Starting sometime in 2005, owners of .net domain names will have to pay 
a 75-cent additional annual fee to ICANN. There's nothing stopping ICANN 
from upping the levy in the future, and its executives have indicated 
that other top-level domains will be targeted as well.

Before deciding to play tax collector, though, ICANN should consider 
what happened back in 1999 that caused it to concoct and then abandon 
the idea.

[...remainder snipped...]
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Declan McCullagh | 6 Jan 2005 15:47
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Two reviews of Larry Lessig's "Free Culture" book [ip]

Here's an excerpt from David Post's review in Reason (which is generally 
quite positive):

http://www.reason.com/0411/cr.dp.free.shtml
For instance, Lessig’s proposal for an Internet-wide compulsory 
licensing scheme -- a fixed, government-set royalty rate covering all 
music downloads -- strikes me as unwise. There are, to begin with, 
serious practical and theoretical problems with any scheme that sets a 
single (per-byte?) price to cover all musical works. More importantly, 
under a compulsory licensing scheme, the government is suddenly the 
arbiter of all transactions; every music download becomes, literally, a 
federal case. The potential for government snooping, not to mention the 
administrative nightmare, gives me pause.
And I have some other nagging doubts that Lessig never quite dispels. 
It’s undeniable that the scope of copyright has expanded vastly during 
the last few decades. But there is a respectable slice of opinion that 
views this expansion much more positively than Lessig does -- one that 
welcomes these developments.

The second follows.

-Declan

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Review of Lessig's Free Culture
Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2005 15:01:16 GMT
From: The Progress & Freedom Foundation <mail <at> pff.org>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan <at> well.com>

FROM THE IPCENTRAL.INFO WEBLOG...
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Declan McCullagh | 6 Jan 2005 15:50
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Two Internet views on the Asian tsunami and its aftermath


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Tsunami aftermath - Picture of hell and no kerosene
Date: Sat, 01 Jan 2005 20:48:27 +0530
From: suresh <at> hserus.net (Suresh Ramasubramanian)
To: declan <at> well.com
CC: dave <at> farber.net

Relief efforts are going on, following a fairly familiar pattern.

High profile types (politicians, film stars) waltz in, get photographed 
and go
right back.  Journalists hang around near the politicians and film 
stars.  It
is left to a few volunteers to plow a lonely furrow, often without too much
access to all the money that's flowing in

---------

It’s five kilometres of hell, and it’s right here at Nagapattinam.

Kaviarsi studies – make that studied – in the sixth standard. Her 
schoolbooks lie a short distance away, and besides them lies a doll. The 
girl herself lies on a makeshift pyre on what used to be her home, her 
face totally blackened, her neck twisted upwards, the skin peeling off 
her legs like torn stockings. There is a large empty container of Pepsi 
lying just besides her, and four other bodies. And besides the pyre, 
towards the sunset, are five long kilometers of slushy wasteland strewn 
with dead bodies.
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Declan McCullagh | 6 Jan 2005 15:51
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Half-Life 2: Test bed for Internet licensing techniques [ip]


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Half-Life 2: Test bed for Internet licensing techniques
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 11:04:34 -0600
From: Rick Russell <rickr <at> rice.edu>
Organization: Rice University Information Technology
To: Declan McCullagh <declan <at> well.com>

This might be fodder for Politech. Long time reader, first time
contributor :-)

Half-Life 2 is a new computer game for Windows PCs. Unlike most games, HL2
uses a network-based licensing and update client that is tightly
integrated into the game itself. This client is called "Steam".

Valve, the maker of Half-Life 2, can disable or "ban" users who sign in
with falsified or pirated authentication keys by refusing to serve out a
valid license for the game. When that happens, all Steam-enabled games on
the user's computer become inaccessible, even for standalone single-player
use.

An example of Valve's policies in action can be found here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4041289.stm

This is nothing new, and it's much the same as the Windows Activation
method that Microsoft has employed for two years. It may also remind you
of the banning issues in other multiplayer games like Ultima Online or
Everquest.
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Declan McCullagh | 6 Jan 2005 16:00
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Copyrighting cease and desist lawyer nastygrams? [ip]

[Yes, the C&D letter is copyrighted; the real question is (or should be) 
  whether copyright law extends so far as to prevent the recipient from 
redistributing it freely. ChillingEffects.org gets around this problem 
by providing a modicum of commentary with the nastygram. --Declan]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Copyrighting Cease and Desist Letters?
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2005 13:43:38 -0800
From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <joehall <at> gmail.com>
Reply-To: joehall <at> pobox.com
To: Declan McCullagh <declan <at> well.com>, Dave Farber <dave <at> farber.net>

Hi Declan, Dave,

I thought either or both of you would be interested in this.
Attorneys for a resort are claiming that a cease and desist letter
that they sent in a trademark issue is covered by copyright and,
therefore, not forwardable.  (The below is written in [Markdown][0]
format.)

best and happy new year, Joe

[0]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/

----

http://pobox.com/~joehall/nqb2/index.php/2005/01/05/copyrighting_candds

### Copyrighting Cease and Desist Letters? ###
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Declan McCullagh | 7 Jan 2005 06:00
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ITU's Richard Hill on ICANN's $.75 fee and Net governance


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: ICANN partying like it's 1999
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 18:20:35 +0100
From: <richard.hill <at> itu.int>
To: <declan <at> well.com>

Declan,

With reference to your article

> 
> http://news.com.com/ICANN+partying+like+its+1999/2010-1071_3-5495758.html
> 
> ICANN partying like it's 1999
> December 20, 2004, 4:00 AM PT
> By Declan McCullagh
> 

Here are some comments that you may, if you wish, post publicly.

