Setting Up Westell Modems with Linksys WRT54G Routers
I connect to my high-speed DSL Internet service using a Westell WireSpeed modem that's hooked up to a Linksys WRT54G router. Last week a power outage hosed the settings on the modem and router, which knocked me offline until I figured out the proper configuration. I was so desperate at one point that I called my ISP's outsourced tech support, speaking for 15 minutes to a pleasant wage slave in Bangalore or another distant port o' call center who could not have been less helpful.
For the help of others in my predicament, and myself in the future when I forget how to do this again, I'm documenting how to configure a Westell modem to work with a WRT54G router.
First, connect a computer directly to the Westell modem using an Ethernet cable and see if you can browse the web. If you can, this confirms that your Internet connection is fine and your modem/router configuration is the most likely cause of the problem.
While the modem is connected, load the address http://192.168.1.254 in your browser, which opens a web application in the modem that enables it to be configured. Choose Expert Mode from the main menu, which adds options to the menu, then choose the Configure Connection option.
Westell modems are set up by default to act as their own router. This is ungood if you have another router, because they conflict with each other and neither works properly. When you are connecting the modem to a router, the modem must be set to "Bridged Ethernet" mode to disable its routing capabilities. This option can be selected in the Protocol drop-down box. After setting the modem to Bridged Ethernet, click Save and Restart Connection.
Next, disconnect the computer from the modem and turn the router and computer off, which for the router requires pulling the cord out of the back. Once this is done, plug the modem into the router with an Ethernet cable while the router's power is still off. Wait 10 Mississippis, then turn the router and computer back on in that order.
Load the address http://192.168.1.1 in your browser to open the router's web configuration application. This application requires a username and password. If you've never set one up, leave the username blank and use the default password "admin". The Basic Setup form is displayed. Choose the Internet Connection Type PPPoE (Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet), then click Save Settings.
To see if it works, choose the Status tab to display information about your connection. If Login Status is "Connected", the router's connecting to the Internet successfully through the modem. If not, click the Connect button.
(At this point you're done, but if you haven't set up router and wireless password, anyone can change your configuration and use your wireless Internet connection. Click the Administration tab to set a router username and password. Click the Wireless tab and the Wireless Security link to restrict wireless access.)
Broadband Reports has more information on configuring Westell modems and Linksys routers.
Life on the Streets of St. Augustine
A blog in St. Augustine, Art in the Market, is published by street artists who are tired of being driven away from the city's Old Town district by police. Ten years ago, the thousands of tourists who walked up and down St. George Street in Old Town would see a motley assortment of musicians, artists and street performers. One of our favorites was Sterling the Silver Man, a guy covered in glittery spray paint who combined robotic movements with the occasional water gun sneak attack on passers-by. My kids loved it.
In the late '90s, shopkeepers on the street decided that these folks were bad for business, so they got the St. Augustine city council to pass ordinances that make it illegal for them to work on the street. This sucked most of the charm right out of the place, so we visit much less often.
Today on Art in the Market, they tell a story of another side of street life in the nation's oldest city -- the death of John Lynch, a homeless alcoholic who was a fixture in the area:
When tourists or residents complained about the "bums" in the Plaza it was many times in reference to John Lynch. Whatever sent Mr. Lynch on the road to broken down alcoholism, we'll never know. He was usually in an extremely foul mood. Life had battered him apparently and he escaped into the bottle. He had over 32 citations and a number of incarcerations from" open container" violations to aggravated battery(drunken disputes). ...
If he had been dry for awhile (jail time) his appearance changed to a tall, distinguished, white haired 63 year old gent who could be mistaken for the head of the Rotary. This change lasted until he got a hold on another bottle.
I'd be lying if I said panhandlers and homeless people in this part of Florida are a welcome sight. Some of them are young, able-bodied and fairly intimidating, and I think the last time I gave one money was years ago in Fort Worth, Texas, when a guy wouldn't let me pass on a deserted street. But I appreciate the fact that a local blogger's telling stories that would otherwise go untold.
Credit: The photo of a street musician on St. George Street was taken by Bill Frazzetto and is available under a Creative Commons license.
