Friday 5

Strange bookmarks

An alert reader passed along a wire story from the Scripps Howard News Service that explored the eternal question: “What do other people use as bookmarks?”

Intrigued, Friday 5 made a phone call to Jamie Thomas of the Charleston County Public Library. Thomas passed the question along to library employees who work in circulation, and here’s what she found out about the strange bookmarks people leave in library books (boiled down, of course, to a convenient 5 List):

TOP 5 ODD BOOKMARKS LEFT IN CCPL BOOKS
5. Unwrapped slice of sandwich cheese (“Gimme one of them big drinks, an order of fries, and a novel with extra cheese, please.”).

4. Driver’s licenses (“I would drive down there and pick it up, but, you know...”)

3. An already-licked lollipop (for those times when don’t want to lose your place, yet really don’t want to ever read that particular page again).

2. Doggie treats (Apparently, some readers can’t tell it’s not bacon, either).

And No. 1: A tax refund check from the IRS for $5,250.

What this tells us about the inner workings of human nature remains to be seen, but this list makes one thing abundantly clear: If you’ve got a really great tax attorney, you can afford to be forgetful.

What about copyright?

A reader wrote the following to P&C Public Editor Elsa McDowell this morning:

I think it amazing that the paper would knowingly promote a piece of software designed to violate another's copyrights. (Friday, 3/16/07, page 1D). Surely the P&C should respect copyrights!

That's a reference to my bit about SoundTaxi in "Five geek things to perk up your life." And I'm so glad somebody asked. That's a great topic, a great point, a great question.

Here's my reply:

Bluntly: Whether or not this is a true violation of copyright is something that Apple can choose to test in court if it thinks it has a good case. A better question might be whether Apple's DRM relationship between iTunes and its iPod music players represents the kind of monopoly situation that got Microsoft in such trouble years ago.

Copyright isn't as simple a question as some make it out to be. See Darknet by J.D. Lasica (editor's note: it's a book, and there's also a blog Lasica runs about the subject).

I bought Soundtaxi because it lets me carry music I purchased on iTunes on a non-Apple music player. That's not a copyright violation by any stretch of the imagination. (Does) the fact that I could now do other things with that music make (its) conversion to a usable format a form of theft? I'd say that's up to Apple and its attorneys to decide. If they think so they're free to file civil charges against the makers of Soundtaxi. So far, no charges.

Updating copyright and intellectual property law so that it makes sense in the 21st century is the most important economic challenge of the coming decade. This doesn't just affect record companies, movie studios, Apple and YouTube: It affects all of us.

Consider this: If I buy a CD of music and don't like it, I can turn around and resell that CD to a store or a friend and pocket the resale value. None of that money goes to the artist, or the record company, or the original retailer. But if I buy that same collection of music from iTunes, it's somehow illegal for me to convert it to a format that's usable by non-Apple music players, even if I'm the only one listening to it.

Say what? And everybody's OK with record companies and Apple cutting deals that protect record company interests and Apple's interest at the expense of consumers and other manufacturers?