While it hasn't been done perfectly, I'm of the opinion that the literature world has handled the transition to the digital economy rather well. Perhaps they saw the recording industry trip over its own testicles so badly that they were able to learn from all the worst mistakes. The pricing, while probably not exactly right, far better mirrors consumer demand than what the music industry attempted for digital music initially. We're even seeing a quicker transition to DRM abandonement than I think we saw for music. All that being said, as much as is possible, the inevitable progression that recorded music followed into the digital realm continues with literature.

With that in mind, perhaps it shouldn't be all that surprising that one of the buzzwords in the publishing industry is quickly becoming eSingles. For the unintiated, eSingles are loosely defined as works of complete literature in the neighborhood of 8k-10k words. Laura Hazard Owen sums things up rather nicely.

Amazon’s U.S. Kindle Singles store now contains 283 singles. In February, I reported that the company had sold 2 million Kindle Singles; as of September, that number was up to 3.5 million, and Amazon (AMZN) just expanded the program to the U.K., where it will include new entries by bestselling British authors as well as most of the American Kindle Singles. Many Byliner Originals are available through Kindle Singles, and they’ll be crossing the Atlantic for the first time with the program’s U.K. expansion.

Popularity of production aside, the other half of the coin is whether or not anyone actually buys these eSingles. Well, it turns out the sales of eSingle literature is a pretty decent mirror to the music singles market. In other words, they're selling pretty well. Several eSingles are hitting the best sellers list and authors tend to do quite well with them thanks to the friendly split distributors like Amazon take. Owen notes that because of the lower price of these singles, bigger publishing houses tend to not be as high on eSingles because the low price point means less on the profit margin, but that kind of misses the point. Much in the same way digital distribution lowered the barriers in music, so one would expect the same to occur in literature, meaning that eSingles may end up being less about publishers benefiting from them as much as new and/or what would otherwise be unheard of artists.

With all that said, it's the distributors of eSingles that are currently limited, but that isn't going to last for long. There's a ton of interest.

That could change next year as other digital bookstores pay more attention to the format. Apple (AAPL) has a separate section of the iBookstore for shorter reads. Barnes & Noble (BKS) launched Nook Snaps, a so-far unimpressive answer to Kindle Singles. Those efforts can give shorter works a promotional push. We could also see more companies, or individual authors, do a Kickstarter campaign to fund either a line of e-singles or just a single work. That’s what journalism startup Matter did.

What matters is that this is where publishing is going to go in the future, likely in a major way. Even the rise of the eBook helps eSingles make sense, given that anyone on a commute may wish to invest in a shorter read on their iPad than a longer novel. In any case, the end result will be more writing, more literature, and more culture, and that is a beautiful thing.

Everyone is supposed to have a unique signature for signing all kinds of important documents. Your signature represents how you would like to be viewed by the world, according to some signature-analysis theories. For most people, a signature isn't worth much and doesn't get much attention, but celebrities and public officials get a bit more scrutiny. Here are some signature examples that have been immortalized (or will soon be) on US currency.

• Jack Lew's distinctive signature has been described as a stretched-out Slinky -- which would look awesome unbecoming AWESOME on a dollar bill. A ton of FOIA requests are probably being filed now to see all the documents that have Lew's signature on them.... [url]
• Here's a list of 47 signatures that have graced US currency since 1928. Anna Escobedo Cabral wins for the most legibly stylish. [url]
• Timothy Geithner also had a unintelligible signature, but he changed it to make it more readable for the US Treasury. From now on, I'm sure some people will refer to Geithner as the former Treasury Secretary known as [insert sig here]. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

As we well know, despite promises from the Obama administration that it would be "the most transparent" in history, it has been anything but that over its first four years. The US Trade Rep (USTR) has been particularly bad on this front, especially when it comes to trade agreements that will have a massive impact on the public, such as ACTA and TPP. No matter how many times they were asked by the public, by Congress and by other countries, the USTR kept insisting that it had to keep things secret because... well... just because. There were some excuses made about how they don't "negotiate in public" or about how "this is how it's always been done," but those don't make any sense when you look at the details. It became especially silly in the ACTA negotiations, late in the process, when many of the countries involved indicated that they wished things were more transparent and many pointed their fingers at the US as being the one country that kept things secret. Also, we know that other international agreements are done in a much more transparent fashion.

The folks at KEI filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents relating to the US's position on transparency regarding a particular ACTA meeting, as well as documents the US had on the positions of other countries. FOIA requests are supposed to be fulfilled within 20 business days from the time they're received. In practice, this time frame is almost never met, though sometimes for good reasons (it takes a while to do some of the searches). However, in this case, it took two and a half years for the White House to finally respond, and when it did, the response was that, while 16 relevant documents were found, it wouldn't release them, because of reasons.

