Mike Masnick, TechDirt.com; Princeton Demands Website Remove Elena Kagan's Thesis; Claiming Copyright Infringement:
"Obviously, there's been lots of talk about Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan in numerous areas. There have been various reports concerning Kagan's supposed views on copyright, but those seem pretty blown out of proportion from what I've seen and in talking to folks who know Kagan. She was a big supporter of the Berkman Center at Harvard, but that was part of her job. Other than her recommendation in the Cablevision case, there doesn't seem to be much to go on. In fact, I'm considerably more concerned with the idea that one of the leading contenders for Kagan's current job of Solicitor General is one of the entertainment industry's favorite legal attack dogs who led the industry's case in Grokster and was a major player in the Jammie Thomas trial before being appointed to the Justice Department (where he didn't last very long before moving over to the White House as associate White House counsel). Still, if Kagan really is a big supporter of fair use, you have to wonder what she thinks of the following situation.
With everyone digging deeper and deeper to find out more about Kagan, the website Red State apparently dug up her undergraduate thesis and posted it to their website... leading Princeton to demand that the thesis be taken down -- not, of course, for political reasons, but copyright ones. The University is selling copies of her thesis, and apparently the commercial value just shot up:
It has been brought to my attention that you have posted Elena Kagan's senior thesis online.... Copies provided by the Princeton University Archives are governed by U.S. Copyright Law and are for private individual use only. Any electronic distribution is prohibited, as noted on the first page of the copy that is on your website. Therefore I request that you remove it immediately before further action is taken.
Of course, ordering that the document be pulled down pretty much guarantees that it will get spread more widely -- and there's definitely a journalistic reporting defense for posting the document (though, I'm not particularly convinced that anything anyone wrote in college has much meaning once they've spent a few decades outside of college). And, of course, in trying to get the document taken down, it's just going to lead conspiracy-minded folks to think there's more to the document than there is (in actuality, it's a rather bland historical analysis, but you wouldn't know that from what some sites are claiming about it). But from a journalistic standpoint, it seems you could make a decent argument for fair use in distributing the document. In fact, publications like Newsweek are already sharing parts of the thesis as well (mostly to debunk the hysteria around it). It's difficult to see what Princeton gained in issuing the takedown notice, other than to rile up people."
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100517/0000079435.shtml
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Growers, Jessica in boat copyright flap; Sydney Morning Herald, 5/6/10
Lisa Martin, Sydney Morning Herald; Growers, Jessica in boat copyright flap:
"A fruit-growing corporation which warned Jessica Watson her boat name, Ella's Pink Lady, breached international copyright wants to make the teenage sailor a poster girl for apples.
Ella's Pink Lady has a similar heart logo to the Pink Lady apple trademark.
Pink Lady Australia spokesman John Durham told AAP the company wrote to Watson's management in October last year advising them of its registered trademarks on the Pink Lady name and flowing heart symbol in more than 70 countries world-wide.
"Given that this was a global sailing attempt and given that our registrations were global, we just wanted them to be aware of that," Mr Durham said.
"We just requested ... that no person associated with Jessica Watson's solo around the world sailing attempt to take any action or make any statements which could cause damage or bring into disrepute APAL's (Apple & Pear Australia Ltd) Pink Lady flowing heart trademark.
"We never imagined that she would (damage the trademark), the letter was just to make her management aware."
Mr Durham said the organisation had extended its best wishes to the 16-year-old Queenslander.
"Personally I think she is a fantastic young lady and very much admire her courage, fortitude and pluck sailing around the world," he said.
He said Pink Lady Australia would talk to Jessica Watson's people about a potential deal."
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/growers-jessica-in-boat-copyright-flap-20100506-ucj9.html
"A fruit-growing corporation which warned Jessica Watson her boat name, Ella's Pink Lady, breached international copyright wants to make the teenage sailor a poster girl for apples.
Ella's Pink Lady has a similar heart logo to the Pink Lady apple trademark.
Pink Lady Australia spokesman John Durham told AAP the company wrote to Watson's management in October last year advising them of its registered trademarks on the Pink Lady name and flowing heart symbol in more than 70 countries world-wide.
