April, 26, 2001 archives

while everyone is kvetching about a very bright princeton researcher being silenced by being threatened with the dmca, this covers another huge problem -- the consumer electronics manufacturers joining up to support video watermarking. so-called "big media" would love it if i had to buy my music all over again, instead of being able to convert my already-purchased cds into mp3s that i can play on a computer or on my camera/mp3-player. (and meanwhile, copyright law is used to protect a dead writer. i'd love to know how that isn't directly contrary to the goals of "intellectual property" law laid out in the constitution.)

clay shirky once again proves why he is a very smart guy by trying to school some sun engineers on the mistakes being made by the jxta project. (why should we be hopeful about jxta? because it has decentralized authentication at its core. microsoft's hailstorm has exactly the opposite. but there's no way sun is going to save us from microsoft. it will take someone like yahoo, aol, or amazon. my bet is that we lose, though.)

after getting no response last time, i sent another email (attached) to upi. this time, a fairly straightforward sales inquiry. (in fact, that was even the subject.) no response as of yet. and i'm being sincere! if the pricing were right, i am quite confident that i could turn it into a profitable little business.

date: thu, 19 apr 2001 16:23:54 -0700
to: sales@upi.com
subject: sales inquiry

i'm interested in licensing upi content for a web-based news service (with the obvious wireless aspirations). what sort of packages and pricing do you offer?

jim winstead
trainedmonkey

(yes, i'm the same guy who wrote a month ago that you should get a clue. you still should.)