More specifically:

With regard to the second category, we identified sixteen (16) pages of responsive records. We have determined that all 16 pages of responsive records are exempt from disclosure under the deliberative process prong of section of the FOIA. The deliberative process privilege protects the decision making processes of government agencies by encouraging open and frank discussions on policy matters among subordinates and superiors. These records contain predecisional discussions regarding negotiating positions and their implications on future negotiations. Moreover, these documents contain policy recommendations and opinions shared between subordinates and superiors.

Think about this for a second. This is a request to be transparent about positions on transparency, and they're being rejected because it may show discussions about transparency. Really. The fact that these discussions "may contain open and frank discussions on policy matters" shouldn't be a huge concern. The ACTA negotiations are done at this point, and it should be easy enough to redact other issues that might impact future policy efforts. It seems ridiculous to suggest that discussions on whether or not the US should be transparent are, themselves, not subject to transparency.

As we noted recently, one of the key questions in Bradley Manning's trial is whether or not his leaking of information amounted to aiding the enemy, a charge which can lead to a death sentence. This is troubling on many levels, considering the evidence is pretty clear that Manning was actually trying to do the opposite: aid the US, by providing more openness and transparency, not help Al Qaeda. Even scarier, the government's ridiculously broad interpretation of "aiding the enemy" seems to be revealing or publishing any information that Al Qaeda might like. As Glenn Greenwald notes, if that's the case, famed investigative reporter Bob Woodward (one half of the duo who revealed Watergate) and his White House sources should be on trial first.

But let's apply the government's theory in the Manning case to one of the most revered journalists in Washington: Bob Woodward, who has become one of America's richest reporters, if not the richest, by obtaining and publishing classified information far more sensitive than anything WikiLeaks has ever published. For that reason, one of Woodward's most enthusiastic readers was Osama bin Laden, as this 2011 report from AFP demonstrates:

"Al-Qaeda has released a video marking the anniversary of 9/11 which includes a message from its slain leader Osama bin Laden to the American people . . . . He recommended that Americans read the book 'Obama's War' by Bob Woodward which details wrangles over US military decision-making."

If bin Laden's interest in the WikiLeaks cables proves that Manning aided al-Qaida, why isn't bin Laden's enthusaism for Woodward's book proof that Woodwood's leakers - and Woodward himself - are guilty of the same capital offense? This question is even more compelling given that Woodward has repeatedly published some of the nation's most sensitive secrets, including information designated "Top Secret" - unlike WikiLeaks and Manning, which never did.

Indeed, he goes on to point out a report from 2010 by Michael Isikoff showing that Woodward's book revealed a ton of highly sensitive info.

In the first 12 pages of his new book, “Obama’s Wars,” famed journalist Bob Woodward reveals a wealth of eye-popping details from a highly classified briefing that Mike McConnell, then-director of National Intelligence, gave to President-elect Barack Obama just two days after the November 2008 election.

Among the disclosures: the code names of previously unknown National Security Agency programs, the existence of a clandestine paramilitary army run by the CIA in Afghanistan, and details of a secret Chinese cyberpenetration of Obama and John McCain campaign computers.

The contents were so sensitive that McConnell, under orders from President George W. Bush, barred Obama's own transition chief, John Podesta, from sitting in at the briefing, which took place inside a tiny, windowless and secure room known as a SCIP (or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility.)

Thus, under the basic argument being used against Manning, any government source who provided info to Woodward -- and Woodward himself -- could be subject to the same charges (and potential death penalty). That is, to put it mildly, insane. And, yet, very few journalists are speaking out about how ridiculous the charges are against Manning. Sometimes this is because they're just not paying attention. Or it's because they don't like Wikileaks. No matter what the reason, it's quite scary.

What this really shows, however, is that it appears the Obama administration -- which has gone after a ton of journalists who have published embarrassing information -- is using these lawsuits strategically. If you reveal highly sensitive info that makes them look good: no problem. If you reveal much less sensitive info that makes them look bad: watch out.

Times change. Amazon is making some news by launching an auto-rip service that puts MP3 copies of songs into your Amazon cloud storage when you buy CDs. Some have been comparing this to the old MP3.com "Beam It!" service that got MP3.com sued out of existence a while back, but this is quite different on one key dimension: Amazon has licensing deals with the major labels which specifically allow this (which also means it doesn't work on all CDs).

Still, this move does raise some interesting question. For example: why not do this for books too? Why not have it so that when you buy a physical book, a digital copy automatically shows up on your Kindle? Of course, the real answer isn't difficult to glean: because the publishers have no interest at all in doing this (yet). I expect they'll do it eventually, but the publishers are still going through the same denial phase that many in the recording business went through earlier, and so it's probably still going to be at least a year before some publisher comes around to such a deal (and then it will be announced as "big news" when it happens).