As you know, ITU does not charge a per-number fee for administering 
E.164, E.212 and/or Q.708 naming and numbering resources.

Nor do most national regulators (although practices vary nationally).

But I don't know whether that is relevant or not.

For interest, the American Heritage dictionary gives the following as 
its second definition of tax:  "a fee or due levied on the members of an
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Declan McCullagh | 7 Jan 2005 06:01
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Steve Mann asks about filtering anonymous threats from incoming email [priv]


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Filtering out anonymous threats
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 13:38:09 -0500 (EST)
From: Steve Mann <mann <at> eecg.toronto.edu>
To: declan <at> well.com (Declan McCullagh)
CC: mann <at> genesis.eecg.toronto.edu (Steve Mann), joehall <at> gmail.co, 
  dave <at> farber.net, iankerr <at> uottawa.ca

Would it not be a legally reasonable Personal Policy (TM) to filter
out anonymous threats coming into one's self?

I know the Maffia like to pull someone over to a quiet corner and
whisper a threat in their ear.  If a person were to broadcast everything
he or she saw and heard, it would eliminate this kind of anonymous
or private threat.

In particular, I think a person, in addition to having a right of
privacy should have a right of inverse privacy if and when they want it.

We are currently studying "anonauthority" and "anonequity" issues
in colaboration with University of Ottawa (Ian Kerr, Faculty of Law,
etc.), so these issues would be of great interest.

Personal Policy (TM) is like saying "by exposing me to informatic
content, you agree to the following Terms and Conditions...
if you do not agree to these Terms and Conditions, do not expose
me to informatic content".

For example, if I built a machine that automatically opened all of
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Declan McCullagh | 7 Jan 2005 06:07
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Bloggers undercut reporters' 1A privilege defense [fs]


[I meant to send this out last month. It's provocative and raises some 
of the hoary who's-a-journalist-and-can-get-creds issues that are 
becoming important again. --Declan]

http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/getmailfiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:ArticleToMail&Type=text/html&Path=NYS/2004/12/06&ID=Ar00600

Bloggers Blur the Definition of Reporters’ Privilege

By JOSH GERSTEIN Staff Reporter of the Sun

     As two prominent Washington journalists struggle to avoid jail time 
over their refusal to disclose confidential sources, one of the biggest 
obstacles the reporters face is America’s fastgrowing army of citizen 
Web loggers, or bloggers.

     It’s not that the town criers of the online world are campaigning 
to send Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time 
Magazine to prison. Rather, it’s the bloggers’ very existence that 
undercuts the journalists’ legal defense.

     On Wednesday, lawyers for Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper are scheduled 
to appear before a federal appeals court in the capital to argue that 
reporters should have a legal privilege not to testify about their 
sources under most circumstances. A federal prosecutor investigating 
whether the White House leaked the name of a CIA operative,Valerie 
Plame, has asked the pair to appear before a grand jury to answer 
questions.They have refused.

     The crux of the reporters’ contention is that the public would be
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Declan McCullagh | 7 Jan 2005 06:15
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Michael Powell: No FCC censorship of satellite radio [fs]

[Of course it's hardly clear that the FCC has the statutory authority to 
impose "indecency" restrictions on satellite radio if it wanted to, and 
constitutional hurdles are another reason for Powell to say this. But 
it's still good that he did. More broadly, the existence of two 
different regulatory regimes does cause an imbalance, and all else being 
equal, a competitive advance for satellite radio. If the imbalance ever 
corrects itself, I hope it'll be in the less-regulated direction rather 
than the Pacification of satellite. --Declan]

---

http://news.com.com/FCC+chief+buoys+VoIP%2C+satellite+radio/2100-7353_3-5515823.html?tag=nefd.top

FCC chief buoys VoIP, satellite radio
Published: January 6, 2005, 3:09 PM PST
By David Becker
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

LAS VEGAS--Michael Powell had a rare bit of good news Thursday for shock 
jock Howard Stern, saying the government had no interest in censoring 
satellite radio... "I think it's a dangerous thing to start talking 
about extending government oversight of content to other media just to 
level the playing field," Powell said. [...] Broadcast radio operators 
have made several unsuccessful attempts to restrict satellite radio 
content. But Powell said the merging of media formats and the Internet 
and changing attitudes favor minimal oversight. [...]
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