"Given that this was a global sailing attempt and given that our registrations were global, we just wanted them to be aware of that," Mr Durham said.
"We just requested ... that no person associated with Jessica Watson's solo around the world sailing attempt to take any action or make any statements which could cause damage or bring into disrepute APAL's (Apple & Pear Australia Ltd) Pink Lady flowing heart trademark.
"We never imagined that she would (damage the trademark), the letter was just to make her management aware."
Mr Durham said the organisation had extended its best wishes to the 16-year-old Queenslander.
"Personally I think she is a fantastic young lady and very much admire her courage, fortitude and pluck sailing around the world," he said.
He said Pink Lady Australia would talk to Jessica Watson's people about a potential deal."
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/growers-jessica-in-boat-copyright-flap-20100506-ucj9.html
Real Copyright Law And File Sharing Copyright Law; TechDirt.com, 5/14/10
Mike Masnick, TechDirt.com; Real Copyright Law And File Sharing Copyright Law:
"We already wrote about the Limewire decision, which didn't seem particularly surprising at all, given that LimeWire was basically doing the exact same things as Grokster. However, some people are noticing a few problematic parts to the ruling. While these parts alone certainly won't change the ruling, it's still worth noting what the judge said and questioning whether or not they're proper. As Eric Goldman notes, he tells his students that when it comes to copyright law there's normal copyright law, and then there's "P2P file sharing" copyright law "and it's a mistake to think those two legal doctrines are closely related."
Judges don't like file sharing systems, and even if they have to twist the law to reach the conclusion they want, they'll do so to shut such sites down. It's happened over and over and over again."
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100513/1450189418.shtml
"We already wrote about the Limewire decision, which didn't seem particularly surprising at all, given that LimeWire was basically doing the exact same things as Grokster. However, some people are noticing a few problematic parts to the ruling. While these parts alone certainly won't change the ruling, it's still worth noting what the judge said and questioning whether or not they're proper. As Eric Goldman notes, he tells his students that when it comes to copyright law there's normal copyright law, and then there's "P2P file sharing" copyright law "and it's a mistake to think those two legal doctrines are closely related."
Judges don't like file sharing systems, and even if they have to twist the law to reach the conclusion they want, they'll do so to shut such sites down. It's happened over and over and over again."
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100513/1450189418.shtml
Can we have fair use without fair use technology?; Ars Technica, 5/14/10
Matthew Lasar, Ars Technica; Can we have fair use without fair use technology?:
"Back in February of 2007, the Ars team was a bit miffed at what it saw as the half-hearted efforts of Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) to bolster fair use protections for consumers. Boucher had just introduced his Fair Use Act to the House, a bill that would provide additional protection for consumers following the Supreme Court's 2005 pile drive of the Grokster file-sharing service.
Boucher's legislation, cosponsored by John Doolittle (R-CA), offered a variety of new fair use exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. These included making "a compilation of audiovisual works" for classroom use, transmitting files over a home network, and accessing various works "of substantial public interest solely for purposes of criticism, comment, news, reporting, scholarship, or research."
Unlike previous iterations of his proposed law, however, Boucher's latest version did not offer protections to the developers of tools designed to facilitate these salubrious activities.
"So if Boucher's legislation passed," Tim Lee lamented in a post published a day after the law's announcement, "a film studies professor would be permitted to use software such as Handbrake to circumvent the copy protection on DVDs and create an audiovisual presentation featuring scenes from various movies. However, developing or distributing Handbrake in the United States would still be a crime."
Now, three years later, the Public Knowledge advocacy group has a set of proposals that would address this strange shortcoming.
Substantial noninfringing use
PK has been especially busy with these matters of late, unveiling its proposed Copyright Reform Act in stages. Stage one urges an expansion of fair use concepts to the DMCA, including the incidental capture of images ("for example, capturing music playing over radio when filming a family moment") and "personal and noncommercial uses" that would have "little chance of harming copyright holders" (e.g., making a CD of your favorite cardio-pop tunes for the fitness center).
Now Public Knowledge's stage two addresses the "anticircumvention" trap embedded in Section 1201 of the DMCA, the first words of which read as so: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
PK would add a codicil to this text:
"It shall not be a violation of this section to circumvent a technological measure in connection with access to, or the use of, a work if such circumvention is for the purpose of engaging in noninfringing use of a work."
Then the group's reforms address Section 1201 language forbidding anyone to make, offer or traffic any technology, product, or service that "is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title" and "has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
To these sentences PK would append the following:
"It shall not be a violation of this section to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof capable of enabling substantial noninfringing use of a work protected under this title."
This, of course, lands us deep in the muck which is Supreme Court's Grokster decision, which ruled that the file-sharing service could find no safe harbor in the high court's 1984 Betamax standard. Betamax allowed that devices "capable of substantial noninfringing uses" could not be legally blamed for the infringing shenanigans of their users. But Grokster found that device distributors who sold services and technologies with the object of promoting their uses to infringe copyright were indeed liable for the consequences.
What we have in Public Knowledge's proposals, then, is a legislative attempt to address both the DMCA and Grokster's overreach, empowering devices capable of "enabling substantial noninfringing use of a work," while retaining the ruling's oversight over bad intent.
Teachers, regional DVDs, backups, time shares
Why does PK think that consumers need these reforms? Lots of reasons.
High on the group's first aid list are teachers who want to show films to their classes. They're hobbled by the law if they want to make film compilations from DVD media, a task that sometimes requires encryption circumvention technology. Thus, classroom instructors "must both worry about liability for the act of circumvention and manage in spite of the prohibition on tools that would allow them to circumvent," PK warns.
In other words, they have to navigate through a DVD's scene index, creating long and awkward breaks in their lectures. In 2006 the US Copyright Office granted a limited exemption on these restrictions for film and media studies professors, leaving historians, sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, and everybody else to fend for themselves.
Next, there are the roadblocks set up by the regional coding mechanisms stamped into many DVDs. On top of CSS used by most DVD makers, regional playback control is added, making their media usable only in a specific geographical area.
"Consumers' ability to make private use of legitimately purchased foreign DVDs on their DVD players in the United States is thus challenged regardless of whether they lawfully imported foreign DVDs themselves or legally purchased them from an overseas vendor," PK notes, "though both methods of acquisition are 'plainly legal' under copyright law."
Then there are the backup technologies that have been pummeled under the DMCA, such as RealDVD, a system that allowed consumers to store DVD content on their hard drives.
Eventually RealNetworks settled its fight with Hollywood, agreeing to fork over $4.5 million make the Motion Picture Association of America's infringement lawsuit go away.
But RealNetworks isn't always the defendant. Don't forget the time/format sharing Streambox VCR, which allowed users to record and play RealAudio streams. Real Networks sued Streambox for DMCA copyright infringement. Eventually the two companies settled.
Enacting these reforms "would remedy the unintended consequences caused by §1201's overbroad prohibitions while continuing to offer copyright owners extra protections for digital works guarded by TPMs [technology protection measures]," Public Knowledge's brief concludes.
Unfortunately, these suggestions are unlikely to ever darken the doors of Congress. Even Boucher's milquetoast fair use law didn't get very far; it was referred to the House Judiciary Committee, and then to the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property back in 2007. That was the last anyone heard of it."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/can-we-have-fair-use-without-fair-use-technology.ars
"Back in February of 2007, the Ars team was a bit miffed at what it saw as the half-hearted efforts of Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) to bolster fair use protections for consumers. Boucher had just introduced his Fair Use Act to the House, a bill that would provide additional protection for consumers following the Supreme Court's 2005 pile drive of the Grokster file-sharing service.
Boucher's legislation, cosponsored by John Doolittle (R-CA), offered a variety of new fair use exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. These included making "a compilation of audiovisual works" for classroom use, transmitting files over a home network, and accessing various works "of substantial public interest solely for purposes of criticism, comment, news, reporting, scholarship, or research."