Another interesting question is whether or not the "AutoRip" service leads to more resells of CDs soon after people buy them. As Sherwin Siy notes, it may not actually be different than buying a CD and ripping it yourself, but the automated nature of it may make it easier to simply pass on the CD. Of course, does that mean you're legally supposed to delete the MP3s too? I'm sure the industry would argue that's the case, but it might not be that clear cut.

In the end, this really is the kind of thing that the recording industry should have embraced a decade ago, so welcome to the party (a bit late).

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.
~Alexis de Tocqueville

War generally used to refer to a finite state, but as with the endless "War on Drugs," the War on Terror has scattered the US military around the globe to battle terrorists with no endgame. Hillary Clinton speculated back in 2009 that we would be in Afghanistan (in one form or another) for another "50 or 60 years." Greg Miller's article for the Washington Post quotes unnamed senior administration officials as stating these operations are "likely to be extended for at least another decade." [As this story was being prepped, the administration announced plans to pull all American troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Seeing as this completely contradicts the Pentagon's claim that a large fighting force will need to be maintained seemingly indefinitely, we're probably better off believing this when we see it.] Eleven years and counting from the 9/11 attacks and the "action" only seems to be heating up. Glenn Greenwald, writing for The Guardian, points out the current administration's escalation of this undeclared war.

The policies adopted by the Obama administration just over the last couple of years leave no doubt that they are accelerating, not winding down, the war apparatus that has been relentlessly strengthened over the last decade. In the name of the War on Terror, the current president has diluted decades-old Miranda warnings; codified a new scheme of indefinite detention on US soil; plotted to relocate Guantanamo to Illinois; increased secrecy, repression and release-restrictions at the camp; minted a new theory of presidential assassination powers even for US citizens; renewed the Bush/Cheney warrantless eavesdropping framework for another five years, as well as the Patriot Act, without a single reform; and just signed into law all new restrictions on the release of indefinitely held detainees.

Much of this has to do with the very nature of government itself: surviving a round of budget cuts is a larger victory than actually achieving stated goals. We've seen evidence of this perverted incentive in the TSA, which has done everything it can to protect its turf in order to remain "essential" enough to receive funding year in and year out.

Another bonus for those in power is that long-lasting wars create an atmosphere conducive to the expansion of government control. Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture quotes James Madison's warning about the corruption of executive power by the act of war:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

We have a government (and various industries) that has no interest in ending the War on Terror. In order to maintain the new, post-9/11 status quo, the "war" must continue. There is simply no incentive to end it, at least nothing that outweighs the side benefits.

If you were a US leader, or an official of the National Security State, or a beneficiary of the private military and surveillance industries, why would you possibly want the war on terror to end? That would be the worst thing that could happen. It's that war that generates limitless power, impenetrable secrecy, an unquestioning citizenry, and massive profit.

Limitless power and impenetrable secrecy. That's what we've got and that's what's in store for us in the future. The FISA Amendments Act, which was recently extended for another half-decade with scarcely an objection, sanctions warrantless wiretapping on American citizens thanks to a "secret" interpretation of the law's language by a secret court. A so-called "National Counterterrorism Center" is collecting a giant database of information on innocent Americans, an action so breathtakingly wrong that it raised objections from the DHS. Law enforcement officials, with assistance from the FBI and CIA, have spent years violating the rights of US citizens who happen to be Muslim in hopes of uncovering terrorist plots. To date, they've found nothing. If certain "security" legislation fails to make its way through the proper channels, executive orders are issued to make it a reality.

The politicians and private companies benefiting from our ongoing battle will be pleased to learn that our "anti-terrorist" actions are going a long way towards making the War on Terror self-perpetuating.

There's a good reason US officials are assuming the "War on Terror" will persist indefinitely: namely, their actions ensure that this occurs. The New York Times' Matthew Rosenberg examines what the US government seems to regard as the strange phenomenon of Afghan soldiers attacking US troops with increasing frequency, and in doing so, discovers a shocking reality: people end up disliking those who occupy and bomb their country:

"Such insider attacks, by Afghan security forces on their Western allies, became "the signature violence of 2012", in the words of one former American official. The surge in attacks has provided the clearest sign yet that Afghan resentment of foreigners is becoming unmanageable, and American officials have expressed worries about its disruptive effects on the training mission that is the core of the American withdrawal plan for 2014. . . .

"But behind it all, many senior coalition and Afghan officials are now concluding that after nearly 12 years of war, the view of foreigners held by many Afghans has come to mirror that of the Taliban. Hope has turned into hatred, and some will find a reason to act on those feelings.

