‘Star Wars’ Doesn’t Belong to George Lucas. It Belongs to the Fans.; New York Times, 10/29/15

Manohla Dargis, New York Times; ‘Star Wars’ Doesn’t Belong to George Lucas. It Belongs to the Fans. :

"Mr. Lucas’s true genius may be in marketing, including of his vision. Like other filmmakers who came of age in the 1960s, when American directors became auteurs, he has strong views on authorship. In a 1997 interview with Wired, he addressed the studios’ and artists’ rights, arguing that a copyright should belong to “the artist” of a film and not the large corporation that owns it. “I solved the problem by owning my own copyright,” Mr. Lucas said, “so nobody can screw around with my stuff. Nobody can take ‘Star Wars’ and make Yoda walk, because I own it.” When asked about the changes that he had made to his earlier work, including to “Star Wars,” he said: “It’s my artistic vision. If I want to go back and change it, it’s my business, not somebody else’s.”...

Years before the popularization of the idea of participatory culture, a term for those who are at once pop-culture consumers and contributors, “Star Wars” fans had staked their claim on this world. That engagement sometimes took Mr. Lucas aback. “It’s always amazing to me when people take them so seriously,” he is quoted as saying in Dale Pollock’s essential book “Skywalking” (1983).

In the years since, Mr. Lucas has clearly embraced his destiny as a force. And while it may seem strange, given his hatred of the studios, that he sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, he found it a perfect home. Mr. Lucas helped shape modern conglomerate cinema, to borrow a term from Mr. Schatz, but it was Disney that really pioneered cradle-to-grave entertainment. In 1929, Walt Disney sold the rights to use Mickey Mouse (soon called the “million dollar mouse”) on children’s writing tablets, signing his first licensing contract a year later. “The sale of a doll to any member of a household,” Roy Disney, Walt’s brother, said, “is a daily advertisement in that household for our cartoons and keeps them all ‘Mickey Mouse Minded.’ ”"

A ‘Star Trek’ Dream, Spread From Upstate New York; New York Times, 10/11/15

Paul Post, New York Times; A ‘Star Trek’ Dream, Spread From Upstate New York:

Mr. Cawley founded a nonprofit 12 years ago to create the series. It was produced in two smaller spaces before moving last year into a studio inside the old Family Dollar store, where an inaugural episode was shot in early summer. “It’s basically a big Star Trek fan club,” he said. “It gives people a chance to work on the show and be on the show. Episodes are basically crowdfunded, crowdsourced for the fans, by the fans.”

Mr. Cawley’s sets are careful replicas of those used for the original series, including the transporter room (“Scotty, beam us up”), captain’s bridge — where Kirk guided the Enterprise to bold new worlds — and the sick bay, where Dr. Leonard McCoy treated ill crew members...

“Star Trek” was first broadcast on NBC, but the rights to the show are now owned by CBS. The Ticonderoga studio steers away from copyright issues by not charging people to view the episodes, Mr. Cawley said."

A New Kind of Leader: Transition time at the Library of Congress; Library Journal, 7/1/15

John N. Berry III, Library Journal; A New Kind of Leader: Transition time at the Library of Congress:

"The Librarian of Congress needs to be a modern library administrator, capable of curating the great collections, leading the exemplary staff of more than 3,000, and keeping LC’s array of vital services current and on technology’s cutting edge.

LC must be led by a person who understands and not only can deal effectively with the huge cultural, economic, and political differences in America but can deliver information services that enlighten our Congress and the people of the nation. The Librarian of Congress must lead us out of the jungle of conflicting claims, rival demands, and legal interpretations that obscure our implementation of the rules and regulations of intellectual property and copyright.

Simultaneously, the Librarian of Congress must be an intellectual inspiration, with an acumen and articulateness that capture the attention of an argumentative society of free people struggling to govern themselves amid the tempests of a world so complex that true cultural understanding is rare and difficult to achieve.

If that formidable job sounds like the one most librarians work at every day, then that suggests an excellent place for our president to begin the search for candidates: in our nation’s libraries.

It is our duty, through ALA and through all of our most effective connections to government, to help the president find the right librarian to lead our national library. We all know she or he is out there ready and waiting to accept the challenge."

New State of America’s Libraries Report finds shift in role of U.S. libraries; American Library Association (ALA), 4/12/15

Macey Morales, American Library Association (ALA); New State of America’s Libraries Report finds shift in role of U.S. libraries:

"Copyright updates

There were some positive developments in the realm of copyright. The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the ruling in Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, deciding that providing a full text search database and providing access to works for people with print disabilities constitutes fair use.

In October 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit handed down an important decision in Cambridge University Press et al. v. Carl V. Patton et al. (the Georgia State University e-reserves case). This decision emphasizes a thoughtful analysis of fair use and a rejection of the highly restrictive guidelines promoted by many publishers. Critically, this decision affirms the importance of flexible limitations on publisher’s rights, such as fair use. Overall, federal court cases continue to favor reasonable fair use rights, especially those that add value to an original work or serve a different, socially beneficial purpose.

While Congress continues to hold hearings about various aspects of copyright, the US Copyright Office and the US Patent and Trademark Office (PDF) published studies on orphan works, music licensing, and other topics to inform decision-making."

Indonesia Fails to Solve Olympic Ring Row Amid IOC Ban Talks; Reuters via New York Times, 2/18/15

Reuters via New York Times; Indonesia Fails to Solve Olympic Ring Row Amid IOC Ban Talks:

"The Indonesian Olympic Committee (KOI) and the Indonesian National Sports Committee (KONI) failed this week to resolve a copyright row involving the Olympic rings logo which has put the country's hosting of the 2018 Asian Games in jeopardy.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) told the Indonesian government last month they faced a ban unless KONI stopped using the Olympic rings in its logo, saying only their member, KOI, was allowed to do so."

Google boss warns of 'forgotten century' with email and photos at risk; Guardian, 2/13/15

Ian Sample, Guardian; Google boss warns of 'forgotten century' with email and photos at risk:

"Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh have made headway towards a solution to bit rot, or at least a partial one. There, Mahadev Satyanarayanan takes digital snapshots of computer hard drives while they run different software programs. These can then be uploaded to a computer that mimics the one the software ran on. The result is a computer that can read otherwise defunct files. Under a project called Olive, the researchers have archived Mystery House, the original 1982 graphic adventure game for the Apple II, an early version of WordPerfect, and Doom, the original 1993 first person shooter game.

Inventing new technology is only half the battle, though. More difficult still could be navigating the legal permissions to copy and store software before it dies. When IT companies go out of business, or stop supporting their products, they may sell the rights on, making it a nightmarish task to get approval.

“To do this properly, the rights of preservation might need to be incorporated into our thinking about things like copyright and patents and licensing. We’re talking about preserving them for hundreds to thousands of years,” said Cerf."

Cloud Computing Is Forcing a Reconsideration of Intellectual Property; New York Times, 10/11/14

Quentin Hardy, New York Times; Cloud Computing Is Forcing a Reconsideration of Intellectual Property:

"Almost overnight, our technology revolution is shaking up entire industries and remaking society. Don’t get caught up in the small stuff, though: Tech really is changing how we think about our ideas.

We’ve used ideas to sculpt the globe since the Industrial Revolution, thanks largely to the way we handle intellectual property. When machines, and machines to make identical machines, mass-produced reliably identical goods, it was because people understood the same set of instructions.

Mass-produced books, music and movies were possible, too. Like machine-making instructions, these items were made reliable and protected with laws of copyright, patent and trademark.

Now, according to people involved in the business of protecting ideas, all of that is set to change.

Software, lashing together thousands of computer servers into fast and flexible cloud-computing systems, is the reason. Clouds, wirelessly connected to more software in just about everything, make it possible to shift, remix and borrow from once separate industrial categories."

Why It's So Hard to Get the Law to Protect a Good Joke (Guest Column); Hollywood Reporter, 6/8/14

James J.S. Holmes and Kanika D. Corley, Hollywood Reporter; Why It's So Hard to Get the Law to Protect a Good Joke (Guest Column) :

"Comedians work hard to refine their craft, which often results in the creation of an intangible asset — a signature style of comedy. Such assets are deserving of intellectual property rights protection — but which one(s)?

Under the Copyright Act, protection extends to original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed. It follows that artistic content in tangible form, such as a comic's written jokes performed to an audience (or recorded), is entitled to protection. Taken to its logical conclusion, if comedic works are copyrightable, then those who engage in "joke thievery" should find themselves subject to suit for copyright infringement, thereby entitling the complainant to the Copyright Act's statutory damages and attorneys' fees.

Not so fast! A thorough review of the tenets of the Copyright Act when viewed in the context of professional comedians raises a problem."

Timid About Fair Use?; Inside Higher Ed, 1/30/14

Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed; Timid About Fair Use? :

"Visual arts professionals, including art historians, let real and perceived fears about copyright law get in the way of their work, finds a new report from the College Art Association. And while the fundamentally visual nature of their discipline raises particular concerns among scholars of art, artists, editors and museum curators, experts say their fears are shared across academe -- although some disciplines have worked to develop codes to help scholars navigate the murky waters of fair use."

