Ridiculous Ruling Says University Can't Release Course Syllabi Because That Would Violate Professors' Copyright; Forbes, 9/29/14

George Leef, Forbes; Ridiculous Ruling Says University Can't Release Course Syllabi Because That Would Violate Professors' Copyright:

"On August 26, a Missouri appeals court held that course syllabi are protected by federal copyright law. That trumps the state’s Sunshine Law, so the court ruled that the university is correct in refusing to allow NCTQ or anyone else to have copies. NCTQ will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Missouri...

On legal grounds, the University of Missouri’s refusal to release the syllabi looks very shaky. Do professors really hold copyright over their syllabi?

One expert in copyright law, Chapman University law professor Tom Bell, thinks not. In an email to me, he wrote, “While debate continues over whether scholarship prepared in the course of employment with a university falls within the work-for-hire doctrine, there can be little doubt that syllabi do, meaning that the copyrights in them vest in the university rather than the professor.”

Another reason for believing that the court’s ruling is incorrect is the “fair use” exception to copyright. Under “fair use,” people are permitted to make reasonable use of copyrighted material. Among the factors that are to be considered are whether the use is for a non-profit educational purpose and how the use would affect the market value of the work. Here, the analysis to be done on the syllabi is for a non-profit educational purpose (assessing the quality of the education school courses), and it has no impact at all on the market value of the syllabi, which is zero."

Parody copyright laws set to come into effect; BBC News, 9/29/14

BBC News; Parody copyright laws set to come into effect:

"Changes to UK legislation are to come into force later this week allowing the parody of copyright works.

Under current rules, there has been a risk of being sued for breach of copyright if clips of films, TV shows or songs were used without consent.

But the new European Copyright Directive will allow the use of the material so long as it is fair and does not compete with the original version.

The new law will come into effect on 1 October.

Owners of the copyrighted works will only be able to sue if the parody conveys a discriminatory message.

It would then be down to a judge to decide if the parody is funny.

"The only, and essential, characteristics of parody are, on the one hand, to evoke an existing work while being noticeably different from it and, on the other, to constitute an expression of humour or mockery," the EU rules state.

"If a parody conveys a discriminatory message (for example, by replacing the original characters with people wearing veils and people of colour), the holders of the rights to the work parodied have, in principle, a legitimate interest in ensuring that their work is not associated with such a message.""

The Unrepentant Bootlegger; New York Times, 9/27/14

Jenna Wortham, New York Times; The Unrepentant Bootlegger:

"To the government, Ms. Beshara was a thief, plain and simple. The Motion Picture Association of America alerted the federal government to NinjaVideo and nine other movie-streaming sites, and they all went dark at the same time. The raids were carried out by several federal agencies working to combat counterfeiting and piracy, and the scale of the operation was meant to send a warning that the government wasn’t ignoring the freewheeling world of illegal online streaming and downloading.

Ms. Beshara, however, still can’t accept that what she was doing deserved the heavy hammer of the law. She served 16 months in prison for conspiracy and criminal copyright infringement, but she still talks about NinjaVideo as something grand. It was a portal that spirited her away from the doldrums of her regular life as a receptionist living with her parents to an online community that regarded her as its queen. Sure, she showed movies that were still playing in theaters, but it seemed like harmless, small-stakes fun.

“In hindsight — I know it’s naïve — but I never imagined it going criminal,” she said. “It didn’t seem like it was something to be bothered with. Even if it is wrong.”

She is not the only one who feels that way. It has proved very difficult to reverse a pervasive cultural nonchalance about what constitutes intellectual property theft on the web. Despite the government crackdown in 2010 and subsequent efforts to unplug websites that host or link to illegal content, new sites have emerged that filled the void that NinjaVideo left behind.

Online piracy is thriving. File-sharing, most of it illegal, still amounts to nearly a quarter of all consumer Internet traffic, according to Cisco Systems’ Visual Networking Index. And a recent report from Tru Optik, a media analytics firm, said that nearly 10 billion movies, television shows and other files, including games and pornography, were downloaded globally in the second quarter of 2014. Tru Optik estimates that about 6 percent of those downloads were legal. In July, a high-quality version of “The Expendables 3,” the Sylvester Stallone action comedy film, surfaced online and was downloaded millions of times, well before its release in theaters."

A Stolen Video of My Daughter Went Viral. Here’s What I Learned; New York Times, 9/26/14

Carrie Goldman, New York Times; A Stolen Video of My Daughter Went Viral. Here’s What I Learned:

"In early September, someone downloaded my video of Cleo, stripped it of all identifying information, changed the title from “Cleo on Equality” to “Wisdom of a 4-Year-Old”, and re-uploaded it to YouTube, passing it off as his or her own video. A woman in Amsterdam posted an embedded version of the stolen video to her Facebook page, from which it went viral. Within a matter of days, the stripped-down version of the video had been shared over 80,000 times.

I only learned about it when the pirated video began appearing in the news feed of people who recognized Cleo and noticed that it was not linked to any of my accounts. I felt sick on multiple levels. I have always known, of course, that the mere act of uploading a video to any digital site means potentially losing control over that content. But now it had happened, and even though the shares appeared to be harmless — approving, even — it was still terrifying. What if someone decided to do something creepy with it?

There was also a part of me that saw all the comments lauding Cleo’s grasp of acceptance, and I wanted those people to be linked back to my anti-bullying work. I missed the opportunity to share what I do for a living with a wide audience. I was sad and confused. Was I upset because the video was out there being viewed by tons of strangers, or was I upset because it was out there and I wasn’t getting credit? Both, probably...

I knew I had rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Since I speak to students and teachers all the time about good digital citizenship, I knew what steps to take next:

• Do not retaliate against someone online

• Take a screen shot and record the evidence

• Use this online form to report the violation to Facebook.

• Use this online form to report a copyright infringement on YouTube."

Bugging out: How rampant online piracy squashed one insect photographer; Ars Technica, 9/24/14

Alex Wild, Ars Technica; Bugging out: How rampant online piracy squashed one insect photographer:

"Here is a true story about how copyright infringement costs my small photography business thousands of dollars every year.

Or, maybe it isn’t. It could also be a true story of how copyright infringement earns me thousands of dollars every year. I can’t be sure. Either way, this is definitely the story of how copyright infringement takes up more of my time than I wish to devote to it. Copyright infringement drains my productivity to the point where I create hundreds fewer images each year. And it's why, in part, I am leaving professional photography for an academic position less prone to the frustrations of a floundering copyright system."

Marvel & Jack Kirby Family Settle Long-Running Legal Dispute; ComicBookResources.com, 9/26/14

ComicBookResources.com; Marvel & Jack Kirby Family Settle Long-Running Legal Dispute:

"Deadline reports that Marvel and the family of Jack Kirby have settled their legal battle in advance of the Supreme Court taking the case into conference. A joint statement has been released and reads as follows:

"Marvel and the family of Jack Kirby have amicably resolved their legal disputes, and are looking forward to advancing their shared goal of honoring Mr. Kirby’s significant role in Marvel’s history.""

Behind the Groundbreaking Design of Aphex Twin’s Record Covers; New York Times, 9/22/14

Andy Beta, New York Times; Behind the Groundbreaking Design of Aphex Twin’s Record Covers:

"Tomorrow sees the release of “Syro,” a double album on the pioneering electronic label Warp Records that finds the reclusive genius — now a father of two living in rural Scotland — at his mischievous, beat-twisting best. (It can be streamed here in its entirety; a Spotify account is required.) The record also shares a lineage with the eye-catching, face-distorting cover art of releases like 1997’s “Come to Daddy” and 1999’s “Windowlicker,” again finding James collaborating with the groundbreaking firm The Designers Republic (TDR) on the visuals. Here, the collective’s founder and creative director, Ian Anderson, chats with T about the thought process behind some of Aphex Twin’s most iconic cover art...

“Come to Daddy Remixed” (1997) “For us the key elements in the ‘Come to Daddy’ art were the typographic deconstructions of the photographic imagery and of the TV ad for Orange Mobile, which had used one of the Aphex Twin remix tracks. For copyright reasons we weren’t allowed to show an image of the art, so we reduced the ad to a short descriptive text in reversed white out of orange.”