Read Standing up for developers: youtube-dl is back (The GitHub Blog)
Today we reinstated youtube-dl, a popular project on GitHub, after we received additional information about the project that enabled us to reverse a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown. 
Good to seem them taking a positive stance on this.

👓 Universal yanks TWiT’s ‘Tech News Today’ episode from YouTube due to Mega Video clip | VentureBeat

Read Universal yanks TWiT’s ‘Tech News Today’ episode from YouTube due to Mega Video clip (VentureBeat)
Universal Music Group has taken action to remove a recent episode of Tech News Today from YouTube because it contained clips of a MegaUpload video that Universal claims violates its copyright agreements. Tech News Today is a web show hosted on Leo Laporte’s TWiT’s web TV news network. In the yanked episode, the show’s hosts …
As I’m thinking about bookclubs and Hypothes.is, I sort of wish that Ruined by Design was either online or in .pdf format so that I could use a Hypothes.is group to highlight/annotate my copy with their tool for my bookclub. I’m curious if there are any non-academic bookclubs using it in the wild?

Obviously it’s great for reading native digital content, material in the public domain, or Creative Commons content, but how could one work on participatory annotations for more restricted copyright material? Is there a Hypothes.is plugin for the Kindle, Kindle apps, or other e-readers that may work with copyright material?

👓 ‘I can get any novel I want in 30 seconds’: can book piracy be stopped? | The Guardian

Read 'I can get any novel I want in 30 seconds': can book piracy be stopped? by Katy Guest (the Guardian)
As publishers struggle with ‘whack-a-mole’ websites, experts, authors and Guardian readers who illegally download books, assess the damage

👓 Turnitin to Be Acquired by Advance Publications for $1.75B | EdSurge News

Read Turnitin to Be Acquired by Advance Publications for $1.75B (EdSurge)
A company best known (and sometimes rebuked) for its plagiarism checker has just received one of the biggest checks in the education technology ...
There is just so much wrong with what Turnitin is doing to begin with, much less a bigger corporation buying it for this sort of money.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.


From Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem (1923)

I’ve been thinking lately about writing some poetry and putting it here on my site. Since the muses aren’t visiting today, I thought I would republish Frost’s poem today to to celebrate its entering the public domain. Perhaps I’ll think of a way to remix it too…

Featured photo credit: P1020911 flickr photo by pekka.jarvelainen shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license

👓 These 1923 Copyrighted Works Enter the Public Domain in 2019 | LifeHacker

Read These 1923 Copyrighted Works Enter the Public Domain in 2019 (Lifehacker)
For the first time in twenty years, as the Atlantic points out, a whole year’s worth of copyrighted works will enter the public domain in the U.S. on January 1, 2019. Under the terms of the Sonny Bono Copyright Act, works first published in 1923 will enter the public domain, meaning anyone can re-publish them, or chop them up and use them in other projects, without asking permission or paying the old rights holders. You can record new versions of the musical compositions; you can show the movies for a profit; you can even remake them. Amazon can sell you the ebook and keep all the money, and Project Gutenberg can give you the ebook for free. The Atlantic has a short list; we have a longer one below.

👓 A Landslide of Classic Art Is About to Enter the Public Domain | The Atlantic

Read A Landslide of Classic Art Is About to Enter the Public Domain (The Atlantic)
For the first time in two decades, a huge number of books, films, and other works will escape U.S. copyright law.

👓 New Life for Old Classics, as Their Copyrights Run Out | The New York Times

Read New Life for Old Classics, as Their Copyrights Run Out (New York Times)
Works by Marcel Proust, Willa Cather, D.H. Lawrence, Agatha Christie and Robert Frost are entering the public domain on Jan. 1. And that’s just the first wave.

👓 For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain | Smithsonian Magazine

Read For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain (Smithsonian)
A beloved Robert Frost poem is among the many creations that are (finally) losing their protections in 2019

🎧 This Week in Google 481 Stoned on Cheese | TWIG.tv

Listened to This Week in Google 481 Stoned on Cheese by Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, Stacey Higginbotham from TWiT.tv
Foldable Phone, Online Civility

  • The Samsung Developers Conference Keynote features a foldable phone, SmartThings IoT, and Bixby innovations.
  • Android will support foldable phones.
  • Google employees stage a walkout over sexual harassment
  • Tim Berners-Lee's Contract for the Web
  • How to encourage civility online
  • YouTube Content ID
  • Facebook and "White Genocide"
  • Young people are deleting Facebook in droves
  • Facebook's holiday pop-up store
  • Everybody gets free Amazon shipping
  • Amazon's new HQ2(s)
  • 8 new Chromebook features
  • Google Home Hub teams up with Sephora
  • Ajit Pai's FCC is hopping mad about robocalls

Picks of the Week

  • Jeff's Number: Black Friday home tech deals
  • Stacey's Thing: Extinct cables, Alexa Christmas Lights
Leo Laporte doesn’t talk about it directly within an IndieWeb specific framework, but he’s got an interesting discussion about YouTube Content ID that touches on the ideas of Journalism and IndieWeb and particularly as they relate to video, streaming video, and YouTube Live.

While most people are forced to rely on Google as their silo of choice for video and specifically live streaming video, he points out a painful single point of failure in their system with regard to copyright rules and Google’s automatic filters that could get a user/content creator permanently banned. Worse, as Leo indicates, this ban could also extend to related Google accounts (YouTube, Gmail, etc.) One is thus open to potential chilling effects of intimidation, censorship, and deplatforming.

Leo discusses the fact that he’s not as beholden to YouTube because he streams and hosts all of his content on his own website and only utilizes silos like YouTube as ancillary distribution. In IndieWeb parlance what he does is known as POSSE or Post to your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere and this prevents his journalism, commentary, and even his business from being ravaged by the whims of corporate entities whose rules he can’t control directly.

The discussion starts at 1:05:11 into the episode and goes for about 10 minutes for those who are interested in this particular sub-topic.

This idea also impinges on Cal Newport’s recent article Is YouTube Fundamental or Trivial? which I read the other day.