Ten Reasons Why

If I had any doubt that my interpretation of the RIAA’s Atlantic v. Howell brief and the Washington Post’s lousy reporting on the case was dead on, those have been washed away by William Patry, current Senior Copyright Counsel at Google and former copyright counsel to the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary. Patry also pretty much wrote the book on copyright, the “book” being a 7-volume, 5500-page treatise on copyright with a foreword by former Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor.

On The Patry Copyright Blog, he writes:

On page 15 of the brief, we find the flashpoint:
“Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs’ recordings into the compressed
.mp3 format AND they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the
authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs.” I have capitalized the word “and” because it is here that the RIAA is making the point that placing the mp3 files into the share folder is what makes the copy unauthorized. The RIAA
is not saying that the mere format copying of a CD to an mp3 file that
resides only on one’s hard drive and is never shared is infringement.
This is a huge distinction and is surprising the Post didn’t understand
it.

Pretty much spot on the argument I was making. Vindicated! :-)

Greg Intellectual Property

Yesterday, Marc Fisher of the Washington Post wrote a piece entiled “Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use.” (Free registration might be required to view.)
One of my favorite bloggers, Daring Fireball’s Jon Gruber, referenced this briefly yesterday. I’ve seen this crop up on lots of other blogs and various media outlets, and the story is always presented in basically the way that Fisher presented it:

[I]n an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry’s lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are “unauthorized copies” of copyrighted recordings.

The problem is that’s not what the brief says at all.

Read more…

Greg Intellectual Property

I’ve been disappointed that I haven’t made better use of the digital SLR I bought last year, so I hereby dub 2008 the Year of Photogregory. Or Rittography. Or something clever that combines my name and photography.
I did get good use out of the Nikon D50 a few months back on my vacation to California for (a) Tim & Sharon’s San Francisco wedding and (b) driving down the coast in a convertible Mustang.
And yesterday I finally got around to starting to get good use out of my Flickr account via the newly released Flickr Uploadr 3.0. The Uploadr is quite nice and takes nearly all the pain out of uploading batches of photos to Flickr. (The only remaining pain is the fault of Verizon DSL, not Flickr.)
So enjoy some brightly colored San Francisco pics which make the pallette of colors in last year’s vacation to Edinburgh look damn near monochromatic.
Still to come on my Flickr account: photos from last year’s not-so-monochromatic trip to Nice and the driving-down-the-coast-in-a-convertible-Mustang portion of this year’s vacation. And promises of more regular, non-vacation, man-about-town photos as I reclaim my creative life in 2008. ;-)

Greg Photography

From a New York Times Magazine interview with Umberto Eco:

I am wondering if you read Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code,” which some critics see as the pop version of your “Name of the Rose.”

I was obliged to read it because everybody was asking me about it. My answer is that Dan Brown is one of the characters in my novel, “Foucault’s Pendulum,” which is about people who start believing in occult stuff.

But you yourself seem interested in the kabbalah, alchemy and other occult practices explored in the novel.

No, in “Foucault’s Pendulum” I wrote the grotesque representation of these kind of people. So Dan Brown is one of my creatures.

Point Umberto!
I’ve frequently said that The Da Vinci Code is a dumbed-down knock-off of Foucault’s Pendulum. I’m glad Eco agrees.

Greg Books, Writing & Literature

Back in 1986, I got introduced to Don DeLillo in a contemporary American literature class through his National Book Award-winning novel, White Noise. DeLillo is still one of my favorite American novelists (although I’ve enjoyed his recent work less than his novels from the 80’s and 90’s), and White Noise is one of those books that I re-read every few years, just for the hell of it. I own several copies of it, but the favorite copy is the original white-covered Penguin edition I bought for that contemporary American lit class back in ‘86. It has margin notes scrawled in it from the course, and again from several years later when I made White Noise part of the focus of my Master’s thesis. And some margin notes from when I taught it to my own students.

I taught White Noise in my own literature courses at least four times, alway somewhat disappointed that the vast majority of my students weren’t as blow away by it as I was (and many were actually violently put off by DeLillo’s highly stylized prose). More to the point, after I began to focus more on teaching composition & rhetoric than literature, I used an excerpt from White Noise — the oft-excerpted “Most Photographed Barn in America” scene — as a writing prompt in many more composition/rhetoric courses.

Imagine my delight then when this morning I read (via Kottke) a blog post that points out the combination of Flickr with mapping functionality that allows you to “theoretically pick any place in the world — a city, a neighborhood, a street corner, a building, and literally view that place through the lenses of the people who had photographed that place” means that we can now look at the actual Most Photographed Barn in America.

Still . . . the presence of the Rockies in the background makes me think that maybe this isn’t in proximity to the idyllic College-on-the-Hill, and maybe Jack and Murray are still standing on that elevated spot looking at the signs of another barn. Ah . . . what’s the differance? ;-)

Greg Books, Writing & Literature, Photography

Sigh. I knew the Fates wouldn’t let me take a vacation unhindered.
Got to DCA this morning, 90 minutes before my flight’s departure time, checked in and was told there were no seats on my connection to SFO, but “you’re confirmed on the flight.” Whatever the hell that means. Whatever else it might mean, apparently being “confirmed” doesn’t mean you get to get on the plane.
I got bumped off my connection to San Francisco because US Airways overbooked it and . . . and who knows? I don’t know why I got the bump. I booked weeks ago, I checked in a good 3.5 hours before the SFO flight, etc. End result: there are no other open flights to SFO (or Oakland) until 555pm this evening. Booked on that flight, standby on at least one other in mid-afternoon.
Thank god for free wifi. Unfortunately, only about 1 in 5 of the power outlets I’ve tried in this airport appear to work. I thought my power cord was hosed, but other travelers have confirmed they have the same problem.
So the first day of my vacation gets spent in Charlotte airport, instead of relaxing in San Francisco and joining my friend Tim on his last burrito & bar outing as a bachelor. Bummer.

