It is surely the height of folly for Joe Klein to take on Arianna Huffington over her criticism of his attempt to spin his position on the Iraq War. That Arianna, she takes no prisoners.

The ‘tropolis is abuzz over Jobs’ DRM manifesto (gist – Jobs to Labels: let my music go), though as usual the chatter is almost all mere repetition, with little added thought. One exception is Read/WriteWeb’s take on it (gist: it’s propaganda), which I agree with. I can’t help but think, largely because of its timing, that as admirable as its sentiments are, the manifesto is simply as a PR exercise designed to deflect the growing criticism of Apple’s DRM and increasing demands that Apple allow cross-platform interoperability.

With regularity that would make a swiss watchmaker proud, Michael routinely deconstructs, disassembles and debunks the copyright fantasies peddled by the media cartels (if there is a Captain Copyright, it’s Michael). Most recently, the object of his affection is the recent MPAA claim of assorted dangers to Western civilization posed by Canadian camcording. Today, a two-fer: Michael’s article, and Mike’s post on it at Techdirt.

One can’t help but giggle at YouTube’s patently false and face-saving assertion, made in response to Viacom’s sweeping takedown notice. YouTube’s terms of service obtain the user’s ‘agreement’ that no copyrighted material will be uploaded, but there’s a world of difference between (at least $1.6B of difference, anyway) this and ‘prohibiting’ users from doing anything.

I’ll be speaking at the 2nd Annual Solo and Small Firm Conference and Expo on March 2. Details about the event are here.