Well Senator Burns isn’t the only one to reject our campaign contribution. I got Senator John Kerry’s iPod back with this note:


It was nice of Senator Kerry’s campaign to actually have someone put their name on it and sign the letter, but I was hoping for a more detailed reason why Friends of John Kerry ''respectfully declines' the iPod. Kerry has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Hollywood cartels not including the $3 million he raised when running for President. So we’re sending Friends of John Kerry a letter asking for clarification on why they returned the iPod.

In the last six years, Senator Conrad Burns' campaign has taken $59k from TV/Music/Movie PACs, including $2k from the RIAA and Disney

He's also the 4th-highest recipient of entertainment industry money in Congress. So we started wondering if Burns' campaign has a new policy against accepting contributions from political action committees when they returned our iPod with this note:

Why not?

IPac's contribution is legal. It was submitted with all of the required paperwork. And it was paid for by ordinary Americans who care about balanced copyright and technology policy. We're sending his campaign a letter to clarify their policy on accepting contributions from PACs, and we'll let you know what they say. We hope their answer is that they're swearing off *all* PAC contributions, including the tens of thousands of dollars that they take from the entertainment industry!

It could also be that Senator Burns has sworn off all new technology. His campaign spokesperson had this to say to the Missoula Independent:

The iPod donation, says Klindt, “is the first time we have received something technological” as a donation, adding that “it’s just not a donation that we want” and confirming that while Burns does not presently own an iPod, “if he wants an iPod, he’ll buy one.”

Many of you have seen or heard about the new amendment to the DMCA being sent to Congress by the Dep. of Justice. We've gotten a copy of the proposed bill and it's worse than we could have imagined.

This is a concerted effort to escalate Hollywood's war on America by creating a generation of criminals and sending them off to jail. That's right: the "Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006" (IPPA) would double the authorized prison terms for existing copyright infringement, create a host of new offenses, and establish a division within the FBI to hunt down infringers. The Members of Congress in the pockets of the Hollywood cartels want to divert $20 million a year and FBI agents from fighting real criminals so they can go after people without computers.

Read the entire bill here or a summary here.
Now is the time to fight back and prevent this from passing. This is the epitome of bad policy, and it's a direct result of the Hollywood Cartel's influence in Congress.

You can join the fight by calling your Congress member or your Senator. Tell them that you will not vote for their reelection if they do not publicly denounce this bill. Please take notes on your conversation, including the name of the staffer you talked to, and post them in the comments section of this post or email them to us.

IPac will be making this an issue in the 2006 elections, and we need your help to do it. Please consider donating or volunteering.

EDIT: I want to thank everyone that has written or called the Representative, but I want to add a bit of inside baseball on how Congress works. There is an order of importance when dealing with a constituent. The least likely to be dealt with are those that email. The most likely to be dealt with are those that call and particularly those that call a Representative's district office.

When you call make sure to be polite, but firm. If the person on the phone doesn't have an answer for you ask to speak to someone that does. If nobody has an answer for you, make sure to ask them to call you back when they do have an answer. Note the time of the call and all the people at the office you spoke with. Once you’ve spoken to their office, please leave us a note here or send us an email so we can track where each Representative stands.

Visually, Google.com is very plain. It has acres of whitespace and none of the flashing, blinky bits that make me want to browse the web with Lynx. The only piece of ornamentation is the Google logo, which is occasionally reworked into whimsical variations to honor special events. Known as "Google doodles," these versions mark special days like Thanksgiving, the Persian New Year, and the birthdays of people who Google employees admire.

But the family of Joan Miró (b. April 20, 1893-1983), the Catalan surrealist painter, wasn't pleased when Google honored his birthday with a Google doodle incorporating elements of his work. Google took down the logo at the request of the "Artists Rights Society, a group that represents the Miró family and more than 40,000 visual artists and their estates." According to their representative, "the authorization process is simple: all Google needed to do was send an e-mail asking permission to use the images. [...] We would have asked the estate or the family, and they would have said yes or no."

If they said no, the reasoning goes, Google shouldn't be allowed to make a Miró homage. But at what point can we stop asking permission to comment on the world around us, including the art that is part of that world?

