Remember that between entries here you can keep up with the Live Web (and other) issues I’m spotting by subscribing to my Google Reader Starred Items. Among the links now playing:

Two-word license agreement: “F— YOU!”, from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

Fair Use for YouTube & MySpace Users, from Slashdot by Zonk

What bloggers should know about copyright protection for their writing and photographs, from IP Law Daily by mamarant

Trademarks FAQ, from Blawg IT-Internet Patent, Trademark and Copyright Issues with Attorney Brett Trout by Brett Trout

Catching Up: Derivative Works and Fair Use, from IPTAblog by Andrew Raff

Avatar Rights, from Wonderland by Alice Taylor

Proposal to Make Suing Anonymous Avatars Harder, from Virtually Blind - Virtual Law | Legal Issues That Impact Virtual Worlds by Benjamin Duranske

Lawsuit Filed Against Second Life Avatar, from Top Tech News by Phil Davis

Prophesies, from Doc Searls Weblog by Doc Searls

A Guide to Google’s APIs, from Mashable! by Adam Ostrow

It All Comes Together: The getting good with BitTorrent roundup, from Lifehacker by Adam Pash

Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk31), from TorrentFreak by Ernesto

Stop! Don’t click “I Agree” before you read the Terms of Service, from Yap 3.0 by Robin

YouTube, Google Street View: the copyright, trademark, AND privacy trolls are coming!!, from ZDNet Blogs by Russell Shaw

Getting data OUT of Facebook, from ZDNet Blogs by Dennis Howlett

Electronic Filing Of Copyright Applications Has Arrived (at least for beta testers), from Clock Tower Law Group’s shared items in Google Reader by Aaron Silverstein

Internet Vote-Swapping Legal, Says 9th Circuit, from Threat Level - Wired Blogs by Sarah Lai Stirland

Facebook, Identity, and OpenID, from Ministry of Intrigue by daniel@andrlik.org (Daniel Andrlik)

Let’s kill all the lawyers: web-based negotiation platform seeks to revolutionize the creation of contracts, from Online Guide to Mediation by Diane Levin

Taking Intangible Electronic Files is Criminal Fraud–NM v. Kirby, from Technology & Marketing Law Blog by Eric Goldman

Video Site Veoh Sues To Stop Universal, from Top Tech News by Richard Koman

Surfing your clickstream, from ZDNet Blogs by Ed Gottsman

Hyperlinking & the law: IMPACT guide to the essentials, from IMPACT® by Alex (note the focus of this piece is UK/EU)

“Social Networking 3.0″ was on the agenda this afternoon at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit. This one was a “must watch” for me, as will be Dan Farber’s later today on “The Democratization of Media.” You can follow along with the conference’s live Webcast here.

Moderator Charlene Li, senior analyst for Forrester Research, was joined by Travis Katz, senior vice president and general manager of MySpace International; Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook; Rich Rosenblatt, CEO of Demand Media and former MySpace executive; Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning; and Karl Jacob, CEO of Wallop. Dan blogged the panel on Between the Lines, and, as he says, most of the discussion focused the future of social networks. I was most interested in the comments concerning social networks and identity, attention, and intellectual property.

On the identity front, Charlene Li stated the truism that maintaining identities across different social networks is “a pain,” and wondered when the social networks we see today will become more open. Facebook’s Dustin Moskovitz recognized that portable identities are necessary, but didn’t go into particulars of how Facebook is or will be addressing this. Rich Rosenblatt said they talk internally at Demand Media about “the portable profile,” and says Demand Media is working on letting users log in with a single profile then select from a mix of options as to where they want to be. (My impression was he was not talking about navigating out of the Demand Media environment.) MySpace’s Travis Katz is interested by the notion of OpenID and a single, portable identity, but thinks it’s “complicated” to make it happen. And Gina Bianchini challenged the notion that social networking users want a single, inflexible identity to follow them around: “Your wakeboarding social network is fundamentally different from your independent journalist one. People in the real world have different sides of themselves that they show to different groups, different people, different communities.” She makes a good point, and I think the digital identity community is on top of that nuance. Though Tantek Çelik Twittered me to ask about their plans, if any, for using microformats as an open portability standard, sadly I didn’t get the nod from the microphone handler. [Update:] See Fred Oliveira: “A good start: A few social networks already have microformatted data on user profiles (Last.FM, Dopplr, Twitter and Cork’d), meaning any other network could easily consume this data when you sign-up, saving you a load of trouble - which is exactly what Dopplr (being smart as it is) does. Now if other networks would tag along, that would be superb.”

Travis Katz, Dustin Moskovitz, Rich Rosenblatt, Gina Bianchini, Karl Jacob

On the attention front, in response to the question “Where’s the money going to come from?” the panelists answered with nearly a single voice: targeted advertising. But transactions based on user desires and intentions are on the radar as well:

Travis Katz: the advertising model on social networks is going to be here a long time. Other models will probably emerge too. MySpace is looking at ecommerce models. You always feel better buying from a trusted source. When you talk about transactions between individuals, there’s a commerce opportunity there too.

Karl Jacob: Wallop is all transaction, no advertising. We believe there’s a world down the road where you buy the things you need to dress up your profile and the applications you want to use. Akin to the ringtone market.

Gina Bianchini: If I had to choose between the ringtone market and targeted advertising, I’d choose targeted advertising. There’s a huge opportunity to bring what is happening with AdWords into social networks. If you take a monetization model that’s working today and generating significant amounts of money, and apply it to a market that is only going to get bigger and more sophisticated as far as targeted advertising, it gets very interesting.

Finally, on the subject of intellectual property, when asked what was missing from the social networking ecosystem and what he would invest in if given the opportunity, Rich Rosenblatt commented on the need for what I would call a “third estate” of media: outside the copyright and use limitations of the products of the big studios, labels, and publishing houses, and yet a step above one person’s photos, films, etc. made primarily for personal use. A class of media produced and designed for Web distribution. Gina Bianchini challenged the notion that “amateur” media can’t comprise this third estate:

Rich Rosenblatt: We’d like to see more content actually made for the Internet. There are two layers of content. Studio generated (lots of trouble and fighting there), and user generated but not usable (one guy’s photos of himself). We’d like to see content that more than a few people want to see.

Gina Bianchini: I would argue that that’s happening today. On YouTube some of that gets lost in the crowd, but put it in a community of really interested people, and it’s very powerful.

Rich Rosenblatt, to Gina: But if you could buy wakeboarding content for your wakeboarding social network, wouldn’t that be great?

Gina Bianchini: From my perspective, one of the benefits of social networks is you and your friends can watch your own stuff. Another benefit is the good stuff rises to the top. I would rather have the material be truly user generated.

Karl Wallop: the good content and the good applications will all come from the current and up and coming generations of users.

I have long thought Creative Commons moves us significantly closer to this third estate media ecosystem, but doesn’t quite take us all the way there. John Palfrey points this out in his post today on blog scraping and the ongoing licensing/compensation gap.

alwayson, alwayson2007

Chris Pirillo is on Pownce at pownce.com/chrispirillo, and has 69 friends. Or wait, that’s not Chris. I can scarcely catalog the related legal considerations, which include:

Can Chris stop someone from using his name and likeness without his consent? Possibly, under right of publicity laws, but the ones I’m most familiar with preclude unauthorized commercial uses, and the jurisdictional variations are a nightmare.

Can’t Chris sue for defamation if someone is falsifying things he supposedly said and did? Perhaps, but parody is a First Amendment defense to defamation.

Is this parody? No one here has identified themselves as the "fake" Chris Pirillo. Under trademark law apparently, “A parody must convey two simultaneous–and contradictory messages; that it is the original, but also that it is not the original and is instead a parody. To the extent that it does only the former but not the latter, it is not only a poor parody but also vulnerable under trademark law, since the consumer will be confused.” From Cliffs Notes, Inc. v. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 886 F. 2d 490 (2d Cir. 1989). (Via Chilling Effects) (I’m not sure if the same requirement extends to parody in general, and haven’t quickly found anything on point.)

Does Chris have trademark rights in “Chris Pirillo?” Let’s assume yes. And let’s assume he wanted to put a stop to someone else’s use of pownce.com/chrispirillo. Do anti-cybersquatting laws extend to other level domains? Is something to the right of .com, etc. even an other level domain? Would Chris have recourse against Pownce, the faux Chris Pirillo Pownce user, or both?

How about tags?

(My head hurts.)

As an example of someone who thinks he owns his reputation data, here’s lawyer John Henry Browne, threatening to sue new lawyer rating service Avvo over a rating he says is unjustifiably low. That link comes via Joe Andrieu on the Project VRM list, who earlier this week had these musings about reputation as case-based identity:

Perhaps considering reputation as case-based identity, we can start to outline the components required for such case-based systems to work:

* transaction data (potentially including opinions of others)
* algorithmic evaluation
* refutation process

These may not be the definitive requirements for a reputation system, but they seem to be present in the working systems I know of and are perhaps a good starting point.

For the record, I think it is an even bet as to whether or not personal opinions can be effectively integrated as “transaction history” in a case-based identity system, given the challenges of emotions, grudges, slander, and the non-provability of opinions.

It is also a near certainty that for certain types of case-based identity that the user will never be able to actually fully control the data-set. For example, I could significantly improve my credit score if I had read-write control over that data-set. Unfortunately, that would render the current system completely ineffective. Perhaps a new one could emerge, but there are other domains, such as criminal records, etc., where an authoritative reputation requires a data-set with limited or heavily moderated user control–otherwise everyone would erase those pesky traffic violations.

Against this context, the kind of ownership and control over one’s reputation data attorney Browne and others are threatening to enforce in court may find itself running up against Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields providers of interactive computer services from liability for simply filtering and/or distilling information provided by others. Though a California district court recently skirted the issue of whether Section 230 immunizes search engines for the reputational consequences of their ranking and placement algorithms, the situation is analogous. It’s interesting that unlike the search engine cases, these attorneys aren’t complaining about reputational slippage; they’re saying Avvo’s rating system has harmed them from the get-go.

What’s not clear from the lawyers’ demand letter is the legal basis for the threatened lawsuit. Defamation I assume, but what’s defamatory? Individual components of the rating or the rating itself? Avvo says it merely synthesizes data from third party sources, including the subject lawyers if they choose to participate in the process (e.g., by claiming and editing “unlocked” portions of their profiles or reporting incorrect data). The key question for Section 230 purposes will be whether Avvo and other reputational ranking systems are embellishing or enhancing third party material (or creating new material) by virtue of the way it is collected, processed, and displayed. (See Professor Eric Goldman’s excellent post on the recent Ninth Circuit decision/”hairball” that is Fair Housing Counsel v. Roommates.com.)

[Update:] Declan McCullagh has a good piece on Avvo, particularly the section on the difficulty of rating lawyers. Declan points to some of the more eye-opening ratings for folks like U.S. Supreme Court Justices: “When asked about Justice Ginsburg’s lackluster rating, [Avvo CEO Mark Britton] replied, ‘Arguably, her rating is a bit less efficient.’” Arguably. Arguably, things like peer endorsements and client ratings should operate, um, differently when it comes to jurists or legal scholars.

Speaking of which, my own unedited, uncontributed-to rating is 6.3 — the same as Larry Lessig’s, and just two clicks below Justices Ginsburg and Alito (that we all have the same “experience” rating — 3 — is nothing short of comical; Avvo also has my location wrong, which tells me their last poll of CA bar information was several months ago).

Adding to Declan’s thoughts on the slippery nature of this kind of reputation ranking, it will be interesting to see whether and how Avvo will attempt to police the inevitable gaming of its peer endorsement and client rating components. I haven’t yet heard of LinkedIn (which also has an endorsement mechanism) having to contend with this issue, but there are some key differences: people choose to be in LinkedIn (lawyers are in Avvo whether they like it or not, and there doesn’t appear to be an opt-out), and LinkedIn isn’t rating anybody, or attempting to tell would-be clients or customers “how well” a member could handle a piece of work.

[Update, 6/14]: The suit has been filed, see John Cook’s coverage and Regina Mullen’s discussion/analysis of the complaint.

[Update, 6/18]: Santa Clara law professor Eric Goldman weighs in on the Avvo case, Section 230, and Roommates.com:

Let’s put all of this aside and focus on the doctrinal issue that seems preeminent: 47 USC 230. To the extent that the plaintiffs seek to hold Avvo liable under state consumer protection laws for third party content, this lawsuit should be cleanly preempted by 47 USC 230. As an example, I’m reasonably confident that eBay would argue vociferously that its numerical feedback rating is protected by 230 (among other doctrines).

But it’s hardly clear that Avvo gets the benefit of the statute. First, arguably, the lawsuit is based on the word choices that Avvo made in describing/characterizing the data and the output, not the underlying third party data. Second, this case goes straight to the doctrinal murkiness of the Roommates.com case. Recall Reinhardt’s reformulation that Roommates.com lost 230 protection because “Roommate categorizes, channels and limits the distribution of information, thereby creating another layer of information.” Isn’t this exactly what Avvo does too? I sure hope the Ninth Circuit cleans up the Roommates.com hairball before cases like this test its limits.

Also, Carolyn Elefant and I joined the named plaintiff John Henry Browne on the Lawyer2Lawyer show to discuss the case (MP3; feed). Carolyn made some great points about how the legal profession and its institutions (particularly state bar associations) have dropped the ball on making this kind of information accessible (implying I believe that even a system that may be less than perfect/still getting the kinks out is better than nothing).

As evidenced by the many lawsuits against Google concerning PageRank or other search result (read reputational) slippage, the notion that you own your digital reputation — even if it is at bottom a collaborative work that begins with your actions, but thereafter depends on the reactions of others — has legs. Michael O’Connor Clarke wrote an interesting post along these lines at Uninstalled called Web 3.0 and Personal Reputation Management:

I’m still not quite sure where I’m going with this, but I feel the need for some secure, personal repository that would hold all of my connections and “whuffie” together. I want to keep my whuffie in my wallet - but not in a Microsoft Passport/Hailstorm kind of way. Ack, no.

It should include most elements of OpenID, a lot of FOAF, and maybe some of the stuff being worked on by the Attention Trust people.

I want it in XML, of course, and I want it to be incredibly easy to implement and use, as secure as it possibly can be, and extensible without being completely unmanageable.

Naturally, I’d want everyone to adopt it – from eBay to Amazon, Facebook to Flickr, Google to Microsoft to Yahoo.

Critically: no vendor (or government) can own it.

My reputation and relationships are mine. They’re the sum of the gifts of friendship and respect people grant to one another over the years; the currency we earn through our life and work. And like the other, folding kind of currency, I should be able to carry my stock of links, linkages and laurels with me from one Web experience to the next.

In law, the intrinsic value of one’s reputation crops up in the mishmash of defamation, intentional interference, and right of publicity principles. Privacy too, since reputation depends as well on what one does not reveal. (You should, or wait you shouldn’t, see the dishevelled snarl that is my hair right now.) And let’s not forget intellectual property (there’s the “P” word), since copyright, patent, and particularly trademark exist in part to protect the reputational identity that accompanies the acts of creating and doing business.

The Attention Trust says that attention is property, that you own it and can store it where you wish, and that such ownership and the right of control go hand in hand. Michael suggests the same is true of reputation. It’s more difficult for me to get my arms around what the sum total of one’s reputation might be, and whatever it is, whether it matters that it’s a joint and not a solo creation (e.g., Tom Williams‘ act of Facebook-friending Michael and vice versa). However, these seem like mere speed bumps to recognizing rights of ownership and control comparable to those posited for attention.

More from Joe Andrieu.

[Disclosure: I’m on the Board of the Attention Trust.]

I was one of several folks who spoke today on policy issues at Video on the Net.  Since my talk riffs on Jeff Jarvis's, which I blogged earlier, and since I actually have notes for a change, here they are.  And here's a Flickr set of the accompanying slides.

Jeff Jarvis told us Tuesday that we're reinventing TV, and this time it's ours.

On the legal front, we're caught in a tempest of alternately dreading regulatory attention and inviting it ('Net neutrality; Pulver's hands-off-video petition; Skype's cellular Carterfone), DMCA ping-pong, fair use flip-flopping, and polarizing coypright wars. 

Though this can all seem a bit dark and depressing, what it really means is a subpoint to Jeff's:  we get to reinvent not just TV but its law.  And this time it's ours. 

Along those lines, Jonathan Askin has nominated himself for the post of Chief Justice of Second Life.

How and why to we get to reinvent the law?  Because in the lack of a framework built to support these activities, sistas (and brothas) are doin' it for themselves.  And can and should keep doing it, and do even more.  As means and mores for interacting with one another, and with one another's creative works, are established, these measures act to fill the gaps.  And when courts and regulators see an economically and socially healthy ecosystem arise from these gapfillers, there will be scant legitimate motive (special interest money and lobbying efforts notwithstanding) to undo them.  Hence, we get to do the law the way it should be done, the way that works best for this arena.  But accomplishing this (or accomplishing it with sufficient speed) requires recognizing what's at stake and what needs to be done.  It won't happen by continuing to try to bolt Video-on-the-Net legal considerations onto laws and processes trapped in a music- and movie-on-disk time warp.

If you're a regular person, when you think about the future you probably imagine a Minority Report world of flying cars and virtual displays.  If you're a certain odd species of lawyer, you might imagine contracts that are both flying and virtual.  Contracts formed not by mailing or faxing pieces of paper and blue or black (but not red) ink signatures back and forth.  Contracts formed by the relevant personal agents and bots having sex with our preestablished permissions and parameters data.  Sex is a good metaphor.  Jeff Jarvis discussed how metrics are sex for advertisers.  Doc Searls says federated identity is a series of vendors having sex with our data.

It's not made explicit frequently enough, but one of the core purposes of Creative  Commons is to let agents and bots have sex with our permissions data.  That's why the licenses are machine readable.  That's why they can be embedded as metadata in digital files.  Accordingly, we see the early progenitors of flying contracts today. 

On the creator side, Creative Commons lets you express usage conditions in a machine readable way.  On the user side, Creative Commons search, such as that in Flickr, lets you locate works that fit your requirements, both substantitively and from a permissions standpoint.  (Example:  let me see all the pictures of candy, or all the bass blues riffs, that are licensed for commercial use in exchange for attribution.)

A few interesting facts about Creative Commons:

• Though it's impossible to know precisely how many works carry creative commons licenses, it's at least in the tens of millions, based on the Flickr Creative Commons search index alone.
• Despite the existence of at least tens of millions of Creative Commons licensed works, in the almost 5 years Creative Commons has existed its licenses have come under judicial scrutiny only a handful of times, and in each instance have been found valid and enforceable.
• Almost as many Flickr using Creative Commons licensors want to propogate use of Creative Commons licenses through use of the "Share Alike" condition as those who are interested in controlling their works through use of the "No Derivatives" condition.

The realities of Internet video, and 'Net distributed creativity in general, require turning Cole Porter on his head and giving parties new, more practical, streamlined ways to say "Let's Behave!"  Here are some more examples.

• Code is law, Creative Commons.  We've discussed.
• Lisensa:  blogs only for the time being, but the Creative Commons on steroids approach, with creator dictated payments enabled, is the point.  (I'm on the advisory board.)
• Brightcove (from the FAQ):

Licensing Services – Dreaming big and looking for content? Our Licensing Services help you acquire the perfect video content for your site or device. Soon, you'll be able to browse the Brightcove Syndication Marketplace for content that you can buy on a performance basis. Just pay for what you use.

• YouTube:  New role front and center role for Terms of Service; no longer just
  something to ignore, now a living, breathing, dynamic relationship
  building machine.  Revver, Metacafe, Videoegg, etc.  Different approaches with a common theme that perhaps should be the official slogan of reinvented TV:  "License it, benefit."  (In money, attention, or both.)
• Microformats:  one means of addressing the problem of RSS and implied license uncertainties.  (See Myheavy.com fiasco.)  Also key to provisioning the new law's infrastructure (Creative Commons search as with Flickr; "flying contract" transactions)
• Putting clickthroughs to work.  (WordPress plugin for podcast releases.)
• More automating of the automatable:  Chilling Effects' DMCA
  counterdesignation tool; Wendy Seltzer saga's latest.
• And stabilizing the unstable:  CIS documentary film fair use project.  (Take it
  a step further, envision a TRUSTe for fair use, based on compliance
  with approved best practices.)
• Planting and harvesting from outside unlicensed walled gardens:
  Magnatune, CC Mixter, Pump Audio, Podsafe Music Network.
• Everyone's rights matter, not just the big boys':  Attention Trust (I'm on the board), Project VRM

In his science fiction novel Eastern Standard Tribe, Cory Doctorow wrote about a not-too-distant future where network-enabled legal dealings flow smoothly, unobtrusively, and correctly.  (Actually, the book is filled with far more dramatic and interesting things, but I've never quite been able to get past this subtext.)

The reinvented law of reinvented TV is built — route-around by route-around — on the damage of things like byzantine music licensing rules, nonexistent Hollywood film licensing alternatives, antiquated procedural niceties, and the inability of our undeniably glorious (when compared with other alternatives) legal system to deliver certainty on a host of business-critical and livelihood-critical issues.

You, all of us, can help build the new law by focusing our energies on these tools and building or demanding more of them.  Before long they'll draw in the denizens of the old law — witness the flurry of licensing deals struck with the iTunes and YouTubes of the world.  As this happens, the new law becomes mainstream and ultimately formally endorsed by our legal institutions.  This reinvented law doesn't throw out the old one.  That's not what Jeff Pulver means when he says sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.  What he means is the more we streamline these relationships, the more we build law that works.

[tag: von07]

The description of Jeff Jarvis's talk on the VON Web site captured precisely what he covered:

Our medium [Internet TV] is so new, we have the chance to do things right, to set ourselves up for success. What do we need to make our small TV revolution successful in advertising, measurement, networks, guides, marketing, PR? We need to get our act together. 

But you can judge for yourself; here are my notes: 

We can nurture an explosion of commerce, but we've got to get it right.  Weblogs didn't get it right.  "To advertisers, metrics are sex.  And size does matter."  Advertisers can't track our performance and their clients all fear us.  They lose, but so do we.  Helping people find the good stuff is important, but remember there's no uniform definition of what's "good" any more.  You don't have to be the blockbuster any more.  The tail of the dinosaur is far more powerful than the dumb brain of the dinosaur.  It's the vastness that matters, and video is now a form of communication.  Size doesn't matter; quality does.  Let's not get stuck in the same traps of old media.  We can do things right.  We are reinventing TV.  It's ours.  

Exploding Video is Jeff's new, very small, television network.  He's learning, learning lots about finding the right voice.  The roughness and bluntness of our new small television gives it credibility.  Our roughness is at least endearing.  We don't want to be old TV, and we're not sure what we should be yet but I hope we never decide.  Per hour cost of network television is $300k/hour as opposed to 18 Doughty Street:  $140/hour, all in.  

TV needs to go to where people are.  This is why Viacom's move against Google is such a collosal mistake.  Fans recommending good stuff is invaluable.  Jeff's 15-year-old son never clicks through channels with the remote.  He finds things only through recommendation.  Monetize and control is the wrong way.  Monetize, Jeff gets.  But we need to figure out a way to monetize without control.

This doesn't mean you ignore the big guys, you work with them.  When they showcase you, you get audience, they get "cool points."  Then there's money.  "I'm not getting enough.  I'm not getting any."  Dina Kaplan at Blip.tv is doing a tremendous job.  What do we need?  Measurement.  We have to give advertisers orgasms.  Metrics are sex.  We have to serve people where they are.  Metrics have to be standard, public, and verifiable.  We need to recognize the value of links and recommendation.  Every media element needs to have a unique identifier.  We need experimentation.  It's 1954, as far as this TV is concerned.

We need ad serving.  The only way the big boys will play is if they can put things multiple places.  We need to sell ads across networks.

We need trust and identity.  Who made it?  Advertisers won't go for anonymity.  It's also important for creators to get their money and credibility.  

We need guides.  Network2.tv is one.  We're all critics, and we're all networks.  We need to get judged on our recommendations.  The idea of people as guides matter.  The whole role of criticism has changed.  It's social, it's trusting your friends.  But it's hard to find the good stuff.  It's a mistake to concentrate on the flaming farts.  There are gems in there, but it's difficult to find them.  There's hope on Blip.tv, where Jeff found the talent to do his show Idol Critic.  Dina Kaplan and company are developing talent and finding good people.  Network2.tv is another chance to find where the good stuff is.  Jeff started Exploding Video to help find guides.  

The world isn't bifurcated into "premium content" and "the rest."  There's good stuff in the rest (even if it's not yet making money).Viacom is a fool for demonizing fans for recommending shows.  CBS on the other hand, also in the House of Sumner, is trying to find as much as they can to put on YouTube.  

Finally, we need protection against regulation.  Doc Searls:  it's a mistake to think of this stuff as content.  It's conversation, and when you regulate it you regulate our speech and our lives.  We have to be fearful, stand together, and fight together to keep TV ours.  It is our place, protect it.  

We're only going to make TV that's better (it's 1954).  We have a new definition of better, and best.

Q from a New York Times person:  if you do all these things, aren't you just becoming big media?  A:  The economics of this world are different, the definition of a hit is enough to survive.  

Q from a ZDNetter:  who's we?  A:  Anyone who wants to make TV. 

[tag: von07]

Update, 5:32 p.m.:  Consummate and indefatigable blogger that he is, Jeff blogged his own talk.

The conference call Mike Madison and I recorded earlier this week in anticipation of our session at Community 2.0 (more here and here) is now available as part of the Bag and Baggage Podcast or from the Future of Communities blog.  We talked about:

• Defining community and loosely-joined individuals and interest groups
• Community goals and governance (or lack thereof)
• External innovation communities such as Procter & Gamble's and ownership issues
• Intellectual and liability concerns for company-owned or associated communities
• Whether an initiative similar to the Creative Commons movement has or is in the process of emerging
• Ownership issues and risk-minimization around products or services that emerge from external ideas
• Variations on open source licenses
• Individual rights and protections for community contributors and participants
• Anonymity and accountability
• Nefarious community exploitation: gaming, hacking, spamming
• Trust and reputation management
• The use of trademark law to use and manage community involvement; selective enforcement, the expansion of certification marks
• Insurance industry mechanisms and models
• Defamation
• Company-sponsored (and owned) communities, and the actions taken by participants who find the terms and conditions of such initiatives too draconian
• "Innovator's dilemma" management and patent strategy and the tension between old, successful products and those developed with help from outsourced customer communities
• Personal data ownership and the Attention Trust

Our rescheduled conference call in anticipation of Community 2.0 (details here) takes place today at 1:00 p.m. PST/3:00 p.m. EST.  Call-in details are here, please join us if you are interested.

In connection with our session at the the upcoming Community 2.0 conference, law professor Mike Madison and I will be hosting a public conference call on Monday, February 26 beginning at 1:00 p.m. PST, and we'd love your participation to help us hone in on the ownership considerations (IP; attention; identity), and issues of governance and liability, most critical to the creation, maintenance, and long-term health of business communities.  The call will be recorded and made available as a podcast from The Future of Communities blog.  You can join us as follows:

From Skype: +990008275785861

From a regular phone (long distance costs apply):
US: 1-605-475-8590

In Europe, call:
Germany 01805 00 7620
UK 0870 738 0763

The Conference Room Number: 5785861

Hope to chat with you then.

(Cross-posted to Bag and Baggage and Between Lawyers)

[Update, Monday 2/26 @ 1:15 p.m.:] Unfortunately, we had problems with the conferencing service lined up to support this, so are having to reschedule. I'll post the new date, time, and call-in details once they're available, sorry for the delay.