In late November, Twitter started contributing its DMCA takedown letters to Chilling Effects, the online clearinghouse jointly organized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and many universities and law schools.

Chilling Effects says it received records of 11,500 total takedown notices in 2010, as of Dec. 15. Major contributors include Google, Yahoo and Digg.

Techdirt’s Mike Masnick flagged the Twitter takedowns, noting that many of them are for tweets that contain links to copyrighted material. Why go to Twitter and not the content host itself? he asks.

Chilling Effects founder Wendy Seltzer said she believes Twitter has been getting the takedown notices for a while but only recently started submitting them for public posting.

Using Twitter to get out the word about content may well be a growing phenomenon. In August, BitTorrent released a tool for more easily tweeting about torrent files. A friend of mine who’s an avid Green Bay Packers fan recently told me about a Twitter account he follows to find streams of football games he doesn’t have access to on TV.

“It’s interesting that they are receiving takedowns, given that most of what they’re hosting is little 140-character bursts of expression,” Seltzer said on a phone call yesterday. “Copyright holders are pushing the complaint out further, not going after the user who hosted, or even the user who pointed, but going after Twitter because it’s made itself a central location for the collection of information.”

Seltzer said that under the U.S. Supreme Court Grokster ruling, it’s possible that users could end up on the wrong side of the law for inducing infringement by posting a link with the intent to encourage their Twitter followers to access or download infringing material. But as long as Twitter complies with takedown requests, it should be within the safe harbor rules of the DMCA, which protect providers of information tools, said Seltzer. “Twitter doesn’t have an intent to infringe, so they would have a solid argument.”

A spokesperson for Twitter declined to comment, citing mellowness in the office over the holidays.

Latest example: A recent post from TechDirt’s Mike Masnick, which focused on talks that a Warner Music Group (WMG) rep has had with various colleges and universities about a “voluntary licensing” plan. The rough outline: The schools pay a per-student fee to Warner and the other music labels and the students get to download/”share” all the music they want.

Much of this is laid out in a presentation that TechDirt acquired, and it seems pretty reasonable to me:

But Warner wants you to know that while the above slides say “Warner Music Group” and list the name and contact info for Jim Griffin–a Warner exec hired to look into these kinds of proposals–it isn’t theirs. Well, not exactly. In their (many) words:

This presentation belongs to someone outside our company and represents that individual’s interpretation of issues discussed at meetings held several months ago. It was not made by me or anyone at Warner Music Group. Of course, we are actively engaged with universities and other parties to seek a constructive resolution to a complex issue–how to assure artists appropriate compensation while enabling the widespread dissemination of their work among fans. Therefore, we are undertaking an effort to develop new voluntary business models that seek something other than–and we believe, better than–a litigation-based approach. This is exactly the type of solution that several universities and their associations have been asking for. We recognize that there are many different potential solutions to this issue, and we are determined to continue to think creatively and cooperatively with other parties in order to find the best ones. At this early stage, many ideas may be discussed and discarded, but efforts to prematurely label or criticize the process only hinder achievement of constructive solutions.”

I’ll try to translate a bit. The slides are actually the work of Mark Luker, a VP at something called Educause, an education and tech nonprofit (that among other things, administers the “.edu” domain). But they are a summary of discussions Luker and Educause have had with Griffin. So while they’re not exactly Warner’s words, they are, roughly, Warner’s ideas–or at least ideas Warner has been batting around.

And while I understand why Warner and the other labels are stepping gingerly around this stuff–they’ve got a terrible image to begin with, and anything associated with a “tax” is a tough sell in any case–but this really shouldn’t be that controversial, at least conceptually: The labels get to move away from both physical distribution as well as charging consumers for each song–both losing propositions in the long run. And consumers get unlimited consumption for a small monthly fee. Isn’t that what everyone wants?

Admittedly, there are lots of devils in those details. But better to start tackling them now–in discussions with anyone who will have them–than shrugging and giving up altogether.

This past Saturday night, BoomTown attended the tony San Francisco book party for Jonathan Zittrain’s new book, “The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It.”

It was hosted by megablogger Arianna Huffington and Melanie Ellison, an old friend of Zittrain’s from high school, as it turned out.

And BoomTown took our Flip video camera, of course.

For one, it was held at Ellison’s stunning Pacific Heights home, with a lot of Internet and San Francisco wattage in attendance, including Melanie’s husband, Larry Ellison, and Mayor Gavin Newsom.

By the way, Zittrain is professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University, and co-founder of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

And the book is actually not about stopping the Web–perish the thought, as what would I do with my life without my beloved Internet, which I would marry if it were legal?

Instead, according to Zittrain, my beloved Web is in deep, deep trouble!

He is justifiably worried about innovation continuing and the book is a bracing call to fix some of the Internet’s serious structural and other problems, before it collapses in a giant heap of too-tightly controlled mundanity.

I’m for that! Let Web Wackiness Worldwide (WWW!) reign!

In that spirit, here is a video of the party, in which I ask everyone the key question: What is the future of the Internet?

The video includes some book party speeches and thoughts from Craigslist’s Craig Newmark, Jim Steyer of Common Sense Media, Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer, Techdirt’s Mike Masnick, Zittrain and, of course, Huffington (and I also got her to impersonate Tracey Ullman impersonating Arianna to up the wacky quotient) .

And also three Internet clowns trying to impersonate me. Wackier still!

Here’s the video (there is an odd voice/video disconnect in the Zittrain and clown sections at the very end that I am trying to fix):

While Masnick’s company consults with companies on a range of tech-related issues, which it discloses, it manages to use its site to do hard-hitting and pungent analysis of many top issues–often taking aim at the practices of its own clients. In fact, Techdirt is often more honest and insightful than some sites that have no such affiliations.

Here is his tough take on the recent MTV abandonment of its Urge music service and deal with RealNetworks, for example, which cuts right to the chase:

MTV has had an awful lot of trouble over the years trying to become the MTV of the Internet. It seems that the company rested on its TV laurels for way too long, and then totally misunderstood what the online world wanted, originally insisting that its archive of video would make it a player in the space. More recently, it tried to get into the music download business, but offered a me-too package that wasn’t even remotely compelling. Almost no one used it. So, it should come as no surprise that MTV is now killing off its Urge music offering, that was launched together with Microsoft, and instead focusing on a new joint venture with RealNetworks’ Rhapsody music service. Of course, once again, it’s going to face the same questions as before about what differentiates this from anything else out there, and once again, it seems likely that MTV won’t have a very good answer.”

And, in this video, Masnick talks about the recalcitrance of old-media companies to come around fast enough, even after all this time, to the realities of the digital age: