On today's podcast we discuss the (near) end of the AT&T/T-Mobile deal, MegaUpload vs. UMG and YouTube, and SOPA. We also have an extended interview with Robert Levine, author of Free Ride, How Digital Parasites are Destroying The Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back.

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The good folks over at American University are hosting the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest next week. The Congress will bring together scholars, policymakers, and policy advocates to discuss how positive copyright policies can be constructed. The purpose of the event is to come up with policy recommendations that would allow copyright to serve the interests of artists and the general public and not just a few established industries. The plenary session of the Congress is open to the public and folks at American University welcome your participation. Here’s more information about the Congress:

On today's podcast, we discuss Jay-Z and Kanye's successful battle against album leaks, avoiding the Apple app store rules with rich web apps, cable and satellite drifting towards luxury-only, and Walmart having to keep its DRM servers on even after it closes its online music store.  We also talk with Cody Sumter and Jason Boggess of Minecraft.Print(), the script that bridges the worlds of 3D printing and Minecraft.

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A good third of the PK staff is shipping up to Boston for Free Press’s fifth National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR) this weekend. Not only are we excited about the Shake Your Media Maker Dance Party, but we’re also looking forward to participating in a wide variety of panels with our public interest colleagues. From wireless and spectrum policy to copyright and remix culture, the issues that PK staff will be covering run the gamut. If you’re joining us at NCMR, we’ll also have a table set up in the exhibit hall this year (where you can find this awesome t-shirt)!

Ah, check out this lovely piece about Odetta, catch her discussion of “theft” where she schools her interviewer on inappropriate application of property arguments to musicking in the tradition she is a part of.

Seriously. Watch it first, it's a lovely 20 minutes, and then I will take you through her amazing smackdown of her interviewer.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/arts/20081203_odetta.html

At 13:48, he asks her about Dylan, about how he “took something deep from" her. She pushes back, says he was "influenced" by her, but that he did his own thing with it.

He than says that Dylan listened to the same songs as her, recordings of sharecroppers, workers and slaves, and “stole" from them. She says, immediately, (at 14:15) “no no no no no"

Tomorrow, Scott Turow, a novelist and the president of the Authors Guild, will testify before a Senate hearing on the specific topic of online infringement. This hearing will almost certainly center around proposals similar to last year's S. 3804, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act—a detailed piece of legislation that delves into law enforcement practices and the technological underpinnings of the Internet.

This is a guest blog post. The original post, which has images and a great comment thread including the thoughts of Jace Clayton aka DJ /rupture, can be found here. Both Larisa Mann and Jace Clayton spoke at Public Knowledge's second annual World's Fair Use Day.

Looks like the walls are going up again...

You may remember the thing memorialized on Twitter and beyond as #musicblogocide which was actually the second wave (and there may be a third?) of what is basically an inevitable clash between the practices and desires of local music scenes, especially dance music scenes, and the way music-making is structured under law and capitalism.  I wrote about an earlier wave in 2008 and then this February it started up again, with many folk starting to get into the deeper issues, including this magisterial take by Wayne.

The second annual World's Fair Use Day will take place on January 13th, 2011 at the Washington Post Conference Center in Washington.

Panel discussions will cover Hip-Hop and Fair Use, Visual Art and Fair Use, Remix and the Gaming Community and Fair Use and Internet Humor.  There will also be keynote speeches from prominent scholars in the fields of copyright and media studies.
Panelists confirmed so far are:

•    NYC hip-hop trio Das Racist
•    Cheezburger Network founder and CEO Ben Huh
•    Jay Pavlina, creator of "Super Mario Bros. Remix"
•    Larry Oji and David "djpretzel" Lloyd of OverClocked Remix
•    Tim Hwang, co-founder of ROFLcon, The Awesome Foundation and The Web Ecology Project

More information is available at the conference web site.

There is a cop on the beat when it comes to “mystery charges” on your cell phone: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  Yes, the same FCC that after a year of dithering can’t bring itself to use its lawful authority over broadband, has decided to stick up for consumers who are tired of being nickel and dimed on their cell phone bills.