Educause. A Blueprint for Big Broadband. (.pdf) January 2008. America’s standing in global broadband access and speed continues to plummet, and American consumers continue to pay more per capita for slower and less available broadband. (See data from the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development for more information.) Educause blames America’s position on this country’s lack of a national broadband policy. (Foreign Affairs magazine addressed this issue in late spring 2005.)

Educause commissioned a white paper paper that proposes creating a Universal Broadband Fund (UBF) that will provide “open, big broadband networks of at least 100 Mbps … to every home and business by 2012.” Educause estimates the cost for this effort will approach $100 billion, but the organization proposes a public‐private partnership approach followed in Canada.

Why is this important? Simply, without widely available broadband in the States, all measure of technological innovation gets hampered. Hampered technological development means a slower economy; a slower economy means fewer jobs; fewer jobs means more unemployment; more unemployment means … well, you get the idea.

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Jon Stokes. Proposed EU ISP Filtering and Copyright Extension Shot Down. ArsTechnica. Jan. 22, 2008. Just as AT&T begins considering filtering on its network for alleged copyright infringement violations, the European Union decides not to allow it for now on ISP networks in member countries. But as long as intellectual property is seen as an “economic engine” — and who’s not looking for an “economic engine” with this credit crisis upon us — this issue will not go away easily.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 29, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

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Nate Anderson. Warner Sues “Playable Search Engine,” Tests DMCA Safe Harbor. ArsTechnica. Jan. 25, 2008. Warner Bros. trots out all the goodies in its 57-page complaint (.pdf) that alleges copyright infringement by search engine SeeqPod. One of the ways in which SeeqPod tries to differentiate itself is by providing links to music or video files that others make available on the Web. (For example, we typed in a search “jay-z” and received about 20 hits, many of which were links to YouTube videos. We were able to watch the YouTube videos within the SeeqPod site instead of having to link out to YouTube to get the content.)

Apparently, SeeqPod compiles search results not only through the work of its own search robot, but also through user-contributed submissions. Warner Bros. has seized on this second aspect to frame SeeqPod as a business that “aims to capitalize on the illegal use of ‘free’ music to grow its user base rapidly and inexpensively,” accusing the search provider of direct infringement, contributory infringement, vicarious infringement. WB also throws in MGM v. Grokster’s inducement liability theory (just for kicks and giggles).

One of the interesting things about this case is SeeqPod’s technology was born in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; the Lab also has a 5% stake in the spin-off company. So, in essence, Warner Bros. also is suing the federal government. Another interesting tidbit: Anderson notes that Last.fm has a similar search capability, but also has licensing deals in place with the major music labels, while SeeqPod has no licensing deals and seems to rest its business model on the DMCA ISP safe harbor at Section 512(c). We hate to see a promising technology like this get ensnared in litigation so early in its life, but in the unlikely event this goes to trial, this could be an interesting case.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 29, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

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Tim Wu. Has AT&T Lost Its Mind? Slate. Jan. 16, 2008. Columbia law professor Wu rhetorically poses the obvious question in response to news that AT&T is considering proposals to filter content, ostensibly to halt alleged copyright infringement. Wu delves more deeply into the “safe harbor” provisions of Section 512 than we did when we first reported this story in last week’s Clippings, and offers some interesting thoughts about why AT&T would even consider such an effort.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 22, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

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projectb15ck. UCSC Network Woes. Jan. 9, 2008. According to an e-mail within the body of the post, the information technology department at University of California, Santa Cruz is using Cisco’s Clean Access appliance and software to “help speed up the network for legitimate uses and reduce the risk of ‘accidental’ copyright infringement.” In the e-mail, John Rocchio , a UCSC IT administrator, says Clean Access will be configured to block file sharing services such as Gnutella and Bittorrent. The poster notes UCSC is a public university, therefore it is spending public funds to block Internet access. The unnamed writer asks incisively what difference is there between UCSC’s action’s and Comcast’s reported filtering of P2P traffic.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 15, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings, and it was an Article of the Week selection.)

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Jason Victor Serinus. Reference Recordings Aims At Your Hard Drive. Stereophile. Jan. 5, 2008. In the December 2007 issue of Information Today, there is an article that discusses dissatisfaction with the MP3 format for listening to music. This article continues that thread, discussing a music server offering that streams WMV audio files in high resolution 24-bit audio and the possibility that such files may be made available without copy restriction technology.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 8, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

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Seth Mnookin. Universal’s CEO Once Called iPod Users Thieves. Now He’s Giving Songs Away. Wired. Nov. 27, 2007. First Edgar Bronfman, now Doug Morris. At some point, all these executives get the message that Slim Charles conveyed to Bodie early in Season 4 of The Wire: “The thing about the old days is that they the old days.” We can hear refrains of Gladys Knight singing “Can it be that it was all so simple then?”

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Dec. 18, 2007, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

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