Nate Anderson, Ars Technica; Free at last! Official ACTA text coming next week:
"After more than a year of sustained pressure, the countries negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) have decided that the time is right to release the draft text of their work.
The official announcement came today after the conclusion of negotiations in New Zealand. "There was a general sense from this session that negotiations have now advanced to a point where making a draft text available to the public will help the process of reaching a final agreement," says the official announcement.
"For that reason, and based on the specific momentum coming out of this meeting, participants have reached unanimous agreement that the time is right for making available to the public the consolidated text coming out of these discussions, which will reflect the substantial progress made at this round."
The draft text will be released this upcoming Wednesday, April 21.
The announcement also shows just how carefully the European Union, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, the US, and others have been watching public opinion. It goes out of its way to say that the treaty will not oblige "participants to require border authorities to search travelers' baggage or their personal electronic devices for infringing materials." This is a clear attempt to rebut the "but customs will start searching my iPod!" madness we've seen in relation to ACTA.
The announcement also says that "no participant is proposing to require governments to mandate a 'graduated response' or 'three strikes' approach to copyright infringement on the Internet." As we've reported before, the leaked draft text does demand that ISPs have some plan in place to deter infringers, and a footnote made it clear that booting them off the Internet would be a great way to handle this—but the language in the draft came straight from the existing DMCA in the US and does not mandate any specific approach.
The announcement is certainly good news for fans of transparency, but it's not all sunshine and unicorns. For one thing, the participants plan to strip out their "respective positions." In other words, we are going to get a consolidated draft text that provides no information about who has been arguing for what position.
Not that it really matters, since massive leaks have already revealed negotiating positions and a complete draft text from January. It's disappointing that the negotiating countries refused to release more information about the process along the way; their decision to do so now has limited meaning, since the complete text is already leaked.
Still, it should allow negotiators to start answering public questions about the treaty and responding to public criticism. That's a good thing, but it comes quite late in the process. After a couple years of negotiations, the existence of a "consolidated text" shows that most of the tough negotiating has already been done. Changes could still be made at this point, but it's late in the process and today's announcement reminds us that the aim is to wrap up this treaty "as soon as possible in 2010."
The next meeting takes place in Switzerland in June."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/free-at-last-official-acta-text-coming-next-week.ars
Friday, April 16, 2010
Digital Economy Act: This means war; (London) Guardian, 4/16/10
Cory Doctorow, (London) Guardian; Digital Economy Act: This means war:
Baking surveillance, control and censorship into the very fabric of our networks, devices and laws is the absolute road to dictatorial hell:
"With the rushed passage into law of the Digital Economy Act this month, the fight over copyright enters a new phase. Previous to this, most copyfighters operated under the rubric that a negotiated peace was possible between the thrashing entertainment giants and civil society.
But now that the BPI and its mates have won themselves the finest law that money can buy – a law that establishes an unprecedented realm of web censorship in Britain, a law that provides for the disconnection of entire families from the net on the say-so of an entertainment giant, a law that shuts down free Wi-Fi hotspots and makes it harder than ever to conduct your normal business on the grounds that you might be damaging theirs – the game has changed.
I came to the copyfight from a pretty parochial place. As a working artist, I wanted a set of just copyright rules that provided a sound framework for my negotiations with big publishers, film studios, and similar institutions. I worried that the expansion of copyright – in duration and scope – would harm my ability to freely create. After all, creators are the most active re-users of copyright, each one of us a remix factory and a one-person archive of inspirational and influential materials. I also worried that giving the incumbent giants control over the new online distribution system would artificially extend their stranglehold over creators. This stranglehold means that practically every media giant offers the same awful terms to all of us, and no kinder competitor can get our works into the hands of our audiences.
I still worry about that stuff, of course. I co-founded a successful business – Boing Boing, the widely-read website – that benefits enormously from not having to pay fealty to a distributor in order to reach its readers (by contrast, the old print edition of Boing Boing folded when its main distributor went bankrupt while owing it a modest fortune and holding onto thousands of dollars' worth of printed materials that we never got back). My novels find their way onto the bestseller list by being distributed for free from my website simultaneous with their mainstream bookstore sales through publishers like Macmillan and HarperCollins and Random House.
My whole life revolves around the digital economy: running entrepreneurial businesses that thrive on copying and that exploit the net's powerful efficiencies to realise a better return on investment.
Parliament has just given two fingers to me (and every other small/medium digital enterprise) by agreeing to cripple Britain's internet in order to give higher profits to the analogue economy represented by the labels and studios.
But today, my bank-balance is the least of my worries. The entertainment industry's willingness to use parliament todi impose censorship and arbitrary punishment in the course of chasing a few extra quid is so depraved and terrible that it has me in fear for the very underpinnings of democracy and civil society.
In the US, the MPAA and RIAA (American equivalents of the MPA and the BPI) just submitted comments to the American Intellectual Property Czar, Victoria Espinel, laying out their proposal for IP enforcement. They want us all to install spyware on our computers that deletes material that it identifies as infringing. They want our networks censored by national firewalls (U2's Bono also called for this in a New York Times editorial, averring that if the Chinese could control dissident information with censorware, our own governments could deploy similar technology to keep infringement at bay). They want border-searches of laptops, personal media players and thumb-drives.
They want poor countries bullied into diverting GDP from humanitarian causes to enforcing copyright. And they want their domestic copyright enforcement handled, free of charge, by the Department of Homeland Security.
Elements of this agenda are also on display (or rather, in hiding) in the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a treaty being drafted between a member's club of rich nations. They've turned their back on the United Nations to negotiate in private, without having to contend with journalists or public interest groups. By their own admission, they intend to impose this treaty on poor countries as a condition of ongoing trade, and in the US, the Obama administration has announced its intention to pass ACTA without Congressional debate.
I'm not such a techno-triumphalist that I believe that the free and open internet will solve all our socio-economic problems. But I am enough of a techno-pessimist to believe that baking surveillance, control and censorship into the very fabric of our networks, devices and laws is the absolute road to dictatorial hell.
Chekhov wrote that a gun on the mantelpiece in act one is sure to go off by act three. The entertainment industry's blinkered pursuit of its own narrow goals has the potential to redesign our technology to be the perfect tools and excuses for oppression."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/apr/16/digital-economy-act-cory-doctorow
Baking surveillance, control and censorship into the very fabric of our networks, devices and laws is the absolute road to dictatorial hell:
"With the rushed passage into law of the Digital Economy Act this month, the fight over copyright enters a new phase. Previous to this, most copyfighters operated under the rubric that a negotiated peace was possible between the thrashing entertainment giants and civil society.
But now that the BPI and its mates have won themselves the finest law that money can buy – a law that establishes an unprecedented realm of web censorship in Britain, a law that provides for the disconnection of entire families from the net on the say-so of an entertainment giant, a law that shuts down free Wi-Fi hotspots and makes it harder than ever to conduct your normal business on the grounds that you might be damaging theirs – the game has changed.
I came to the copyfight from a pretty parochial place. As a working artist, I wanted a set of just copyright rules that provided a sound framework for my negotiations with big publishers, film studios, and similar institutions. I worried that the expansion of copyright – in duration and scope – would harm my ability to freely create. After all, creators are the most active re-users of copyright, each one of us a remix factory and a one-person archive of inspirational and influential materials. I also worried that giving the incumbent giants control over the new online distribution system would artificially extend their stranglehold over creators. This stranglehold means that practically every media giant offers the same awful terms to all of us, and no kinder competitor can get our works into the hands of our audiences.
I still worry about that stuff, of course. I co-founded a successful business – Boing Boing, the widely-read website – that benefits enormously from not having to pay fealty to a distributor in order to reach its readers (by contrast, the old print edition of Boing Boing folded when its main distributor went bankrupt while owing it a modest fortune and holding onto thousands of dollars' worth of printed materials that we never got back). My novels find their way onto the bestseller list by being distributed for free from my website simultaneous with their mainstream bookstore sales through publishers like Macmillan and HarperCollins and Random House.
My whole life revolves around the digital economy: running entrepreneurial businesses that thrive on copying and that exploit the net's powerful efficiencies to realise a better return on investment.
Parliament has just given two fingers to me (and every other small/medium digital enterprise) by agreeing to cripple Britain's internet in order to give higher profits to the analogue economy represented by the labels and studios.
But today, my bank-balance is the least of my worries. The entertainment industry's willingness to use parliament todi impose censorship and arbitrary punishment in the course of chasing a few extra quid is so depraved and terrible that it has me in fear for the very underpinnings of democracy and civil society.
In the US, the MPAA and RIAA (American equivalents of the MPA and the BPI) just submitted comments to the American Intellectual Property Czar, Victoria Espinel, laying out their proposal for IP enforcement. They want us all to install spyware on our computers that deletes material that it identifies as infringing. They want our networks censored by national firewalls (U2's Bono also called for this in a New York Times editorial, averring that if the Chinese could control dissident information with censorware, our own governments could deploy similar technology to keep infringement at bay). They want border-searches of laptops, personal media players and thumb-drives.
They want poor countries bullied into diverting GDP from humanitarian causes to enforcing copyright. And they want their domestic copyright enforcement handled, free of charge, by the Department of Homeland Security.
Elements of this agenda are also on display (or rather, in hiding) in the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a treaty being drafted between a member's club of rich nations. They've turned their back on the United Nations to negotiate in private, without having to contend with journalists or public interest groups. By their own admission, they intend to impose this treaty on poor countries as a condition of ongoing trade, and in the US, the Obama administration has announced its intention to pass ACTA without Congressional debate.
I'm not such a techno-triumphalist that I believe that the free and open internet will solve all our socio-economic problems. But I am enough of a techno-pessimist to believe that baking surveillance, control and censorship into the very fabric of our networks, devices and laws is the absolute road to dictatorial hell.
Chekhov wrote that a gun on the mantelpiece in act one is sure to go off by act three. The entertainment industry's blinkered pursuit of its own narrow goals has the potential to redesign our technology to be the perfect tools and excuses for oppression."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/apr/16/digital-economy-act-cory-doctorow
5 Ways The Google Book Settlement Will Change The Future of Reading; io9.com, 4/2/10
io9.com; 5 Ways The Google Book Settlement Will Change The Future of Reading:
"1. It may become harder to get information online about books from writers you love...
2. You will find yourself reading free books online, by authors who have disappeared. And Google will make money when you do...
3. Google will be competing with Apple and Amazon and everybody else to be your favorite online bookseller...
4. Google will be competing with Apple and Amazon and everybody else to be your favorite online bookseller...
5. Pulp science fiction will make a comeback in ways you might not expect."
http://io9.com/5501426/5-ways-the-google-book-settlement-will-change-the-future-of-reading
"1. It may become harder to get information online about books from writers you love...
2. You will find yourself reading free books online, by authors who have disappeared. And Google will make money when you do...
3. Google will be competing with Apple and Amazon and everybody else to be your favorite online bookseller...
4. Google will be competing with Apple and Amazon and everybody else to be your favorite online bookseller...
5. Pulp science fiction will make a comeback in ways you might not expect."
http://io9.com/5501426/5-ways-the-google-book-settlement-will-change-the-future-of-reading
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
[Podcast] American Readers, Waiting Impatiently For 'The Girl'; NPR, 4/5/10
[Podcast, 4 min. 38 sec.] NPR; American Readers, Waiting Impatiently For 'The Girl':
"All this online book-buying did not escape the attention of book sellers, like David Thompson of Murder By the Book mystery bookstore in Houston. Thompson says the store wanted to honor the U.S. release date, but it kept getting harder and harder.
"We had gotten several very loyal customers who just absolutely needed the third book because the second one ends with such a cliffhanger you really, really want to read that third one right away," Thompson says. "And so we felt that it was really important to serve our customers and import these books that there was a desperate demand for."
Eventually Knopf found out that Thompson's store and others were importing copies of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest and selling them to their customers. Knopf asked the booksellers to stop the practice, because says Bogaards, "it's a violation of copyright law."
But even online booksellers like Amazon.com are supposed to honor the U.S. release dates, which Bogaards says consumers may not know.
"What I would say to readers is, I would encourage them to shop at their local bookseller here in the United States or their online bookseller in the United States, where no laws are being broken and you are supporting the continuing discovery of world literature," Bogaards says."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125499739
"All this online book-buying did not escape the attention of book sellers, like David Thompson of Murder By the Book mystery bookstore in Houston. Thompson says the store wanted to honor the U.S. release date, but it kept getting harder and harder.
"We had gotten several very loyal customers who just absolutely needed the third book because the second one ends with such a cliffhanger you really, really want to read that third one right away," Thompson says. "And so we felt that it was really important to serve our customers and import these books that there was a desperate demand for."
Eventually Knopf found out that Thompson's store and others were importing copies of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest and selling them to their customers. Knopf asked the booksellers to stop the practice, because says Bogaards, "it's a violation of copyright law."
But even online booksellers like Amazon.com are supposed to honor the U.S. release dates, which Bogaards says consumers may not know.
"What I would say to readers is, I would encourage them to shop at their local bookseller here in the United States or their online bookseller in the United States, where no laws are being broken and you are supporting the continuing discovery of world literature," Bogaards says."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125499739
Copyright and wrong; Economist, 4/8/10
Economist; Copyright and wrong: Why the rules on copyright need to return to their roots:
"WHEN Parliament decided, in 1709, to create a law that would protect books from piracy, the London-based publishers and booksellers who had been pushing for such protection were overjoyed. When Queen Anne gave her assent on April 10th the following year—300 years ago this week—to “An act for the encouragement of learning” they were less enthused. Parliament had given them rights, but it had set a time limit on them: 21 years for books already in print and 14 years for new ones, with an additional 14 years if the author was still alive when the first term ran out. After that, the material would enter the public domain so that anyone could reproduce it. The lawmakers intended thus to balance the incentive to create with the interest that society has in free access to knowledge and art. The Statute of Anne thus helped nurture and channel the spate of inventiveness that Enlightenment society and its successors have since enjoyed.
Over the past 50 years, however, that balance has shifted. Largely thanks to the entertainment industry’s lawyers and lobbyists, copyright’s scope and duration have vastly increased. In America, copyright holders get 95 years’ protection as a result of an extension granted in 1998, derided by critics as the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act”. They are now calling for even greater protection, and there have been efforts to introduce similar terms in Europe. Such arguments should be resisted: it is time to tip the balance back.
Annie get your gun
Lengthy protection, it is argued, increases the incentive to create. Digital technology seems to strengthen the argument: by making copying easier, it seems to demand greater protection in return. The idea of extending copyright also has a moral appeal. Intellectual property can seem very like real property, especially when it is yours, and not some faceless corporation’s. As a result people feel that once they own it—especially if they have made it—they should go on owning it, much as they would a house that they could pass on to their descendants. On this reading, protection should be perpetual. Ratcheting up the time limit on a regular basis becomes a reasonable way of approximating that perpetuity.
The notion that lengthening copyright increases creativity is questionable, however. Authors and artists do not generally consult the statute books before deciding whether or not to pick up pen or paintbrush. And overlong copyrights often limit, rather than encourage, a work’s dissemination, impact and influence. It can be difficult to locate copyright holders to obtain the rights to reuse old material. As a result, much content ends up in legal limbo (and in the case of old movies and sound recordings, is left to deteriorate—copying them in order to preserve them may constitute an act of infringement). The penalties even for inadvertent infringement are so punishing that creators routinely have to self-censor their work. Nor does the advent of digital technology strengthen the case for extending the period of protection. Copyright protection is needed partly to cover the costs of creating and distributing works in physical form. Digital technology slashes such costs, and thus reduces the argument for protection.
The moral case, although easy to sympathise with, is a way of trying to have one’s cake and eat it. Copyright was originally the grant of a temporary government-supported monopoly on copying a work, not a property right. From 1710 onwards, it has involved a deal in which the creator or publisher gives up any natural and perpetual claim in order to have the state protect an artificial and limited one. So it remains.
The question is how such a deal can be made equitably. At the moment, the terms of trade favour publishers too much. A return to the 28-year copyrights of the Statute of Anne would be in many ways arbitrary, but not unreasonable. If there is a case for longer terms, they should be on a renewal basis, so that content is not locked up automatically. The value society places on creativity means that fair use needs to be expanded and inadvertent infringement should be minimally penalised. None of this should get in the way of the enforcement of copyright, which remains a vital tool in the encouragement of learning. But tools are not ends in themselves."
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15868004
"WHEN Parliament decided, in 1709, to create a law that would protect books from piracy, the London-based publishers and booksellers who had been pushing for such protection were overjoyed. When Queen Anne gave her assent on April 10th the following year—300 years ago this week—to “An act for the encouragement of learning” they were less enthused. Parliament had given them rights, but it had set a time limit on them: 21 years for books already in print and 14 years for new ones, with an additional 14 years if the author was still alive when the first term ran out. After that, the material would enter the public domain so that anyone could reproduce it. The lawmakers intended thus to balance the incentive to create with the interest that society has in free access to knowledge and art. The Statute of Anne thus helped nurture and channel the spate of inventiveness that Enlightenment society and its successors have since enjoyed.
Over the past 50 years, however, that balance has shifted. Largely thanks to the entertainment industry’s lawyers and lobbyists, copyright’s scope and duration have vastly increased. In America, copyright holders get 95 years’ protection as a result of an extension granted in 1998, derided by critics as the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act”. They are now calling for even greater protection, and there have been efforts to introduce similar terms in Europe. Such arguments should be resisted: it is time to tip the balance back.
Annie get your gun
Lengthy protection, it is argued, increases the incentive to create. Digital technology seems to strengthen the argument: by making copying easier, it seems to demand greater protection in return. The idea of extending copyright also has a moral appeal. Intellectual property can seem very like real property, especially when it is yours, and not some faceless corporation’s. As a result people feel that once they own it—especially if they have made it—they should go on owning it, much as they would a house that they could pass on to their descendants. On this reading, protection should be perpetual. Ratcheting up the time limit on a regular basis becomes a reasonable way of approximating that perpetuity.
The notion that lengthening copyright increases creativity is questionable, however. Authors and artists do not generally consult the statute books before deciding whether or not to pick up pen or paintbrush. And overlong copyrights often limit, rather than encourage, a work’s dissemination, impact and influence. It can be difficult to locate copyright holders to obtain the rights to reuse old material. As a result, much content ends up in legal limbo (and in the case of old movies and sound recordings, is left to deteriorate—copying them in order to preserve them may constitute an act of infringement). The penalties even for inadvertent infringement are so punishing that creators routinely have to self-censor their work. Nor does the advent of digital technology strengthen the case for extending the period of protection. Copyright protection is needed partly to cover the costs of creating and distributing works in physical form. Digital technology slashes such costs, and thus reduces the argument for protection.
The moral case, although easy to sympathise with, is a way of trying to have one’s cake and eat it. Copyright was originally the grant of a temporary government-supported monopoly on copying a work, not a property right. From 1710 onwards, it has involved a deal in which the creator or publisher gives up any natural and perpetual claim in order to have the state protect an artificial and limited one. So it remains.
The question is how such a deal can be made equitably. At the moment, the terms of trade favour publishers too much. A return to the 28-year copyrights of the Statute of Anne would be in many ways arbitrary, but not unreasonable. If there is a case for longer terms, they should be on a renewal basis, so that content is not locked up automatically. The value society places on creativity means that fair use needs to be expanded and inadvertent infringement should be minimally penalised. None of this should get in the way of the enforcement of copyright, which remains a vital tool in the encouragement of learning. But tools are not ends in themselves."
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15868004
Thursday, April 8, 2010
U.K. Approves Crackdown on Internet Pirates; New York Times, 4/8/10
Eric Pfanner, New York Times; U.K. Approves Crackdown on Internet Pirates:
"The British Parliament on Thursday approved plans to crack down on digital media piracy by authorizing the suspension of repeat offenders’ Internet connections.
Following the House of Commons late Wednesday, the House of Lords on Thursday approved the bill after heavy lobbying from the music and movie industries, which say they suffer huge losses from unauthorized copying over the Internet.
The law makes Britain the second large European country, after France, to approve a so-called graduated response system, under which online copyright violators face temporary suspensions of their Internet accounts if they ignore warning letters to stop.
“The U.K. has today joined the ranks of those countries who have taken decisive and well-considered steps to address the issue,” John Kennedy, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said in a statement. “We hope this will prompt more focus and urgency for similar measures in other countries where debate is under way.”
The anti-piracy plan is part of a broader bill aimed at stimulating the development of the digital economy in Britain."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/technology/09piracy.html?hpw
"The British Parliament on Thursday approved plans to crack down on digital media piracy by authorizing the suspension of repeat offenders’ Internet connections.
Following the House of Commons late Wednesday, the House of Lords on Thursday approved the bill after heavy lobbying from the music and movie industries, which say they suffer huge losses from unauthorized copying over the Internet.
The law makes Britain the second large European country, after France, to approve a so-called graduated response system, under which online copyright violators face temporary suspensions of their Internet accounts if they ignore warning letters to stop.
“The U.K. has today joined the ranks of those countries who have taken decisive and well-considered steps to address the issue,” John Kennedy, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said in a statement. “We hope this will prompt more focus and urgency for similar measures in other countries where debate is under way.”
The anti-piracy plan is part of a broader bill aimed at stimulating the development of the digital economy in Britain."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/technology/09piracy.html?hpw
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Visual Artists to Sue Google Over Vast Library Project; New York Times, 4/7/10
Miguel Helft, New York Times; Visual Artists to Sue Google Over Vast Library Project:
"As Google awaits approval of a controversial settlement with authors and book publishers, the company’s plan to create an immense digital library and bookstore may face yet another hurdle.
On Wednesday, the American Society of Media Photographers and other groups representing visual artists plan to file a class-action lawsuit against Google, asserting that the company’s efforts to digitize millions of books from libraries amount to large-scale infringement of their copyrights.
The lawsuit, in some respects, mirrors the complaints filed in 2005 by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers when they first opposed Google’s library project on copyright grounds.
Those groups have since agreed to a sweeping $125 million settlement that, if approved, would allow Google to make available and sell digital copies of millions of out-of-print books. The settlement would also give authors and publishers new ways to make money from digital copies of their work.
The photographer group decided to file suit after its efforts to intervene in the settlement were rejected by a court last year. The complaint claims Google’s mass copying efforts infringe on the rights of photographers and other creators of graphic works.
“We are seeking justice and fair compensation for visual artists whose work appears in the 12 million books and other publications Google has illegally scanned to date,” said Victor Perlman, general counsel for the American Society of Media Photographers.
Other groups joining the class action include the Graphic Artists Guild, the North American Nature Photography Association and the Professional Photographers of America, as well as individual photographers and illustrators.
Google’s settlement with authors and publishers largely excluded photographs and other visual works. Legal experts said it was not unexpected that Google would face claims from groups that were not part of the original case and are not covered by it.
“Google is trying to control or expand access to virtually all information in the world,” said Scott Moss, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School. “It isn’t surprising that their settlement with written authors doesn’t end all their legal battles.”
Professor Moss said that while Google would have to contend with the allegations made by the photographers and graphic artists, the new case was not likely to delay or otherwise affect the company’s settlement with authors and publishers.
Judge Denny Chin, of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York is expected to rule on the validity of the proposed settlement in the coming months.
The agreement has faced a barrage of opposition from Google rivals like Amazon.com and Microsoft, as well as many academics and legal scholars, representatives of authors and estates, and even some foreign governments. The Justice Department said the settlement posed antitrust and other legal problems.
Unlike the suit by authors and publishers, which focused largely on Google’s scanning of books from libraries, the suit from the photographers and graphic artists includes Google’s “partner program,” under which some publishers allow Google to include their books in the company’s book search service. The new suit claims the program fails to adequately compensate visual artists for the use of their work."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/technology/07google.html?scp=1&sq=visual%20artists&st=cse
"As Google awaits approval of a controversial settlement with authors and book publishers, the company’s plan to create an immense digital library and bookstore may face yet another hurdle.
On Wednesday, the American Society of Media Photographers and other groups representing visual artists plan to file a class-action lawsuit against Google, asserting that the company’s efforts to digitize millions of books from libraries amount to large-scale infringement of their copyrights.
The lawsuit, in some respects, mirrors the complaints filed in 2005 by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers when they first opposed Google’s library project on copyright grounds.
Those groups have since agreed to a sweeping $125 million settlement that, if approved, would allow Google to make available and sell digital copies of millions of out-of-print books. The settlement would also give authors and publishers new ways to make money from digital copies of their work.
The photographer group decided to file suit after its efforts to intervene in the settlement were rejected by a court last year. The complaint claims Google’s mass copying efforts infringe on the rights of photographers and other creators of graphic works.
“We are seeking justice and fair compensation for visual artists whose work appears in the 12 million books and other publications Google has illegally scanned to date,” said Victor Perlman, general counsel for the American Society of Media Photographers.
Other groups joining the class action include the Graphic Artists Guild, the North American Nature Photography Association and the Professional Photographers of America, as well as individual photographers and illustrators.
Google’s settlement with authors and publishers largely excluded photographs and other visual works. Legal experts said it was not unexpected that Google would face claims from groups that were not part of the original case and are not covered by it.
“Google is trying to control or expand access to virtually all information in the world,” said Scott Moss, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School. “It isn’t surprising that their settlement with written authors doesn’t end all their legal battles.”
Professor Moss said that while Google would have to contend with the allegations made by the photographers and graphic artists, the new case was not likely to delay or otherwise affect the company’s settlement with authors and publishers.
Judge Denny Chin, of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York is expected to rule on the validity of the proposed settlement in the coming months.
The agreement has faced a barrage of opposition from Google rivals like Amazon.com and Microsoft, as well as many academics and legal scholars, representatives of authors and estates, and even some foreign governments. The Justice Department said the settlement posed antitrust and other legal problems.
Unlike the suit by authors and publishers, which focused largely on Google’s scanning of books from libraries, the suit from the photographers and graphic artists includes Google’s “partner program,” under which some publishers allow Google to include their books in the company’s book search service. The new suit claims the program fails to adequately compensate visual artists for the use of their work."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/technology/07google.html?scp=1&sq=visual%20artists&st=cse
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Obama admin: time to make radio pay for its music; Ars Technica, 4/2/10
Nate Anderson, Ars Technica; Obama admin: time to make radio pay for its music:
"The recording industry scored a significant victory today with news that the Obama administration will provide its "strong support" for the Performance Rights Act. The bill would force over-the-air radio stations to start coughing up cash for the music they play; right now, the stations pay songwriters, but not the actual recording artists.
This has been a dream of the recording industry for decades, but it has taken on new importance as the revenues from recorded music have plummeted over the last decade. The broadcasters refer to the idea as a new "tax" that will largely benefit foreign record companies such as Universal (France), Sony (Japan), and EMI (UK).
Taking sides
Today, a letter from the Commerce Department's general counsel, Cameron Kerry, makes clear which side has the administration's support: the recording industry. (We double-checked with Kerry's office; this is no April Fools' joke.)
"The Department has long endorsed amending the US copyright law to provide for an exclusive right of public performance of sound recordings," says the letter. It pledges "strong support" for the current bill and approves the idea that radio's payment exemption is nothing more than "an historical anomaly that does not have a strong policy justification."
A copy of the letter was sent to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the letter, Kerry says that making radio pay for music is really a matter of fairness—not just to artists, but to Internet webcasters and satellite radio, too.
That's because both webcasters and the satellite radio folks currently do have to pay a public performance right on the music they play; the exclusion granted to over-the-air broadcasters thus distorts the market and makes it difficult for new technologies to gain traction. "It would also provide a level playing field for all broadcasters to compete in the current environment of rapid technological change, including the Internet, satellite, and terrestrial broadcasters," says the letter.
In addition to rationalizing the performance rights scheme in the US, Commerce points out that the US is the only major industrialized country to have such an exemption for over-the-air radio. Making a change isn't just a case of bowing to peer pressure; real money is at stake, since many artists are unable to collect the public performance money due them in other countries because of "the lack of reciprocal protection under US copyright law.""
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/obama-admin-make-radio-pay-for-its-music.ars
"The recording industry scored a significant victory today with news that the Obama administration will provide its "strong support" for the Performance Rights Act. The bill would force over-the-air radio stations to start coughing up cash for the music they play; right now, the stations pay songwriters, but not the actual recording artists.
This has been a dream of the recording industry for decades, but it has taken on new importance as the revenues from recorded music have plummeted over the last decade. The broadcasters refer to the idea as a new "tax" that will largely benefit foreign record companies such as Universal (France), Sony (Japan), and EMI (UK).
Taking sides
Today, a letter from the Commerce Department's general counsel, Cameron Kerry, makes clear which side has the administration's support: the recording industry. (We double-checked with Kerry's office; this is no April Fools' joke.)
"The Department has long endorsed amending the US copyright law to provide for an exclusive right of public performance of sound recordings," says the letter. It pledges "strong support" for the current bill and approves the idea that radio's payment exemption is nothing more than "an historical anomaly that does not have a strong policy justification."
A copy of the letter was sent to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the letter, Kerry says that making radio pay for music is really a matter of fairness—not just to artists, but to Internet webcasters and satellite radio, too.
That's because both webcasters and the satellite radio folks currently do have to pay a public performance right on the music they play; the exclusion granted to over-the-air broadcasters thus distorts the market and makes it difficult for new technologies to gain traction. "It would also provide a level playing field for all broadcasters to compete in the current environment of rapid technological change, including the Internet, satellite, and terrestrial broadcasters," says the letter.
In addition to rationalizing the performance rights scheme in the US, Commerce points out that the US is the only major industrialized country to have such an exemption for over-the-air radio. Making a change isn't just a case of bowing to peer pressure; real money is at stake, since many artists are unable to collect the public performance money due them in other countries because of "the lack of reciprocal protection under US copyright law.""
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/obama-admin-make-radio-pay-for-its-music.ars
Saturday, April 3, 2010
[OpEd] The End of History (Books); New York Times, 4/3/10
[OpEd] New York Times; Marc Aronson, The End of History (Books):
"TODAY, Apple’s iPad goes on sale, and many see this as a Gutenberg moment, with digital multimedia moving one step closer toward replacing old-fashioned books.
Speaking as an author and editor of illustrated nonfiction, I agree that important change is afoot, but not in the way most people see it. In order for electronic books to live up to their billing, we have to fix a system that is broken: getting permission to use copyrighted material in new work. Either we change the way we deal with copyrights — or works of nonfiction in a multimedia world will become ever more dull and disappointing.
The hope of nonfiction is to connect readers to something outside the book: the past, a discovery, a social issue. To do this, authors need to draw on pre-existing words and images.
Unless we nonfiction writers are lucky and hit a public-domain mother lode, we have to pay for the right to use just about anything — from a single line of a song to any part of a poem; from the vast archives of the world’s art (now managed by gimlet-eyed venture capitalists) to the historical images that serve as profit centers for museums and academic libraries.
The amount we pay depends on where and how the material is used. In fact, the very first question a rights holder asks is “What are you going to do with my baby?” Which countries do you plan to sell in? What languages? Over what period of time? How large will the image be in your book?
Given that permission costs are already out of control for old-fashioned print, it’s fair to expect that they will rise even higher with e-books. After all, digital books will be in print forever (we assume); they can be downloaded, copied, shared and maybe even translated. We’ve all heard about the multimedia potential of the iPad, but how much will writers be charged for film clips and audio? Rights holders will demand a hefty premium for use in digital books — if they make their materials available in that format at all.
Seeing the clouds on the horizon, publishers painstakingly remove photos and even text extracts from print books as they are converted to e-books. So instead of providing a dazzling future, the e-world is forcing nonfiction to become drier, blander and denser.
Still, this logjam between technological potential and copyright hell could turn into a great opportunity — if it leads to a new model for how permission costs are calculated in e-books and even in print.
For e-books, the new model would look something like this: Instead of paying permission fees upfront based on estimated print runs, book creators would pay based on a periodic accounting of downloads. Right now, fees are laid out on a set schedule whose minimum rates are often higher than a modest book can support. The costs may be fine for textbooks or advertisers, but they punish individual authors. Since publishers can’t afford to fully cover permissions fees for print books, and cannot yet predict what they will earn from e-books, the writer has to choose between taking a loss on permissions fees or short-changing readers on content.
But if rights holders were compensated for actual downloads, there would be a perfect fit. The better a book did, the more the original rights holder would be paid. The challenge of this model is accurate accounting — but in the age of iTunes micropayments surely someone can figure out a way.
Before we even get to downloads, though, we need to fix the problem for print books. As a starting point, authors and publishers — perhaps through a joint committee of the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers — should create a grid of standard rates and images and text extracts keyed to print runs and prices.
Since authors and publishers have stakes on both sides of this issue, they ought to be able to come up with suggested fees that would allow creators to set reasonable budgets, and compel rights holders to conform to industry norms.
A good starting point might be a suggested scale based on the total number of images used in a book; an image that was one one-hundredth of a story would cost less than an image that was a tenth of it. Such a plan would encourage authors to use more art, which is precisely what we all want.
If rights remain as tightly controlled and as expensive as they are now, nonfiction will be the province of the entirely new or the overly familiar. Dazzling books with newly created art, text and multimedia will far outnumber works filled with historical materials. Only a few well-heeled companies will have the wherewithal to create gee-whiz multimedia book-like products that require permissions, and these projects will most likely focus on highly popular subjects. History’s outsiders and untold stories will be left behind.
We treat copyrights as individual possessions, jewels that exist entirely by themselves. I’m obviously sympathetic to that point of view. But source material also takes on another life when it’s repurposed. It becomes part of the flow, the narration, the interweaving of text and art in books and e-books. It’s essential that we take this into account as we re-imagine permissions in a digital age.
When we have a new model for permissions, we will have new media. Then all of us — authors, readers, new-media innovators, rights holders — will really see the stories that words and images can tell."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/opinion/03aronson.html
"TODAY, Apple’s iPad goes on sale, and many see this as a Gutenberg moment, with digital multimedia moving one step closer toward replacing old-fashioned books.
Speaking as an author and editor of illustrated nonfiction, I agree that important change is afoot, but not in the way most people see it. In order for electronic books to live up to their billing, we have to fix a system that is broken: getting permission to use copyrighted material in new work. Either we change the way we deal with copyrights — or works of nonfiction in a multimedia world will become ever more dull and disappointing.
The hope of nonfiction is to connect readers to something outside the book: the past, a discovery, a social issue. To do this, authors need to draw on pre-existing words and images.
Unless we nonfiction writers are lucky and hit a public-domain mother lode, we have to pay for the right to use just about anything — from a single line of a song to any part of a poem; from the vast archives of the world’s art (now managed by gimlet-eyed venture capitalists) to the historical images that serve as profit centers for museums and academic libraries.
The amount we pay depends on where and how the material is used. In fact, the very first question a rights holder asks is “What are you going to do with my baby?” Which countries do you plan to sell in? What languages? Over what period of time? How large will the image be in your book?
Given that permission costs are already out of control for old-fashioned print, it’s fair to expect that they will rise even higher with e-books. After all, digital books will be in print forever (we assume); they can be downloaded, copied, shared and maybe even translated. We’ve all heard about the multimedia potential of the iPad, but how much will writers be charged for film clips and audio? Rights holders will demand a hefty premium for use in digital books — if they make their materials available in that format at all.
Seeing the clouds on the horizon, publishers painstakingly remove photos and even text extracts from print books as they are converted to e-books. So instead of providing a dazzling future, the e-world is forcing nonfiction to become drier, blander and denser.
Still, this logjam between technological potential and copyright hell could turn into a great opportunity — if it leads to a new model for how permission costs are calculated in e-books and even in print.
For e-books, the new model would look something like this: Instead of paying permission fees upfront based on estimated print runs, book creators would pay based on a periodic accounting of downloads. Right now, fees are laid out on a set schedule whose minimum rates are often higher than a modest book can support. The costs may be fine for textbooks or advertisers, but they punish individual authors. Since publishers can’t afford to fully cover permissions fees for print books, and cannot yet predict what they will earn from e-books, the writer has to choose between taking a loss on permissions fees or short-changing readers on content.
But if rights holders were compensated for actual downloads, there would be a perfect fit. The better a book did, the more the original rights holder would be paid. The challenge of this model is accurate accounting — but in the age of iTunes micropayments surely someone can figure out a way.
Before we even get to downloads, though, we need to fix the problem for print books. As a starting point, authors and publishers — perhaps through a joint committee of the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers — should create a grid of standard rates and images and text extracts keyed to print runs and prices.
Since authors and publishers have stakes on both sides of this issue, they ought to be able to come up with suggested fees that would allow creators to set reasonable budgets, and compel rights holders to conform to industry norms.
A good starting point might be a suggested scale based on the total number of images used in a book; an image that was one one-hundredth of a story would cost less than an image that was a tenth of it. Such a plan would encourage authors to use more art, which is precisely what we all want.
If rights remain as tightly controlled and as expensive as they are now, nonfiction will be the province of the entirely new or the overly familiar. Dazzling books with newly created art, text and multimedia will far outnumber works filled with historical materials. Only a few well-heeled companies will have the wherewithal to create gee-whiz multimedia book-like products that require permissions, and these projects will most likely focus on highly popular subjects. History’s outsiders and untold stories will be left behind.
We treat copyrights as individual possessions, jewels that exist entirely by themselves. I’m obviously sympathetic to that point of view. But source material also takes on another life when it’s repurposed. It becomes part of the flow, the narration, the interweaving of text and art in books and e-books. It’s essential that we take this into account as we re-imagine permissions in a digital age.
When we have a new model for permissions, we will have new media. Then all of us — authors, readers, new-media innovators, rights holders — will really see the stories that words and images can tell."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/opinion/03aronson.html
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Remix Pedagogy, Libraries, and the Georgia State Case | Peer to Peer Review; Library Journal,
Barbara Fister, Library Journal; Remix Pedagogy, Libraries, and the Georgia State Case Peer to Peer Review:
"I found myself wondering today if students at my college would be happy if the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia agrees to the motion for summary judgment filed by Cambridge, Oxford, and SAGE against Georgia State University. A ruling in favor of the publishers could put an end to most library e-reserves programs and would essentially prohibit the sharing of scholarly publications through course management systems (CMSs) without purchasing a license for each work, each student, each semester.
So why might our students be pleased?
Increasing students’ costs by replacing e-reserves with coursepacks, print or electronic, is, frankly, a non-starter. Legislators have been logging so many complaints about the cost of textbooks, the US Congress has passed a law that requires faculty to identify their required course texts before students register for classes, so that they can calculate how much the course will set them back and plan accordingly.
This is not pleasing to faculty, who now have to turn in their textbook orders much earlier, and it’s a huge headache for campus bookstores (which have to play along but will lose sales to used book vendors) and registrars who have to construct new registration procedures to enforce the law. If the courts rule against George State University, making students pay for virtually every assigned reading would be a politically toxic outcome. But it’s equally unlikely that cash-strapped institutions would be willing or able to subsidize the costs on behalf of students.
The most likely immediate outcome is that faculty would simply scale back on reading assignments. I can hear our students cheering already. But is this really good for higher education?
Going to the source
Many instructors prefer to expose students to scholarly work in its original form, rather than rely exclusively on textbooks that have combined and digested the most commonly-accepted research ideas into an accessible but bland survey.
Of course, faculty have other options. If pay-per-use proved to be too expensive, they could limit their assigned reading to open access scholarship or to materials that are licensed by the library for campus use—oh, but not including publications like the Harvard Business Review, which prohibits using its library-licensed articles in courses. (Personally, I think tenure and promotion committees should disregard any citations to this publication on candidate’s CVs, just to even the score.)
But knowledge isn’t built out of stuff that can be easily substituted, depending on cost and availability. It’s built out of unique ideas that were expressed by scholars in order to contribute something new to our understanding of the world. One of the reasons why market-based economics are so inappropriate for scholarly communication is that in the marketplace of ideas, you can’t win market share by offering a cheaper idea.
Each idea has to stand on its own merits, regardless of which publishing company owns the copyright. If I can’t afford the knowledge in an article published in Nature Neuroscience, I can’t correct the market by choosing an article in a cheaper journal. Even more confounding, being exclusive and rare does not increase the value of an idea; its value is measured by how often it’s shared.
From the publishers’ perspectiveTo try and understand the publishers’ argument, I read the original complaint, their motion for summary judgment, and supporting materials filed by two university presses and one for-profit scholarly press against four individuals: the president, provost, and heads of the library and IT operations at Georgia State University (which, the plaintiffs note, employs over 100 faculty who have written some of the materials these publishers make available; I wonder what they think about this lawsuit?). These seem to be the plaintiffs’ major points:
Revenue generated by course packs has gone down as e-reserve and CMS systems are adopted; students prefer not to purchase course packs because they are costly, so encourage their instructors to make readings available in an alternative form. It’s hard to know exactly what losses we’re talking about, since every sales figure has been redacted from the documents.
Seems it’s none of our business how much we spend on this stuff.
Some instructors’ course content is conveyed through scholarly texts that, though they have likely been acquired by the library on behalf of the campus, don’t generate new revenue for publishers as students are asked to read them. Implicit in this objection is that faculty should be requiring students to purchase most of their course materials and are engaging in spurious remix culture by creating their own spontaneous anthologies. Oh, for shame.
The plaintiffs feel that checklists used to guide fair use decisions are inappropriate because the people using them are not trained in the law, and such checklists (like the one posted at the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), which the plaintiffs otherwise endorse as a convenient resource for paying licenses) are too likely to support fair use claims. (Hat tip to Kevin Smith for the link to CCC’s checklist.)
Because readings are in digital form, students could copy and distribute works even if access is limited to enrolled students. Apparently students should not only pay per use, but that use should be limited in some fashion. This neglects the fact that library subscriptions to digital materials enable distribution of full-text articles; in fact, most databases, even SAGE Journals Online, have functions for saving or e-mailing copies of articles, enabling convenient sharing capability. (Maybe I shouldn’t be giving these people ideas.)
Colleges and universities should adhere to fair use guidelines as restrictive as those followed by publishers; one of the plaintiffs points out that when they publish a work that incorporates copyrighted material, they consider it fair use only if they use less than three percent of the work and the use is transformative—which assigned reading typically would not be. They suggest there is no way that reading scholarly materials without a payment for each student could be fair use.
I particularly like this bit of outrage: Students are able to get materials “without setting foot in a bookstore or expending a single cent on the copyrighted materials that lie at the heart of the educational experience.” Have they heard of libraries? Of course they have! We’re their biggest customers. But apparently we’re not at the heart of the educational experience, or if we are, we shouldn’t be.
I confess I laughed out loud at this statement: “This revenue is also vitally important to the authors of such works, and serves as a spur to, and reward for, creative expression.” There is no direct financial incentive for most academic authors to publish. However, having one of your articles assigned in courses, while not profitable, is sweet.
And then there’s this fit of pique: “Defendant’s acts have been and continue to be willful, intentional and purposeful, in violation of Plaintiff’s rights.” In other words, Georgia State didn’t roll over and settle out of court.
I admit, after reading their arguments, the only one that makes any sense to me is that the revenue stream that came from coursepacks is drying up, and publishers are concerned about how to sustain their operations. But is that reason enough to demand that the use of scholarly materials in courses should be metered on a pay-per-use basis? It seems to me irresponsible for scholarly publishers to attempt to criminalize the use of these materials in courses unless it generates additional income for them.
What are our options?
Raizel Liebler asked an excellent question at the LibraryLaw Blog back in 2008, when the complaint was first filed: is fair use dead? Or are traditional publishing models dying? She lays out five options for libraries if publishers win this lawsuit:
Pay permissions for everything placed on e-reserve. This, of course, will reduce our ability to buy new scholarship and will not enhance publishers’ bottom line.
Adopt a deeply conservative set of guidelines and hope they pass muster.
Tell faculty the only things they can put in e-reserves are links to licensed content that doesn’t prohibit such linking.
Cease offering e-reserves.
Change the system.
This last idea, of course, is the only option that has a positive outcome. We need to find a way that scholars can both systematically and impulsively share scholarly work with students without penalty. We need to find a way to support and sustain the editorial value provided by conscientious and professional publishing. We need to ensure that the materials libraries provide on behalf of their communities can be used to further students’ educations.
Something is badly broken when university presses sue universities for using their materials. We need to stop playing a shell game that merely shifts the costs and benefits around. It’s not sustainable.
I want my students to be happy, and I want our faculty to be more aware of the case for open access, but putting a tollgate on library materials used in courses is not the way to go."
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6724855.html
"I found myself wondering today if students at my college would be happy if the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia agrees to the motion for summary judgment filed by Cambridge, Oxford, and SAGE against Georgia State University. A ruling in favor of the publishers could put an end to most library e-reserves programs and would essentially prohibit the sharing of scholarly publications through course management systems (CMSs) without purchasing a license for each work, each student, each semester.
So why might our students be pleased?
Increasing students’ costs by replacing e-reserves with coursepacks, print or electronic, is, frankly, a non-starter. Legislators have been logging so many complaints about the cost of textbooks, the US Congress has passed a law that requires faculty to identify their required course texts before students register for classes, so that they can calculate how much the course will set them back and plan accordingly.
This is not pleasing to faculty, who now have to turn in their textbook orders much earlier, and it’s a huge headache for campus bookstores (which have to play along but will lose sales to used book vendors) and registrars who have to construct new registration procedures to enforce the law. If the courts rule against George State University, making students pay for virtually every assigned reading would be a politically toxic outcome. But it’s equally unlikely that cash-strapped institutions would be willing or able to subsidize the costs on behalf of students.
The most likely immediate outcome is that faculty would simply scale back on reading assignments. I can hear our students cheering already. But is this really good for higher education?
Going to the source
Many instructors prefer to expose students to scholarly work in its original form, rather than rely exclusively on textbooks that have combined and digested the most commonly-accepted research ideas into an accessible but bland survey.
Of course, faculty have other options. If pay-per-use proved to be too expensive, they could limit their assigned reading to open access scholarship or to materials that are licensed by the library for campus use—oh, but not including publications like the Harvard Business Review, which prohibits using its library-licensed articles in courses. (Personally, I think tenure and promotion committees should disregard any citations to this publication on candidate’s CVs, just to even the score.)
But knowledge isn’t built out of stuff that can be easily substituted, depending on cost and availability. It’s built out of unique ideas that were expressed by scholars in order to contribute something new to our understanding of the world. One of the reasons why market-based economics are so inappropriate for scholarly communication is that in the marketplace of ideas, you can’t win market share by offering a cheaper idea.
Each idea has to stand on its own merits, regardless of which publishing company owns the copyright. If I can’t afford the knowledge in an article published in Nature Neuroscience, I can’t correct the market by choosing an article in a cheaper journal. Even more confounding, being exclusive and rare does not increase the value of an idea; its value is measured by how often it’s shared.
From the publishers’ perspectiveTo try and understand the publishers’ argument, I read the original complaint, their motion for summary judgment, and supporting materials filed by two university presses and one for-profit scholarly press against four individuals: the president, provost, and heads of the library and IT operations at Georgia State University (which, the plaintiffs note, employs over 100 faculty who have written some of the materials these publishers make available; I wonder what they think about this lawsuit?). These seem to be the plaintiffs’ major points:
Revenue generated by course packs has gone down as e-reserve and CMS systems are adopted; students prefer not to purchase course packs because they are costly, so encourage their instructors to make readings available in an alternative form. It’s hard to know exactly what losses we’re talking about, since every sales figure has been redacted from the documents.
Seems it’s none of our business how much we spend on this stuff.
Some instructors’ course content is conveyed through scholarly texts that, though they have likely been acquired by the library on behalf of the campus, don’t generate new revenue for publishers as students are asked to read them. Implicit in this objection is that faculty should be requiring students to purchase most of their course materials and are engaging in spurious remix culture by creating their own spontaneous anthologies. Oh, for shame.
The plaintiffs feel that checklists used to guide fair use decisions are inappropriate because the people using them are not trained in the law, and such checklists (like the one posted at the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), which the plaintiffs otherwise endorse as a convenient resource for paying licenses) are too likely to support fair use claims. (Hat tip to Kevin Smith for the link to CCC’s checklist.)
Because readings are in digital form, students could copy and distribute works even if access is limited to enrolled students. Apparently students should not only pay per use, but that use should be limited in some fashion. This neglects the fact that library subscriptions to digital materials enable distribution of full-text articles; in fact, most databases, even SAGE Journals Online, have functions for saving or e-mailing copies of articles, enabling convenient sharing capability. (Maybe I shouldn’t be giving these people ideas.)
Colleges and universities should adhere to fair use guidelines as restrictive as those followed by publishers; one of the plaintiffs points out that when they publish a work that incorporates copyrighted material, they consider it fair use only if they use less than three percent of the work and the use is transformative—which assigned reading typically would not be. They suggest there is no way that reading scholarly materials without a payment for each student could be fair use.
I particularly like this bit of outrage: Students are able to get materials “without setting foot in a bookstore or expending a single cent on the copyrighted materials that lie at the heart of the educational experience.” Have they heard of libraries? Of course they have! We’re their biggest customers. But apparently we’re not at the heart of the educational experience, or if we are, we shouldn’t be.
I confess I laughed out loud at this statement: “This revenue is also vitally important to the authors of such works, and serves as a spur to, and reward for, creative expression.” There is no direct financial incentive for most academic authors to publish. However, having one of your articles assigned in courses, while not profitable, is sweet.
And then there’s this fit of pique: “Defendant’s acts have been and continue to be willful, intentional and purposeful, in violation of Plaintiff’s rights.” In other words, Georgia State didn’t roll over and settle out of court.
I admit, after reading their arguments, the only one that makes any sense to me is that the revenue stream that came from coursepacks is drying up, and publishers are concerned about how to sustain their operations. But is that reason enough to demand that the use of scholarly materials in courses should be metered on a pay-per-use basis? It seems to me irresponsible for scholarly publishers to attempt to criminalize the use of these materials in courses unless it generates additional income for them.
What are our options?
Raizel Liebler asked an excellent question at the LibraryLaw Blog back in 2008, when the complaint was first filed: is fair use dead? Or are traditional publishing models dying? She lays out five options for libraries if publishers win this lawsuit:
Pay permissions for everything placed on e-reserve. This, of course, will reduce our ability to buy new scholarship and will not enhance publishers’ bottom line.
Adopt a deeply conservative set of guidelines and hope they pass muster.
Tell faculty the only things they can put in e-reserves are links to licensed content that doesn’t prohibit such linking.
Cease offering e-reserves.
Change the system.
This last idea, of course, is the only option that has a positive outcome. We need to find a way that scholars can both systematically and impulsively share scholarly work with students without penalty. We need to find a way to support and sustain the editorial value provided by conscientious and professional publishing. We need to ensure that the materials libraries provide on behalf of their communities can be used to further students’ educations.
Something is badly broken when university presses sue universities for using their materials. We need to stop playing a shell game that merely shifts the costs and benefits around. It’s not sustainable.
I want my students to be happy, and I want our faculty to be more aware of the case for open access, but putting a tollgate on library materials used in courses is not the way to go."
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6724855.html
EFF's Fred von Lohmann Wins Copyright Award; Electronic Frontier Foundation, 3/30/10
Electronic Frontier Foundation; EFF's Fred von Lohmann Wins Copyright Award:
"EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann was named the 2010 winner of the L. Ray Patterson Copyright Award today.
The American Library Association (ALA) Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) and its Copyright Advisory Subcommittee issues the award to recognize work done in support of fair use and the public domain. The award is named after the late L. Ray Patterson, a copyright scholar and historian that left a lasting impression on the law of copyright, the public domain, and fair use.
Chair of the OITP Copyright Advisory Subcommittee Patrick Newell said, "Fred is a tireless advocate for openness of information and seeking the proper balance between intellectual property protection and the public interest in fair use, expression and innovation."
An award reception honoring Fred will be held on June 25 during the ALA's Annual Conference in Washington, D.C."
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/effs-fred-von-lohmann-wins-copyright-award
"EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann was named the 2010 winner of the L. Ray Patterson Copyright Award today.
The American Library Association (ALA) Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) and its Copyright Advisory Subcommittee issues the award to recognize work done in support of fair use and the public domain. The award is named after the late L. Ray Patterson, a copyright scholar and historian that left a lasting impression on the law of copyright, the public domain, and fair use.
Chair of the OITP Copyright Advisory Subcommittee Patrick Newell said, "Fred is a tireless advocate for openness of information and seeking the proper balance between intellectual property protection and the public interest in fair use, expression and innovation."
An award reception honoring Fred will be held on June 25 during the ALA's Annual Conference in Washington, D.C."
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/effs-fred-von-lohmann-wins-copyright-award
Study Finds Copyright Concerns Affect Communication Research; Wired Campus, Chronicle of Higher Education, 4/1/10
Jill Laster, Wired Campus, Chronicle of Higher Education; Study Finds Copyright Concerns Affect Communications Research:
"A new survey has found that many communications scholars lack confidence in their knowledge of copyright laws in relation to their research.
On Thursday, American University's Center for Social Media and the International Communication Association released a survey of ICA members titled "Clipping Our Own Wings: Copyright and Creativity in Communication Research." The e-mail survey—to which about 8 percent of ICA members, or 387, responded—found that nearly half of all communications scholars were not confident about their knowledge of copyright laws. The survey also found that nearly a third avoided research subjects or questions because of that lack of knowledge, and a fifth abandoned research that was already under way because of copyright worries.
The report's authors say that the abandoned research is perhaps the most important part of the study because it results in unrealized work and "self censorship" among scholars.
Patricia Aufderheide, director of the Center for Social Media and part of the committee that produced the report, said that in the last two decades "we've seen the erosion of 'fair use'" for different reasons. She cited the growth of the Internet, tightening of copyright rules, and the growth of large media copyright holders, among other things.
"There's a lot of pressures that end up at the desk of some poor communications professor who never thought he'd have to think about this stuff," said Ms. Aufderheide.
According to the report, communications scholars on the whole frequently use copyrighted works such as books (82 percent), journal articles (86 percent) and Internet content (72 percent).
But according to the report, about 60 percent of the scholars had some difficulty getting access to copyrighted works, including problems with obtaining permissions, prohibitive costs, convenient access or copying options, and technological barriers including encryption.
The authors of the report recommend that scholars develop standards for copyright exemption that include "fair use" allowances guaranteed by federal law. The Center for Social Media has produced a code of best practices for use in the profession.
"Effective use of copyright exemptions, such as fair use, fair dealing, and right of quotation, has been shown to have direct links to the quality and nature of creative work," the authors say in the report. "When creators fail to understand or make use of exemptions that permit quotation of existing (and usually copyrighted) culture, they typically suffer from a failure not only to complete work but a hobbling of the imaginative and creative process itself."
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Study-Finds-Copyright-Concerns/22211/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
"A new survey has found that many communications scholars lack confidence in their knowledge of copyright laws in relation to their research.
On Thursday, American University's Center for Social Media and the International Communication Association released a survey of ICA members titled "Clipping Our Own Wings: Copyright and Creativity in Communication Research." The e-mail survey—to which about 8 percent of ICA members, or 387, responded—found that nearly half of all communications scholars were not confident about their knowledge of copyright laws. The survey also found that nearly a third avoided research subjects or questions because of that lack of knowledge, and a fifth abandoned research that was already under way because of copyright worries.
The report's authors say that the abandoned research is perhaps the most important part of the study because it results in unrealized work and "self censorship" among scholars.
Patricia Aufderheide, director of the Center for Social Media and part of the committee that produced the report, said that in the last two decades "we've seen the erosion of 'fair use'" for different reasons. She cited the growth of the Internet, tightening of copyright rules, and the growth of large media copyright holders, among other things.
"There's a lot of pressures that end up at the desk of some poor communications professor who never thought he'd have to think about this stuff," said Ms. Aufderheide.
According to the report, communications scholars on the whole frequently use copyrighted works such as books (82 percent), journal articles (86 percent) and Internet content (72 percent).
But according to the report, about 60 percent of the scholars had some difficulty getting access to copyrighted works, including problems with obtaining permissions, prohibitive costs, convenient access or copying options, and technological barriers including encryption.
The authors of the report recommend that scholars develop standards for copyright exemption that include "fair use" allowances guaranteed by federal law. The Center for Social Media has produced a code of best practices for use in the profession.
"Effective use of copyright exemptions, such as fair use, fair dealing, and right of quotation, has been shown to have direct links to the quality and nature of creative work," the authors say in the report. "When creators fail to understand or make use of exemptions that permit quotation of existing (and usually copyrighted) culture, they typically suffer from a failure not only to complete work but a hobbling of the imaginative and creative process itself."
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Study-Finds-Copyright-Concerns/22211/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
European ACTA Negotiators Reject "Three Strikes" Moniker; EFFector List, Electronic Frontier Foundation, 4/1/10
EFFector List, Electronic Frontier Foundation; European ACTA Negotiators Reject "Three Strikes" Moniker:
"Seething Danes were seen stomping out of the ACTA negotiation chambers in Wellington, New Zealand, citing frustration with the United States negotiators' continued pushing of "three strikes" proposals.
"ACTA is an international agreement," fumed negotiator Olaf Atdis. "It's absurd for the United States to continue demanding a baseball analogy when a football analogy would be much more representative of the diversity of the negotiating countries."
"Three strikes" laws and policies require Internet serviceproviders to automatically disconnect their Internetusers on repeat allegations of copyright infringementby entertainment company complaints, but EU negotiatorsreportedly prefer a "carding" system. ISPs that receive complaints would issue "yellow cards" and "red cards,"tracking the official penalty system of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).
EFF spoke out against both naming conventions. "These sports analogies are antithetical to the spirit of the open Internet," argued EFF International Director Gwen Hinze. "The Internet is much more like the Force, which as Obi-Wan taught us all, 'surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.' Evil Sith-Imperial complaints should not result in an individual being severed from the Force. That's clearly preposterous.""
For more about yellow cards, red cards, the Force,and ACTA:http://eff.org/r.2hu
"Seething Danes were seen stomping out of the ACTA negotiation chambers in Wellington, New Zealand, citing frustration with the United States negotiators' continued pushing of "three strikes" proposals.
"ACTA is an international agreement," fumed negotiator Olaf Atdis. "It's absurd for the United States to continue demanding a baseball analogy when a football analogy would be much more representative of the diversity of the negotiating countries."
"Three strikes" laws and policies require Internet serviceproviders to automatically disconnect their Internetusers on repeat allegations of copyright infringementby entertainment company complaints, but EU negotiatorsreportedly prefer a "carding" system. ISPs that receive complaints would issue "yellow cards" and "red cards,"tracking the official penalty system of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).
EFF spoke out against both naming conventions. "These sports analogies are antithetical to the spirit of the open Internet," argued EFF International Director Gwen Hinze. "The Internet is much more like the Force, which as Obi-Wan taught us all, 'surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.' Evil Sith-Imperial complaints should not result in an individual being severed from the Force. That's clearly preposterous.""
For more about yellow cards, red cards, the Force,and ACTA:http://eff.org/r.2hu
Friday, March 26, 2010
About the Office of the U.S. Intellectual Propery Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC); Office of Management and Budget [No Date Provided]
[No Date Provided] Office of Management and Budget; About the Office of the U.S. Intellectual Propery Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC):
"Hi, I am Victoria Espinel, the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator. I am honored to have been appointed by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve in this new position created by Congress in the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008. Given the unique nature of this job, I’d like to describe what I’m doing in my office and how we want to engage the public to get input on what we, as a government, should be doing.
While talking about our global competitive advantage at a recent town hall meeting in Ohio, the President said, "One of the problems that we have had is insufficient protection for intellectual property rights"–and it is important that our ideas are protected. In December 2009, the Vice President, joined by Cabinet members and other senior government officials, held a roundtable discussion to emphasize the Administration’s commitment to enforcing laws against intellectual property theft.
Intellectual property are the ideas behind inventions, the artistry that goes into books and music, and the logos of companies whose brands we have come to trust. My job is to help protect the ideas and creativity of the American public. One of the reasons that I care about this is because I believe it is enormously important that the United States remain a global leader in these forms of innovation – and part of how we do that is by appropriately protecting our intellectual property. Our intellectual property represents the hard work, creativity, resourcefulness, investment and ingenuity of the American public. Infringement of intellectual property can hurt our economy and can undermine U.S. jobs. Infringement also reduces our markets overseas and hurts our ability to export our products. Counterfeit products can pose a significant threat to the health and safety of us all. Imagine learning that the toothpaste you and your family have used for years contains a dangerous chemical. U.S. Customs officials have seized several shipments of counterfeit toothpaste containing a dangerous amount of diethylene glycol, a chemical used in brake fluid, and that in sufficient doses is believed to cause kidney failure. All of these are reasons why your government has renewed its efforts to challenge this illegal activity.