AP Settles Dispute with Drudge Retort
Late Thursday night, AP issued the following statement after a day-long discussion of the DMCA takedowns issued to the Drudge Retort that reached all the way up to the company's top management:
In response to questions about the use of Associated Press content on the Drudge Retort web site, the AP was able to provide additional information to the operator of the site, Rogers Cadenhead, on Thursday. That information was aimed at enabling Mr. Cadenhead to bring the contributed content on his site into conformance with the policy he earlier set for his contributors. Both parties consider the matter closed.
In addition, the AP has had a constructive exchange of views this week with a number of interested parties in the blogging community about the relationship between news providers and bloggers and that dialogue will continue. The resolution of this matter illustrates that the interests of bloggers can be served while still respecting the intellectual property rights of news providers.
I'm glad that my personal legal dispute with the AP is resolved, thanks to the help of the Media Bloggers Association, but it does nothing to resolve the larger conflict between how AP interprets fair use and how thousands of people are sharing news on the web. You could probably guess that by the lack of detail in AP's statement.
I spent around two hours yesterday talking to AP attorneys about their specific objections to the user blog entries in dispute, going line by line through the text to pinpoint exactly where they have intellectual property concerns in the short excerpts that were posted. I won't reveal the details of this discussion until AP releases the guidelines for bloggers that it promised on Monday.
On a social news site that's still manageable in size, like the 8,500-member Drudge Retort, it's possible to steer bloggers away from potential conflicts with media organizations by working directly with users. But 25 million people visited a social news site last month, and thousands of people are sharing news links in a way that's in direct conflict with AP's interpretation of fair use regarding the headlines and leads of its articles.
If AP's guidelines end up like the ones they shared with me, we're headed for a Napster-style battle on the issue of fair use.
When it appeared that I might end up in court on this issue, I got offers of help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Citizen and the Stanford Fair Use Project. My attorney Wade Duchene and I were already working up the victory speech to deliver on the steps of the Supreme Court in the landmark First Amendment decision AP v. Me (Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter, Kennedy, Lessig, Tribe and Clinton concurring).
I think AP and other media organizations should focus on how to encourage bloggers to link their stories in the manner they like, rather than hoping their lawyers can rebottle the genie of social news. Given the publicity of this dispute, the first blogger sued for excerpting a news story will have the best pro bono legal representation that massive press attention can buy.
Although AP will be releasing guidelines, I don't think the news service will be able to concede any ground to the blogosphere. AP sells headline and lead-only services to customers. Asking the company to concede there's a way people can share this information for free is like asking the RIAA to pick its favorite file-sharing client.
If an expansive view of fair use is to remain in place, it's incumbent upon bloggers and our $500-an-hour friends in the legal community to define our own guidelines and fight for them. If we don't, big media companies will eventually define them for us, just as they've gotten the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and Copyright Term Extension Act passed in Congress.
I have learned that the Drudge Retort popped up on AP's radar through its use of Attributor technology to find potential cases of copyright infringement, as K.C. Jones reported in InformationWeek:
Attributor launched last year, with company representatives saying they would identify and "fingerprint" chunks of content from more than 10 billion pages on the Internet. The company provides a service to media outlets and other content creators to track how their content is reused online and whether the user has authorization to reproduce the material.
"Our agreement with Attributor will enable AP to safeguard its investment in creating and distributing news reports, while assuring licensees that unauthorized use will not diminish the value of their licenses," AP general counsel Srinandan Kasi explained in the announcement. "These services are part of the next-generation licensing and enforcement services we plan to provide to our global network of members and subscribers."
Earlier this year, Attributor told its customers that when a case might be fair use, it's better to ask for credit than to file a DMCA takedown:
No one wins when a DMCA notice is sent. First, unless you have an open and shut case, a DMCA notice can be a PR risk for the DMCA sender. Next, the site hosting the content has to deliver the bad news to its user putting them in an unfavorable spot. Finally, consumers lose overall because the result of content removal is one less place to find quality content. ...
You can't send a DMCA notice if it's Fair Use -- and Fair Use is usually not a black and white situation. The fairness of asking for a link is indisputable.
