Steven Pearlstein gives a good primer on XM Radio vs RIAA case. His chat on the Washington Post site provides good followup as well.

Ipac provides a good response worth reading as well.

The issue is starting to heat up besides in the typical technology and politics crowd of players which is good. Truth about copyright abuse and monopolistic behaviour by the recording industry needs to gain wider attention by the mass media. Education is the most powerful tool.

Jason Calacanis talks about paying people at social networking sites (like flickr, digg, etc) for bookmarking material. At first I did not like the concept, but after further thought I realized I didn't mind the concept on one condition.

People need to disclose if they do get paided for bookmarking in their site's profile. A decent blogger announces their disclosures, ala Jeff Jarvis example.

How do you enforce it? I don't know. Maybe you can't and people will game the system, it has been known to happen. If you know a friend is being paid but doesn't disclose maybe you may make comments on their submissions. I am not sure what mechanisms will be necessary, but based the history of spam and bots we need to start thinking about how to add disclosures into profiles.

It may be a necessary tool for social networking sites to thrive.

A picture is worth a thousand words the saying goes.

Old concept, but as the web develops we have the opportunity to present ideas in a new fashion. As example Frappr maps are mostly social purposes for instance some podcasts use them to show listenership.

Radley shows us a glimpse of the future of social science research. I think the visual nature of maps and other displays of data will become new tools in explaining the nature of research data. CNET has been using web maps associated with occasional news stories to show interrelationships.

Be it wiki, digg spy, or some yet to be invented mashup tools will define how we look for patterns of data. Heck Frappr is a mashup of taking the Google Map API and location data.

Education will impacted by these advances in collabrative learning in ways I can scarcely imagine. Group projects will likely be the start and individual research papers a close second.

20 years from now a map like this will be as outdated and basic as a static HTML page does today, but now it's a look of the future.

Marc Gunther says "mass culture isn't so mass anymore. Instead, culture is evolving into a 'mass of niches.'"

and that this "explosion of choice has left us poorer".

Truth is he is wrong, the existance of mass culture is a fairly modern creation of the post-World War 2 age. His whole point of view only is based in a reality created by Mass Media, but the internet is changing us back to a time when local mattered, when niches mattered. Perhaps too many choices can exist, but I suspect it was only so in the Soviet Union. To the rest of us choice = freedom and of that we can never have enough.

For another informative review of Marc's Fortune article consider the good Radley Balko.

PS - My Mother, a former English teacher, might get after me if I don't point this out his use of 'poorer' is bad English. The phrase would have been better stated as "explosion of choice has left us more poor", but then I don't have fact-checkers and editors to catch such a gaff, for shame Marc and the folks at Fortune.

Okay I have seen the Senator Stevens 'internet is tubes' material, I have heard the know-it-all podcasters and bloggers make condscending comments. Yes, he doesn't understand the internet. But for a minute, just a minute think about this little point. How would you like to explain how the internet works to your parents or if you are under 30 your grandparents?

Explain to them Net Neutrality. How about DMCA? Maybe P2P filesharing? How much would they really understand. Try telling them about podcasting or blogging? How much of this technology will they comphrehend, honestly?

Remember the audience who you are dealing with when you talk with Congress (especially the Senate), last time I tried to have a chat with my grandmother over AIM she typed me a whole letter, it is not their medium.

Don't believe me? Go look up the age of your Senator, compare to a family member of equal age. Go explain things to them and see how much they understand.

If we want to win the battles of internet freedom we need to better relate to those making policy decisions. To begin with that the current 'Net-Generation' needs to lose it's technical arrogance, I think it's the only way we can win.

ps - This is not to say certain people over the age of 50 don't get the web, some do, this is just a generalization.