The End of Ownership: Why You Need to Fight America’s Copyright Laws; Wired.com, 1/17/14

Kyle Wiens, Wired.com; The End of Ownership: Why You Need to Fight America’s Copyright Laws: "Copyright is like the many-headed, hostile-when-provoked hydra. And just like a hydra, chopping off one head — solving one issue — won’t work. Congress could legalize unlocking phones on Monday, tablets on Tuesday, cars on Wednesday, and a different gizmo every day from now until the end of week let alone year. It won’t matter. The day after that, there will be yet another new computerized product, a new thing with code for its connective tissue. As long as “The Law of Electronic Eventuality” marches on, and as long as companies can make money by keeping users out of their own stuff, they will … and so copyright law will never catch up. Our current copyright laws clearly don’t account for the role technology plays in our lives. But I was born a tinkerer, so I believe that with enough energy, ingenuity, and passion, anything can be fixed — and I mean that both metaphorically and literally (with our right to repair). If we want to preserve consumer rights against copyright power grabs, we’ll have to aim at the heart of the hydra. We can’t afford to wait another 40 years for Congress make a new copyright law. It has to happen now; here’s how."

Happy Birthday; On The Media, 12/27/13

On The Media; Happy Birthday: "Happy Birthday to You" is one of the most popular songs in the English language. It is also copyrighted. On the Media producer PJ Vogt investigates the long, surprising, and contentious history of the argument over just who owns the rights to the song."

Not-So-Great Expectations; Inside Higher Ed, 10/18/13

Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed; Not-So-Great Expectations: "Politics aside, Slocum’s case and others like it in recent months raise an important question: In the age of social media and smartphones, what expectations – if any – should professors have for privacy for lectures and communications intended for students? Very little, said Slocum – but that’s “an acknowledgement of fact, of the way the Internet works, rather than a normative statement.” Privacy and intellectual property experts agreed, saying that such communications are fair game for students to share. Higher education has a complicated relationship with copyright and other ownership questions, experts said, due to historical concerns about academic freedom. Legally, however, most all of what professors say to students in lectures and in e-mails would pass the "fair use" doctrine test, making it O.K. for students to record, share and comment on even copyrighted material for non-commercial purposes. “All of us have to figure out what our expectations should be in an age of smartphones and the Internet,” said Jessica Litman, a professor of law and information at the University of Michigan who specializes in intellectual property -- professors included... “Copyright doesn't protect extemporaneous utterances unless they are recorded with the permission of their author -- here, the speaker -- so he would have no copyright claim,” she said. If Penn’s lecture had been written down – including the “rant” – he could have a copyright claim, Litman said. But in that case, the student who recorded it would have a plausible fair use defense, she added, referring to the section of copyright law that allows for unlicensed, non-commercial use of copyrighted material."

10/22/13 & 10/24/13 Copyright/Open Access Presentations at University of Pittsburgh

John Barnett, University of Pittsburgh ULS Scholarly Communications Librarian, has kindly provided the information below about two upcoming presentations: Event #1- Copyright & Your Research Tuesday, October 22, 4 to 5 pm Ballroom A, University Club Speaker: Peter B. Hirtle, Senior Policy Advisor, Cornell University Library, and Research Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet Security and Society, Harvard University * Learn about copyrights, author agreements, and publishing contracts * Learn to navigate public access requirements in federal grants * Discover new publishing options for Pitt authors Event #2- Open Access Policies: Coming Attractions Thursday, October 24, 4 to 5 pm Ballroom A, University Club Speaker: Michael W. Carroll, Professor of Law and director, Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, American University, Washington College of Law * Learn more about the White House directive on Open Access and the University of California System policy on Open Access * Better understand how scholarly publishing will be impacted * Discover the importance of reuse rights for Open Access works