What do you think? Should it be illegal to make a noncommercial collage designed to honor an artist? Would it be different if the collage was made by an art critic who wanted to draw attention to formal elements in several different Miró paintings? Are those uses different from, say, Poster.com printing entire copyrighted Miró paintings and selling them?

I don't know if the Artists Rights Society threatened to sue, but their letter certainly assumes that they should have the right to do so. And so this episode underscores an inevitable outcome of permission-based culture: creativity cannot travel in a direct line from idea to artistic expression to the public -- it takes a detour through the land of negotiation, where it can be waylaid by lawyers and the fear of lawsuits.

Do you want to personally impact the upcoming elections by forcing information policy issues onto the agenda?

Do you want to utilize the power of the internet to fight the Hollywood cartels?

If so we'd love to have you. We're looking for people that want to get involved and help IPac fight for our rights. Please send an email to info@ipaction.org with 'volunteer' in the subject. We have a lot of exciting projects coming soon, but we'd like to get the community involved with them.

I was interviewed by Jon Gordon for his radio program Future Tense about our wildly successful iPod campaign. Jon has a great program and you should consider subscribing to his podcast.

Produced and hosted by Jon Gordon, Future Tense brings you the latest technology topics in daily five-minute capsules. From electronic privacy and digital democracy to spam and computer worms, Future Tense keeps you up to date on the rapidly changing world of technology.

Future Tense goes out to over 1oo NPR stations around the country. You can find if you're one of the lucky ones here at their station finder.

I just wanted to pass along a note from Ren about how much bandwidth we've served up:

104GB

That's amazing. If you haven't taken the time to download the archive of content we loaded on each iPod, do so now.

If you've seen the archive floating around as a torrent file, let me know so I can link to it.

One of IPac's volunteers, Russell, went around RIT yesterday putting up some of our flyers on campus.

You can find the entire set of photo's at Flickr.

If you'd like to volunteer or have an idea, please drop us a line.

Sirius has worked a deal with the major record labels that clears it to sell the S50, a Tivo-for-radio-style receiver that also plays MP3s. But man, what a terrible deal it is:

The deal, which will allow Sirius to market its S50 device without fear of a pitched legal battle, follows pacts Sirius made with the three other major music labels last month. Music executives had argued that Sirius' player, which allows users to record up to 50 hours of music without paying any additional fees, violated earlier agreements they had signed with the satellite service.

[Other deals] reportedly call for Sirius to pay the labels a fee for each device sold, and cap the number of gadgets that Sirius will sell. Sirius is marketing the player for $330.

How crappy does that sound? Negotiations forced through fear of litigation, the extorting party gets a cut of each device sold, and there's a limit to the number Sirius can sell? This situation is a direct result of the climate of fear that the copyright cartels have created; any device that touches their content may be subject to a lawsuit that's too expensive to defend, even if no law has been broken.

And remember that this most recent round of abuse is not happening because the device-maker is a pipsqueak start-up. This is Sirius, the satellite radio company that hosts Howard Stern and expects over $600 million in revenues this year. If the copyright cartels can exact such terrible deals from large companies -- and the average consumers that they serve -- what hope is there for the little guys?

Welcome TWiT Army, Engadgeteers, iLoungers, and others.

As you can see from our site, we're serious about taking the fight to Hollywood cartels and the Congress Members that are imposing an innovation tax. We've got a ton of great ideas on how we can impact elections this fall; sending iPods to Senators was just the first step.

Please consider making a contribution to IPac so we can continue to fight on your behalf. Although the Hollywood cartels doled out millions in 2004, on average each Member recieved very little. In many races a small amount of money spent can make a huge difference in the outcome.

If you can't support us financially, please make sure to register to vote. A few thousand votes in the right district can unseat a sitting Member or get a good candidate elected to an open seat.

Leo Laporte, host of the wildly popular podcast TWiT, had Ren and I on for a special today.

You can find the episode of TWiT on their download page or by subscribing to their feed with your podcatching client of choice.

For the TWiT listeners coming here for the first time, make sure to sign our statement of principles or download all the music, movies, photos, and books that we preloaded onto every iPod we sent.

We are very lucky and honored to have a special video presentation created by Lawrence Lessig just for IPac entitiled Read/Write Culture. Make sure to check it out.

Below you'll find the letter we enclosed with each iPod. I'm thrilled with the support you have given us since we launched the campaign earlier this year.

You can find all the content we put on the iPods including a special video presentation created for IPac by Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig entitled 'Read/Write".


Dear Senator,

My name is Jake Fisher, and I am writing on behalf of a nonpartisan political action committee called IPac. IPac represents thousands of Americans committed to promoting the public interest in technology and copyright policy. Founded in 2004 by Internet pioneers, IPac is the leading political organization working to restore balance to American copyright and patent law by protecting the right to innovate. IPac endorses and contributes to candidates for Federal elective office.

Enclosed with this letter is an iPod we sent your campaign as an in-kind contribution valued at $316.94. Our hope is that by using the iPod you and your campaign will better understand that new innovative technologies need to be fostered not hindered by restrictive legislation that amounts to a innovation tax.

We thought you might have some questions about this peculiar contribution, so we took the liberty of answering a few of the likely ones here. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like to know anything else about this campaign jake@ipaction.org.


Who paid for this iPod?
In January, IPac started a public campaign to buy iPods for Senators’ campaign who work on technology and copyright issues. To date, ordinary Americans have contributed thousands of dollars to this fund, and we sent a dozen iPods to Senate reelection campaigns this week. While this purchase was made possible by many contributions, you need only list IPac as the donor for the purposes of FEC reporting.

Why did IPac send my campaign an iPod?
Though iPods are best known for playing music, they can also be used to assist your campaign. You can use the device to store contact information for donors or manage your busy calendar. You can archive footage of your public speaking engagements or view recorded television and radio interviews on the road. We hope you find other uses for the device as well.

The iPod is also a useful illustration for many complicated copyright and technology issues. In fact, pending legislation in the Senate will make some of your iPod's uses illegal. For example, if Senator Gordon Smith's "Digital Content Protection Act" becomes law, it could prohibit the transfer of digital broadcast content to personal media players and stifle American technical innovation. We believe that hands-on experience with the same devices that your constituents use can provide a new perspective on these topics.

Other legislation would make this device more useful. For example, the House has been considering Representative Rick Boucher's "Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act"

(DMCRA, HR 1201), which would amend our copyright law to protect American consumers and technological leadership.

What is on my iPod?
Your iPod has been pre-loaded with video, music, images, and text that is in the public domain or released under permissive terms like those provided by Creative Commons licenses. This means that everything on your iPod is free.

But that does not mean it isn't valuable.

Far from it. In the "Notes" section, you'll find the complete works of Shakespeare, the Constitution of the United States, and other important literarature. The audio content includes music by David Byrne, the Beastie Boys, and scores of independent artists. We also included a slideshow with 101 photos selected from the millions in flickr.com's Creative Commons image pool. Under "Videos," you'll find a special presentation from Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig on the importance of balancing copyright law with technical innovation and the rights of the public. A full list of your iPod's contents is available here:

https://ipaction.org/campaigns/ipod/content.html

If you are pleased by the richness you see and hear, we also hope that you are troubled by what you do not. In the public domain texts there are very few female and non-European authors. That is because in America, the public domain was essentially frozen in 1923, when our national chorus was only open to certain voices. The public domain has become an island, cut off from our cultural mainland and populated by ghosts.

Copyright policy shouldn't only be concerned with expanding copyright - it should focus on calibrating these policies to support artists, the public, and access to our common heritage. We look forward to working with you and your campaign in the future to ensure American innovation continues.

Sincerely,

Jake Fisher
Executive Director

Today an amendment proposed by Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and co-sponsor Rick Boucher (D-Va.) that would have required broadband providers to give equal access to all content was struck down by a 23-8 vote.

In addition to codifying those FCC guidelines essentially divided into four basic principles of access the amendment would have added a fifth principle preventing network operators from charging Internet content providers for a bigger piece of the broadband pipe, while still allowing them to charge users for different download speeds.

