Blogger Matt Yglesias posts a YouTube video of Tony Blair singing a copyrighted song pasted over C-span videos of speeches he made, including the one about his retiring as PM. Yglesias notes that it violates copyrights but aptly argues it would be sad if viewers couldn't see it (link here).

Have a look before it gets taken down.

Elsevier has made a fortune with excessive costs for its journals. Here is a protest about its envolvement in the arms trade link here

From time to time, a few people take actions about excessive journal prices. Here is one example.

Shapiro, Gary. 2006. A Rebellion Erupts Over Journals of Academia. New York Sun (26 October).

The nine members of the editorial board of the Oxford University-based mathematics journal Topology have signed a letter expressing their intention to resign on December 31. They cited the price of the journal as well as the general pricing policies of their publisher, Elsevier, as having "a significant and damaging effect on Topology's reputation in the mathematical research community".

But according to Elsevier's Web site, in 2007 the cost of a single year (six issues) of Topology, in all countries except Europe and Japan, will be $100 for individuals and $1,665 for institutions.

Founded through the vision of the Oxford topologist J.H.C. Whitehead in mid-century, Topology has an "illustrious history" with "some of the greatest names of 20th century mathematics" among its editorial and honorary advisory editorial board members, the editors wrote in their resignation letter, dated August 10. "Elsevier's policies towards the publication of mathematics research have undermined this legacy".

Board resignations have occurred at other Elsevier publications, such as the Journal of Logic Programming and the Journal of Algorithms, and also at a variety of other publishers such as Kluwer and Taylor and Francis." "One editor of Topology, John Roe, whose specialty is the relation between geometry and differential equations, said the rising cost of journals has concerned academics, not just mathematicians, for a long time." "To those who favor free online access to scholarship, mass resignations of editors are "declarations of independence," a research professor of philosophy at Earlham College, Peter Suber, said. Usually, he said, an editorial board "has a long track record of failed negotiations with their publisher. The typical scenario is the editors resign, form a new journal at a lower price, and the old journal hires new editors".

A Lehigh University mathematics professor, Donald Davis, who moderates an online algebraic topology discussion list, said, "University library budgets are no longer adequate to subscribe to all the journals they used to." The Head Librarian of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences Library at New York University, Carol Hutchins, said, "The degree of choice is shrinking" and cited reasons such as the consolidation of publishing firms.

"Elsevier's prices are very high," said an emerita mathematics professor at Barnard College, Joan Birman, who resigned a few years ago from the board of an Elsevier journal, Topology and Its Applications. She said her feeling was, "We do the work, we check each other, we referee the articles, edit and typeset them and send them to the publisher, which slaps them between two covers and charges a huge amount".

A professor at New York University, Sylvain Cappell, who is an editor of Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, published by John Wiley & Sons with the Courant Institute, said in addition to bundled subscriptions, journals have complex subsidiary rights and other concerns: "You would need a staff as large as the publishing houses to keep track of that".

It appears that Red Hat stock is in freefall now that Oracle announced that it would offer identical services at 50% the cost. I don't know enough to understand how much Red Hat contributes to the open source movement, but I am suspicious that anything good can come from Red Hat tactic.

I await enlightenment for more informed sources.

A Korean newspaper is carrying a story about Microsoft, asserting that it is using patents to keep out competitors (link here). It has filed a rising number, starting from 6 in 2000 to 591 in 2005, for a cumulative total of more than 1000. The article notes that MS tried in the past to close a Korean competitor of MS Office by investing $20 million if it stopped writing programs in Korean characters. Local fund raising saved the program with a nationalist public campaign. One of the paper's sources is quoted as saying it is a worldwide drive by MS, not just confined to Korea.

The paper also notes that Korean software companies do not worry much about patents. That may result from the widespread pirating.

Blogger Matt Yglesias has an interesting take on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and the success of the iPod (http://www.matthewyglesias.com/). When you buy an iPod, the only place you can buy music for it is at the iTunes Music Store. And the only place you can play the tunes is on an iPod, since at the behest of the record companies, the DMCA makes it illegal for anyone to make a player for iTunes .

It's a monopoly essentially created by government.

Hollywood studies have begun an anti-camcording website against pirates who record a film at a theater and then produce DVD copies for sale (yahoo news link here). It quotes Motion Picture Assn. of America president Bob Pisano that 90% of pirated films worldwide are the result of camcording. Schemes to cut off the practice include getting laws passed against such camcording and campaigns to get theater owners to throw camcorders out of the theater and patrons to report the practice to the theater manager.

The story also notes that pirated copies of films currently showing in one country are made from DVDs already released in another country. The industry wants to stop the original sale while the film is still in theaters in another country.

For anyone who has ever lived in a low-income country (not to mention New York City), getting laws passed and enforced against film piracy is sisyphusian.

Via Slashdot we find IBM suing Amazon for patent infringement. One of the downsides of the patent system is that people genuinely think they invented something new (Amazon) so they think they should be entitled to sue anyone who does anything vaguely similar (Barnes and Noble) - and they are outraged that anyone would suggest (IBM) that maybe what they invented wasn't really so new. People tend to be very proprietary about their ideas, rarely recognizing the extent to which the build on and incorporate other ideas. Is it utopian to suggest that instead of IBM sues Amazon, sues someone else, sues IBM - maybe we should just get rid of patents? Shifting money around in circles doesn't enhance incentives to innovate, and the court system has not proven a very effective method of resolving disputes over intellectual credit.

2006 - NORTH COUNTRY GAZETTE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - NO UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION (see the bottom of the page) - of course fair use allows unauthorized reproduction - like my reproduction of their copyright notice, for example. Hattip Volokh who points out that while it might be possible to waive fair use by signing a contract (a gray area to be sure), it certainly isn't by opening a web page that announces you've waived your rights.

Yahoo today has a story entitled “Be loyal, kind and don't steal Movies” about a Boy Scout merit badge awarded for learning about the “evils of downloading pirated movies and music" (yahoo news link here). The curriculum was developed by the movie industry.

Fortunately, this nonsense is confined to the Los Angeles area, at least for now.

Responding to a comment, I tried again today to get into the NYTimes TimesSelect to get the url for its article on patents for tax strategies but still couldn't, though as a subscriber to the paper version I had been able to up till a few days ago.

By Googling the title of the article, however, I came up with the text at here One must wonder how long it stays there.

My Google search also came up with another website that took a view of the practice similar to mine at here. Have a look.