Lessig on O'Reilly and Linking

Is there some procedure in law school that surgically removes any shred
of common sense or is it some on-the-job thing you pick up working in
particular industries? It smacks of Aristotleian science where any
attempt to observe the actual phenomenon was irrelevant in the face of
authority. Or for those of a more New Testament bent, much like the way
the Pharisees tried to avoid the evidence of their eyes.

make my day, bill-ites. So there's a blog first created by the volunteers who watched Fox to create the data necessary to produced OutFoxed. They posted an item
about a Bill O'Reilly column, which itself was posted on the web. The
company syndicating O'Reilly's column wrote them a nasty letter,
telling them to take the column down. They did, and replaced it with a
link. The same company wrote again, insisting that the blog was guilty
of “unauthorized linking.” Dear syndicators of Bill: Me thinks there's
no such concept as illegal linking (outside of China, at least, and
please, don't pester me with misreadings of the 2600 case). Indeed, I
think that I, like anyone else, am perfectly free to link to the
column, as this link
does. And indeed, I'd invite anyone else out there who thinks that we
still live in a FREE LINKING world to link to the same. Got to find
some way to keep those lawyers busy. [Lessig Blog]

Identity Theft is no joke – here's some free advice

Some useful advice worth passing along. Here's hoping you never have cause to take advantage of it.

I just received this form a good friend. I know this is a bit off topic but ID theft is becoming a huge problem.
I’ve read some sobering stories about the devastation having your identity hijacked can wreak. Here’s some excellent
advice from an attorney about how you can protect yourself and what to do if you become a victim.

It’s rather lengthy but well worth reading and doing.

A corporate attorney sent the following out to the employees in his company.

1. The next time you order checks have only your initials (instead of first name) and last name put on them. If someone
takes your checkbook, they will not know if you sign your checks with just your initials or your first name, but your
bank will know how you sign your checks.

2. Do not sign the back of your credit cards. Instead, put “PHOTO ID REQUIRED”..

3. When you are writing checks to pay on your credit card accounts, DO NOT put the complete account number on the “For”
line. Instead, just put the last four numbers. The credit card company knows the rest of the number, and anyone who
might be handling your check as it passes through all the check processing channels won’t have access to it.

4. Put your work phone # on your checks instead of your home phone. If you have a PO Box use that instead of your home
address. If you do not have a PO Box, use your work address. Never have your SS# printed on your checks. (DUH!)
You can add it if it is necessary. But if you have it printed, anyone can get it.

5. Place the contents of your wallet on a photocopy machine. Do both sides of each license, credit card, etc. You will
know what you had in your wallet and all of the account numbers and phone numbers to call and cancel. Keep the
photocopy in a safe place. I also carry a photocopy of my passport when I travel either here or abroad. We’ve all heard
horror stories about fraud that’s committed on us in stealing a name, address, Social Security number, credit
cards.

Unfortunately, I, an attorney, have firsthand knowledge because my wallet was stolen last month. Within a week, the
thieve(s) ordered an expensive monthly cell phone package, applied for a VISA credit card, had a credit line approved
to buy a Gateway computer, received a PIN number from DMV to change my driving record information online, and more. But
here’s some critical information to limit the damage in case this happens to you or someone you know:

1. We have been told we should cancel our credit cards immediately. But the key is having the toll free numbers and
your card numbers handy so you know whom to call. Keep those where you can find them.

2. File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where your credit cards, etc., were stolen. This proves to
credit providers you were diligent, and this is a first step toward an investigation (if there ever is one).

But here’s what is perhaps most important of all: ( I never even thought to do this.)

3. Call the 3 national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your name and Social
Security number. I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank that called to tell me an application for
credit was made over the Internet in my name. The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your
information was stolen, and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit.

By the time I was advised to do this, almost two weeks after the theft, all the damage had been done. There are records
of all the credit checks initiated by the thieves’ purchases, none of which I knew about before placing the alert.
Since then, no additional damage has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away. This weekend (someone turned it
in). It seems to have stopped them dead in their tracks.

Now, here are the numbers you always need to contact about your wallet, etc., has been stolen:

1. Equifax: 1-800-525-6285

2. Experian (formerly TRW): 1-888-397-3742

3. Trans Union: 1-800-680-7289

4. Social Security Administration (fraud line): 1-800-269-0271

We pass along jokes on the Internet; we pass along just about everything. But if you are willing to pass this
information along, it could really help someone that you care about.

Free Software Foundation, Grokster, Strategy, and the MPAA

All of the Copyfight coverage
of the Grokster case is worth following. This one reminds me the
differing mindsets of executives and policy makers. I was lucky enough
to learn strategy from Mike Porter as he was writing Competitive Strategy. His course was the hottest course at the Harvard Business School.

Several years later, I went back to Harvard to get my doctorate at the
Business School. As part of that process I took the basic course in
Industrial Economics from Richard Caves
who was Porter's thesis advisor and learned that Porter was possibly
even more clever than I already thought. Porter's fundamental insight
was to take the academic research field of Industrial Economics and
invert it. Industrial Economics studies the question of market
failures. What conditions lead to markets that don't conform to the
economic ideal of perfect competition? What conditions make monopolies
and oligopolies likely? The economists study this area with an eye
toward what public policies are useful and necessary to maintaining
competition in its close to ideal form.

Porter's genius was to see that an economists' market failure was a
CEO's wet dream. Competitive strategy could be viewed as an effort to
create market failures. This is what executives are trained to do and
rewarded for. Absent the appropriate policy checks and balances, you
end up with the world that the RIAA and MPAA hope to preserve.

Free Software Foundation tears MPAA a new one in Grokster brief. Cory Doctorow:
The Free Software Foundation and New Yorkers for Fair Use have filed a
brief in Grokster, EFF's Supreme Court case to establish the legality
of P2P networks. Eben Moglen, the author of the brief, really lights
into the RIAA and MPAA — he's a fantastic writer:

At the heart of Petitioners'
argument is an arrogant and unreasonable claim–even if made to the
legislature empowered to determine such a general issue of social
policy–that the Internet must be designed for the convenience of their
business model, and to the extent that its design reflects other
concerns, the Internet should be illegal.

Petitioners' view of what constitutes the foundation of copyright
law in the digital age is as notable for its carefully-assumed air of
technical naivete as for the audacity with which it identifies their
financial interest with the purpose of the entire legal regime.

Despite petitioners' apocalyptic rhetoric, this case follows a
familiar pattern in the history of copyright: incumbent rights-holders
have often objected to new technologies of distribution that force
innovation on the understandably reluctant monopolist.

The Ultimate Boot CD

Something I need to put together for myself.

The Ultimate Boot CD. And yes, they mean it:

UBCD4Win is a bootable CD which
contains software that allows you to repair/restore/diagnostic almost
any computer. All software included in UBCD4Win
are freeware utilities for Windows®. UBCD4Win uses Bart's PE© which is
how the CD boots into a Windows® environment with network support.
Perfect for recovering deleted files on your harddrive without
accidentally overwriting them or scanning a virus infected system. This
project currently has 50+ utilities included in the download.
Anti-Virus, CMOS password recovery, password finders, file recovery,
Networking tools, CD burning software, MBR backup and recovery, etc.
types of applications are all included in the download. Please visit
the “List of Tools” page for a complete list of what is included in the
project.

Blogs as personal knowledge management tool

I'm in the midst of a similar project as a way to learn WordPress as a step toward converting McGee's Musings to WordPress in the not too distant future.

In the opening post, John Hesch quotes an observation from Paul Allen that struck home forcefully:

But like some other good habits I have developed over the years which
are hard to teach and harder yet to convince others to do (like taking
notes at every meeting you attend, and storing all your personal
knowledge in a searchable database), I have a very hard time convincing
anyone to start their own blog. Most think it would be a waste of time
[Paul Allen: Internet Entrepreneur]

Last weekend I did a seminar at DePaul University's School for New Learning on
the topic of personal knowledge management and I've been thinking on
this odd problem of technologies that need to be experienced to be
understood.

Blogs, wikis, and social software all suffer from this need to
spend time with them on their own terms. In organizational settings,
this makes them hard to introduce. Decision makers want a clear story
about investment and return (and they'd prefer hard numbers). I'm still
working out how to best formulate one. I suspect it will depend on the
unique characteristics of each organization.

The series continues with Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

Creating My Personal Information Manager Using WordPress. Creating My Personal Information Manager Using WordPress:
A very interesting step by step series of instructions (in three parts
so far) of creating a PIM using WordPress. John runs Blogging Pro and
is by no means new to WordPress. [Weblog Tools Collection]

Valuing specialist knowledge

While this has been true and will likely continue to be so, it's also
cause for concern. To be a specialist in anything implies we are at
best generalists in most everything else. If we don't learn to value
and appreciate specialist knowledge that we don't have, we will
continue to be at the mercy of those who can best pretend to expertise.

“The only people who value your specialist knowledge are the ones who already have it.”

William Tozier, On trivia and details and miscellanea: [Seb's Open Research]