My job is to help coordinate the work of the federal agencies that are involved with stopping this illegal behavior. We are going to work together to develop a strategy to reduce those risks to the public, the costs to our economy and to help protect the ingenuity and creativity of Americans. We want to be able to reduce the number of infringing goods in the United States and abroad. The examples are almost endless: counterfeit car parts, illegal software, pirated video games, knockoff consumer goods, dangerous counterfeit medicines, and many other types of products – including very sophisticated technology. Our goal is to better use taxpayer dollars and other government resources to be more effective in reducing any threat to our economy and our safety."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/intellectualproperty/ipec/
"Hi, I am Victoria Espinel, the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator. I am honored to have been appointed by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve in this new position created by Congress in the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008. Given the unique nature of this job, I’d like to describe what I’m doing in my office and how we want to engage the public to get input on what we, as a government, should be doing.
While talking about our global competitive advantage at a recent town hall meeting in Ohio, the President said, "One of the problems that we have had is insufficient protection for intellectual property rights"–and it is important that our ideas are protected. In December 2009, the Vice President, joined by Cabinet members and other senior government officials, held a roundtable discussion to emphasize the Administration’s commitment to enforcing laws against intellectual property theft.
Intellectual property are the ideas behind inventions, the artistry that goes into books and music, and the logos of companies whose brands we have come to trust. My job is to help protect the ideas and creativity of the American public. One of the reasons that I care about this is because I believe it is enormously important that the United States remain a global leader in these forms of innovation – and part of how we do that is by appropriately protecting our intellectual property. Our intellectual property represents the hard work, creativity, resourcefulness, investment and ingenuity of the American public. Infringement of intellectual property can hurt our economy and can undermine U.S. jobs. Infringement also reduces our markets overseas and hurts our ability to export our products. Counterfeit products can pose a significant threat to the health and safety of us all. Imagine learning that the toothpaste you and your family have used for years contains a dangerous chemical. U.S. Customs officials have seized several shipments of counterfeit toothpaste containing a dangerous amount of diethylene glycol, a chemical used in brake fluid, and that in sufficient doses is believed to cause kidney failure. All of these are reasons why your government has renewed its efforts to challenge this illegal activity.
My job is to help coordinate the work of the federal agencies that are involved with stopping this illegal behavior. We are going to work together to develop a strategy to reduce those risks to the public, the costs to our economy and to help protect the ingenuity and creativity of Americans. We want to be able to reduce the number of infringing goods in the United States and abroad. The examples are almost endless: counterfeit car parts, illegal software, pirated video games, knockoff consumer goods, dangerous counterfeit medicines, and many other types of products – including very sophisticated technology. Our goal is to better use taxpayer dollars and other government resources to be more effective in reducing any threat to our economy and our safety."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/intellectualproperty/ipec/
FSF Advocates Free Software for U.S. IPEC Joint Strategic Plan; Free Software Foundation, 3/25/10
Brett Smith, Free Software Foundation; FSF Advocates Free Software for U.S. IPEC Joint Strategic Plan:
"The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has responded to the United States executive Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) Joint Strategic Plan.
The FSF argues that the government should use free software to provide more freedom and transparency to its constituents and reduce the need to engage in costly copyright enforcement activities on behalf of proprietary software companies. The FSF states that "the most egregious harms to the public interest in the areas of copyright and patents come not from a lack of enforcement, but from extraordinarily excessive enforcement."
"For a government that's supposed to be accountable to its citizens, it's clear that using free software should be a natural choice," said Brett Smith, license compliance engineer at the FSF. "With free software, government can be sure their computers work on behalf of the people, instead of some proprietary software company. And it also offers an opportunity for unparalleled transparency: agencies can release the source code of software they use to help illustrate what they're doing."
The creation of IPEC and the Joint Strategic Plan are mandated by the "PRO-IP Act," which became law in 2008. The Joint Strategic Plan is intended to provide broad policy recommendations to increase enforcement of copyright, patent, trademark, and anti-counterfeiting laws both at home and abroad.
"Everything about the PRO-IP Act, from the confused way it lumps together various laws under the banner of 'intellectual property' in its name, to its corrupted purpose of being another government giveaway to the big incumbent copyright industries, is flawed" said Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF. "It's unfair for taxpayers to foot the bill for supporting the unethical business models of a handful of companies. Our comment shows there's another way: with relatively small steps, government can do the right thing and use free software, make a better investment in our society, and eliminate much of the need for enforcement of these laws."
The full text of the FSF's comment is available at http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/fsf-opposes-more-copyright-enforcement-in-joint-strategic-plan."
http://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-advocates-free-software-for-u.s.-ipec-joint-strategic-plan
"The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has responded to the United States executive Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) Joint Strategic Plan.
The FSF argues that the government should use free software to provide more freedom and transparency to its constituents and reduce the need to engage in costly copyright enforcement activities on behalf of proprietary software companies. The FSF states that "the most egregious harms to the public interest in the areas of copyright and patents come not from a lack of enforcement, but from extraordinarily excessive enforcement."
"For a government that's supposed to be accountable to its citizens, it's clear that using free software should be a natural choice," said Brett Smith, license compliance engineer at the FSF. "With free software, government can be sure their computers work on behalf of the people, instead of some proprietary software company. And it also offers an opportunity for unparalleled transparency: agencies can release the source code of software they use to help illustrate what they're doing."
The creation of IPEC and the Joint Strategic Plan are mandated by the "PRO-IP Act," which became law in 2008. The Joint Strategic Plan is intended to provide broad policy recommendations to increase enforcement of copyright, patent, trademark, and anti-counterfeiting laws both at home and abroad.
"Everything about the PRO-IP Act, from the confused way it lumps together various laws under the banner of 'intellectual property' in its name, to its corrupted purpose of being another government giveaway to the big incumbent copyright industries, is flawed" said Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF. "It's unfair for taxpayers to foot the bill for supporting the unethical business models of a handful of companies. Our comment shows there's another way: with relatively small steps, government can do the right thing and use free software, make a better investment in our society, and eliminate much of the need for enforcement of these laws."
The full text of the FSF's comment is available at http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/fsf-opposes-more-copyright-enforcement-in-joint-strategic-plan."
http://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-advocates-free-software-for-u.s.-ipec-joint-strategic-plan
CEA Calls For Fair Use Balance In IPEC Plan; Twice, 3/25/10
Greg Tarr, Twice; CEA Calls For Fair Use Balance In IPEC Plan:
"The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and the Home Recording Rights Coalition (HRRC) filed comments with the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) Thursday in response to the Coordinator's request for public input into its draft strategic plan.
The statement urged the IPEC to ensure a balance between intellectual property rights and fair use.
In order to promote a balanced approach, CEA and HRRC urged that fair use and other public interest exceptions be included in international agreements that impact fair-use rights.
"These concerns are particularly poignant...when considering secondary liability for infringement," CEA and HRRC stated, noting that over the past 30 years the introduction of virtually every technology capable of consumer recording has been met with an actual or threatened secondary liability lawsuit.
The comments also point to the recent incident in which an Italian court imposed criminal liability on Google employees based on consumer uploaded content as exemplifying the need for third-party liability limitations in international IP agreements."
http://www.twice.com/article/450741-CEA_Calls_For_Fair_Use_Balance_In_IPEC_Plan.php
"The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and the Home Recording Rights Coalition (HRRC) filed comments with the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) Thursday in response to the Coordinator's request for public input into its draft strategic plan.
The statement urged the IPEC to ensure a balance between intellectual property rights and fair use.
In order to promote a balanced approach, CEA and HRRC urged that fair use and other public interest exceptions be included in international agreements that impact fair-use rights.
"These concerns are particularly poignant...when considering secondary liability for infringement," CEA and HRRC stated, noting that over the past 30 years the introduction of virtually every technology capable of consumer recording has been met with an actual or threatened secondary liability lawsuit.
The comments also point to the recent incident in which an Italian court imposed criminal liability on Google employees based on consumer uploaded content as exemplifying the need for third-party liability limitations in international IP agreements."
http://www.twice.com/article/450741-CEA_Calls_For_Fair_Use_Balance_In_IPEC_Plan.php
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Colleges Automate Process of Responding to Copyright-Violation Notifications; Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired Campus, 3/23/10
Jeff Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired Campus; Colleges Automate Process of Responding to Copyright-Violation Notifications:
"Some colleges get hundreds of e-mail messages a month from music, movie, and book publishers notifying them that a student or professor is illegally sharing copyrighted material over the campus network. Colleges are required to look into each alleged violation, and some are setting up automated systems to make the process cheaper and easier.
Doing so is trickier than it sounds, since many colleges assign users a new Internet address each time they log in, rather than give each network computer a fixed identity. That means colleges have to do some detective work to see which user was at the computer at the day and time of an alleged copyright infringement.
Colleges hoping to automate the process have built their own systems, and many say it's been easy. But today Audible Magic Corporation announced a product that it says is the first commercial system that can do the job. The system is called CopySense DMCA Service, referring to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which governs what network administrators must do to police copyright violations on their networks.
"At least two [colleges] have committed to testing the system and expressed a high degree of interest," said Vance Ikezoye, founder and CEO of Audible Magic, in an interview on Tuesday.
Some music, movie, and book publishers have already automated their end of the notification process, setting up systems that scan the Internet looking for anyone trading their works and zapping out messages to network administrators. That makes it easy for the companies to send out thousands of notices each month. As a result, more colleges are likely to enlist software robots, whether home-built or commercial, to respond."
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Colleges-Automate-Process-of/22010/
"Some colleges get hundreds of e-mail messages a month from music, movie, and book publishers notifying them that a student or professor is illegally sharing copyrighted material over the campus network. Colleges are required to look into each alleged violation, and some are setting up automated systems to make the process cheaper and easier.
Doing so is trickier than it sounds, since many colleges assign users a new Internet address each time they log in, rather than give each network computer a fixed identity. That means colleges have to do some detective work to see which user was at the computer at the day and time of an alleged copyright infringement.
Colleges hoping to automate the process have built their own systems, and many say it's been easy. But today Audible Magic Corporation announced a product that it says is the first commercial system that can do the job. The system is called CopySense DMCA Service, referring to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which governs what network administrators must do to police copyright violations on their networks.
"At least two [colleges] have committed to testing the system and expressed a high degree of interest," said Vance Ikezoye, founder and CEO of Audible Magic, in an interview on Tuesday.
Some music, movie, and book publishers have already automated their end of the notification process, setting up systems that scan the Internet looking for anyone trading their works and zapping out messages to network administrators. That makes it easy for the companies to send out thousands of notices each month. As a result, more colleges are likely to enlist software robots, whether home-built or commercial, to respond."
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Colleges-Automate-Process-of/22010/
Faculty Move Forward on Open Access Policy; Duke Today, 3/21/10
Duke Today; Faculty Move Forward on Open Access Policy:
"In a unanimous vote, the Academic Council approved a resolution supporting a new open access repository for faculty scholarly writings, but asked that organizers return for more discussion when they have details in place about how the repository would be serviced.
The policy would place the final draft manuscript of future scholarly articles in an open access repository that would be available for use by the public. Faculty members have a right to opt-out of the repository at any time, and the repository would respect any embargo requested by the author or journal. The policy would be reviewed in three years to determine its effectiveness.
Open access is in line with the university’s commitment to disseminate the knowledge of the faculty, and Duke follows in the wake of peer institutions such as Harvard and MIT that have established similar policies.
But supporting it in theory is one thing, and faculty members said they want to hear more about the details in the fall."
http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2010/03/accessvote.html
"In a unanimous vote, the Academic Council approved a resolution supporting a new open access repository for faculty scholarly writings, but asked that organizers return for more discussion when they have details in place about how the repository would be serviced.
The policy would place the final draft manuscript of future scholarly articles in an open access repository that would be available for use by the public. Faculty members have a right to opt-out of the repository at any time, and the repository would respect any embargo requested by the author or journal. The policy would be reviewed in three years to determine its effectiveness.
Open access is in line with the university’s commitment to disseminate the knowledge of the faculty, and Duke follows in the wake of peer institutions such as Harvard and MIT that have established similar policies.
But supporting it in theory is one thing, and faculty members said they want to hear more about the details in the fall."
http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2010/03/accessvote.html
An essential newsletter for copyright and media law; American Libraries Direct, 3/23/10
American Libraries Direct; An essential newsletter for copyright and media law:
"ALA Editions, the publishing imprint of the American Library Association, is partnering with copyright and licensing expert Lesley Ellen Harris to offer The Copyright & New Media Law Newsletter, available both digitally and in print. This newsletter keeps readers informed and provides practical solutions for everyday copyright-related activities.
Copyright law is a difficult and constantly changing topic. Since 1997, The Copyright & New Media Law Newsletter has kept library professionals up-to-date with the latest developments related to new media and uses of content. Edited by Harris, author of “Licensing Digital Content,” this quarterly 12-page newsletter is geared toward those who work in libraries, archives, museums, corporations, educational institutions, governments and law firms. It features contributors from around the world, including the United States, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Harris is a copyright, licensing and digital property lawyer who consults on legal, business, policy and strategic issues in the publishing, entertainment, Internet and information industries. She has authored numerous articles and books and also created The Digital Licensing Online eCourse for ALA Editions. Since 1991 her practice has served a broad range of clients, and she frequently works with libraries, archives, museums and educational institutions. She often speaks at conferences and teaches in-person and online courses on copyright and licensing through Copyrightlaws.com and in conjunction with national and regional associations in Canada and the U.S.. From 1987 to 1991 she was senior copyright officer for the Canadian government, and helped revise the country’s copyright laws.
ALA Store purchases fund advocacy, awareness, and accreditation programs for library professionals worldwide.
ALA Editions develops resources for the library and information services community. Tens of thousands of librarians are helped and supported professionally each year by 30 or more new and revised titles, as well as periodicals and online products such as Library Technology Reports, Smart Libraries Newsletter, and the ALA TechSource blog. ALA writers are leaders across their fields, and their publications are distributed and valued worldwide."
http://www.ala.org/ala/newspresscenter/news/pressreleases2010/march2010/essnews_pub.cfm
"ALA Editions, the publishing imprint of the American Library Association, is partnering with copyright and licensing expert Lesley Ellen Harris to offer The Copyright & New Media Law Newsletter, available both digitally and in print. This newsletter keeps readers informed and provides practical solutions for everyday copyright-related activities.
Copyright law is a difficult and constantly changing topic. Since 1997, The Copyright & New Media Law Newsletter has kept library professionals up-to-date with the latest developments related to new media and uses of content. Edited by Harris, author of “Licensing Digital Content,” this quarterly 12-page newsletter is geared toward those who work in libraries, archives, museums, corporations, educational institutions, governments and law firms. It features contributors from around the world, including the United States, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Harris is a copyright, licensing and digital property lawyer who consults on legal, business, policy and strategic issues in the publishing, entertainment, Internet and information industries. She has authored numerous articles and books and also created The Digital Licensing Online eCourse for ALA Editions. Since 1991 her practice has served a broad range of clients, and she frequently works with libraries, archives, museums and educational institutions. She often speaks at conferences and teaches in-person and online courses on copyright and licensing through Copyrightlaws.com and in conjunction with national and regional associations in Canada and the U.S.. From 1987 to 1991 she was senior copyright officer for the Canadian government, and helped revise the country’s copyright laws.