Our government has, over the past decade, ordained murder (targeted killing), torture (enhanced interrogation techniques) and kidnapping (extraordinary rendition) under the guise of "fighting terrorism." The administration has granted itself the power to authorize war/warlike tactics anywhere in the world without requiring congressional authorization. The conscription of local law enforcement into the War on Terror has availed them of the same questionable procedures and tactics, further eroding our rights as citizens.

Rather than make the world safer, our actions have created more enemies. And it's only going to get worse. Laws, especially far-reaching legislation that grants unprecedented powers, rarely, if ever, come back "off the books." The feeling that this is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better is particularly disheartening because the "better" half of that sentence looks like its chances are moving from "slim" to "none."

It's no surprise that the War on Terror is endless. It is, however, discomfiting to hear administration officials confirm this. What began as merely overreaction to a horrendous attack has become the focal point of two administrations -- a vague quest against a poorly-defined "evil" that has been used to excuse criminal activities by national security agencies and as impetus for a swiftly-growing surveillance state.

I've recently been dealing with some building contractors over some work, and the process is no fun at all. Finding someone you can trust is a pretty harrowing experience, because if you pick wrong, the consequences can be huge. Online review sites, like Yelp, have actually been tremendously helpful, even if you know to take reviews with a grain of salt (in both directions). At the very least, they provide some good fodder for understanding strengths and weaknesses. Recently, we wrote about a case in Virginia, in which a contractor named Christopher Dietz took a woman, Jane Perez, to court for $750,000 because she wrote negative reviews about him on Yelp and Angie's List. A lower court had initially told Perez to change her reviews, but the Virginia Supreme Court overturned that, saying that it could not require changes under the 1st Amendment until a full hearing was held on whether or not the content was defamatory.

It's worth noting that Perez only posted her negative reviews after Dietz had already sued her in small claims court, a case that was dismissed (some of the defamation claim concerns Dietz disagreeing with how Perez described the end result of that court case in her reviews). Dietz has also suggested during a video interview on MSNBC that he wanted to go after both Yelp and Angie's List, and that they shouldn't hide behind Section 230 of the CDA. At this point, it would appear that Dietz either does not understand or underestimates the power of the Streisand Effect as well as the importance of free speech and the importance of secondary liability protection for service providers. It's a trifecta!

Perez has pro bono legal help from Public Citizen and the ACLU, but there are still substantial legal costs that she needs to cover. To help pay for it, she's put up an IndieGoGo campaign in which she notes that some comments on a popular site for home builders suggest that an association for home builders may be backing Dietz's lawsuit. The site in question does have a running update on the case, which includes one post where a spokesperson for the National Association of the Remodeling Industry claims that they "support [Chris Dietz] in the quest to right this wrong" and that the organization is "reviewing the case and will determine next steps." It's not clear if this means that NARI is actually financially supporting Dietz's lawsuit, but either way, "supporting" Dietz's misguided lawsuit still doesn't seem like a particularly smart stance, for reasons we'll get to below. NARI could do a lot more good for contractors by teaching them how to properly deal with negative reviews.

That same page includes a couple different reports from other contractors, insisting that contractors need to support Dietz and stop this scourge of people saying bad stuff about them. There's one post that insists the lawsuit is a good thing, saying it will take a "perfect storm" to lose (unlikely), while also mocking review sites claiming most of his customers have never heard of them. Then there's another one that mocks both review sites and the ACLU for daring to think that this was an important case.

I can certainly understand why contractors are upset about negative reviews -- just as lots of other businesses are worried about negative reviews. It's no secret that not all reviews are accurate, and it really does suck, emotionally, to see a negative review that's not true. But there are ways to deal with negative reviews that don't make the situation worse. Jumping straight to defamation lawsuits generally are the opposite of that. They do make the situation worse. SearchEngineLand has a great post in response to this very case, in which they point out that there are much better ways to deal with negative reviews online. Suing only creates news about those negative reviews -- and having it become widely public news that you sued a customer about their negative review seems likely to have a lot more damaging impact on a business than those negative reviews might have had in the first place.

Yes, we live in a legalistic society, where it is the first response of many people to "go legal" when they feel wronged, but in a world where information is widely available, there are often much better ways to respond to "negative" information than going legal. If these contractors really wanted to "support" Dietz, they should encourage more of their colleagues to read the SearchEngineLand article, rather than supporting a dangerous lawsuit that could undermine key principles of free speech or secondary liability.

You may remember that, at the beginning of 2012, there were some predictions that Kickstarter might possibly help fund over $150 million that year, up from about $80 million in 2011. Turns out that estimate was way low. Kickstarter projects actually brought in $274 million on $319 million in pledges. A lot of folks are focused on that $319 million, but it seems like the $274 million is more interesting. You can see the breakdown of pledges as well, showing how it covers a variety of different areas: It seems notable that some of the areas with the most funding are the ones we're often told are struggling the most with new business models. Kickstarter is clearly not "the" new business model (because there isn't just one), but it shows that there are solutions out there, and likely will be many more on the way, even as Kickstarter itself continues to grow.

At the beginning of the year, some folks in France, who used the popular ISP Free (whose name is a bit misleading, as it is not, in fact, free), discovered that the company had started providing a service in which it blocked all internet banner ads. There was no whitelist. It was either all or nothing (and if you went "all," you were trusting that it wouldn't over-filter). This quickly raised an awful lot of questions -- with the biggest among them being "can they do that?" According to the French Digital Economy minister, the answer apparently is no. Free was quickly told to turn off its ad blocking software.

The French minister said: "No actor can jeopardise the digital ecosystem in a unilateral way."

Of course, the reason for doing this was not to make their subscribers happier but rather to attempt to force Google to pay them more money for carrying their traffic. It was related to the story we just had about France Telecom degrading YouTube performance. Both were examples of these French companies effectively seeking to break basic end-to-end principles of the internet, in an effort to get Google to pay more, since Google is so popular. As we've noted, some European telcos have been desperately trying to make the argument that successful internet companies should pay them more money to carry their traffic.

The whole thing leaves me conflicted. Obviously, some will argue that I'm biased, since a significant part of our revenue comes from banner ads on this site. However, as I've made clear in the past, I have no problem with users who choose to make use of ad blocking software themselves, such as AdBlock, if they feel that ads on a site are too annoying. Many sites get upset at users who do this, or even try to punish them. We do not and would not do such a thing. We consider it an incentive to try to figure out ways to make money that don't annoy our readers.

However, what Free is doing is different than that. Not only does it not really have anything to do with creating a benefit for the user, the fact that it's universal with no control is quite worrisome. Furthermore, while some consumers will (obviously) argue that removing all ads is a major benefit, they might want to be careful in thinking about the slippery slope they're stepping on when it comes to "net neutrality" issues. If an ISP is able to simply block all advertising, unless it gets paid directly from the ad platform, what's to stop it from blocking other content (like all YouTube videos, all Netflix movies, all Spotify plays, all Skype calls, etc...) unless those companies pay to reach the ISP's subscribers as well.

In some ways it's a clever play by Free, who likely hoped consumers would support this move, without recognizing they were really supporting the same tool being applied across other content that they actually want.

Of course, given all that, I'm still a bit conflicted, since it's uncomfortable to then see a government official step in unilaterally, and tell an ISP what they can and cannot do. This is, obviously, the net neutrality debate in a nut shell but pushed into an alternate perspective, thanks to the fact that it's about advertising, rather than content subscribers really want. In the end, I find it problematic that the ISP is doing this unilaterally -- whereby it seems like it really should be the end user's choice to set their own rules for how their internet connection works, not the ISP in the middle.

At some point, some national group is going to have to get the memo out to local law enforcement agencies within the United States that it is perfectly legal to record them while they operate in public. We've seen case after case after case of citizens having their property taken away or being charged with trumped up crimes all because they pointed a recording device at the police. Hell, some states have tried to enact unconstitutional laws to back up their ill-conceived and unwarranted positions.

All that being said, you just have to hand it to a police force up in Minnesota for the sheer cajones it took to do what they did. It started as other stories have, with a citizen, Andrew Henderson, recording police as they frisked a bloodied man before he was loaded into an ambulance and then having an officer take his recording device away.

The deputy, Jacqueline Muellner, approached him and snatched the camera from his hand, Henderson said.

"We'll just take this for evidence," Muellner said. Their voices were recorded on Henderson's cellphone as they spoke, and Henderson provided a copy of the audio file to the Pioneer Press. "If I end up on YouTube, I'm gonna be upset."

We've seen this kind of thing before, of course. Police use the excuse of evidence collecting to take away recording devices, which is really the only thing they're interested in. It's wrong. We get that. Usually some kind of internal review of the incident is triggered, asses are officially covered, and then the recording device is returned, sometimes after having been wiped. It's a bad enough story as it stands.

And that scenario is almost exactly what happened here, as the spokesman for Ramsey County acknowledged in a quote that citizens have the right to record police. But everyday abusive practices aren't enough for Ramsey County officers, apparently. The only thing that will satisfy them appears to be a new level of bullshit hitherto unseen, because a week later, when Henderson went to retrieve the camera, the police charged him with disorderly conduct and obstruction, with the citation noting that this was due to a "Data privacy HIPAA violation." In case you aren't clear on this, in the blogging industry, we refer to this as a massive amount of bullshit (piles and piles of it).

The allegation that his recording of the incident violated HIPAA, or the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is nonsense, said Jennifer Granick, a specialist on privacy issues at Stanford University Law School. The rule deals with how health care providers handle consumers' health information.

"There's nothing in HIPAA that prevents someone who's not subject to HIPAA from taking photographs on the public streets," Granick said. "HIPAA has absolutely nothing to say about that."

The kicker? The deputy who had taken the camera for "evidence" purposes erased all the footage. The exchange in which she took that camera was audio recorded by Henderson separately on his cell phone, a recording which he still has. I would suggest that if the police do not immediately rescind their trumped up charges against him, Henderson should insist that we take the deputy at her word, assume she collected the camera and its footage as evidence, and then we can all begin discussing how much prison time the deputy should be doing for destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice.

That's no more crazy than anything the police have done in this story.

We're always told that the reason there's so much piracy out there is because "people just want stuff for free." This isn't actually supported by the facts, because we see people pay when they can get things for free all the time. And, similarly, we know that those who often get the most free stuff, also buy more. In other words, price may be one component of why people buy -- and free may be an appealing price -- but it is hardly the only component in how people make their decisions on obtaining content. One of the key issues, for many, is the freedom and or convenience in how they can make use of said content -- an area where DRM solutions take away value from the end-user (which, by definition, lowers the price that the average person is willing to pay).

Given all that, there's something rather amusing about Hollywood's new pitch for its Ultraviolet platform. As you may recall, this is the kinder, gentler DRM for video content that the industry has been pushing. It does let you watch content on multiple devices (within limits), but it's still DRM. And, as such, it's no surprise that the reception to UltraViolet has been somewhat lukewarm.

In order to deal with that, the movie studios are trying something different: giving away free movies. Yes, there's something somewhat bizarre about Hollywood using "free" movies as the incentive to get people to buy into their Ultraviolet DRM, which is meant to get them away from the "free" movies they were getting through unauthorized means. While it may attract a few people, it seems likely that the industry is going to (once again) discover the point that many of us have been making for ages. It's not just about free. If free comes with massive strings -- such as annoying DRM -- it's just not going to attract that many people. If they were strategic thinkers, perhaps they'd finally realize that it's not just about free, but about the overall package, and then maybe they'd stop making the overall package so annoying all in an effort to stop some people from accessing the same content... for free.

Hip hop artist Kid Cudi is at it again, tearing into Universal Music for its lack of support. Last February, Cudi decided to branch out stylistically with his album "WZRD," citing Pink Floyd, Nirvana and the Pixies as inspiration. The label's response was to ship only 55,000 physical copies and continue pushing Cudi towards completion of another album in the vein of his first two.

Cudi took to Twitter to express his displeasure and became his own promotional team. The result? "WZRD" debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200 chart -- all without label support. Now, something else has caught Cudi's attention and (re)raised his ire at his label. Apparently, he's racking up millions of views at Vevo -- but his latest singles (which are the "return to form" Universal seemed to be seeking) are getting no radio push from Universal, unlike other artists with similar view totals.

"King Wizard 3.4 million views on Vevo, Just What I Am has 4.3 million and my shit is not on regular rotation on radio. Hmmm," Cudi Tweeted from his account, @ducidni.

"Trinidad James got 4.1 million views on his hit (rightfully so), and I hear that jam EVERYWHERE. Wheres my fuckin spins???" the rapper born Scott Mescudi added.

It must be noted that Cudi has racked up three million views in a little less than a month. His previous track, "Just What I Am," has 4.5 million views in two months, all without label support or radio airplay. Here's Cudi's Twitter rant in full:


Interestingly, Kid Cudi's official site (which is owned by Universal Music) includes his Twitter feed and it appears that UMG has decided to edit out any disparaging tweets. His "Im talking numbers..." tweet now floats freely in a context-free void, following his last, pre-rant tweet of "Dentist :("


UMG's not actually putting words in Cudi's mouth, but it's certainly taking quite a few out of it. Fortunately for Cudi, UMG doesn't control his actual Twitter account, but after the events of the last several months, I'm willing to bet it wishes it did.

If Cudi can push this volume with little to no support, it's probably a good indication that he could strike out on his own and move on from UMG. Of course, nothing in the major label world is quite that easy, what with contractual obligations and the fact that the third party that controls his creations would be more than willing to hang onto his catalog in perpetuity, even if it feels it's not worth supporting.

It has been three and a half years since I first uploaded my remix video “Buffy vs Edward: Twilight Remixed” to YouTube. The work is an example of fair use transformative storytelling which serves as a visual critique of gender roles and representations in modern pop culture vampire media.