Unlike previous iterations of his proposed law, however, Boucher's latest version did not offer protections to the developers of tools designed to facilitate these salubrious activities.
"So if Boucher's legislation passed," Tim Lee lamented in a post published a day after the law's announcement, "a film studies professor would be permitted to use software such as Handbrake to circumvent the copy protection on DVDs and create an audiovisual presentation featuring scenes from various movies. However, developing or distributing Handbrake in the United States would still be a crime."
Now, three years later, the Public Knowledge advocacy group has a set of proposals that would address this strange shortcoming.
Substantial noninfringing use
PK has been especially busy with these matters of late, unveiling its proposed Copyright Reform Act in stages. Stage one urges an expansion of fair use concepts to the DMCA, including the incidental capture of images ("for example, capturing music playing over radio when filming a family moment") and "personal and noncommercial uses" that would have "little chance of harming copyright holders" (e.g., making a CD of your favorite cardio-pop tunes for the fitness center).
Now Public Knowledge's stage two addresses the "anticircumvention" trap embedded in Section 1201 of the DMCA, the first words of which read as so: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
PK would add a codicil to this text:
"It shall not be a violation of this section to circumvent a technological measure in connection with access to, or the use of, a work if such circumvention is for the purpose of engaging in noninfringing use of a work."
Then the group's reforms address Section 1201 language forbidding anyone to make, offer or traffic any technology, product, or service that "is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title" and "has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
To these sentences PK would append the following:
"It shall not be a violation of this section to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof capable of enabling substantial noninfringing use of a work protected under this title."
This, of course, lands us deep in the muck which is Supreme Court's Grokster decision, which ruled that the file-sharing service could find no safe harbor in the high court's 1984 Betamax standard. Betamax allowed that devices "capable of substantial noninfringing uses" could not be legally blamed for the infringing shenanigans of their users. But Grokster found that device distributors who sold services and technologies with the object of promoting their uses to infringe copyright were indeed liable for the consequences.
What we have in Public Knowledge's proposals, then, is a legislative attempt to address both the DMCA and Grokster's overreach, empowering devices capable of "enabling substantial noninfringing use of a work," while retaining the ruling's oversight over bad intent.
Teachers, regional DVDs, backups, time shares
Why does PK think that consumers need these reforms? Lots of reasons.
High on the group's first aid list are teachers who want to show films to their classes. They're hobbled by the law if they want to make film compilations from DVD media, a task that sometimes requires encryption circumvention technology. Thus, classroom instructors "must both worry about liability for the act of circumvention and manage in spite of the prohibition on tools that would allow them to circumvent," PK warns.
In other words, they have to navigate through a DVD's scene index, creating long and awkward breaks in their lectures. In 2006 the US Copyright Office granted a limited exemption on these restrictions for film and media studies professors, leaving historians, sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, and everybody else to fend for themselves.
Next, there are the roadblocks set up by the regional coding mechanisms stamped into many DVDs. On top of CSS used by most DVD makers, regional playback control is added, making their media usable only in a specific geographical area.
"Consumers' ability to make private use of legitimately purchased foreign DVDs on their DVD players in the United States is thus challenged regardless of whether they lawfully imported foreign DVDs themselves or legally purchased them from an overseas vendor," PK notes, "though both methods of acquisition are 'plainly legal' under copyright law."
Then there are the backup technologies that have been pummeled under the DMCA, such as RealDVD, a system that allowed consumers to store DVD content on their hard drives.
Eventually RealNetworks settled its fight with Hollywood, agreeing to fork over $4.5 million make the Motion Picture Association of America's infringement lawsuit go away.
But RealNetworks isn't always the defendant. Don't forget the time/format sharing Streambox VCR, which allowed users to record and play RealAudio streams. Real Networks sued Streambox for DMCA copyright infringement. Eventually the two companies settled.
Enacting these reforms "would remedy the unintended consequences caused by §1201's overbroad prohibitions while continuing to offer copyright owners extra protections for digital works guarded by TPMs [technology protection measures]," Public Knowledge's brief concludes.
