Archives for March 2007
Turnitin and Google Book Search: same thing?
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What’s striking to me is how similar this is to Google Book Search. It remains to be seen whether Turnitin will make a fair use defense, but their past statements suggest that they will. (Here is a PDF of a legal opinion that Turnitin commissioned.)
Google is copying books without the copyright owners’ consent and storing them in a searchable database, just as Turnitin does with student papers. Google copies the whole book, but argues it’s a fair use because they only display a “snippet” of the text in search results. Turnitin also copies the whole work and only displays snippets to teachers if there’s a plagiarism match. Both Google and Turnitin make commercial use of the works they copy and they both arguably serve educational purposes. And If Google’s use doesn’t affect the “potential market” for licensing books to be included in searchable databases, then Turnitin’s use certainly doesn’t affect the potential market for licensing papers to be included in a plagiarism database.
So, can these cases be distinguished? If not, are they both fair use? I’m still thinking about this one, and I’d like to hear what your analysis is.
Cross-posted at TLF. You can leave and read comments there. →
A quick response to Cyren Call & Frontline
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Cyren Call Chairman Morgan O’Brien and Frontline Wireless Chairman Janice Obuchowski each had a letter to the editor responding to my March 13th op-ed about first responder communications. I’d like to take up just a few sentences to respond.O’Brien writes that I “audaciously misrepresent[ed]” Cyren Call’s proposal, but does not point out what that misrepresentation was. So, I can’t answer. Obuchoski, on the other hand, does point out a misstatement about Frontline’s plan. She writes,
[Brito] misstates that the plan would build “an interoperable network over spectrum purchased at auction; but Frontline wants the FCC to restrict that spectrum to public safety use.” Frontline will offer commercial service in the spectrum won at auction and provide public safety with pre-emptible access during emergencies to this commercial spectrum to provide additional capacity during peak periods of crisis when first responders’ communications requirements spike. This spectrum would remain in commercial use at all other times.
The thing is, I have always fully understood that the Frontline proposal would share he spectrum with public safety and commercial users. The error was introduced by a WSJ edit made after the last version of the op-ed that I approved the evening before it was published. (I don’t blame the WSJ; they were probably just editing for length or style.) Continue reading this post »
Romney: Dyn-o-mite!
I’d love to know who was the Romney speech writer responsible for this hilarity. According to the Miami Herald:People chuckled when presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a Mormon raised in Michigan and elected in Massachusetts, bungled the names of Cuban-American politicians during a recent speech in Miami. But when he mistakenly associated Fidel Castro’s trademark speech-ending slogan — Patria o muerte, venceremos! — with a free Cuba, listeners didn’t laugh. They winced. Castro has closed his speeches with the phrase — in English, ”Fatherland or death, we shall overcome” — for decades.
You have no idea how bad that is. That’s Castro’s trademark phrase. Like Mr. T’s “I pity the fool,” or He-Man’s “By the power of Greyskull!”
My op-ed quoted on the Hill
Yesterday all five FCC commissioners went before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Telecom and the Internet for an oversight hearing. Here’s the AP’s account. During the hearing, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Ca.) introduced into the record my op-ed published on Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal and she read from it to the Commissioners. Here’s the video:It’s really great to see the hard work you put into something maybe having an effect on policy.
TimesSelect now free for .edu
I wrote a while back that the New York Times had cut the price of its TimesSelect premium online content in half for university faculty and students. Today comes word that it’s free. It’s nominally just for current students, but as long as you have a .edu e-mail address you can get the free subscription. Click here to start the sign-up. Just got mine. Ah Brooks and Dowd, I can read you once again. Hat tip Joe Adamson.Me in the WSJ: Failure to communicate
I promise to talk about something different soon, but for now let me plug my op-ed in The Wall Street Journal today about first responder communications. You can read it here (no subscription required). The gist:Offer Cyren Call, Frontline and others the opportunity to bid on spectrum already restricted to public safety use. That would allow firms to build national interoperable networks without affecting how much spectrum will be available for commercial use. At the very least, if spectrum now slated for commercial auction must be used, the government should identify an equal amount of existing public safety spectrum that can be auctioned commercially once the new public safety networks are built.
Whatever path we take, we should ensure that at least two competing networks are built. This works well for wireless services such as cell phones; subscribers to one service have no trouble speaking to subscribers on another while prices are kept low.
A private-sector national network for public safety first responders is not an untested idea. In the U.K., the national network that supports police, fire and over a hundred other public safety services is owned and operated by O2, a private firm. We can do even better, using competition to spur the innovations that monopoly rarely provides.