All this amendment did was require internet providers treat all sites and services equally. Right now the Monstrously Large Baby Bells are extorting companies like Google by attempting to deny them guaranteed access to consumers.

Broadcastingcable.com quotes Andrew Schwartzman of Media Access Project:

"This allows restrictions on important and innovative content such as the provocative political satire jibjab.com generated during the last presidential election. Innovations such as blogs, web videos, sites such as YourTube.com never would have gotten off the ground if content-based discrimination had been permitted on the internet."

Broadband providers want to create a massive AOL model for the internet where they charge content providers for better access to their customers while creating a prohibitive cost to competing and emerging companies.

This comes on the heels of Verizon’s disgusting attempt to prevent minorities and low income residents from receiving their new FiOS fiber optic internet service. Verizon is asking the Town of Hempstead on Long Island for a franchise to install fiber, but they want to be able to ignore poor areas. The Mayor of the Village of Hempstead, a smaller community within the Town, had this to say in an Op-Ed in Newsday:

This suggests Verizon is prioritizing where it builds - in wealthy communities ahead of lower-income communities. This may be how a private business makes more money, but it is wrong and immoral. Like all good companies, Verizon has a special public trust to bring service to all without prejudice or discrimination.

If Verizon's approach was limited to the Town of Hempstead, we might chalk this up as an oversight. But the depth of the evidence suggests that this is an example of its broader national business strategy. Right now, Verizon is lobbying for state and federal legislation that would allow the company to ignore the current franchise authority of local towns and villages, and eliminate the ability of local governments to ensure that all residents receive the benefits of competition.

Bypassing local governments allows Verizon blatantly to ignore the issues and concerns that are most important to our communities. But who best knows what issues are important to our neighborhoods than our local officials? When you boil it all down, Verizon is out in the marketplace demanding special considerations because of its promise to bring competition and choice. But when you look at the company's plans, it becomes very clear its promise is limited. Verizon's approach is not only offensive; it is appalling.

We have to demand a free and open internet for all people, not just the ones in the upper income brackets and we need to demand a free and open internet for all content providers, not just the ones that can pay Verizon and other’s extortion demands.

20 year-old Yan Yifan stole and sold the login credentials of 30 gamers, and a Chinese judge has upheld his 5000 RMB ($870) fine. In its decision, the court said that "online game players had spent time, energy and money gaining the game's equipment and adding value to the virtual goods." The article goes on to say that others in China have been calling for explicit legal protections for this kind of "virtual property."

This is interesting because it's the same kind of theoretical justification for copyright in things like databases: no creativity required, just hard work. The tension between creativity and this "sweat of the brow" approach is discussed in this paper, and traces of both are evident in the patois of copyright, but neither encompasses the utilitarian justifications provided by the US Constitution. There, neither creativity nor hard work are sufficient to justify copyright protection. Instead, the Constitution says that protection is granted in order to promote the creation of new works. In case you were wondering.

The Smithsonian Institution, the publicly funded entity that manages some of America's largest archives and most venerable museums, has entered into a semi-exclusive agreement with Showtime for documentaries that rely on their material. Under the arrangement, Showtime will have a "right of first refusal" for works that use Smithsonian resources, including public domain material and expert interviews. Only "films that [make] incidental use of a single interview with a staff member or a few minutes of pictures of elements of the Smithsonian collections would be allowed."

In other words, new work that's crafted out of the Smithsonian's tax-funded archives, interviews with experts at its 19 museums, or access to its 142 million items would have to go through Showtime before release. You want to make a documentary and distribute it under a Creative Commons license? Not if Showtime wants to run it in primetime. This is unconscionable on its own, but what if the WIPO Broadcasting Treaty becomes law in the US? Showtime gets 50 years of copyright protection for the public domain material in each documentary.

The Smithsonian was created by an act of Congress "for the increase & diffusion of Knowledge among men." This isn't the way to do it, and they should be ashamed.

Note: I wrote this post while on a business trip in Barcelona. If you're interested in how Showtime feels about the free flow of information, you might like to know what happens when I try to visit their website: