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:

California court invalidates Alienware arbitration provision in online terms and conditions, from Internet Cases by Evan Brown

“Among other things, the memorandum suggests that the [U.S. Supreme] Court will begin making electronically-filed briefs available for access over the Court’s own web site“, from How Appealing

“A Quest To Get More Court Rulings, Online and Free”, from The Trademark Blog by Marty

Technophilia: Where to find public records online, from Lifehacker by Wendy Boswell

Drawing That Explains Patent Costs, from Clock Tower Law Group’s shared items in Google Reader by Erik J. Heels

Wired Piece on How to Run a Corporate Blog, from Micro Persuasion by Steve Rubel

American Airlines Sues Google Over Keyword Ads, from Technology & Marketing Law Blog by Eric Goldman

Burn the books, brave the blogs, from IP Law Daily by Jeremy

Joining OIN, from Official Google Blog by Karen

Documentary Tests Fair Use, from IP Law Daily by (author unknown)

Social Network Portability: Do We Need a Creative Commons-ish Campaign for Privacy?, from Like It Matters by Brian Oberkirch

Lyrics sites out of tune with copyrights, from ZDNet News - News Page One

Did You Violate Copyright Law Today?, from Law.com - Inside Opinions: Legal Blogs by Carolyn Elefant

Free MySpace Music Downloads?, from Mashable! by Kristen Nicole

State of the AmLaw 200 Blogosphere, August 2007, from Real Lawyers :: Have Blogs by kevin@lexblog.com (Kevin O’Keefe)

Linus on Subversion, GPL3, Microsoft and More, from Slashdot by CmdrTaco

Why watermarking is a bigger devil than DRM, from ZDNet Blogs by George Ou

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.

When I read The Support Economy a few years ago, it resonated in a Cluetrain-esque sort of way.  If I recall correctly, one of its main premises is that due to the considerable pain presently involved in managing one's relationships with vendors, an economic shift would take place around alleviating (and hopefully eliminating) this pain.  One of my new year's resolutions is to re-read that book through the lens of both attention and Doc Searls' recent musings.

From a legal standpoint, one's data is likely to be considered one's property, or one's personal, identity-centric information, or both.  Along these lines, fellow ZDNet blogger Steve O'Hear had a great post this week:   Do ordinary users care about data portability? And if not, should they? Four social networks respond.  Note that both the ownership rights and identity themes crop up in the interviewees' responses concerning user data.  To what extent it's sound public policy to permit one's rights in such data be licensed or assigned via boilerplate terms of service is one of the coming key issues of the Live Web, in my estimation. 

Silicon Valley law firm Fenwick & West paid a lot of money to be a Gold sponsor of this year's Web 2.0 conference, which among other things bought it the chance to put a flyer in the official conference bag.  Interestingly, that flyer doesn't focus as one might expect on the firm's intellectual property, corporate, litigation, or more traditional practice areas.  Instead, it mines for business by steering the attendees' attention to a year old article on the legal risks and rewards of blogs and blogging:

With the proliferation of weblogs or "blogs," companies find themselves faced with a new forum for employee conduct that poses both risks and rewards…

[Updated 11/10/06, 6:45 a.m.]  As Kevin O'Keefe points out:  in answering this question for itself, the Fenwick apparently and/or thus far has come down on the "risk" side of the equation.  (Kevin, who makes no bones about the fact he supplies blogging services to law firms, questions the ability of a firm in such a position — i.e., one that has not itself eaten the blogging dog food — to provide sufficiently comprehensive and informed advice.)

Reuters held a Newsmaker Event in New York recently it would have been interesting to attend; but for it being on an inconvenient coast I gladly would have gone:

PUBLIC FIGURES, PRIVATE LIVES -

A panel of experts debate how far the media should delve into the private lives of public figures

*Do celebrities and politicians have a right to private lives?
*Where does the public interest argument stop?
*Are families fair game?
*Why are we fascinated by the famous?

Panel:

Floyd Abrams, noted First Amendment lawyer
Bonnie Fuller, Chief Editorial Director, American Media, Inc.
Hilary B. Rosen, CNBC/MSNBC, Media Industry Consultant
Gary Morgan, CEO, Splash News/Paparazzi
Jacob Weisberg, Editor-in-Chief, Slate.com

moderator: Paul Holmes, Reuters

Coverage from Reuters, Culture Kitchen, BC Beat, and Jossip indicates there was much discussion but little consensus concerning standards in the online and offline/old media and new media arenas, and "quite of bit of talk about First Amendment/copyright/privacy issues and how they apply to old and new media." 

Meanwhile, Jason Lee Miller discusses how courts have shown their willingness to apply defamation laws in all applicable contexts. 

And just last night in San Francisco, bloggers, podcasters, and journalists converged for a Social Media Club Roundtable "on what is the right thing to do to properly disclose interests and conflicts of interest."  Here's pre-event discussion from Chris Heuer and Mike Arrington, and Chris' post-event recap.

Jason Calacanis has never made a secret of his views on whether distributing full content via RSS entails any implied license.  His answer?  N-o, with a locked and loaded legal team and strategic sanctions to boot.  His most recent reiteration of his perspective is here:  Newsgator is not stealing our content (or "One more time: our full RSS feeds are for individual, non-comercial use ONLY").  

There has been no shortage of reportage concerning the official transfer of YouTube's copyright concerns to the Googleplex.  See, e.g.:

• BBC News, Google's copyright nightmare
• The Globe and Mail, At YouTube, a copyright conundrum continues
• CNET, YouTube may add to Google's copyright worries

But perhaps more than any other company in existence, Google is adept at encouraging copyright law to develop consistent with the realities of a connected world.  EFF's Fred von Lohmann both gets this and explains it well; in fact he read my mind:

YouTube has already been sued (by LA New Service), so Google is essentially buying that lawsuit. But I don't think that's a problem — frankly, precedent set against YouTube will likely exert strong influence over the entire video hosting industry. So, in essence, Google is just getting more direct control over a lawsuit that is important for its existing and future business. And when it comes to lawsuits, Google has top-drawer talent (both in-house and in outside law firms), strategic vision, and a stellar track record. Google's executives (like AOL's and Yahoo's before them) understand that shaping the legal precedents is a critical part of their business.

And it's important to consider who are the people suing YouTube. I've thought for some time that the first lawsuits against YouTube (and other video hosting services) will be from small copyright owners (like LA News Service), not from major media companies. That's good news for YouTube (and Google). Small timers tend to lack the resources to bring top-drawer legal talent to bear in these fights. As a result, they often lose, creating useful precedents for the Google's of the world. In fact, Google has already been successful in securing good precedents against unsophisticated opponents who thought that they could squeeze a quick settlement out of Google (Field v. Google, Parker v. Google). What the small-timers don't appreciate is that Google would much rather spend money on setting a good precedent than on settling.

So I think the YouTube acquisition may well represent a legal opportunity for Google (and the Internet industry generally), rather than a vulnerability. After all, litigation to define the copyright rules for new online services is inevitable — better to choose your battles and plan for them, rather than fleeing the fight and letting some other company create bad precedents that will haunt you later.

As summed up at the Wall Street Journal Online, John Palfrey agrees:  "From my vantage point, Google's investors should not be too worried, but rather applauding this transaction as just the next stage in a wild ride."

Wikipedia cites Mr. Spock's goatee from the original Star Trek series episode Mirror Mirror as "a part of popular culture as a satirical symbol of evil and normality run amok."  So it is with states (currently, New York, though it's not alone) that would indiscriminately impose onerous advertising regulations on blogs and other online communications authored by lawyers.  In such a universe, markets aren't conversations — they're conversational vacuum.  More:

• Law blogs raising prickly ethical issues
• Autophagy in the Courts
• Between Lawyers, legal ethics and advertising