Unfortunately, these suggestions are unlikely to ever darken the doors of Congress. Even Boucher's milquetoast fair use law didn't get very far; it was referred to the House Judiciary Committee, and then to the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property back in 2007. That was the last anyone heard of it."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/can-we-have-fair-use-without-fair-use-technology.ars
Warner Brothers Sues "Superman" Lawyer; ComicBookResources.com, 5/14/10
Kiel Phegley, ComicBookResources.com; Warner Brothers Sues "Superman" Lawyer:
"Not long after they created the character in the late 1930s, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster started to push back against National Periodical Publications for a bigger share in the rights to Superman. Over 70 years later, that battle is still being played out in a much more complex and unexpected way than almost any other intellectual property rights fight in history.
Today, Warner Brothers (owner of DC Comics and by extension Superman) fled suit against attorney Mark Toberoff who has represented the families of Siegel and Shuster in their attempt to gain back a percentage of rights and profits on the character. Deadline Hollywood reports that the suit focuses on the money Toberoff would supposedly gain if the Siegel and Shuster families earn the full rights to Superman back in 2013. If successful, the Warner Brothers suit may force Toberoff to step back from representing the families, giving the studio a better chance of winning future rights battles.
In the suit, the studio appeals to the court with the fact that Siegel and Shuster chose to work with DC on settling the rights dispute while they were alive as well as the fact that years of comics, TV and movie materials produced by DC and Warners would be stripped from the company in terms of its profits if they lost all the rights."
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=26237
"Not long after they created the character in the late 1930s, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster started to push back against National Periodical Publications for a bigger share in the rights to Superman. Over 70 years later, that battle is still being played out in a much more complex and unexpected way than almost any other intellectual property rights fight in history.
Today, Warner Brothers (owner of DC Comics and by extension Superman) fled suit against attorney Mark Toberoff who has represented the families of Siegel and Shuster in their attempt to gain back a percentage of rights and profits on the character. Deadline Hollywood reports that the suit focuses on the money Toberoff would supposedly gain if the Siegel and Shuster families earn the full rights to Superman back in 2013. If successful, the Warner Brothers suit may force Toberoff to step back from representing the families, giving the studio a better chance of winning future rights battles.
In the suit, the studio appeals to the court with the fact that Siegel and Shuster chose to work with DC on settling the rights dispute while they were alive as well as the fact that years of comics, TV and movie materials produced by DC and Warners would be stripped from the company in terms of its profits if they lost all the rights."
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=26237
[OpEd] Getting the last word on Holden Caulfield; LA Times, 5/7/10
[OpEd] Jon Healey, LA Times; Getting the last word on Holden Caulfield:
"I've been so distracted by the Greek debt crisis that I missed a ruling last week by the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals that has potentially enormous implications for publishers, movie studios and other copyright holders. The appeals panel overturned a federal judge's ruling that J.D. Salinger (and now, his heirs) was entitled to a preliminary injunction barring the U.S. publication of an unauthorized sequel to "Catcher in the Rye."
Citing the Supreme Court's ruling in EBay vs. MercExchange, a case involving patent infringement, the appeals panel ruled that courts should not grant injunctions automatically to stop the publication or distribution of works that infringe copyrights. Instead, copyright holders will have to demonstrate that the harm they would suffer if the injunction were not issued could not be remedied through other means, such as monetary damages. The courts must also consider the "balance of hardships" that an injunction (or lack thereof) would inflict on either side, and whether an injunction would serve the public interest.
The ruling may not make a practical difference to the unauthorized "Catcher" sequel, a novel titled "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye." The 2nd Circuit left the injunction in place temporarily, giving the lower court time to put new restraints in place. It also stacked the deck in favor of another injunction. In addition to upholding the lower court's finding that the book's main character, "Mr. C," violated Salinger's copyright over the character Holden Caulfield, the appeals panel rejected the argument by the author, the publisher and some allies of "60 Years Later" that the book was a fair use of Salinger's work.