Modernizing an English Garden; New York Times, 10/4/13

Adam Nicolson, New York Times; Modernizing an English Garden: "The National Trust accepted Sissinghurst in 1967, and my father entered the last decades of his life secure in the idea that he had done the right thing. He was known as the Resident Donor and presided happily over the place as it boomed with the tourist revolution over the next three decades. He became a sort of constitutional monarch: advising and consulting. He built himself a little writing room in the garden, where visitors would find him charmingly and delightfully welcoming. His part-skeptical children used to call it the Resident Donor Display Cabinet. He was a caretaker, spending his days as the protector of his parents’ creation. When he fell ill in 2004, my wife, Sarah, and I and our two daughters, Rosie and Molly, left our own farmhouse and went back to live at Sissinghurst. And when he died later that year, we stayed on, largely, I think, out of a sense of duty to this strange unowned inheritance, a mere tenancy at a place everything encouraged us to think of as ours. It did not go well. The new setup was something of a shock. We had moved into a museum: our dogs not allowed in the garden, being shouted at by gardeners if they did wander in; our children not allowed near the greenhouses; our cars to be parked in exactly prealigned ways; instructions that we were not to have parties on the weekends; that any photograph we took inside or outside the house was to be the copyright of the National Trust — I said no to the most invasive of these requests — and so on."

Free Sherlock Holmes: the Copyright Battle of Baker Street; The Conversation, 9/30/13

Matthew Rimmer, The Conversation; Free Sherlock Holmes: the Copyright Battle of Baker Street: "Who owns Sherlock Holmes, the world’s greatest detective? Is it the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Or the mysterious socialite Andrea Plunket? Or does Sherlock Holmes belong to the public? This is the question currently being debated in copyright litigation in the United States courts, raising larger questions about copyright law and the public domain, the ownership of literary characters, and the role of sequels, adaptations, and mash-ups."

Giant rubber duck causes big flap with Pittsburgh Cultural Trust; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/22/13

Anya Sostek, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Giant rubber duck causes big flap with Pittsburgh Cultural Trust: "On Friday, a 40-foot-tall rubber duck will float into Pittsburgh waterways, marking the beginning of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's Pittsburgh Festival of Firsts. The Cultural Trust, which has paid to bring artist Florentijn Hofman's Rubber Duck Project to Pittsburgh, would like to control merchandise sold in conjunction with the event. "As a responsible arts presenter, we are committed to maintaining the integrity of the artist's work and all images affiliated with this public art installation," the Trust posted on its Facebook page. That stance isn't sitting well with ToonSeum founder and executive director Joe Wos, who received a cease-and-desist letter from the Cultural Trust after he created a T-shirt to be sold in celebration of the duck and of a pop-up rubber duck exhibit at the ToonSeum. Mr. Wos and a friend took about an hour to create a shirt, featuring a cartoon duck swimming above the phrase "Quack N'At," a nod to the popular Pittsburgh abbreviation for "and that.""

Lawyers in ‘Spider-Man’ Battle Spin Their Early Arguments; New York Times, 6/1/12

Patrick Healy, New York Times; Lawyers in ‘Spider-Man’ Battle Spin Their Early Arguments:

"Lawyers for the Broadway producers of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” argued in federal court on Friday that the musical’s former director, Julie Taymor, had borrowed so many ideas from Spider-Man superhero lore that she was not entitled to copyright protection for her initial three-page script outline for the musical, which features characters and subplots from Spider-Man comics and movies. Ms. Taymor’s lawyers, who regard the outline as crucial to her copyright claims and battle for more than $1 million from the producers, countered that the document reflected what they termed originality and the singular vision that she had demonstrated as the Tony Award-winning director of “The Lion King.”"

Music label sues over Seth Rogen's 50/50; Guardian, 11/21/11

Ben Child, Guardian; Music label sues over Seth Rogen's 50/50:

"A Florida-based music and fashion label is suing the makers of the Seth Rogen/Joseph Gordon-Levitt cancer comedy 50/50, claiming it owns the copyright to the title.

Eastland Music Group (EMG) says it has been using the names 50/50 and Phifty-50 records to sell music by a hip-hop duo of the same name since 2000. They allege the film's release in US cinemas has already confused consumers."

[Op-Ed] The Public Domain; New York Times, 10/11/11

[Op-Ed] New York Times; The Public Domain:

"Copyright gives writers and others the incentive to create by giving them exclusive right to their work. But Congress’s power to grant copyright is limited in time and scope so that works can move into the public domain, where they become an essential part of our culture. The government must find other ways to comply with the trade treaty without curbing free expression."

[Podcast] Q&A: Kirby Ferguson; On the Media, 7/1/11

[Podcast] Alex Goldman, On the Media; Q&A: Kirby Ferguson:

"Over the past 9 months, writer, director, and editor Kirby Ferguson has been releasing episodes of Everything is a Remix, a video series about how appropriation, borrowing, and adaptation are inherent in, well, everything we as a culture create. The third installment of the four-part series just came out last week, so we thought we'd ask him a few questions about the project and his personal opinions on copyright and fair use."