Service Provider Journal

Roxio: No Leopard patch for broken Toast DVD burner software

Do not install Apple OS X Leopard if you use Roxio's Toast DVD burner software. Leopard will make Toast malfunction, and Roxio is not planning to do a patch. My wife learned this today the hard way.

VCAMNOW

Attention activists and kids of all ages: VCAMNOW is one cool, inexpensive video camera. Eric Rice is a fan; he showed one off at an Ipswitch-sponsored blogger's lunch in San Francisco today. Update: This International Herald-Tribune article provides interesting context. Update #2: Ted Tagami posted a short video he took at this lunch. In this video, Eric Rice shows off VCAMNOW.

DRM meanderings from CES

Here in Las Vegas, all week the drumbeat has been to allow consumers to manage their own content. But the trick is to define manage and their content.

What's OK:

• Letting consumers do anything they want with the pictures and videos they create.
• Letting them remix traditionally-copyrighted music they purchase legally, into playlists, as well onto home-produced DVDs mixing such music with the pictures and videos they create.

What's not OK:

• Letting consumers freely distribute online (or blog, podcast, Webcast or post) such home-produced DVDs or customized music drawn from RIAA-style playlists.

The Home Recording Rights Coalition is the consumer electronic industry's main bulwark against the so-called "DRM Internet" envisioned by the RIAA, where consumers no longer own the traditionally-copyrighted music they buy, but instead merely license it under terms which can be changed or revoked at any time. As a publicity move, at CES HRRC is distributing pocket print versions of the 20-year-old "Betamax" Supreme Court decision. Which boils down to allowing any home recording with technology with substantially non-infringing uses.

But will consumers whetted by HP and others on how cool it is to mix their traditionally-copyrighted media with Creative Commons-style content, and burn it onto a DVD, understand that they can't simply email such content around the Internet, or blog it?

Code is law, said Professor Lessig. Now imagine if bandwidth becomes cheap enough that eBay's business model becomes driven by allowing sellers to post video, instead of still pictures, of the items they're selling. Would eBay allow it, or would the thought of having consumers jazz up their videos by mixing in traditionally-copyrighted music, cause eBay to forget about it? At some point in the near future, using video within eBay would probably otherwise propel the service to new, greater heights, but I'm sure eBay doesn't want to get further into the copyright enforcement business.

There's a discussion where this could be mentioned at 3 p.m. today at CES. Unfortunately, at CES the audience doesn't get to come to the microphone, but instead must pass written questions up to the moderator.

P.S.: For Christmas, I produced a family oral history, "Four Generations of American Women," and gave it a Creative Commons license, the first I've ever used for my own work.

Podcasting needs a conference

It occured to me today that podcasting needs a conference. Instead, this week I received a direct mail piece for Streaming Media 2004. I quickly searched that Web site and found no reference to podcasting or iPodder. The irony of the Streaming Media conference coming back from the dead (after helping drain Penton Media of much of its dot-com-era value) just when podcasting is poised to eclipse it in importance, cannot be overstated. Podcasting needs, and will have, its own conference. Gnomedex and Bloggercon only provide a taste.

Mirrordot raises interesting issues

Could you build a business out of mirroring sites referred to by a top Web site? That's the value touted by Mirrordot, reports Wired News. The "Slashdot effect" is real; it does regularly swamp little Web sites, and other popular sites also produce such effects as well. But some of those small sites probably don't want to be mirrored, because, as the article notes, they depend upon page "hits" for advertising revenue. Since the Slashdot effect typically kicks in seconds after Slashdot posts a link, how could Mirrordot possibly get advance permission to mirror each site? It seems to me their model works only until one well-placed lawsuit lands on their desk. But this new twist makes me think there's another technology out there, sort of a BitTorrent for flash crowds, peer-to-peer based, that will emerge in such a way that there's no one person to sue. I wonder what the DMCA, or future versions of the DMCA, has to say about all of this

QWERTY phones are hot

One of the most satisfying elements of writing for me is creating a lead sentence. All too often, editors rewrite leads, and it's always great when that's not necessary. Here's the lead for my latest PC World story: "In the dog-eat-dog world of smart phones, a 140-year-old design is making waves."

Feedster link claim

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

XCP: When worlds collide (i.e., XML and TCP/IP)

Simon St. Laurent, writing for O'Reilly, endorses XCP, a proposed drop-in replacement wire protocol for TCP/IP. The rationale makes sense to me. However, the folks behind it represent folks working on the higher layers of the stack. I wonder what Cisco, or Scott Bradner, or Vint Cerf, think of this proposal.

Skype for Pocket PC requires Pocket PC 2003 OS

Those of you with older Pocket PCs (like the Dell Axim X5 I won at an Intel drawing last month) won't be able to run Skype for Pocket PC. That's because it requires a Pocket PC running the Pocket PC 2003 OS. I have the older Pocket PC 2002 OS, and my device can't be upgraded.

Digital Green and Astound: Let's roll

I may have seen my first home networking truck roll in progress this morning. Digital Green is based in the East Bay of the San Francisco region, and in Minnesota. Very sharp-looking trucks. And the company also installs high-speed Internet and cable TV services from Astound.

Skype preps breakthrough VoIP conferencing

Stuart Henshall: "The promised Skype conferencing capability is nearing launch." Up to five people can talk together from anywhere in the world via a PC, a simple headset and an Internet connection. Now things really get interesting.