Tom Service, (London) Guardian; Don't leave Men at Work to face the music: The Aussie band is being sued for plagiarising a three-second riff. But musicians have always borrowed from one another – just ask Mozart:
"Poor old Men at Work. The ludicrous decision by an Australian court to make them pay up to 60% of the royalties of Down Under to Larrikin Music because of the similarity of band member Greg Ham's flute riff – which plays precisely three times in the song – to a 1934 ditty written for the Aussie Girl Guides, should strike fear into all musicians. If that kind of micro-sampling is to become the subject of court cases the world over, no song that has ever been released is safe. Maybe we should look for the first-ever recorded example of the 1-4-5 harmonic progression, the staple of so much rock and pop through the ages, and argue that every song using it should pay royalties too. That sound you can hear is the hands of music companies and their lawyers being rubbed together at the prospect of making musicians and bands pay back everything they've ever earned because somebody else first came up with the idea of an E-major chord.
Men at Work's "unconscious" (their words) use of a fragment of a tune that had become an Australian folk song by the time they released Down Under in 1983 is in any case a creative slice of Australiana in a song that's all about the land "where the beer does flow and men chunder".
And if Men at Work can be taken to the cleaners for a three-second riff, what would a court have made of Mozart's Requiem? It would never have made it through the copyright laws (if they had existed) if people had been familiar with Handel's Messiah. Have a listen to consecutive movements in the Requiem (the dotted rhythms in the strings in the Introitus, and the first fugue themes of the Kyrie and Part 2 of the Messiah (Surely, He Hath Borne Our Griefs and And With His Stripes, in these admittedly rather contrasted performances from John Eliot Gardiner and Thomas Beecham), and tell me Mozart didn't nick Handel's thematic material.
Of course, Mozart intensified his version and created a new expressive context for Handel's tunes, and his conspicuous borrowing of melodies from the baroque master is an obvious homage to a composer he loved (he made a new orchestration of Messiah just two years before writing the Requiem). It is part of the chain of ongoing, developing creativity that defines every musical tradition. But try telling that to the lawyers."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/tomserviceblog/2010/feb/08/men-at-work-music-mozart
Monday, February 8, 2010
Friday, February 5, 2010
Hollywood Loses Landmark Copyright Case In Australia; New York Times, 2/4/10
Michael Perry, Reuters, via New York Times; Hollywood Loses Landmark Copyright Case In Australia:
"Hollywood studios lost a landmark copyright court case against an Australia internet provider on Thursday, when a court ruled iiNet could not be held responsible for unauthorized downloads of movies using its service.
The suit against iiNet was filed by a group of the biggest Hollywood studios including Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox and Disney.
The consortium had hoped to prove iiNet not only failed to take steps to stop illegal file-sharing by customers, but breached copyright itself by storing and transmitting the data through its system.
Australia's Federal Court in Sydney ruled it was impossible to hold iiNet responsible for users infringing copyright.
"While I find that iiNet had knowledge of infringements occurring, and did not act to stop them, such findings do not necessitate a finding of authorization," Judge Dennis Cowdroy said in handing down the judgment.
"The evidence establishes that iiNet has done no more than to provide an internet service to its users," Cowdroy said.
iiNet told the court it was not required by law to act on allegations of copyright infringement, that customers were innocent until proven guilty in court, and that the case was like suing a power company for things people do with electricity.
Michael Malone, managing director of iiNet, welcomed the ruling, but added he hoped to be able to work with the film consortium on ways to prevent illegal downloads in the future.
"We would like to engage with all the movie studios and the other rights holders, and see if we can find a way to get this stuff legitimately online," Malone told reporters.
The Australian Digital Alliance, a coalition of libraries, universities, museums and galleries, said the ruling would benefit cultural institutions that make their collections available online and can be vulnerable to illegal downloads.
"The practical impact of the decision for ISPs has been to overrule the copyright industry's demands that they must police the activities of their users," said alliance chairman Derek Whitehead."
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/02/04/arts/entertainment-us-australia-copyright-internet.html
"Hollywood studios lost a landmark copyright court case against an Australia internet provider on Thursday, when a court ruled iiNet could not be held responsible for unauthorized downloads of movies using its service.
The suit against iiNet was filed by a group of the biggest Hollywood studios including Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox and Disney.
The consortium had hoped to prove iiNet not only failed to take steps to stop illegal file-sharing by customers, but breached copyright itself by storing and transmitting the data through its system.