Jack Lerner, a copyright expert and law professor who leads the USC Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic, said he was disappointed that the courts didn't find the new book to be a fair use. The author didn't simply do another book about Holden Caulfield; the novel used Caulfield as a way to comment on the relationship between Salinger and his creation. Still, by making it harder for copyright holders to get injunctions, Lerner said, the ruling should make them more willing to strike licensing deals for their content.
Jennifer Urban, director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley, said that the ruling "removed the possibility of the plaintiffs having so much power at the beginning that the licensing negotiations are heavily tilted toward the plaintiffs." That's been the result with patents since the MercExchange decision, she said, especially in cases involving patent holders whose business is to collect royalties rather than make products.
Let me put that another, less charitable way. The MercExchange decision made life harder for patent trolls to stop manufacturers from bringing innovative products to market, and that's a good thing.
Urban added that injunctions may have the effect in copyright cases of diminishing speech, which raises public policy concerns. Granted, there can be 1st Amendment issues on both sides; Salinger, for example, asserted a constitutional right not to be forced to speak. But if authors accused of infringement are making fair use of copyrighted works, that's protected speech, and society has an interest in hearing it."
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2010/05/getting-the-last-word-on-holden-caulfield.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpinionLa+(L.A.+Times+-+Opinion+Blog)
"I've been so distracted by the Greek debt crisis that I missed a ruling last week by the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals that has potentially enormous implications for publishers, movie studios and other copyright holders. The appeals panel overturned a federal judge's ruling that J.D. Salinger (and now, his heirs) was entitled to a preliminary injunction barring the U.S. publication of an unauthorized sequel to "Catcher in the Rye."
Citing the Supreme Court's ruling in EBay vs. MercExchange, a case involving patent infringement, the appeals panel ruled that courts should not grant injunctions automatically to stop the publication or distribution of works that infringe copyrights. Instead, copyright holders will have to demonstrate that the harm they would suffer if the injunction were not issued could not be remedied through other means, such as monetary damages. The courts must also consider the "balance of hardships" that an injunction (or lack thereof) would inflict on either side, and whether an injunction would serve the public interest.
The ruling may not make a practical difference to the unauthorized "Catcher" sequel, a novel titled "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye." The 2nd Circuit left the injunction in place temporarily, giving the lower court time to put new restraints in place. It also stacked the deck in favor of another injunction. In addition to upholding the lower court's finding that the book's main character, "Mr. C," violated Salinger's copyright over the character Holden Caulfield, the appeals panel rejected the argument by the author, the publisher and some allies of "60 Years Later" that the book was a fair use of Salinger's work.
Jack Lerner, a copyright expert and law professor who leads the USC Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic, said he was disappointed that the courts didn't find the new book to be a fair use. The author didn't simply do another book about Holden Caulfield; the novel used Caulfield as a way to comment on the relationship between Salinger and his creation. Still, by making it harder for copyright holders to get injunctions, Lerner said, the ruling should make them more willing to strike licensing deals for their content.
Jennifer Urban, director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley, said that the ruling "removed the possibility of the plaintiffs having so much power at the beginning that the licensing negotiations are heavily tilted toward the plaintiffs." That's been the result with patents since the MercExchange decision, she said, especially in cases involving patent holders whose business is to collect royalties rather than make products.
Let me put that another, less charitable way. The MercExchange decision made life harder for patent trolls to stop manufacturers from bringing innovative products to market, and that's a good thing.
Urban added that injunctions may have the effect in copyright cases of diminishing speech, which raises public policy concerns. Granted, there can be 1st Amendment issues on both sides; Salinger, for example, asserted a constitutional right not to be forced to speak. But if authors accused of infringement are making fair use of copyrighted works, that's protected speech, and society has an interest in hearing it."
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2010/05/getting-the-last-word-on-holden-caulfield.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpinionLa+(L.A.+Times+-+Opinion+Blog)
Google attorney slams ACTA copyright treaty; CNet News, 5/7/10
Declan McCullagh, CNet News; Google attorney slams ACTA copyright treaty:
"An attorney for Google slammed a controversial intellectual property treaty on Friday, saying it has "metastasized" from a proposal to address border security and counterfeit goods to an international legal framework sweeping in copyright and the Internet.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, is "something that has grown in the shadows, Gollum-like," without public scrutiny, Daphne Keller, a senior policy counsel in Mountain View, Calif., said at a conference at Stanford University.