Since I published the remix in 2009 it has been viewed over 3 million times on YouTube and fans have translated the subtitles into 30 different languages. It has been featured and written about by the LA Times, Boston Globe, Salon, Slate, Wired, Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly and discussed on NPR radio. It was nominated for a 2010 Webby Award in the best remix/mashup category. The video is used in law school programs, media studies courses and gender studies curricula across the country. The remix also ignited countless online debates over the troubling ways stalking-type behavior is often framed as deeply romantic in movie and television narratives.

This past summer, together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, I even screened the remix for the US Copyright Office at the 2012 hearings on exemptions to the DMCA. Afterward my Buffy vs Edward remix was mentioned by name in the official recommendations by the US Copyright Office (pdf) on exemptions to the DMCA as an example of a transformative noncommercial video work.

"Based on the video evidence presented, the Register is able to conclude that diminished quality likely would impair the criticism and comment contained in noncommercial videos. For example, the Register is able to perceive that Buffy vs Edward and other noncommercial videos would suffer significantly because of blurring and the loss of detail in characters’ expression and sense of depth."

-Recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, October 2012 (Page 133)

Despite the clear and rather unambiguous fair use argument that exists for the video, Lionsgate Entertainment has now abused YouTube's system and filed a DMCA takedown and had my remix deleted for "copyright infringement." Below is a brief chronicle of my struggle to get Buffy vs Edward back on YouTube where it belongs.

On October 9th 2012 I received a message from YouTube stating that Buffy vs Edward had "matched third party content" owned or licensed by Lionsgate and "ads may appear next to it." Lionsgate acquired ownership of the Twilight movie franchise in 2012 (via the purchase of Summit Entertainment for 412 million dollars) so the claim appeared to be directed at the 1 minute 48 seconds of footage I quoted from the first Twilight movie in my 6 minute remix.

I always turn all ads off on my remix videos and never profit off them. But sure enough when I checked my channel, Lionsgate was monetizing my noncommercial fair use remix with ads for Nordstrom fall fashions which popped up over top of my gender critique of pop culture vampires. Incidentally this copyright claim also prevented the remix from playing on all iOS devices like iPads and iPhones because they are not ”monetized platforms“.

I thought perhaps YouTube’s Content ID System had automatically tagged the video and didn’t understand that it was a fair use. In the hopes I could get the mistake cleared up I immediately used YouTube’s built-in process to register a fair use dispute.

Less then 24 hours later however I received another message from YouTube informing me that Lionsgate had reviewed my fair use claim and rejected it, reinstating their claim on the remix and again monetizing the video with intrusive popup ads.

Concerned at what appeared to be a blatant disregard for fair use provisions, I contacted a lawyer at New Media Rights named Art Neill. New Media Rights drafted a rather detailed 1000 word legal argument citing case law and explaining how Buffy vs Edward was in fact about as clear of an example of fair use as exists. This included fair use arguments for the nature and purpose of the transformative use, amount used and market effect. YouTube's built-in system now allows for a second round of copyright disputes, called an appeal process. So I returned to YouTube and filed an official appeal of the reinstated bogus copyright claim by Lionsgate using the fair use argument and legal language from my lawyer. (See the full text of the fair use argument we made here.)

On November 26th 2012, after a month of waiting, I finally got a response stating that Lionsgate had decided to release their copyright claim on my remix. Victory!

Or so I thought.

That same day I noticed another notification from YouTube saying that my Buffy vs Edward remix had "matched third party content" owned or licensed by Lionsgate and that ads may appear on my video. Wait what? Deja-vu. Hadn't I just spent nearly 2 months dealing with exactly that? On closer inspection this new claim was for "visual content" owned by Lionsgate and the claim I had just fought and finally won had been for "audiovisual" content. No further information was provided as to what the difference was between the two claims or what content exactly was supposedly infringing.

It appeared as though Lionsgate just filed two separate infringement claims on the same piece of media.

 Confused and slightly frustrated I once again embarked on repeating the same dispute process as before. I filed my fair use dispute via YouTube’s built-in form exactly as I had the first time around.

Again, just like the first time, it was rejected by Lionsgate within 24 hours and they reinstated their claim on the remix.

So again I filed my second long-form appeal using YouTube’s system, again making the detailed legal arguments crafted by my lawyer at New Media Rights which again lay out very clearly all the fair use arguments. And again, I waited for a response.

On December 18th I received notification from YouTube that Lionsgate had again ignored my fair use arguments, rejected my appeal and this time had the remix deleted from YouTube entirely.

I was dumbfounded. And to add insult to injury I was now locked out of my YouTube account and had a copyright infringement “strike” placed on my channel.

In order to regain access to my account I was also forced to attend YouTube’s insulting “copyright school” and take a test on fair use. Since I’ve been giving lectures on fair use doctrine for artists and video makers for a number of years this was a breeze, but still insulting because my video was not infringing in the first place.

