If you’re in the Bay Area, please join EFF for a Grokster send-off party. Send our defense team in MGM v. Grokster off to the Supreme Court in style, with a party at 1751 Social Club tonight at 8:00.

I’ll be on my way to the Supreme Court Monday, camping out on the steps Monday night for a seat at the Tuesday arguments. See you there?

Sadly, the Canon won’t turn on, neither before nor after the removal of 42+ tiny screws. (Photo taken with the Treo 650)

EFF colleague Annalee Newitz, Techsploitation columnist extraordinaire, has a feed. Most recently, she recaps ETECH: AlterNet: Aggregate! Iterate! Reciprocate!:

I spent a week with the ETech crowd in San Diego. Our downtown hotel was packed with mad scientists, info aggregators, gadget liberators, visionaries, post-bloggers (blogs are so 2002!), and good old-fashioned techno-wankers.

Not sure which category I fit into…

The New York Times runs an article in which law enforcement officials lament, somewhat breathlessly, that open wifi connections can be used, anonymously, by wrongdoers. The piece omits any mention of the benefits of these open wireless connections — no-hassle connectivity anywhere the “default” community network is operating, and anonymous browsing and publication for those doing good, too.

Without a hint of irony, however:

Two federal law enforcement officials said on condition of anonymity that while they were not aware of specific cases, they believed that sophisticated terrorists might also be starting to exploit unsecured Wi-Fi connections.

Yes, even law enforcement needs anonymity sometimes.

The Maker Fair at ETECH (and its parent, Make Magazine capture my imagination on lots of levels. As a self-confessed geek, I love hardware hacks like Bunny Huang’s DIY persistence-of-vision LEDs and Billy Hoffman’s magstripe readers; as an activist, I love Natalie Jeremijenko’s robot dogs modded to sniff out environmental toxins.

As a copyfighting lawyer, I loved the spirit of tinkering in the air. The whole event was brimming with the spirit of exploration, interoperation, and user-driven innovation. The more people who catch that excitement, the more people we’ll have fighting laws that restrict our ability to open boxes and re-use the contents.

Technorati tag, etech05

Chris DiBona announced code.google.com at ETECH. From the FAQ:

What is code.google.com?
Code.google.com is our site for external developers interested in Google-related development. It’s where we’ll publish free source code and lists of our API services.

Sounds cool.

Chris Anderson talked about the “millions of niches” of the long tail. He described a fairly recent shift from hit-heavy production to marketing of the these niche items, fueled by democratized production, cheaper distribution, and user communication. Joe Kraus added, “all long tail businesses are marketplaces.”

Long tail items are the opposite of commodities, unique items of perhaps intense interest to a few. But underlying their success, I think, is the commoditization of some of the basic goods, the platforms that allow buyers and sellers to meet, and users to communicate. Successful marketplaces on Amazon and eBay offer general-purpose interfaces, not shelves tailored toward display of the few bestsellers, but a series of display cases. Users as well as shopkeepers can customize or group these displays (reviews, lists of related items). The users’ niche interests are served best by a neutral marketplace (not quite a commodity, since both Amazon and eBay benefit from network effects of market dominance).

Technorati tag etech05

The D.C. Circuit has asked for briefing and evidence on our standing to fight the broadcast flag. That’s good news, because the court needs to get through the standing question — whether we can demonstrate concrete injury from the flag — before it can rule on the merits of the case — whether the FCC had authority to mandate a flag at all. In oral argument, the Court expressed skepticism about the FCC’s authority, likening a tuner mandate to regulation of dishwashers.

Specifically, the Court asked in part

Are there any injuries, (not including the increased cost of consumer electronics), … that identifiable members of petitioners’
organizations will face as a result of the broadcast flag regime?
If so, petitioners must identify the relevant member or members
and describe the precise nature of the injury that will be caused
by the FCC’s adoption of the broadcast flag regime?

. We think this is a question we can answer with reference to MythTV builders, hardware manufacturers, and home theater enthusiasts, as well as educators and archivists. Then, the court can get to the meat of ruling that the flag was an unjustified extension of FCC authority.

Jason and I ran through the Endangered Gizmos list at breakneck pace. Slides here in PPT or here in PDF.

Technorati tags: etech05,

Technorati tag EFF.

Lots of fun info from Damian Stolarz and Raffi Krikorian — equipped with a PC, your car could not only play music and help you navigate, but with a couple of sensors and webcams, keep an eye out for dangerous drivers. Pictured, a 1950 Nash Ambassador with a PC display (not OEM) in the dash.

Of course, even here, IP laws intervene. Damian wants to put a DVD screen into the back seat for his kid, and control it from the front. But every time he puts in a DVD, he has to push a whole series of buttons to get it to start. Safety loses out to the DVD-CCA license requirements: each time you want to quiet a crying child, you can’t just put a disk in and press play, lest you skip the FBI warning or commercials.

Technorati tag etech05.