The House voted almost unanimously in favor of a bill that would criminalize anyone who does not report illegal images crossing their networks, upon pain of fines of up to $300,000.
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Google would have to give up most if not all of its available cash to secure copyrights to books, which probably explains why they have been scanning books and given publishers an opt-out choice that teeters on legal grounds.

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House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Tom Lantos comes from Silicon Valley, but he’s been anything but a quiet neighbor to Yahoo over false testimony given to his Committee in February 2006.

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Politicos inside the Capitol Beltway will be assailed with the latest report from the lobbyists at the Computer & Communications Industry Association. (more…)

If YouTube doesn’t get their copyright-violation-finding-thingee running at 110 percent soon, Chad Hurley may be in for a visit from the scariest people outside of the local IRS field office: Disney lawyers.

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Via Digg, a new set of job postings have cropped up on Google’s website. The positions will support Google.org, the company’s philanthropic arm.

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Google Video carried the film The World According To Bush, and the French producers behind the movie want compensation for the viewing and downloading of the movie that has taken place.

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US District Court in Chicago dismissed a lawsuit against the Craigslist classifieds site. They had been accused of permitting discriminatory housing ads to be placed on its Chicago-local website.

More at IFN.

David Utter
Staff Writer, WebProNews

Jeffrey Hermes, a litigation partner at Boston law firm Brown Rudnick, whom I’ve sourced for a previous article on libel as it applies to podcasting, was a little late responding for an article on how the midterm elections would affect the Network Neutrality debate. Jeff sent a brief essay on the issue as a whole, which brings up some interesting points. To follow is the text of that response.

From the standpoint of a First Amendment attorney advocating freedom ofspeech and press, the network neutrality debate can be seen as a choicebetween the lesser of two evils created by the looming issue of thepossible incapacity of the Internet to carry all of the speech that isnecessary given the explosion of high-bandwidth content providers.

If you permit the creation of a tiered or other non-neutral network, youcan better allocate limited network resources such that bandwidth isused most efficiently; however, this option raises the possibility thatthe services who enact such a tiered system will create a preferredcustomer program on a for-profit basis that will result in smallercontent providers being forced out of the market and the balkanizationof the Internet as service providers each adopt their “stable” ofpreferred services. There is significant concern that the FCC’s currentposition on network neutrality is not strong enough to prevent this sortof preferred service structure.

On the other hand, even with enforced network neutrality, there is thethreat that financially strong organizations can dominate the availablebandwidth directly, as opposed to through contracts with serviceproviders. Also, by asking the government to pass affirmativeregulations governing network neutrality, it opens up a type of Internetregulation never before seen — an ironic position, given that normallythe plea for regulation is brought by those who seek to restrict, ratherthan enhance, access to channels of communication. Regulation in oneinstance can easily lead to regulation in future instances, with theresult of government interference that most Internet speakers have longsought to avoid.

If Internet bandwidth is considered a dwindling resource, then, as withany dwindling resource, those who are rich and powerful will force outthose who are not, in the absence of some form of superveningregulation. Whether there is a way to create such regulation that doesnot fundamentally alter the nature of the Internet as a generallyunregulated playing field is a very difficult and troubling question.

Of course, the final tenet, a continuation of the one introduced in paragraph three, relies on whether bandwidth is truly finite, especially 10 years down the road, which is, I think, an important distinction. Allow me to interject that the end game is control of the fiber to be laid to American homes in the next decade. Though bandwidth appears limited now, those limits, as Moore’s Law will dictate, will diminish over time. Once it does, note the logos on the sides of the pipes. Many of those pipes will branded with a V, sans the vendetta if no one opposes, lain next to the scarlet letter, who controls the rest.

He who controls the fiber, controls the future. So some protection is in order, I think, to prevent the abuse of those who control the access, and who work for the shareholder above any nation’s citizenry. Fortunately for Net Neutrality proponents, Democrats sweeping Congress is boon to the cause, as their predecessors railed against it at telecom request.

For a haunting metaphoric explanation of what telecom’s intend to make out of the internet, see Bob Frankston’s prose, “Sidewalks: Paying by the Stroll.”

One of the biggest issues facing the Google acquisition of YouTube is the amount of copyright infringement that takes place. Many of the videos available on YouTube are not of the vlog variety. Instead, they are clips and scenes from television shows, movies, concerts, and other protected works. When the GooTube purchase was announced, one of the first critical reactions had to do with the idea of content providers lining up to get a piece of Google’s treasure, now that there is someone with money to file lawsuits against.

Last night, Google’s new property was faced with their first big test since the purchase was announced. According to Reuters, YouTube removed 29,549 videos from their inventory after a Japanese group of media companies demanded they do so because of copyright implications. The group, called the Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers, indicated the videos in question were posted without the proper permissions being granted.

The group also called for Google/YouTube to set up screening procedures that would block the unauthorized posting of copywritten material. They also called on YouTube users and members to stop posting copyright-protected video clips, a request that will likely fall on deaf ears.

Chris Richardson
Staff Writer | WebProNews Blog

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