Once I was allowed back into my account I found that YouTube is now penalizing me for this “strike” by preventing me from uploading videos longer than 15 minutes.

I consulted my lawyer again, and following the advice on YouTube’s copyright FAQ page, he reached out to the representatives of Lionsgate who administer their online content and had issued the DMCA takedown. What he found out from that correspondence was worrying.

Representatives of Lionsgate, a company called MovieClips that claims to manage Lionsgate’s clips on Youtube, confirmed in an email to New Media Rights that they had filed a DMCA takedown on Buffy vs Edward because I did not want them to monetize the remix. In fact this is exactly what the company’s representative, Matty Van Schoor, said in a response email to New Media Rights on December 20, 2012.

“The audio/visual content of this video has been reviewed by our team as well as the YouTube content ID system and it has been determined that the video utilizes copyrighted works belonging to Lionsgate. Had our requestes to monetize this video not been disputed, we would have placed an ad on the cotent [sic] and allowed it to remain online. Unfortunately after appeal, we are left with no other option than to remove the content.”

No other option? How about recognizing it is fair use and dropping the complaint? They did not answer or even acknowledge our fair use arguments via email, despite fair use being raised multiple times. 

Perhaps this is just the action of a rogue studio, but it hints at a bit of a nightmare scenario for transformative media makers and remix artists. The fear is that fair use will be ignored in favor of a monetizing model in which media corporations will “allow” critical, educational and/or transformative works only if they can retain effective ownership and directly profit off them.

It appears that Lionsgate is attempting to do just that. What if every time The Daily Show made fun of a Fox News clip, News Corp. was allowed to claim ownership over the entire Daily Show episode in order to monetize it?

There are limitations on takedowns. For instance, as Neill from New Media Rights points out, the DMCA Section 512 prohibits knowingly, materially misrepresenting any information in takedown notices. At least one court, the case of the baby dancing to Prince in the Lenz case, has even required that DMCA takedown notice senders consider fair use before sending a takedown.

Buffy vs Edward has now been offline for 3 weeks. Over the past year, before the takedown, the remix had been viewed an average of 34,000 times per month.

Since none of YouTube’s internal systems were able to prevent this abuse by Lionsgate, and our direct outreach to the content owner hit a brick wall, with the help of New Media Rights I have now filed an official DMCA counter-notification with YouTube. Lionsgate has 14 days to either allow the remix back online or sue me. We will see what happens.

This is what a broken copyright enforcement system looks like.

One last note, New Media Rights has offered me invaluable advice and guidance throughout this battle. They are a small, non-profit two lawyer operation on a shoe-string budget fighting to make sure artists like me are heard. So if you can please consider donating to them here.

PS: Until we can get the takedown reversed, you can still watch the HTML5 popup video version of Buffy vs Edward here.

Reposted with permission from RebelliousPixels.com

The middle finger, or flipping the bird, or digitus impudicus, is a wonderfully universal way to let someone know what you think of them. We recently told you the story of a delightful woman who fashioned her Christmas lights into the gesture as a way to help her neighbors get into the holiday spirit. What I didn't realize is how many stories there are of people giving the bird to the police while driving around on streets. Quite frankly, it never occurred to me to be driving past someone who has the ability to make me miserable in so many different ways and give them the finger.

But that's exactly what Vietnam veteran John Swartz of New York did, flipping off an officer and his speed gun as he drove past in 2006. He was subsequently pulled over and arrested for disorderly conduct. He's apparently been fighting back ever since and now his court case has been reinstated by a federal appeals court, who didn't believe the arresting officer's explanation that he pulled the car over because he thought the middle finger was meant as an alert that the female driver, Swartz's wife, needed assistance.

From the three judge panel:

Perhaps there is a police officer somewhere who would interpret an automobile passenger's giving him the finger as a signal of distress, creating a suspicion that something occurring in the automobile warranted investigation. And perhaps that interpretation is what prompted Insogna to act, as he claims. But the nearly universal recognition that this gesture is an insult deprives such an interpretation of reasonableness. This ancient gesture of insult is not the basis for a reasonable suspicion of a traffic violation or impending criminal activity. Surely no passenger planning some wrongful conduct toward another occupant of an automobile would call attention to himself by giving the finger to a police officer.

On the one hand, it's good that a court recognized that there is no law against flipping off the police and that free speech should be protected from hysterically reaching justifications for revenge arrests like this. On the other hand, it's a little sad that a federal appeals court has to delve into such territory at all. Of course, none of this should be read as some embrace for flipping off police in general, but speech is speech and it should be protected. In any case, this isn't over yet and no date for trial has yet been set, so we'll have to wait for a verdict.