Australia's Federal Court in Sydney ruled it was impossible to hold iiNet responsible for users infringing copyright.
"While I find that iiNet had knowledge of infringements occurring, and did not act to stop them, such findings do not necessitate a finding of authorization," Judge Dennis Cowdroy said in handing down the judgment.
"The evidence establishes that iiNet has done no more than to provide an internet service to its users," Cowdroy said.
iiNet told the court it was not required by law to act on allegations of copyright infringement, that customers were innocent until proven guilty in court, and that the case was like suing a power company for things people do with electricity.
Michael Malone, managing director of iiNet, welcomed the ruling, but added he hoped to be able to work with the film consortium on ways to prevent illegal downloads in the future.
"We would like to engage with all the movie studios and the other rights holders, and see if we can find a way to get this stuff legitimately online," Malone told reporters.
The Australian Digital Alliance, a coalition of libraries, universities, museums and galleries, said the ruling would benefit cultural institutions that make their collections available online and can be vulnerable to illegal downloads.
"The practical impact of the decision for ISPs has been to overrule the copyright industry's demands that they must police the activities of their users," said alliance chairman Derek Whitehead."
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/02/04/arts/entertainment-us-australia-copyright-internet.html
Justice Dept. Criticizes Latest Google Book Deal; New York Times, 2/5/10
Miguel Helft, New York Times; Justice Dept. Criticizes Latest Google Book Deal:
"In another blow to Google’s plan to create a giant digital library and bookstore, the Justice Department on Thursday said that a class-action settlement between the company and groups representing authors and publishers had significant legal problems, even after recent revisions.
Filing by the Justice Department (pdf)
In a 31-page filing that could influence a federal judge’s ruling on the settlement, the department said the new agreement was much improved from an earlier version. But it said the changes were not enough to placate concerns that the deal would grant Google a monopoly over millions of orphan works, meaning books whose right holders are unknown or cannot be found.
The department also indicated that the revised agreement, like its predecessor, appeared to run afoul of authors’ copyrights and was too broad in scope.
The revised agreement “suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement: it is an attempt to use the class-action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the court in this litigation,” the department wrote.
The department asked the court to encourage the parties to continue discussions on further changes to the settlement, which it said had many public benefits.
While the Justice Department did not explicitly urge the court to reject the deal, as it had the previous version, its opposition on copyright, class action and antitrust grounds represented a further setback for Google and the other parties to the deal.
The settlement stems from copyright lawsuits filed by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over Google’s plan to digitize books from major libraries. The settlement, introduced in October 2008, would allow Google to make millions of books available online and commercialize them, while creating new ways for authors and publishers to earn money from digital copies of their works.
But the deal faced a chorus of critics who argued that it would give Google a monopoly on millions of out-of-print books and had failed to take into account the interests of many authors.
In a statement on behalf of Google and the author and publisher groups, a Google spokesman, Gabriel Stricker, said the Justice Department’s filing “recognizes the progress made with the revised settlement, and it once again reinforces the value the agreement can provide in unlocking access to millions of books in the U.S.” He said Google looked forward to the court’s review of the department’s views and those of the deal’s supporters.
Critics of the agreement include Amazon, Microsoft and a range of authors, academics and public interest groups.
Judge Denny Chin of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who will rule on the settlement, scheduled a hearing on the agreement for Feb. 18."
"In another blow to Google’s plan to create a giant digital library and bookstore, the Justice Department on Thursday said that a class-action settlement between the company and groups representing authors and publishers had significant legal problems, even after recent revisions.
Filing by the Justice Department (pdf)
In a 31-page filing that could influence a federal judge’s ruling on the settlement, the department said the new agreement was much improved from an earlier version. But it said the changes were not enough to placate concerns that the deal would grant Google a monopoly over millions of orphan works, meaning books whose right holders are unknown or cannot be found.
The department also indicated that the revised agreement, like its predecessor, appeared to run afoul of authors’ copyrights and was too broad in scope.
The revised agreement “suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement: it is an attempt to use the class-action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the court in this litigation,” the department wrote.
The department asked the court to encourage the parties to continue discussions on further changes to the settlement, which it said had many public benefits.
While the Justice Department did not explicitly urge the court to reject the deal, as it had the previous version, its opposition on copyright, class action and antitrust grounds represented a further setback for Google and the other parties to the deal.
The settlement stems from copyright lawsuits filed by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over Google’s plan to digitize books from major libraries. The settlement, introduced in October 2008, would allow Google to make millions of books available online and commercialize them, while creating new ways for authors and publishers to earn money from digital copies of their works.
But the deal faced a chorus of critics who argued that it would give Google a monopoly on millions of out-of-print books and had failed to take into account the interests of many authors.
In a statement on behalf of Google and the author and publisher groups, a Google spokesman, Gabriel Stricker, said the Justice Department’s filing “recognizes the progress made with the revised settlement, and it once again reinforces the value the agreement can provide in unlocking access to millions of books in the U.S.” He said Google looked forward to the court’s review of the department’s views and those of the deal’s supporters.
Critics of the agreement include Amazon, Microsoft and a range of authors, academics and public interest groups.
Judge Denny Chin of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who will rule on the settlement, scheduled a hearing on the agreement for Feb. 18."
[Colloquium] Copyright vs Community in the Age of Computer Networks; Prof. Richard Stallman, 2/19/10 1 PM
[Colloquium] Prof. Richard Stallman, University of Pittsburgh; Copyright vs Community in the Age of Computer Networks:
"Friday, February 19, 2010 1:00pm - 3:00pm - [University of Pittsburgh] William Pitt Union, Lower Lounge
Refreshments at 12:30pm
Hosted by Department of Computer Science
"Abstract
Copyright developed in the age of the printing press, and was designed to fit with the system of centralized copying imposed by the printing press. But the copyright system does not fit well with computer networks, and only draconian punishments can enforce it. The global corporations that profit from copyright are lobbying for draconian punishments, and to increase their copyright powers, while suppressing public access to technology. But if we seriously hope to serve the only legitimate purpose of copyright--to promote progress, for the benefit of the public--then we must make changes in the other direction.
Biography of Speaker
Richard Stallman launched the development of the GNU operating system (see www.gnu.org) in 1984. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small. The GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux added, is used on tens of millions of computers today. Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award, and the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several honorary doctorates."
http://www.cs.pitt.edu/events/talks/2104/stallman.richard.19feb2010.php
"Friday, February 19, 2010 1:00pm - 3:00pm - [University of Pittsburgh] William Pitt Union, Lower Lounge
Refreshments at 12:30pm
Hosted by Department of Computer Science
"Abstract
Copyright developed in the age of the printing press, and was designed to fit with the system of centralized copying imposed by the printing press. But the copyright system does not fit well with computer networks, and only draconian punishments can enforce it. The global corporations that profit from copyright are lobbying for draconian punishments, and to increase their copyright powers, while suppressing public access to technology. But if we seriously hope to serve the only legitimate purpose of copyright--to promote progress, for the benefit of the public--then we must make changes in the other direction.
Biography of Speaker
Richard Stallman launched the development of the GNU operating system (see www.gnu.org) in 1984. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small. The GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux added, is used on tens of millions of computers today. Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award, and the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several honorary doctorates."
http://www.cs.pitt.edu/events/talks/2104/stallman.richard.19feb2010.php
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Yahoo Keeps AP in Its Content Corner With New Deal; Associated Press, via New York Times, 2/1/10
Associated Press, via New York Times; Yahoo Keeps AP in Its Content Corner With New Deal:
"The Associated Press has signed a licensing deal with Yahoo Inc. that gives the news cooperative a steady stream of revenue at a time less money is flowing in from newspapers and broadcasters.
The announcement by both companies Monday didn't disclose the financial terms of the agreement, which allows Yahoo to continue posting AP content on its site.
The AP says it is still negotiating to renew its online licensing agreements with two other companies with far deeper pockets, Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Google stopped posting fresh AP content on its Web site in late December.
Stung by the AP's first downturn in revenue in years, AP's management has said the cooperative needs to make more money from the online rights to its stories, photographs and video as more people flock to the Web for information and entertainment."
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/01/business/AP-US-TEC-AP-Yahoo.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=yahoo%20ap&st=cse
"The Associated Press has signed a licensing deal with Yahoo Inc. that gives the news cooperative a steady stream of revenue at a time less money is flowing in from newspapers and broadcasters.
The announcement by both companies Monday didn't disclose the financial terms of the agreement, which allows Yahoo to continue posting AP content on its site.
The AP says it is still negotiating to renew its online licensing agreements with two other companies with far deeper pockets, Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Google stopped posting fresh AP content on its Web site in late December.