As a newspaper reader since age 8 and the spouse of an investigative reporter, I want the media to keep making enough money to afford the expensive and essential practice of journalism. I sure as hell don't want to do all that reporting myself.
If AP's core business is to report the news, blogs and social news sites send millions of people to its articles every day. Retort users have posted 41,000 links to news stories in the last four years, each link sending from 1,000 to 5,000 readers directly to a media site to read the article.
If its core business is to repackage the news, they're in as much trouble as every other middleman on the web.
Related links:
- New York Times: A.P. Asserts Tough (and Still Secret) View of Copyright on Blogs
How Digg Handles DMCA Takedowns
Jay Adelson, the chief executive of Digg, told Saul Hansell of the New York Times how the social news site responds to DMCA takedowns:
From time to time, Digg has received a request, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to take down a post, or a comment, that contains copyrighted material. Mr. Adelson said the company complies without complaint. But he said that often isn't necessary. ...
But many of the items on the front page used headlines and descriptions lifted directly from the site to which they are linking. And in the active debate on the topic on Digg, I didn't find people arguing that Digg, such as here, has a policy that prefers paraphrases over quotes.
Adelson clarified his comments with the explanation that the site files all of its DMCA takedowns with Chilling Effects, a database of legal challenges issued to web sites. (I did so as well, but it hasn't been published yet.)
Chilling Effects has 18 DMCA takedowns filed against Digg, including eight filed in the month of May:
- Kappa Sigma Doesn't Digg Posted Manual, filed by Kappa Sigma Fraternity
- Drag City wants link dragged off Digg, filed by Drag City, Inc.
- How Not to Release a Bear - Photo, filed by an unnamed photographer
- Dark Knight Strikes Again, filed by Warner Brothers
- People Complains of Carey/Cannon Photo, filed by Time Inc. on behalf of People magazine
- People Complains of Carey/Cannon Photo, Again, filed by Time Inc. on behalf of People magazine
- No Time for Dugg Carey/Cannon Photos, filed by Time on behalf of People magazine
- Dark Knight Strikes Again, filed by Warner Brothers
- Pizza Hut Doesn't Dig Scanned Coupon, filed by Pizza Hut
- Dark Knight on the prowl for linked images, filed by Warner Brothers
- Unauthorized Use of Warner Bros.' Property, filed by Warner Brothers
- Dark Knight on the prowl for linked images, filed by Warner Brothers
- Time Doesn't Want Richie Photos Dugg, filed by Time Inc. on behalf of People magazine
- Zanpakuto complains of Dugg copy, filed by Zanpakuto.com
- Techthrob claims Digg linked to copied post, filed by techthrob.com
- USMLEworld complains to Digg about user comments, filed by USMLEWORLD, LLC
- Facebook Doesn't Digg Posted Source, filed by Facebook
- Farworks Doesn't Dig Digg Link to Far Side Video, filed by Farworks, Inc.
Digg replaces removed posts with a link to the DMCA takedown.
Like Hansell, I'm skeptical of Adelson's claim that Digg actively pursues and bans users who share links using the headlines and excerpts of news articles rather than putting both into their own words. Given the volume of contributions on the site, finding and evaluating whether its posts are fair use would be an enormous if not impossible task.
The DMCA takedown dispute with AP has ramifications for all social news sites that employ a model like the Drudge Retort and Digg, where short user blog entries are paired with long discussions that contain most of the analysis and user commentary. Michael Kwun, the senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, believes we're on solid legal ground:
Drudge Retort posts regularly draw numerous comments, posted on the same web page, from Drudge Retort readers. This transforms the AP's content from (an excerpt from) a news story into a discussion and a debate.
How the Media Bloggers Association Got Involved
As I spend the morning reading stories about myself, a highly pleasurable activity that makes Rogers Cadenhead want to start referring to Rogers Cadenhead in the third person like Bob Dole, I have one question: Why is the Media Bloggers Association getting its ass kicked all over the Internet for attempting to have a dialogue with AP about the Drudge Retort's DMCA takedown dispute?
