Randy Kennedy, New York Times; Photographer Withdraws Lawsuit in Shepard Fairey Case:
"The photographer who took the shot of Barack Obama that was later transformed by the street artist Shepard Fairey into the well-known “Hope” campaign poster has withdrawn a lawsuit against the Associated Press, in which he claimed he was not working for the agency when he took the picture."
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/photographer-withdraws-lawsuit-in-shepard-fairey-case/?scp=2&sq=copyright&st=cse
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Theater Talkback: Who Owns Sheet Music?; New York Times, 7/15/10
Jason Robert Brown, New York Times; Theater Talkback: Who Owns Sheet Music?:
"[C]omposer Jason Robert Brown (“13,” “Parade”) discusses the ethics, creative implications and financial consequences of illegally downloading sheet music — including his sheet music — on the Internet."
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/theater-talkback-who-owns-sheet-music/
"[C]omposer Jason Robert Brown (“13,” “Parade”) discusses the ethics, creative implications and financial consequences of illegally downloading sheet music — including his sheet music — on the Internet."
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/theater-talkback-who-owns-sheet-music/
The Purpose of Copyright; Open Spaces, 8/10
Lydia Pallas Loren, Open Spaces; The Purpose of Copyright:
"The newspaper you read this morning, the television show you watched last night, the movie you are going to see this weekend, the computer software you use to prepare your letters or send your email, the music you listen to in the car on your way to work: they are all copyrighted. Copyright permeates our lives and yet, despite its impact on our lives, relatively few people, including lawyers, have sufficient knowledge or understanding of what copyright is. And far too many people, including lawyers, have major misconceptions concerning copyright. These misconceptions are causing a dangerous shift in copyright protection, a shift that threatens the advancement of knowledge and learning in this country. This shift that we are experiencing in copyright law reflects a move away from viewing copyright as a monopoly that the public is willing to tolerate in order to encourage innovation and creation of new works to viewing copyright as a significant asset to this country's economy. The most recent example of this shift is the new Digital Millennium Copyright Act, sign by the President on October 28, 1998.
Understanding the root cause and the dangers of this shift requires exposing the most fundamental and most common misconception concerning the underlying purpose of the monopoly granted by our copyright law."
http://www.open-spaces.com/article-v2n1-loren.php
"The newspaper you read this morning, the television show you watched last night, the movie you are going to see this weekend, the computer software you use to prepare your letters or send your email, the music you listen to in the car on your way to work: they are all copyrighted. Copyright permeates our lives and yet, despite its impact on our lives, relatively few people, including lawyers, have sufficient knowledge or understanding of what copyright is. And far too many people, including lawyers, have major misconceptions concerning copyright. These misconceptions are causing a dangerous shift in copyright protection, a shift that threatens the advancement of knowledge and learning in this country. This shift that we are experiencing in copyright law reflects a move away from viewing copyright as a monopoly that the public is willing to tolerate in order to encourage innovation and creation of new works to viewing copyright as a significant asset to this country's economy. The most recent example of this shift is the new Digital Millennium Copyright Act, sign by the President on October 28, 1998.
Understanding the root cause and the dangers of this shift requires exposing the most fundamental and most common misconception concerning the underlying purpose of the monopoly granted by our copyright law."
http://www.open-spaces.com/article-v2n1-loren.php
Google's count of 130 million books is probably bunk; ArsTechnica.com, 8/9/10
Jon Stokes, ArsTechnica.com; Google's count of 130 million books is probably bunk:
""After we exclude serials, we can finally count all the books in the world," wrote Google's Leonid Taycher in a GBS blog post. "There are 129,864,880 of them. At least until Sunday."
It's a large, official-sounding number, and the explanation for how Google arrived at it involves a number of acronyms and terms that will be unfamiliar to most of those who read the post. It's also quite likely to be complete bunk...
But the problem with Google's count, as is clear from the GBS count post itself, is that GBS's metadata collection is a riddled with errors of every sort. Or, as linguist and GBS critic Goeff Nunberg put it last year in a blog post, Google's metadata is "train wreck: a mish-mash wrapped in a muddle wrapped in a mess."
Indeed, a simple Google search for "google books metadata" (sans quotes) will turn up mostly criticisms and caterwauling by dismayed linguists, librarians, and other scholars at the terrible state of Google's metadata. Erroneous dates are pervasive, to the point that you can find many GBS references to historical figures and technologies in books that Google dates to well before the people or technologies existed. The classifications are a mess, and Nunberg's presentation points out that the first 10 classifications for Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" classify it as Juvenile Nonfiction, Poetry, Fiction, Literary Criticism, Biography & Autobiography, Counterfeits and Counterfeiting. Then there are authors that are missing or misattributed, and titles that bear no relation to the linked work."
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/08/googles-count-of-130-million-books-is-probably-bunk.ars
""After we exclude serials, we can finally count all the books in the world," wrote Google's Leonid Taycher in a GBS blog post. "There are 129,864,880 of them. At least until Sunday."
It's a large, official-sounding number, and the explanation for how Google arrived at it involves a number of acronyms and terms that will be unfamiliar to most of those who read the post. It's also quite likely to be complete bunk...
But the problem with Google's count, as is clear from the GBS count post itself, is that GBS's metadata collection is a riddled with errors of every sort. Or, as linguist and GBS critic Goeff Nunberg put it last year in a blog post, Google's metadata is "train wreck: a mish-mash wrapped in a muddle wrapped in a mess."
Indeed, a simple Google search for "google books metadata" (sans quotes) will turn up mostly criticisms and caterwauling by dismayed linguists, librarians, and other scholars at the terrible state of Google's metadata. Erroneous dates are pervasive, to the point that you can find many GBS references to historical figures and technologies in books that Google dates to well before the people or technologies existed. The classifications are a mess, and Nunberg's presentation points out that the first 10 classifications for Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" classify it as Juvenile Nonfiction, Poetry, Fiction, Literary Criticism, Biography & Autobiography, Counterfeits and Counterfeiting. Then there are authors that are missing or misattributed, and titles that bear no relation to the linked work."
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/08/googles-count-of-130-million-books-is-probably-bunk.ars
Friday, August 13, 2010
Sharing of Data Leads to Progress on Alzheimer’s; New York Times, 8/13/10
Gina Kolata, New York Times; Sharing of Data Leads to Progress on Alzheimer’s:
"The key to the Alzheimer’s project was an agreement as ambitious as its goal: not just to raise money, not just to do research on a vast scale, but also to share all the data, making every single finding public immediately, available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world.
No one would own the data. No one could submit patent applications, though private companies would ultimately profit from any drugs or imaging tests developed as a result of the effort.
“It was unbelievable,” said Dr. John Q. Trojanowski, an Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s not science the way most of us have practiced it in our careers. But we all realized that we would never get biomarkers unless all of us parked our egos and intellectual-property noses outside the door and agreed that all of our data would be public immediately.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/health/research/13alzheimer.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=homepage&src=me
"The key to the Alzheimer’s project was an agreement as ambitious as its goal: not just to raise money, not just to do research on a vast scale, but also to share all the data, making every single finding public immediately, available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world.
No one would own the data. No one could submit patent applications, though private companies would ultimately profit from any drugs or imaging tests developed as a result of the effort.
“It was unbelievable,” said Dr. John Q. Trojanowski, an Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s not science the way most of us have practiced it in our careers. But we all realized that we would never get biomarkers unless all of us parked our egos and intellectual-property noses outside the door and agreed that all of our data would be public immediately.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/health/research/13alzheimer.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=homepage&src=me
Viacom's billion-dollar lawsuit lives on; ArsTechnica.com, 8/12/10
Nate Anderson, ArsTechnica.com; Viacom's billion-dollar lawsuit lives on:
"The billion-dollar Viacom lawsuit against YouTube/Google trudges on. After a federal judge sided completely with YouTube in summary judgment, Viacom has now filed its appeal to take the case to the next level."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/08/viacoms-billion-dollar-lawsuit-lives-on.ars
"The billion-dollar Viacom lawsuit against YouTube/Google trudges on. After a federal judge sided completely with YouTube in summary judgment, Viacom has now filed its appeal to take the case to the next level."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/08/viacoms-billion-dollar-lawsuit-lives-on.ars
Why Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Fashion; New York Times, 8/13/10
Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman, New York Times; Why Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Fashion:
"It strikes many people as strange that fashion designs are not already protected against copying. Creative artists like musicians and filmmakers argue, quite persuasively, that their success requires copyright protection for their work. If others could steal it, they say, innovation would grind to a halt.
But there is a good reason that fashion designs have never been protected by copyright. Some designers have lost sales to knockoffs, but the copying of designs has not been a serious threat to the survival of the industry. To the contrary, much of the growth and creativity in the industry depends on imitation."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/opinion/13raustiala.html?_r=1&hp
"It strikes many people as strange that fashion designs are not already protected against copying. Creative artists like musicians and filmmakers argue, quite persuasively, that their success requires copyright protection for their work. If others could steal it, they say, innovation would grind to a halt.
But there is a good reason that fashion designs have never been protected by copyright. Some designers have lost sales to knockoffs, but the copying of designs has not been a serious threat to the survival of the industry. To the contrary, much of the growth and creativity in the industry depends on imitation."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/opinion/13raustiala.html?_r=1&hp
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