Host Jonathan Kirsch, an attorney specializing in intellectual property and publishing law, moderates a panel discussion on a landmark literary-legal settlement. It allows Google to scan and make available online many out-of-print but still-copyrighted books. The settlement portends a viable digital future for authors, publishers and libraries. Is there any downside?

Guests:
Alexander McGillivray: Associate General Counsel for Products and Intellectual Property, Google
James Gleick: Vice President, Authors' Guild
Allan Robert Adler: Vice President for Legal and Government Affairs, Association of American Publishers
Fred von Lohmann: Senior Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation

When college kids make mashups of Hollywood movies, do they violate the law? Not necessarily, according to a study Peter Jaszi and I completed at American University. In fact, those funny little videos you watch when you’re supposed to be working—if you’ve missed “Dramatic Chipmunk,” the best five seconds on the Internet ever (Yes, Google it now)—are important harbingers of a more participatory media culture. Defending the rights of their creators to use copyrighted material without permission may be defending the future of media for political and social action, as well.

Content providers worried about piracy and theft, like NBC Universal and Viacom, are working out deals with online video providers like Veoh and MySpace, for specialized filters and software to identify copyrighted material. These filters will “take down” videos that are copies of copyrighted material. The trouble is, nobody has figured out how to protect online videos that use copyrighted material under fair use. As Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says, it’s like going tuna fishing without a dolphin-safe net.

In a move with potentially far-reaching implications for Web users and Internet companies alike, Time Warner Cable will test a new model for high-speed Internet access that charges users based on how much bandwidth they consume.

ISPs have long complained that certain uses gaining popularity on the Web are depleting their network resources. Last summer, Comcast was found to have rationed bandwidth when users were grabbing massive files from P2P site BitTorrent. In the wake of that revelation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation Latest News about Electronic Frontier Foundation suggested alternatives to all-you-can-consume monthly plans may be a way for ISPs to legitimately ration their network capacity.

"The availability of metered access alongside all-you-can-eat plans, combined with accurate advertising by ISPs, is one alternative that might solve the congestion issues raised by the downloading habits of a small number of users," EFF staff attorney Fred von Lohmann told the E-Commerce Times.

Their names keep coming up over and over again in courtrooms and corridors of power across the country--those groups whose interests always seem to run counter to those of technology companies and consumers. They come in many forms: associations, think tanks, money-raising organizations, PACs, and even other tech-oriented industries like telecommunications.

The RIAA and MPAA have exercised considerable political and economic influence to push a legal and policy environment in which the content owners keep tight control of the way their content is distributed and used. "I think it's fair to say that their approach is that any innovation that they haven't signed off on is bad," says Fred von Lohmann, senior intellectual property attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

This steamy city at the mouth of the Amazon river is a haven for pirates — the digital kind who copy CDs and DVDs by the thousands for illegal sidewalk sales. Belem is also home to one of Brazil's most thriving pop scenes: tecnobrega, a musical movement that's expanding exponentially thanks to musicians and producers who see copying as a marketing tool rather than intellectual property theft.

"It's this really gritty tacky, sleazy jungle music. It's just genius," said John Perry Barlow, a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates protecting free speech in the digital age... "It's making it possible for every kid in Brazil to know their songs by the time they turn five," Barlow said. "It's actually good for a lot of money — you give it away and it will come back. That's literally true with information, not with property."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has won reexamination from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) of a bogus patent on Internet subdomains -- the fourth successful reexamination request from EFF's Patent Busting Project.

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"The hard work of open source developers should not be taken out of the public domain and used to threaten other legitimate innovators," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Jason Schultz, who heads EFF's Patent Busting Project. "Fortunately, the open source approach to development helped protect Apache and other web projects by creating the evidence needed to challenge this illegitimate patent."

A non-profit open source project with high-profile backers has released beta code for an open source Flash media player, with a media server in the wings. Open Media Now's Gnash player runs standalone or as a plugin, and may run better than Flash on constrained devices.

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OMNow is dedicated to the "development, the support, and the empowerment of an open media infrastructure," says the Foundation, which is seeking corporate members to help support the Gnash and Cygnal free software projects. The group is also said to collaborate closely with other nonprofits like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and OLPC (One Laptop Per Child), which is seeding low-cost Linux laptops in developing nations.