Greg Personal

One of the few complaints I’ve had with the iPhone is that it failed to work with the Kensington iPod FM Transmitter/Auto Charger that I bought just about two months before I bough the iPhone.

But the good news is that the 1.0.1 iPhone firmware update last week that fixed a recently discovered security flaw, also included several other (undocumented) fixes. Among those, is a fix to allow the iPhone to “now play music through many previously incompatible car
adapters and other external speakers originally designed for the iPod.” Including my Kensington FM transmitter. After reader the above post, I ran outside to test it. Sure enough, I can now listen to the music and podcasts on the iPhone when I drive to the office and take a road trip.

Couldn’t come at a better time, since after attending the wedding of my friends Tim & Sharon in San Francisco next weekend, I’ve rented a Mustang convertible to drive down Pacific Coastal Highway to spend a few days sitting on a rock in Monterey staring at the ocean until my mind goes blank.

The only downside is you still have to switch the iPhone into Airplane Mode while listening to music piped through the radio, which means you can’t make or receive phone calls while using the FM transmitter. Apparently the GSM signal and FM signal don’t get along too well. Oh well. At least while I’m on vacation, I really don’t want to make or receive calls anyway. :-)

Greg Apple

I don’t write about work on this blog, but my team at Blackboard is hiring a UI hotshot to work on Web 2.0-ish education applications. Having a full-time UI designer on my team will make my life a lot less stressful (borrowed resources & contractors make my head hurt), so I figured it can’t hurt to reach out wherever I can.
Check out the full job description for the Senior User Interface Designer position. This isn’t an entry-level position. We’re looking for someone with some serious UI design & AJAX chops to really make user interface and user interaction a focus on a team that’s focused on new product development. The team, the Blackboard Beyond Initiative, is a new division within the company that’s focused on building centrally hosted web applications, a different approach than Blackboard’s traditional enterprise, server-based product line.
Consequently, the team is sort of a start-up within the company, with both the benefits (more freedom to innovate, not hindered by legacy code or interfaces, etc.) and the challenges (yeah, we could use more headcount). One start-up challenge we don’t have, though, is the worry about where the next paycheck comes from, since Blackboard a stable public company with a market cap over a billion dollars.
Blackboard’s a great place to work — casual environment with lots of fun, really smart people. I’ve stayed at Blackboard for over 8 years now, longer than I’ve stayed at any other job, so they must be doing something right. Of course, I’m the product director for the Beyond team, so a potential downside is that you’d have to put up with me on a daily basis. ;-)
If you or someone you know sounds like a good fit, submit your resume through the regular channels, but drop me an email as well at my work address, greg.ritter@blackboard.com.

Greg Technology & Internet

Dramatis Personae:

• Me, your trusty blogger
• Bug, co-worker and friend. Also a wealthy, crazed Mac devotee. Buys and supports his own office hardware so he can have Macs instead of Dells. Also, I share an office with his wife.
• Anjin-san, co-worker and friend. Shares an office with Bug.

Scene:

Bug & Anjin-San’s office. My workstation is in the process of being mangled by our IT department, so I’m wandering around pestering co-workers.

Bug: I think the fan in the MacBook Pro isn’t working. It’s overheating like a bitch. I’ve been trying to get a Genius Bar appointment, but it’s a pain. So I’m wondering: can I just buy another MacBook?

Me (puzzled, knowing he has the means to buy another): Can you? Of course you can…

Bug: No, no, I mean they appear to be sold out. I’ve checked the Apple Store in Arlington, the Apple Store in Bethesda, the one in Tyson’s. Nobody has them.

Me (jesting): Oh, I just though maybe the wife wouldn’t let you buy another.

Bug: Please. Like I would tell her.

Anjin-san: What about online?

Bug: Seven to ten days before the order even ships. I need one sooner than that.

Anjin-san: The 15″ and the 17″ models are sold out?

Bug: I just searched for the 15″ ones.

Me: So buy a 17″.

Bug: Please. That’s just crazy talk.

I pause. I point to Bug’s desk where his three — yes, three — 30″ Apple Cinema Displays sit.

Me: Dude, you have ninety inches of monitor on your desk, and you’re going to say that a 17″ laptop is crazy talk?!?

Anjin-san: He has a point.

Bug: . . .

Bug: Yeah, I’ve got no response to that.

Me: Just think — if you buy the 17″ and get the 15″ repaired you could put them side by side and have 27″ of laptop screen.

Bug’s face lights up at the idea.

Bug: I like it. But how did you come up with 27?

Me (Levers are pulled. Gears turn. The hamsters run round and round.) : . . .  15 plus 17 is . . . oh. 32. What the hell. I majored in English.

The three 30″ monitors simultaneously turn off as they go into power-saving mode.

Anjin-san: Did it just get dark in here?

Greg Apple

Overheard 7/31/2007 in the Border’s Books and Music at 18th & L NW. A young woman talking to her friend:

“She tells me I should be celibate for 30 days. So I ask her, ‘Do you mean celibate celibate or just interactive celibate?’ Because there’s no way I can do celibate celibate for 30 days.”

What the hell is “interactive celibate”?

Greg Other