Viacom Sues Google Over YouTube Clips
WSJ: “After months of negotiation punctuated by pointed rhetoric, Viacom Inc. sued Google Inc. and its YouTube unit, claiming the popular video-sharing site engages in ‘massive intentional copyright infringement.’” Exactly one year ago (eerie) I hinted that this day would come. How long before Mark Cuban says I told you so?How podcasting will take off
Beet.tv has a feature on Podzinger, a podcast search engine that is a subsidiary of defense contractor BBN. BBN developed speech-to-text technology for the government’s anti-terrorism efforts and is now putting it to use on the public web.Podzinger analyzes the language of clips and determines whether they are music or have speech. If there is speech, a transcription is created which is nearly 80 percent accurate, company executives say.
The transcripts are searchable, so finding audio relevant to a keyword search is not a problem. They’ve already indexed 1.5 million YouTube clips. Once this technology becomes more widespread–once Google offers a “podcast” tab next to “image,” “books,” and “news”–podcasting will certainly get a boost, moving it further into the mainstream. That podcast you recorded a year ago and that hasn’t gotten many hits since its release week will suddenly be valuable again once it’s indexed.
Starbucks free coffee day on March 15
Last year I posted a tip about Starbucks’ first-ever Starbucks Coffee Break, a now annual event in which the coffee chain gives anyone who stops by a free tall cup of joe. For some reason that post generated an insane amount of traffic for this site. So, for your enjoyment, this year’s Coffee Break will take place on the same date as last year, the Ides of March, i.e. the 15th. Last year the free cup was only available from 10 a.m. to noon and although I can’t find any info about hours this year, I imagine it’ll be the same deal.Giving McCain benefit of doubt on public safety spectrum
I got my hands on the new public safety communications bill that John McCain introduced last Thursday, but which is not yet available on the web. Unlike what has been reported here and elsewhere, McCain’s bill isn’t a straight-up implementation of the Cyren Call plan. With some trepidation, I say there’s actually quite a bit to like.
McCain’s bill does take 30 MHz now slated for commercial auction and designate it for public safety, which in my book is a bad idea because public safety already has plenty of spectrum, and consumers would forgo the benefits of new commercially available spectrum. But here’s what he does: he sets up a “working group” of first responder and government representatives who will write a report to the FCC outlining what an ideal public-private interoperable network on the 30 MHz would look like. The FCC is then authorized to auction the 30 MHz as long as all the bidders agree to use the spectrum to provide a network that matches the report’s specifications. In some ways this is a lot like the Frontline Wireless proposal. If there is no bidder, however, then the Cyren Call plan kicks in and a Public Safety Broadband Trust Corporation, established by the bill, can buy the spectrum using FCC loan guarantees.
So what’s to like? Well, what there is to like is in the first part of the bill assuming the Cyren Call contingency doesn’t kick in. Continue reading this post »
For my climate-change-denier friends
National Geographic: “Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet’s recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human- induced—cause, according to one scientist’s controversial theory.” Basically Mars is warming up, too, so the theory is that changes in the sun are responsible for climate change on both planets.TPW 2: REAL ID, fair use, and Univision fined
The new episode of Tech Policy Weekly hosted by yours truly is now online. In the show this week, the REAL ID Act gets hot in the states and in Washington, Rep. Rick Boucher introduces a watered-down copyright fair use bill, and the FCC slaps it largest fine ever on Spanish-language broadcaster Univision. On the show are Tim Lee, Adam Thierer, and Jim Harper. You can use the player below to listen to it right here, or click here to subscribe via iTunes.Jules Winnfield in type
Werbach: Forget neutrality, regulate interconnection
Wharton professor Kevin Werbach has posted an interesting new paper on net neutrality that’s not really about net neutrality. His thesis is that while he agrees with the proponents of regulation that broadband network operators will disadvantage content and application providers and thus stifle innovation, he doesn’t think anti-discrimination rules are the way to go. In fact, he does a great job of explaining why they’re not a good idea and how discrimination of all kinds–from content delivery networks (CDNs) like Akamai, to propriety video services like ESPN 360–serve the interests of both consumers and network operators. He also highlights how difficult it would be under neutrality rules to distinguish anti-competitive discrimination from benign discrimination like spam blocking or legitimate traffic management.
Instead he argues that the real issue missed by the neutrality debate is interconnection. “The defining characteristic of the Internet is not the absence of discrimination, but a relentless commitment to interconnection,” he writes. Networks withholding interconnection is the real threat to innovation. In particular, he is concerned about access tiering, “[broadband networks] charging content and application providers additional fees for preferential access to their broadband access customers.” Continue reading this post »
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This is the personal site of Jerry Brito, a lawyer and writer in Washington, D.C. He’s an academic researcher and the creator of Unclutterer and several other blogs. More »
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