Both the Obama administration and the Bush administration had rejected requests from civil libertarians and technologists for the text of ACTA, with the White House last year even indicating that disclosure would do "damage to the national security." After pressure from the European Parliament, however, negotiators released the draft text two weeks ago.
The international adoption of ACTA could increase the liability for Internet intermediaries--such, perhaps, as search engines--Keller said. "You don't want to play Russian roulette with very high statutory damages."
One section of ACTA says that Internet providers "disabling access" to pirated material and adopting a policy dealing with unauthorized "transmission of materials protected by copyright" would be immune from lawsuits. If they choose not to do so, they could face legal liability. Fair use rights are not guaranteed.
"It looks a lot like cultural imperialism," Keller said at the Legal Frontiers in Digital Media conference. "It's something that really snuck up on a lot of people."
Jamie Love of the Knowledge Ecology International advocacy group, which has criticized the ACTA process, reported last year that Keller had signed a nondisclosure agreement that provided her with access to the early draft text. Other organizations whose representatives signed the confidentiality agreement, according to Love's Freedom of Information Act request, include Verizon, eBay, Public Knowledge, Intel, News Corp., and the Consumer Electronics Association.
Sherwin Siy of Public Knowledge, who signed the nondisclosure agreement, wrote at the time that it didn't provide much access: "We were allowed to view a draft of one proposed section as we sat in a (government office) with some of its negotiators and counsel. We were not allowed to take any copies of the text with us when we left the meeting about an hour later."
The U.S. Trade Representative said in a statement last month that recent ACTA negotiations in New Zealand were "constructive." The Motion Picture Association of America called ACTA an "important step forward" that deserves to be adopted.
The next ACTA meeting is in Switzerland in June."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20004450-38.html
"An attorney for Google slammed a controversial intellectual property treaty on Friday, saying it has "metastasized" from a proposal to address border security and counterfeit goods to an international legal framework sweeping in copyright and the Internet.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, is "something that has grown in the shadows, Gollum-like," without public scrutiny, Daphne Keller, a senior policy counsel in Mountain View, Calif., said at a conference at Stanford University.
Both the Obama administration and the Bush administration had rejected requests from civil libertarians and technologists for the text of ACTA, with the White House last year even indicating that disclosure would do "damage to the national security." After pressure from the European Parliament, however, negotiators released the draft text two weeks ago.
The international adoption of ACTA could increase the liability for Internet intermediaries--such, perhaps, as search engines--Keller said. "You don't want to play Russian roulette with very high statutory damages."
One section of ACTA says that Internet providers "disabling access" to pirated material and adopting a policy dealing with unauthorized "transmission of materials protected by copyright" would be immune from lawsuits. If they choose not to do so, they could face legal liability. Fair use rights are not guaranteed.
"It looks a lot like cultural imperialism," Keller said at the Legal Frontiers in Digital Media conference. "It's something that really snuck up on a lot of people."
Jamie Love of the Knowledge Ecology International advocacy group, which has criticized the ACTA process, reported last year that Keller had signed a nondisclosure agreement that provided her with access to the early draft text. Other organizations whose representatives signed the confidentiality agreement, according to Love's Freedom of Information Act request, include Verizon, eBay, Public Knowledge, Intel, News Corp., and the Consumer Electronics Association.
Sherwin Siy of Public Knowledge, who signed the nondisclosure agreement, wrote at the time that it didn't provide much access: "We were allowed to view a draft of one proposed section as we sat in a (government office) with some of its negotiators and counsel. We were not allowed to take any copies of the text with us when we left the meeting about an hour later."
The U.S. Trade Representative said in a statement last month that recent ACTA negotiations in New Zealand were "constructive." The Motion Picture Association of America called ACTA an "important step forward" that deserves to be adopted.
The next ACTA meeting is in Switzerland in June."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20004450-38.html
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