ALA Store purchases fund advocacy, awareness, and accreditation programs for library professionals worldwide.
ALA Editions develops resources for the library and information services community. Tens of thousands of librarians are helped and supported professionally each year by 30 or more new and revised titles, as well as periodicals and online products such as Library Technology Reports, Smart Libraries Newsletter, and the ALA TechSource blog. ALA writers are leaders across their fields, and their publications are distributed and valued worldwide."
http://www.ala.org/ala/newspresscenter/news/pressreleases2010/march2010/essnews_pub.cfm
Want to Use My Suit? Then Throw Me Something; New York Times, 3/24/10
Campbell Robertson, New York Times; Want to Use My Suit? Then Throw Me Something:
"Knowing that there are few legal protections for a person who is photographed in public — particularly one who stops and poses every few feet — some Mardi Gras Indians have begun filing for copyright protection for their suits, which account for thousands of dollars in glass beads, rhinestones, feathers and velvet, and hundreds of hours of late-night sewing."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/us/24orleans.html?scp=1&sq=copyright%20mardi%20gras%20indians&st=cse
"Knowing that there are few legal protections for a person who is photographed in public — particularly one who stops and poses every few feet — some Mardi Gras Indians have begun filing for copyright protection for their suits, which account for thousands of dollars in glass beads, rhinestones, feathers and velvet, and hundreds of hours of late-night sewing."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/us/24orleans.html?scp=1&sq=copyright%20mardi%20gras%20indians&st=cse
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Texts Without Context; New York Times, 3/21/10
Michiko Kakutani, New York Times; Texts Without Context:
"In his deliberately provocative — and deeply nihilistic — new book, “Reality Hunger,” the onetime novelist David Shields asserts that fiction “has never seemed less central to the culture’s sense of itself.” He says he’s “bored by out-and-out fabrication, by myself and others; bored by invented plots and invented characters” and much more interested in confession and “reality-based art.” His own book can be taken as Exhibit A in what he calls “recombinant” or appropriation art.
Mr. Shields’s book consists of 618 fragments, including hundreds of quotations taken from other writers like Philip Roth, Joan Didion and Saul Bellow — quotations that Mr. Shields, 53, has taken out of context and in some cases, he says, “also revised, at least a little — for the sake of compression, consistency or whim.” He only acknowledges the source of these quotations in an appendix, which he says his publishers’ lawyers insisted he add.
“Who owns the words?” Mr. Shields asks in a passage that is itself an unacknowledged reworking of remarks by the cyberpunk author William Gibson. “Who owns the music and the rest of our culture? We do — all of us — though not all of us know it yet. Reality cannot be copyrighted.”
Mr. Shields’s pasted-together book and defense of appropriation underscore the contentious issues of copyright, intellectual property and plagiarism that have become prominent in a world in which the Internet makes copying and recycling as simple as pressing a couple of buttons. In fact, the dynamics of the Web, as the artist and computer scientist Jaron Lanier observes in another new book, are encouraging “authors, journalists, musicians and artists” to “treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind.”
It’s not just a question of how these “content producers” are supposed to make a living or finance their endeavors, however, or why they ought to allow other people to pick apart their work and filch choice excerpts. Nor is it simply a question of experts and professionals being challenged by an increasingly democratized marketplace. It’s also a question, as Mr. Lanier, 49, astutely points out in his new book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” of how online collectivism, social networking and popular software designs are changing the way people think and process information, a question of what becomes of originality and imagination in a world that prizes “metaness” and regards the mash-up as “more important than the sources who were mashed.”
Mr. Lanier’s book, which makes an impassioned case for “a digital humanism,” is only one of many recent volumes to take a hard but judicious look at some of the consequences of new technology and Web 2.0. Among them are several prescient books by Cass Sunstein, 55, which explore the effects of the Internet on public discourse; Farhad Manjoo’s “True Enough,” which examines how new technologies are promoting the cultural ascendancy of belief over fact; “The Cult of the Amateur,” by Andrew Keen, which argues that Web 2.0 is creating a “digital forest of mediocrity” and substituting ill-informed speculation for genuine expertise; and Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows” (coming in June), which suggests that increased Internet use is rewiring our brains, impairing our ability to think deeply and creatively even as it improves our ability to multitask.
Unlike “Digital Barbarism,” Mark Helprin’s shrill 2009 attack on copyright abolitionists, these books are not the work of Luddites or technophobes. Mr. Lanier is a Silicon Valley veteran and a pioneer in the development of virtual reality; Mr. Manjoo, 31, is Slate’s technology columnist; Mr. Keen is a technology entrepreneur; and Mr. Sunstein is a Harvard Law School professor who now heads the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Rather, these authors’ books are nuanced ruminations on some of the unreckoned consequences of technological change — books that stand as insightful counterweights to early techno-utopian works like Esther Dyson’s “Release 2.0” and Nicholas Negroponte’s “Being Digital,” which took an almost Pollyannaish view of the Web and its capacity to empower users."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/books/21mash.html?scp=2&sq=michiko&st=cse
"In his deliberately provocative — and deeply nihilistic — new book, “Reality Hunger,” the onetime novelist David Shields asserts that fiction “has never seemed less central to the culture’s sense of itself.” He says he’s “bored by out-and-out fabrication, by myself and others; bored by invented plots and invented characters” and much more interested in confession and “reality-based art.” His own book can be taken as Exhibit A in what he calls “recombinant” or appropriation art.
Mr. Shields’s book consists of 618 fragments, including hundreds of quotations taken from other writers like Philip Roth, Joan Didion and Saul Bellow — quotations that Mr. Shields, 53, has taken out of context and in some cases, he says, “also revised, at least a little — for the sake of compression, consistency or whim.” He only acknowledges the source of these quotations in an appendix, which he says his publishers’ lawyers insisted he add.
“Who owns the words?” Mr. Shields asks in a passage that is itself an unacknowledged reworking of remarks by the cyberpunk author William Gibson. “Who owns the music and the rest of our culture? We do — all of us — though not all of us know it yet. Reality cannot be copyrighted.”
Mr. Shields’s pasted-together book and defense of appropriation underscore the contentious issues of copyright, intellectual property and plagiarism that have become prominent in a world in which the Internet makes copying and recycling as simple as pressing a couple of buttons. In fact, the dynamics of the Web, as the artist and computer scientist Jaron Lanier observes in another new book, are encouraging “authors, journalists, musicians and artists” to “treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind.”
It’s not just a question of how these “content producers” are supposed to make a living or finance their endeavors, however, or why they ought to allow other people to pick apart their work and filch choice excerpts. Nor is it simply a question of experts and professionals being challenged by an increasingly democratized marketplace. It’s also a question, as Mr. Lanier, 49, astutely points out in his new book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” of how online collectivism, social networking and popular software designs are changing the way people think and process information, a question of what becomes of originality and imagination in a world that prizes “metaness” and regards the mash-up as “more important than the sources who were mashed.”
Mr. Lanier’s book, which makes an impassioned case for “a digital humanism,” is only one of many recent volumes to take a hard but judicious look at some of the consequences of new technology and Web 2.0. Among them are several prescient books by Cass Sunstein, 55, which explore the effects of the Internet on public discourse; Farhad Manjoo’s “True Enough,” which examines how new technologies are promoting the cultural ascendancy of belief over fact; “The Cult of the Amateur,” by Andrew Keen, which argues that Web 2.0 is creating a “digital forest of mediocrity” and substituting ill-informed speculation for genuine expertise; and Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows” (coming in June), which suggests that increased Internet use is rewiring our brains, impairing our ability to think deeply and creatively even as it improves our ability to multitask.
Unlike “Digital Barbarism,” Mark Helprin’s shrill 2009 attack on copyright abolitionists, these books are not the work of Luddites or technophobes. Mr. Lanier is a Silicon Valley veteran and a pioneer in the development of virtual reality; Mr. Manjoo, 31, is Slate’s technology columnist; Mr. Keen is a technology entrepreneur; and Mr. Sunstein is a Harvard Law School professor who now heads the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Rather, these authors’ books are nuanced ruminations on some of the unreckoned consequences of technological change — books that stand as insightful counterweights to early techno-utopian works like Esther Dyson’s “Release 2.0” and Nicholas Negroponte’s “Being Digital,” which took an almost Pollyannaish view of the Web and its capacity to empower users."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/books/21mash.html?scp=2&sq=michiko&st=cse
A Supersized Custody Battle Over Marvel Superheroes; New York Times, 3/21/10
Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply, New York Times; A Supersized Custody Battle Over Marvel Superheroes:
"The dispute is also emblematic of a much larger conflict between intellectual property lawyers and media companies that, in Mr. Toberoff’s view, have made themselves vulnerable by building franchises atop old creations. So-called branded entertainment — anything based on superheroes, comic strips, TV cartoons or classic toys — may be easier to sell to audiences, but the intellectual property may also ultimately belong in full or in part to others.
“Any young lawyer starting out today could turn what he’s doing into a real profit center,” Paul Goldstein, who teaches intellectual-property law at Stanford’s law school, said of Mr. Toberoff’s specialty.
Mr. Goldstein said cases like the one involving Marvel are only the tip of an iceberg. A new wave of copyright termination actions is expected to affect the film, music and book industries as more works reach the 56-year threshold for ending older copyrights, or a shorter period for those created under a law that took effect in 1978.
Mr. Toberoff is tackling what could be one of the most significant rights cases in Hollywood history; it’s certainly the biggest involving a superhero franchise. Unlike his continuing fight with Warner Brothers over Superman, Mr. Toberoff’s rights-reclamation effort against Marvel involves dozens of stories and characters from about 240 comic books."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/business/21marvel.html?scp=1&sq=copyright%20marvel&st=cse
"The dispute is also emblematic of a much larger conflict between intellectual property lawyers and media companies that, in Mr. Toberoff’s view, have made themselves vulnerable by building franchises atop old creations. So-called branded entertainment — anything based on superheroes, comic strips, TV cartoons or classic toys — may be easier to sell to audiences, but the intellectual property may also ultimately belong in full or in part to others.
“Any young lawyer starting out today could turn what he’s doing into a real profit center,” Paul Goldstein, who teaches intellectual-property law at Stanford’s law school, said of Mr. Toberoff’s specialty.
Mr. Goldstein said cases like the one involving Marvel are only the tip of an iceberg. A new wave of copyright termination actions is expected to affect the film, music and book industries as more works reach the 56-year threshold for ending older copyrights, or a shorter period for those created under a law that took effect in 1978.
Mr. Toberoff is tackling what could be one of the most significant rights cases in Hollywood history; it’s certainly the biggest involving a superhero franchise. Unlike his continuing fight with Warner Brothers over Superman, Mr. Toberoff’s rights-reclamation effort against Marvel involves dozens of stories and characters from about 240 comic books."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/business/21marvel.html?scp=1&sq=copyright%20marvel&st=cse
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Smoking guns, dark secrets aplenty in YouTube-Viacom filings; Ars Technica, 3/19/10
Nate Anderson, Ars Technica; Smoking guns, dark secrets aplenty in YouTube-Viacom filings:
"Court documents in the $1 billion lawsuit between Viacom and YouTube were unsealed today, finally shedding some light on key questions: did Viacom have "smoking gun" evidence that YouTube was deliberately profiting from 62,637 Viacom clips that were watched more than 507 million times on the site? Was Google aware of the copyright infringement problems when it purchased YouTube in 2006? Were YouTube's own founders involved in uploading unauthorized materials?
On all three counts, Viacom says yes—and it offers up a host of e-mails to prove it..."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/smoking-guns-dark-secrets-spilled-in-youtube-viacom-filings.ars
"Court documents in the $1 billion lawsuit between Viacom and YouTube were unsealed today, finally shedding some light on key questions: did Viacom have "smoking gun" evidence that YouTube was deliberately profiting from 62,637 Viacom clips that were watched more than 507 million times on the site? Was Google aware of the copyright infringement problems when it purchased YouTube in 2006? Were YouTube's own founders involved in uploading unauthorized materials?
On all three counts, Viacom says yes—and it offers up a host of e-mails to prove it..."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/smoking-guns-dark-secrets-spilled-in-youtube-viacom-filings.ars
Your life will some day end; ACTA will live on; Ars Technica, 3/19/10
Nate Anderson, Ars Technica; Your life will some day end; ACTA will live on:
"The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) isn't just another secret treaty—it's a way of life. If ACTA passes in anything like its current form, it will create an entirely new international secretariat to administer and extend the agreement.
Knowledge Ecology International got its hands on more of the leaked ACTA text this week, including a chapter on "Institutional Arrangements" that has not leaked before. The chapter makes clear that ACTA will be far more than a standard trade agreement; it appears to be nothing less than an attempt to make a new international institution that will handle some of the duties of groups like the WTO and WIPO.
Why bother? Well, from the perspective of countries like the US, the existing institutions have problems. For one, they feature a huge number of nations, some of whom have blocked some of the anti-counterfeiting provisions desired by the US and others. Call this the UN problem—getting much done with so many people in attendance can be tricky, and ACTA has become a "coalition of the willing" who have decided to go form their own club instead.
But WIPO, especially, has also opened up over the last decade, and now has robust rules for the participation of consumer groups and other non-governmental organizations. It also requires far more transparency, with the publication of proposals and draft texts throughout a negotiating process. As we have seen too clearly, ACTA has none of this.
Jamie Love of KEI claims that the US Trade Representative has already "told members of Congress it is their intention to marginalize the participation by consumer interest organizations in the new forum."
The new ACTA secretariat won't be a mere administrator. The leaked chapter makes clear that the new governing body will "make recommendations regarding the implementation of ACTA" and will itself "identify and monitor techniques of piracy and counterfeiting."
In other ACTA news, a separate chapter has also leaked, and in it the EU wants to make sure that criminal penalties exist for "cases of willful trademark counterfeiting and copyright or related rights piracy on a commercial scale." On a "commercial scale" doesn't mean that such infringement must be done for financial gain, however; it also includes "significant willful copyright or related rights infringements that have no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain."
Despite the public support of President Obama, ACTA is running into bad press throughout the world. The European Parliament last week even managed to pass a strong resolution of displeasure with the ACTA process, which passed 633-13."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/your-life-will-some-day-end-acta-will-live-on.ars
"The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) isn't just another secret treaty—it's a way of life. If ACTA passes in anything like its current form, it will create an entirely new international secretariat to administer and extend the agreement.
Knowledge Ecology International got its hands on more of the leaked ACTA text this week, including a chapter on "Institutional Arrangements" that has not leaked before. The chapter makes clear that ACTA will be far more than a standard trade agreement; it appears to be nothing less than an attempt to make a new international institution that will handle some of the duties of groups like the WTO and WIPO.
Why bother? Well, from the perspective of countries like the US, the existing institutions have problems. For one, they feature a huge number of nations, some of whom have blocked some of the anti-counterfeiting provisions desired by the US and others. Call this the UN problem—getting much done with so many people in attendance can be tricky, and ACTA has become a "coalition of the willing" who have decided to go form their own club instead.
But WIPO, especially, has also opened up over the last decade, and now has robust rules for the participation of consumer groups and other non-governmental organizations. It also requires far more transparency, with the publication of proposals and draft texts throughout a negotiating process. As we have seen too clearly, ACTA has none of this.
Jamie Love of KEI claims that the US Trade Representative has already "told members of Congress it is their intention to marginalize the participation by consumer interest organizations in the new forum."
The new ACTA secretariat won't be a mere administrator. The leaked chapter makes clear that the new governing body will "make recommendations regarding the implementation of ACTA" and will itself "identify and monitor techniques of piracy and counterfeiting."
In other ACTA news, a separate chapter has also leaked, and in it the EU wants to make sure that criminal penalties exist for "cases of willful trademark counterfeiting and copyright or related rights piracy on a commercial scale." On a "commercial scale" doesn't mean that such infringement must be done for financial gain, however; it also includes "significant willful copyright or related rights infringements that have no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain."
Despite the public support of President Obama, ACTA is running into bad press throughout the world. The European Parliament last week even managed to pass a strong resolution of displeasure with the ACTA process, which passed 633-13."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/your-life-will-some-day-end-acta-will-live-on.ars
UK IP Minister Lammy Backs EU Release Of ACTA Text; Intellectual Property Watch, 3/17/10
Intellectual Property Watch; UK IP Minister Lammy Backs EU Release Of ACTA Text:
"David Lammy, United Kingdom Minister for Intellectual Property, today said the UK supports the European Union’s position that the text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) should be made public.
“The UK has long been in favour of greater transparency in the ACTA negotiations, so I am very pleased that EU has now agreed that the draft ACTA text should be placed in the public domain as soon as possible,” Lammy said in a press statement. “This would allow much more open and informed engagement with citizens, society, and parliaments.”
Lammy said that the European Commission “will take this message” to the next negotiating round in New Zealand in April “and seek the agreement of all other negotiating partners.”
”This is a very important step forward, and I will continue to push for these negotiations to be conducted openly and transparently,” he said. The 18-month-old negotiations (IPW, Bilateral/Regional Negotiations, 24 October 2007) have been plagued by complaints about the lack of transparency and inclusiveness."
http://www.ip-watch.org/2010/03/17/uk-ip-minister-lammy-backs-eu-release-of-acta-text/
"David Lammy, United Kingdom Minister for Intellectual Property, today said the UK supports the European Union’s position that the text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) should be made public.
“The UK has long been in favour of greater transparency in the ACTA negotiations, so I am very pleased that EU has now agreed that the draft ACTA text should be placed in the public domain as soon as possible,” Lammy said in a press statement. “This would allow much more open and informed engagement with citizens, society, and parliaments.”
Lammy said that the European Commission “will take this message” to the next negotiating round in New Zealand in April “and seek the agreement of all other negotiating partners.”
”This is a very important step forward, and I will continue to push for these negotiations to be conducted openly and transparently,” he said. The 18-month-old negotiations (IPW, Bilateral/Regional Negotiations, 24 October 2007) have been plagued by complaints about the lack of transparency and inclusiveness."
http://www.ip-watch.org/2010/03/17/uk-ip-minister-lammy-backs-eu-release-of-acta-text/
Friday, March 19, 2010
Viacom Says YouTube Ignored Copyrights; New York Times, 3/19/10
Miguel Helft, New York Times; Viacom Says YouTube Ignored Copyrights:
"Pointing to internal YouTube e-mail messages, Viacom said in a court filing that the video site’s founders turned a blind eye when users uploaded copyrighted clips so they could amass a big audience and sell the company quickly.
The charge was one of many made by Viacom in filings unsealed on Thursday in its three-year-old copyright lawsuit against YouTube and Google, which bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion.
Google fired back, saying Viacom was distorting the record by taking passages from e-mail messages out of context. It also said Viacom employees and agents “continuously and secretly” uploaded clips from the company’s television shows and movies to YouTube for promotional purposes, even as they were complaining about copyright violations.
“They are both tearing each other up, and both are scoring points,” said Eric Goldman, director of the High-Tech Law Institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law.
The lawsuit accused YouTube of profiting from thousands of clips from Viacom movies and shows that were uploaded to the site without permission.
It was filed at the height of tensions between Google and media companies over copyrights — tensions that have since eased substantially. YouTube, which is by far the Web’s largest video site, has set up an automated system to detect infringing videos and signed revenue-sharing agreements with more than a thousand media companies.
But more broadly, media companies remain wary of losing control as more of their products become digital, making them easier to copy.
As part of their motions for summary judgment in the case, both sides released hundreds of pages of documents and exhibits on Thursday, including internal documents obtained through the discovery process.
Among them were scores of e-mail messages from YouTube’s founders — Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim — discussing what to do about clips uploaded to YouTube that clearly belonged to major studios or television networks.
In a 2005 e-mail message to Roelof Botha, a partner at Sequoia Capital, YouTube’s major outside investor, Mr. Chen described a system that the company had put in place for users to flag copyrighted and pornographic content: “That way, the perception is that we are concerned about this type of material and we’re actively monitoring it.”
Mr. Chen goes on to acknowledge that much of the infringing material will remain on the site, but that users won’t be able to easily stumble upon it.
Google countered that the message was truncated and taken out of context, and that it merely suggested that YouTube was serious about policing its site for copyrighted content.
One e-mail message revealed that even as YouTube’s founders were discussing how to deal with copyrighted clips, one of them was uploading such material.
In July 2005, Mr. Chen wrote: “Jawed, please stop putting stolen videos on the site. We’re going to have a tough time defending the fact that we’re not liable for the copyrighted material on the site because we didn’t put it up when one of the co-founders is blatantly stealing content from other sites and trying to get everyone to see it.” Google said that message referred to “viral videos,” not pirated media content.
In another e-mail message from January 2006, a Google executive refers to a conversation with Mr. Hurley and another YouTube executive about copyrights, and compares YouTube with the much less popular Google Video service.
“YouTube is at an advantage b/c they aren’t the target that we are with issues like this. They are aware of this (I spoke with them on Friday) and they plan on exploiting this in order to get more and more traffic.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/technology/19youtube.html?hpw
"Pointing to internal YouTube e-mail messages, Viacom said in a court filing that the video site’s founders turned a blind eye when users uploaded copyrighted clips so they could amass a big audience and sell the company quickly.
The charge was one of many made by Viacom in filings unsealed on Thursday in its three-year-old copyright lawsuit against YouTube and Google, which bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion.
Google fired back, saying Viacom was distorting the record by taking passages from e-mail messages out of context. It also said Viacom employees and agents “continuously and secretly” uploaded clips from the company’s television shows and movies to YouTube for promotional purposes, even as they were complaining about copyright violations.
“They are both tearing each other up, and both are scoring points,” said Eric Goldman, director of the High-Tech Law Institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law.
The lawsuit accused YouTube of profiting from thousands of clips from Viacom movies and shows that were uploaded to the site without permission.
It was filed at the height of tensions between Google and media companies over copyrights — tensions that have since eased substantially. YouTube, which is by far the Web’s largest video site, has set up an automated system to detect infringing videos and signed revenue-sharing agreements with more than a thousand media companies.
But more broadly, media companies remain wary of losing control as more of their products become digital, making them easier to copy.
As part of their motions for summary judgment in the case, both sides released hundreds of pages of documents and exhibits on Thursday, including internal documents obtained through the discovery process.
Among them were scores of e-mail messages from YouTube’s founders — Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim — discussing what to do about clips uploaded to YouTube that clearly belonged to major studios or television networks.
In a 2005 e-mail message to Roelof Botha, a partner at Sequoia Capital, YouTube’s major outside investor, Mr. Chen described a system that the company had put in place for users to flag copyrighted and pornographic content: “That way, the perception is that we are concerned about this type of material and we’re actively monitoring it.”
Mr. Chen goes on to acknowledge that much of the infringing material will remain on the site, but that users won’t be able to easily stumble upon it.
Google countered that the message was truncated and taken out of context, and that it merely suggested that YouTube was serious about policing its site for copyrighted content.
One e-mail message revealed that even as YouTube’s founders were discussing how to deal with copyrighted clips, one of them was uploading such material.
In July 2005, Mr. Chen wrote: “Jawed, please stop putting stolen videos on the site. We’re going to have a tough time defending the fact that we’re not liable for the copyrighted material on the site because we didn’t put it up when one of the co-founders is blatantly stealing content from other sites and trying to get everyone to see it.” Google said that message referred to “viral videos,” not pirated media content.
In another e-mail message from January 2006, a Google executive refers to a conversation with Mr. Hurley and another YouTube executive about copyrights, and compares YouTube with the much less popular Google Video service.
“YouTube is at an advantage b/c they aren’t the target that we are with issues like this. They are aware of this (I spoke with them on Friday) and they plan on exploiting this in order to get more and more traffic.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/technology/19youtube.html?hpw
Thursday, March 18, 2010
In Court, a University and Publishers Spar Over 'Fair Use' of Course Materials; Chronicle of Higher Education, 3/14/10
Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education; In Court, a University and Publishers Spar Over 'Fair Use' of Course Materials:
"Maybe you're a professor who wants to use a chunk of copyrighted material in your course this spring. Or perhaps you're a librarian or an academic publisher. If so, the much-followed Google Book Search settlement is not the only legal case you need to be watching. A federal case involving publishers and a state-university system, Cambridge University Press et al. v. Patton et al., should produce a ruling soon, and its stakes are high.
First, a little history. In the spring of 2008, three academic publishers, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and SAGE Publications, brought a lawsuit against several top administrators at Georgia State University. The plaintiffs claimed that the university was encouraging the unauthorized digital copying and distribution of too much copyrighted material, particularly through its ERes and uLearn systems. ERes allows students to access digital copies of course material via a password-protected Web page; uLearn is a program professors can use to distribute syllabi and reading material.
The three publishers alleged that the unauthorized copying was "pervasive, flagrant, and ongoing." In February 2009, Georgia State put in place a revised copyright policy, including a checklist for faculty members to help them decide whether the amount of material they wanted to copy exceeded fair use.
Almost two years and many depositions later, both sides have filed briefs asking for a summary judgment in the case.
Legal briefs are a dry genre, but these tussle over some of the central questions of fair use in an academic context: How much is too much when it comes to copying rights-protected content without permission? To what extent is it the institution's job to shepherd its professors and students through the thorny complexities of copyright?
Unfair Use
The publishers' filing attacks what it calls the university's "blanket presumption of 'fair use'" in a higher-education context. The filing goes after the university's new fair-use checklist and copyright policy, saying that it "delegates the responsibility for ensuring copyright compliance entirely to faculty unschooled in copyright law."
The plaintiffs quote from the depositions of several Georgia State professors who acknowledge that they are not always clear on the copyright issues at stake. ("This is outside of my area of expertise," one is quoted as saying.) The publishers want the university to use the Copyright Clearance Center's licensing system or something like it for course materials.
The defendants take a strict we-didn't-do-it view. Their brief argues that "any alleged unlawful reproduction, distribution, or improper use was actually done by instructors, professors, students, or library employees."
Georgia State's filing also argues that the new copyright policy has drastically reduced the use of the plaintiffs' copyrighted material. It agrees with the plaintiffs that the defendants have no budget for permissions fees and that "faculty members would decline to use works like those at issue if there was an obligation to pay permissions fees."
So on one side you have a set of major academic publishers understandably eager to protect revenue, and on the other side you have a university that says it doesn't promote copyright infringement and doesn't have the money to pay a lot of permissions fees. One implication (threat?) one could draw is that if professors can't use what they need at no charge, they will probably use something else.
Complexities of Copyrights
I asked Kevin L. Smith, the scholarly-communications officer at Duke University, for his reaction. Mr. Smith helps scholars sort out copyright complexities—a function that is becoming ever more essential in university life, as this case makes very clear—and he has written about the GSU case on his blog, Scholarly Communications
For the moment, publishers appear unwilling to go after individual professors. "These faculty members are the same people who provide the content that university presses publish, so it would be really self-defeating," Duke's copyright maven, Mr. Smith, explained. "It would also be an endless game of 'whack-a-mole.' They would prefer a broad judgment against a university."
In any case, the Duke expert said, a fair-use case like this deserves more than a summary judgment. This case cuts to the heart of how many professors choose course material now and how students use it. Summary judgment or not, Duke's Mr. Smith said, "I think faculty and administrators should be very concerned.""
http://chronicle.com/article/In-Court-a-University-and/64616/?key=Tz12clBqMCdEbCY2KCRCfndROXx9chlxPXoWMS4aYlBS
"Maybe you're a professor who wants to use a chunk of copyrighted material in your course this spring. Or perhaps you're a librarian or an academic publisher. If so, the much-followed Google Book Search settlement is not the only legal case you need to be watching. A federal case involving publishers and a state-university system, Cambridge University Press et al. v. Patton et al., should produce a ruling soon, and its stakes are high.
First, a little history. In the spring of 2008, three academic publishers, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and SAGE Publications, brought a lawsuit against several top administrators at Georgia State University. The plaintiffs claimed that the university was encouraging the unauthorized digital copying and distribution of too much copyrighted material, particularly through its ERes and uLearn systems. ERes allows students to access digital copies of course material via a password-protected Web page; uLearn is a program professors can use to distribute syllabi and reading material.
The three publishers alleged that the unauthorized copying was "pervasive, flagrant, and ongoing." In February 2009, Georgia State put in place a revised copyright policy, including a checklist for faculty members to help them decide whether the amount of material they wanted to copy exceeded fair use.
Almost two years and many depositions later, both sides have filed briefs asking for a summary judgment in the case.
Legal briefs are a dry genre, but these tussle over some of the central questions of fair use in an academic context: How much is too much when it comes to copying rights-protected content without permission? To what extent is it the institution's job to shepherd its professors and students through the thorny complexities of copyright?
Unfair Use
The publishers' filing attacks what it calls the university's "blanket presumption of 'fair use'" in a higher-education context. The filing goes after the university's new fair-use checklist and copyright policy, saying that it "delegates the responsibility for ensuring copyright compliance entirely to faculty unschooled in copyright law."
The plaintiffs quote from the depositions of several Georgia State professors who acknowledge that they are not always clear on the copyright issues at stake. ("This is outside of my area of expertise," one is quoted as saying.) The publishers want the university to use the Copyright Clearance Center's licensing system or something like it for course materials.
The defendants take a strict we-didn't-do-it view. Their brief argues that "any alleged unlawful reproduction, distribution, or improper use was actually done by instructors, professors, students, or library employees."
Georgia State's filing also argues that the new copyright policy has drastically reduced the use of the plaintiffs' copyrighted material. It agrees with the plaintiffs that the defendants have no budget for permissions fees and that "faculty members would decline to use works like those at issue if there was an obligation to pay permissions fees."
So on one side you have a set of major academic publishers understandably eager to protect revenue, and on the other side you have a university that says it doesn't promote copyright infringement and doesn't have the money to pay a lot of permissions fees. One implication (threat?) one could draw is that if professors can't use what they need at no charge, they will probably use something else.
Complexities of Copyrights
I asked Kevin L. Smith, the scholarly-communications officer at Duke University, for his reaction. Mr. Smith helps scholars sort out copyright complexities—a function that is becoming ever more essential in university life, as this case makes very clear—and he has written about the GSU case on his blog, Scholarly Communications
For the moment, publishers appear unwilling to go after individual professors. "These faculty members are the same people who provide the content that university presses publish, so it would be really self-defeating," Duke's copyright maven, Mr. Smith, explained. "It would also be an endless game of 'whack-a-mole.' They would prefer a broad judgment against a university."
In any case, the Duke expert said, a fair-use case like this deserves more than a summary judgment. This case cuts to the heart of how many professors choose course material now and how students use it. Summary judgment or not, Duke's Mr. Smith said, "I think faculty and administrators should be very concerned.""
http://chronicle.com/article/In-Court-a-University-and/64616/?key=Tz12clBqMCdEbCY2KCRCfndROXx9chlxPXoWMS4aYlBS
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Why Google's deal with Italy is a good thing for readers; Christian Science Monitor, 3/11/10
Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor; Why Google's deal with Italy is a good thing for readers:
"Good news for Google and also for readers hoping to brush up on their Dante: The Italian government and the search-engine giant have agreed that Google will digitize up to 1 million books from the national libraries in Florence and Rome. The books to be digitized were all published before 1868 (which means that copyright laws do not apply) and will include antiquarian texts, including works by Dante, Machiavelli, and Galileo.
Although Google has struck similar deals with universities in England and Spain and a state museum in Germany, The Wall Street Journal notes that this is Google's "first publishing partnership with a national government."
It's a good deal for Google, which will be able to expand the offerings – and particularly the non-English-language offerings – of its Book Project, which currently lists about 12 million books. The deal also means a win in Europe where recent Google-related headlines have been unfortunate for the company. (A French court has ruled that Google committed copyright violation by scanning certain French-language titles, and an Italian court recently slapped Google officials with jail sentences in connection with an ugly abuse-related video made popular on YouTube.)
It's also a good deal for the Italian government. Google will bear all costs for the project just at a moment when budget cuts are making it harder for Italian libraries to preserve their valuable texts. The Italian libraries will also be able to share digitized copies of the scanned books with readers on other platforms, including Europeana, the online publishing project of the European Commission.
But most of all it's a good deal for readers. A million years ago (well, in the 1980s), when I was at grad school in New York studying Italian renaissance poetry, I went to the New York Public Library to consult an antiquarian text. Holding my credit card as collateral, they gave me a pair of gloves, ushered me into the Rare Book room, and let me handle (very carefully) a yellowing text printed in Naples several centuries earlier.
It was a thrill I will never forget. There is no substitute for laying your hands on a text like that.
However, for every bibliophile and/or Italophile who does not live in the shadow of a major cultural institution with the stature and holdings of the New York Public Library (and that now includes me), the Google deal is a very good thing."
http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2010/0311/Why-Google-s-deal-with-Italy-is-a-good-thing-for-readers
"Good news for Google and also for readers hoping to brush up on their Dante: The Italian government and the search-engine giant have agreed that Google will digitize up to 1 million books from the national libraries in Florence and Rome. The books to be digitized were all published before 1868 (which means that copyright laws do not apply) and will include antiquarian texts, including works by Dante, Machiavelli, and Galileo.
Although Google has struck similar deals with universities in England and Spain and a state museum in Germany, The Wall Street Journal notes that this is Google's "first publishing partnership with a national government."
It's a good deal for Google, which will be able to expand the offerings – and particularly the non-English-language offerings – of its Book Project, which currently lists about 12 million books. The deal also means a win in Europe where recent Google-related headlines have been unfortunate for the company. (A French court has ruled that Google committed copyright violation by scanning certain French-language titles, and an Italian court recently slapped Google officials with jail sentences in connection with an ugly abuse-related video made popular on YouTube.)
It's also a good deal for the Italian government. Google will bear all costs for the project just at a moment when budget cuts are making it harder for Italian libraries to preserve their valuable texts. The Italian libraries will also be able to share digitized copies of the scanned books with readers on other platforms, including Europeana, the online publishing project of the European Commission.
But most of all it's a good deal for readers. A million years ago (well, in the 1980s), when I was at grad school in New York studying Italian renaissance poetry, I went to the New York Public Library to consult an antiquarian text. Holding my credit card as collateral, they gave me a pair of gloves, ushered me into the Rare Book room, and let me handle (very carefully) a yellowing text printed in Naples several centuries earlier.
It was a thrill I will never forget. There is no substitute for laying your hands on a text like that.
However, for every bibliophile and/or Italophile who does not live in the shadow of a major cultural institution with the stature and holdings of the New York Public Library (and that now includes me), the Google deal is a very good thing."
http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2010/0311/Why-Google-s-deal-with-Italy-is-a-good-thing-for-readers
Monday, March 15, 2010
Kirby heirs sue Marvel and Disney for stake in characters, profits; ComicBookResources.com, 3/15/10
Kevin Melrose, ComicBookResources.com; Kirby heirs sue Marvel and Disney for stake in characters, profits:
"The children of legendary artist Jack Kirby have sued Marvel and Disney to terminate copyrights to, and receive a share of profits from, characters created or co-created by their father.
The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, follows the 45 copyright-termination notices sent in September to Marvel, new owner Disney, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox and others who have made films and other forms of entertainment based on characters that Kirby co-created. Marvel responded in early January with a lawsuit asserting that Kirby's work for the company was "for hire," and asked that a judge invalidate the claims of the heirs.
In the Kirby lawsuit, attorney Marc Toberoff lays out the characters and comic books at the heart of the family's claims: properties created or co-created by Jack Kirby between 1958 and 1963, including the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Iron Man, Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, The Avengers, Nick Fury and Ant-Man. (The extent of Kirby's involvement in the creation of Spider-Man is the subject of much debate.)
Under U.S. copyright law, authors or their heirs and estates may file to regain copyrights, or partial copyrights, at a certain period of time after the original transfer of rights. However, if the property is determined to be "work made for hire," the copyright would belong to the company that commissioned it.
Marvel argues that the company's editors determined which titles Kirby and other creators worked on, "and always retained full editorial control."
However, the family's lawsuit asserts that Jack Kirby wasn't an employee but rather a free-lancer who "authored or co-authored" numerous stories that Marvel and its predecessors then purchased and published. That echoes the earlier response to Marvel's January lawsuit. The plaintiffs claim it wasn't until May 1972 that Kirby assigned his copyrights to the properties to Magazine Management Co., then the parent company of Marvel Comics, for "additional compensation."
Lisa Kirby, serving as trustee for the Rosalind Kirby Trust, also alleges that Marvel didn't return all of Jack Kirby's original artwork in its possession -- a bitter dispute that goes back decades -- despite its claims to the contrary. The company's alleged efforts to conceal the art are characterized as "willful, wanton, malicious, and oppressive, and justify the awarding of exemplary and punitive damages."
The plaintiffs also seek damages under the Lanham Act, claiming that Kirby wasn't properly identified as co-creator of the original works in the advertising and promotion of the movies The Incredible Hulk and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (the latter presumably because of the X-Men, Professor X, Scott Summers and the Blob, not Wolverine). The lawsuit contends the omissions amount to "false or misleading descriptions or representations of fact in interstate commerce," prohibited by the Lanham Act, and cause injury to the interests of the Kirby estate. The plaintiffs assert they're entitled to "up to three times the damages they sustained and will sustain" because of the omissions, but don't give an actual figure.
The Kirby lawsuit doesn't state how much money the family believes it's owed in total but, as The Hollywood Reporter's Eriq Gardner notes, "any termination of copyrights could be worth tens of millions of dollars, if not more.""
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/03/kirby-heirs-sue-marvel-and-disney-for-stake-in-characters-profits/
"The children of legendary artist Jack Kirby have sued Marvel and Disney to terminate copyrights to, and receive a share of profits from, characters created or co-created by their father.
The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, follows the 45 copyright-termination notices sent in September to Marvel, new owner Disney, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox and others who have made films and other forms of entertainment based on characters that Kirby co-created. Marvel responded in early January with a lawsuit asserting that Kirby's work for the company was "for hire," and asked that a judge invalidate the claims of the heirs.
In the Kirby lawsuit, attorney Marc Toberoff lays out the characters and comic books at the heart of the family's claims: properties created or co-created by Jack Kirby between 1958 and 1963, including the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Iron Man, Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, The Avengers, Nick Fury and Ant-Man. (The extent of Kirby's involvement in the creation of Spider-Man is the subject of much debate.)
Under U.S. copyright law, authors or their heirs and estates may file to regain copyrights, or partial copyrights, at a certain period of time after the original transfer of rights. However, if the property is determined to be "work made for hire," the copyright would belong to the company that commissioned it.
Marvel argues that the company's editors determined which titles Kirby and other creators worked on, "and always retained full editorial control."
However, the family's lawsuit asserts that Jack Kirby wasn't an employee but rather a free-lancer who "authored or co-authored" numerous stories that Marvel and its predecessors then purchased and published. That echoes the earlier response to Marvel's January lawsuit. The plaintiffs claim it wasn't until May 1972 that Kirby assigned his copyrights to the properties to Magazine Management Co., then the parent company of Marvel Comics, for "additional compensation."
Lisa Kirby, serving as trustee for the Rosalind Kirby Trust, also alleges that Marvel didn't return all of Jack Kirby's original artwork in its possession -- a bitter dispute that goes back decades -- despite its claims to the contrary. The company's alleged efforts to conceal the art are characterized as "willful, wanton, malicious, and oppressive, and justify the awarding of exemplary and punitive damages."
The plaintiffs also seek damages under the Lanham Act, claiming that Kirby wasn't properly identified as co-creator of the original works in the advertising and promotion of the movies The Incredible Hulk and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (the latter presumably because of the X-Men, Professor X, Scott Summers and the Blob, not Wolverine). The lawsuit contends the omissions amount to "false or misleading descriptions or representations of fact in interstate commerce," prohibited by the Lanham Act, and cause injury to the interests of the Kirby estate. The plaintiffs assert they're entitled to "up to three times the damages they sustained and will sustain" because of the omissions, but don't give an actual figure.
The Kirby lawsuit doesn't state how much money the family believes it's owed in total but, as The Hollywood Reporter's Eriq Gardner notes, "any termination of copyrights could be worth tens of millions of dollars, if not more.""
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/03/kirby-heirs-sue-marvel-and-disney-for-stake-in-characters-profits/
British Put Teeth in Anti-Piracy Proposal; New York Times, 3/15/10
Eric Pfanner, New York Times; British Put Teeth in Anti-Piracy Proposal:
"When asked how governments ought to deal with freeloaders who illegally copy music and movies on the Internet, James Murdoch, head of News Corp.’s European and Asian operations, does not mince his words: “Punish them.”
“There is no difference with going into a store and stealing Pringles or a handbag and taking this stuff,” he said last week at a media conference in Abu Dhabi. “We need enforcement mechanisms and we need governments to play ball.”
In Britain, where Mr. Murdoch is based, lawmakers have taken up the challenge — to the consternation of Internet companies and civil liberties groups, which are ratcheting up their own arguments against a tough anti-piracy bill that is nearing the make-or-break stage in Parliament.
The measure, championed by the business secretary, Peter Mandelson, would give the British authorities new tools to clamp down on piracy, including the right to cut off the Internet connections of persistent copyright cheats. Such a system has been approved, though not yet implemented, in France.
The British proposal, set to be taken up by the House of Commons on Monday, goes further. Under an amendment to the bill in the House of Lords this month, courts would be empowered to order Internet service providers to block access to Web sites that provide pirated movies, music and other media content.
Supporters of the amendment say it would finally give copyright holders the tools to tackle the piracy problem at the supply and demand levels, after more than a decade of largely futile efforts. But critics of the bill say it raises the specter of censorship on the Internet, and could undermine the development of Britain’s digital economy, currently among the most advanced in the world.
“Put simply, blocking access as envisaged by this clause would both widely disrupt the Internet in the U.K. and elsewhere, threatening freedom of speech and the open Internet, without reducing copyright infringement as intended,” opponents of the proposal wrote in a letter to The Financial Times. It was signed by Internet service providers, Internet companies like Google, Yahoo, eBay and Facebook, and other groups.
Britain is not the only country considering tougher measures to fight piracy. Along with France, South Korea also recently approved a system under which Internet pirates who ignore two warnings to stop illegal downloads face the loss of their Internet connections. Lawmakers in Spain have proposed a measure that, like the British proposal, could require Internet service providers to block access to certain sites.
The British government says a tougher approach on piracy could provide hundreds of millions of dollars for the “creative industries,” which already account for more than 6 percent of British economic output.
But critics say the proposals would be expensive to enforce and would generate very little new revenue.
Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, which campaigns against restrictions on the Internet, said the bill contained unusually broad scope for abuse. Individuals or companies, he said, might try to use it to suppress any Web content they found objectionable, under the pretext of protecting their copyrights.
British libel laws, which put the burden of proof on the defendant, are already employed in this way by wealthy plaintiffs, critics say; rather than mount expensive defenses, bloggers and others accused of libel often back down and withdraw whatever statements drew offense."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/technology/15iht-piracy15.html?scp=2&sq=piracy&st=cse
"When asked how governments ought to deal with freeloaders who illegally copy music and movies on the Internet, James Murdoch, head of News Corp.’s European and Asian operations, does not mince his words: “Punish them.”
“There is no difference with going into a store and stealing Pringles or a handbag and taking this stuff,” he said last week at a media conference in Abu Dhabi. “We need enforcement mechanisms and we need governments to play ball.”
In Britain, where Mr. Murdoch is based, lawmakers have taken up the challenge — to the consternation of Internet companies and civil liberties groups, which are ratcheting up their own arguments against a tough anti-piracy bill that is nearing the make-or-break stage in Parliament.
The measure, championed by the business secretary, Peter Mandelson, would give the British authorities new tools to clamp down on piracy, including the right to cut off the Internet connections of persistent copyright cheats. Such a system has been approved, though not yet implemented, in France.
The British proposal, set to be taken up by the House of Commons on Monday, goes further. Under an amendment to the bill in the House of Lords this month, courts would be empowered to order Internet service providers to block access to Web sites that provide pirated movies, music and other media content.
Supporters of the amendment say it would finally give copyright holders the tools to tackle the piracy problem at the supply and demand levels, after more than a decade of largely futile efforts. But critics of the bill say it raises the specter of censorship on the Internet, and could undermine the development of Britain’s digital economy, currently among the most advanced in the world.
“Put simply, blocking access as envisaged by this clause would both widely disrupt the Internet in the U.K. and elsewhere, threatening freedom of speech and the open Internet, without reducing copyright infringement as intended,” opponents of the proposal wrote in a letter to The Financial Times. It was signed by Internet service providers, Internet companies like Google, Yahoo, eBay and Facebook, and other groups.
Britain is not the only country considering tougher measures to fight piracy. Along with France, South Korea also recently approved a system under which Internet pirates who ignore two warnings to stop illegal downloads face the loss of their Internet connections. Lawmakers in Spain have proposed a measure that, like the British proposal, could require Internet service providers to block access to certain sites.
The British government says a tougher approach on piracy could provide hundreds of millions of dollars for the “creative industries,” which already account for more than 6 percent of British economic output.
But critics say the proposals would be expensive to enforce and would generate very little new revenue.
Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, which campaigns against restrictions on the Internet, said the bill contained unusually broad scope for abuse. Individuals or companies, he said, might try to use it to suppress any Web content they found objectionable, under the pretext of protecting their copyrights.
British libel laws, which put the burden of proof on the defendant, are already employed in this way by wealthy plaintiffs, critics say; rather than mount expensive defenses, bloggers and others accused of libel often back down and withdraw whatever statements drew offense."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/technology/15iht-piracy15.html?scp=2&sq=piracy&st=cse
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