On Daily Kos yesterday, Markos Moulitsas wrote about the association with his typical subdued restraint:
The dumbasses at the Media Bloggers Association, of course, are walking right into that meeting because they crave nothing more than creating the impression that they, you know, represent bloggers (they don't). But anyone with an inkling of understanding of the law and principles at stake would know that the AP has no ground to stand on, and anything negotiated between them and the MBA will be ignored by the vast majority of bloggers anyway. If people haven't noticed, we're not the type of people that lets others do the talking for us. We do our own thing. ...
I will copy and paste as many words as I feel necessary to make my points and that I feel are within bounds of copyright law (and remember, I've got a JD and specialized in media law, so I know the rules pretty well).
There's a lot of misinformation out there about how the association got involved, primarily from people who'd like to know who the hell died and made them king of the blogosphere. The answer is simple: I asked 'em for help. Before any of the press took an interest in my situation, MBA director Robert Cox reached out to AP to see how the dispute could be resolved. Although the media has made a Thursday meeting with AP sound like some kind of blogger/media peace summit, the association's role is less grandiose.
I didn't know Cox prior to last Thursday, but I've since gotten a quick education in what the MBA does. He hears from 5-10 bloggers a week who face legal challenges, some quite desperate because of lawsuits filed against them. Most of these bloggers don't become a cause célèbre that draws media attention, so Cox is an enormously helpful person to know. Bloggers are facing legal challenges and lawsuits far more often than people realize, particularly from three groups: pharmaceutical companies, real estate developers and local government officials.
The Media Bloggers Association doesn't speak for "all bloggers" any more than the ACLU spoke for all jerkweeds when it represented the neo-Nazi paraders in the Skokie case. But I'm glad to find a group that can speak directly to the big issue here, which is the free speech right inherent in what bloggers have been doing on the Retort and thousands of sites like it around the web.
AP Rethinking Policy After Drudge Retort DMCA Takedowns
I'm gratified by the ginormous amount of support coming in from around the blogosphere after the Associated Press issued DMCA takedowns last week to Drudge Retort bloggers for excerpting short snippets of its articles. AP is rethinking its policy towards bloggers in the wake of this disagreement, according to a story by Saul Hansell in today's New York Times:
Last week, The AP took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from AP articles ranging from 39 to 79 words.
On Saturday, The AP retreated. Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The AP, said in an interview that the news organization had decided that its letter to the Drudge Retort was "heavy-handed" and that The AP was going to rethink its policies toward bloggers.
The quick about-face came, he said, because a number of well-known bloggers started criticizing its policy, claiming it would undercut the active discussion of the news that rages on sites, big and small, across the Internet. ...
"We are not trying to sue bloggers," Mr. Kennedy said. "That would be the rough equivalent of suing grandma and the kids for stealing music."
Although that's not the end of the story -- AP has not withdrawn the takedowns -- Kennedy's comments are one reason I'm guardedly optimistic about the outcome.
As I was grappling with what to do about this situation, I got some great advice from my fellow liberal blogger Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen: "This is, by the way, a moment when every blogger ought to know immediately who to contact: Robert Cox of Media Bloggers Association."
Cox's 1,000-member organization is like a blogger's ACLU, ensuring that the civil liberties issues inherent in blogging are staunchily defended from laws and litigation that could imperil online expression. In 2006, the group stood up for a Maine blogger, Lance Dutson, who was sued for criticizing an ad agency employed by the state's board of tourism. The agency dropped the suit within days after furious criticism from blogs sparked significant media coverage.
For his story, Hansell asked me whether I'd like to duke this out in court with AP. The answer is, of course, hell no. I'd rather they sued Kevin Rose of Digg, photographers dogging his steps into Manhattan federal court as he styles in an impeccably tailored suit chosen by his attorneys. The Retort's a hobby that got out of hand, a social news site that receives slightly less traffic than Digg. But I'm not willing to avoid litigation by capitulating on an important principle: The link-and-excerpt culture we've established in blogging is the way that millions of people find, evaluate and understand the news. Short excerpts should constitute fair use, as long as the excerpts are brief and links are provided to the complete work.
When AP meets with the Media Bloggers Association this week, the titan of old media has an opportunity to set precedent by embracing the way that new media share its stories.
As a former newspaper journalist and proud J-school graduate, I'm living in a dream world where A.J. Liebling's cynical lament, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one," has been rendered obsolete by a medium in which the price of a press dropped to zero. I'd hate to see that disappear in a cloud of murky copyright litigation. Bloggers and social news site users will embrace media organizations that encourage them to link, share and excerpt their news articles.
AP Files 7 DMCA Takedowns Against Drudge Retort
I'm currently engaged in a legal disagreement with the Associated Press, which claims that Drudge Retort users linking to its stories are violating its copyright and committing "'hot news' misappropriation under New York state law." An AP attorney filed six Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown requests this week demanding the removal of blog entries and another for a user comment.
The Retort is a community site comparable in function to Digg, Reddit and Mixx. The 8,500 users of the site contribute blog entries of their own authorship and links to interesting news articles on the web, which appear immediately on the site. None of the six entries challenged by AP, which include two that I posted myself, contains the full text of an AP story or anything close to it. They reproduce short excerpts of the articles -- ranging in length from 33 to 79 words -- and five of the six have a user-created headline.
Here's one of the six disputed blog entries:
Clinton Expects Race to End Next Week
Hillary Rodham Clinton says she expects her marathon Democratic race against Barack Obama to be resolved next week, as superdelegates decide who is the stronger candidate in the fall. "I think that after the final primaries, people are going to start making up their minds," she said. "I think that is the natural progression that one would expect."
If you follow the link, you'll see that the blog entry reproduces 18 words from the story and a 32-word quote by Hillary Clinton under a user-written headline. The blog entry drew 108 comments in the ensuing discussion.
I have all the expertise in intellectual property law of somebody who's never been sued, so standard disclaimers apply. But I have difficulty seeing how it violates copyright law for a blogger to link to a news story with a short snippet of the story in furtherance of public discussion.
AP feels otherwise. In a June 3 letter, AP's Intellectual Property Governance Coordinator Irene Keselman told me:
... you purport that the Drudge Retort's users reproduce and display AP headlines and leads under a fair use defense. Please note that contrary to your assertion, AP considers that the Drudge Retort users' use of AP content does not fall within the parameters of fair use. The use is not fair use simply because the work copied happened to be a news article and that the use is of the headline and the first few sentences only. This is a misunderstanding of the doctrine of "fair use." AP considers taking the headline and lede of a story without a proper license to be an infringement of its copyrights, and additionally constitutes "hot news" misappropriation.
In another DMCA takedown, AP contends that the following user comment is a copyright violation:
Well, the oil execs just put another refinery in South Dakota. Maybe they're a bunch of retards.
Hyperion has said the project, about 60 miles south of Sioux Falls, would create 1,800 permanent jobs and another 4,500 construction jobs over a four-year period. Construction could begin in 2010.
The Hyperion Energy Center would process 400,000 barrels of thick Canadian crude oil a day, which company executives say would help the U.S. reduce its dependence on overseas oil. The company has said it will bring in the crude oil by pipeline but has announced no specific plans for that transportation link.
The user reproduced the last two paragraphs of his comment from the linked Fox News article, written by AP.
AP has filed copyright lawsuits against the VeriSign division Moreover last fall and another against the Florida company All Headline News this year.
I have no desire to be the third member of that club, but sharing links to news stories of interest has become an essential component of how millions of people read and evaluate the news today. When linking to articles, bloggers commonly include excerpts of the article for the purposes of criticism or discussion. Some AP member sites encourage this kind of reuse. Yahoo News, the source for two disputed stories, invites bloggers to use items from its RSS feeds. USA Today, the source for two others, includes a browser widget alongside articles that facilitates their submission to Digg, Mixx and other sites. Wade Duchene, the attorney who helped me win the domain name arbitration for Wargames.Com, says that what we're doing on the Retort is the "absolute definition of fair use."
The DMCA requires that the six blog entries and comment immediately be taken down, regardless of whether I think they're fair use, but users have the option to file counter-notices to AP asserting their own copyright. Because the issue affects all bloggers, I've invited Keselman to explain AP's position at more length. If she accepts I'll post it in full here on Workbench and the Retort.
Assuming I have copyright permission, of course.
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