Stung by the AP's first downturn in revenue in years, AP's management has said the cooperative needs to make more money from the online rights to its stories, photographs and video as more people flock to the Web for information and entertainment."
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/01/business/AP-US-TEC-AP-Yahoo.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=yahoo%20ap&st=cse
In Europe, Challenges for Google; New York Times, 2/2/10
Eric Pfanner, New York Times; In Europe, Challenges for Google:
"Google’s most immediate challenges may be in Italy. This month, a decision is expected in a trial in Milan, where four Google executives were charged with defamation and privacy violations in a case involving videos posted on a Google Web site that showed the bullying of a boy with autism.
The company says a guilty verdict might require it to edit content on YouTube before it is posted, which it says, would be incompatible with the open spirit of the Internet, as well as European Union guidelines.
Prosecutors say Google was too slow to remove the video.
On another front, Italian authorities last summer raided the company’s offices in Milan, opening an investigation of Google News, which displays excerpts from online news articles. Italian publishers contend that Google News violates their copyrights, but say they cannot remove their articles from the service without slipping in Google’s search rankings, which would cost them ad revenue. Google says there is no such link between Google News and the search engine."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/technology/companies/02google.html?scp=2&sq=google&st=cse
"Google’s most immediate challenges may be in Italy. This month, a decision is expected in a trial in Milan, where four Google executives were charged with defamation and privacy violations in a case involving videos posted on a Google Web site that showed the bullying of a boy with autism.
The company says a guilty verdict might require it to edit content on YouTube before it is posted, which it says, would be incompatible with the open spirit of the Internet, as well as European Union guidelines.
Prosecutors say Google was too slow to remove the video.
On another front, Italian authorities last summer raided the company’s offices in Milan, opening an investigation of Google News, which displays excerpts from online news articles. Italian publishers contend that Google News violates their copyrights, but say they cannot remove their articles from the service without slipping in Google’s search rankings, which would cost them ad revenue. Google says there is no such link between Google News and the search engine."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/technology/companies/02google.html?scp=2&sq=google&st=cse
Monday, February 1, 2010
Colloquium: How to read 15 million books in one sitting; Bill Schilit , Google Research, 2/3/10 4 PM, Carnegie-Mellon University
Colloquium: How to read 15 million books in one sitting; Bill Schilit , Google Research; 2/3/10 4 PM, Carnegie-Mellon University, Newell Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium):
"Abstract
Scanning books, magazines, and newspapers is widespread because people believe a great deal of the world's information still resides off-line. In general after works are scanned they are OCR'ed, indexed for search and processed to add links. In this talk I will describe a new approach to automatically add links by mining repeated passages. This technique connects elements that are semantically rich, so strong relations are made. Moreover, link targets point within rather than to the entire work, facilitating navigation. Our system has been run on a digital library of many millions of books (Google Book Search), has been used by thousands of people, and has generated the world's largest collection of quotations. I will also present a follow-on project based on the theory that authors copy passages from book to book because these quotations capture an idea particularly well: Jefferson on liberty; Stanton on women's rights; and Gibson on cyberpunk. These projects suggest that mining quotations for links and ideas is an important mechanism for understanding the knowledge contained in books.
(This work is in collaboration with Okan Kolak, Google Research and Google Book Search.)*"
http://www.hcii.cmu.edu/news/seminar/how-read-15-million-books-one-sitting-or-mining-hypertext-quotations-and-ideas-very-lar
"Abstract
Scanning books, magazines, and newspapers is widespread because people believe a great deal of the world's information still resides off-line. In general after works are scanned they are OCR'ed, indexed for search and processed to add links. In this talk I will describe a new approach to automatically add links by mining repeated passages. This technique connects elements that are semantically rich, so strong relations are made. Moreover, link targets point within rather than to the entire work, facilitating navigation. Our system has been run on a digital library of many millions of books (Google Book Search), has been used by thousands of people, and has generated the world's largest collection of quotations. I will also present a follow-on project based on the theory that authors copy passages from book to book because these quotations capture an idea particularly well: Jefferson on liberty; Stanton on women's rights; and Gibson on cyberpunk. These projects suggest that mining quotations for links and ideas is an important mechanism for understanding the knowledge contained in books.
(This work is in collaboration with Okan Kolak, Google Research and Google Book Search.)*"
http://www.hcii.cmu.edu/news/seminar/how-read-15-million-books-one-sitting-or-mining-hypertext-quotations-and-ideas-very-lar
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