An elegy for the book

Read this transcript of a recent talk by Cory Doctorow. Seriously, read this! Here are a few choice excerpts.

…We are the people of the book. We love our books. We fill our houses with books. We treasure books we inherit from our parents, and we cherish the idea of passing those books on to our children. Indeed, how many of us started reading with a beloved book that belonged to one of our parents? We force worthy books on our friends, and we insist that they read them. We even feel a weird kinship for the people we see on buses or airplanes reading our books, the books that we claim. If anyone tries to take away our books—some oppressive government, some censor gone off the rails—we would defend them with everything that we have. We know our tribespeople when we visit their homes because every wall is lined with books. There are teetering piles of books beside the bed and on the floor; there are masses of swollen paperbacks in the bathroom. Our books are us. They are our outboard memory banks and they contain the moral, intellectual, and imaginative influences that make us the people we are today…

…Neil Gaiman, who I’m sure you’re all familiar with, is a wonderful and inspiring writer, has a lovely schtick that I’m going to do for you today. How many people here have a favourite writer? Put your hands up if you have a favourite writer. Keep your hand up if you paid for the first book you got by your favourite writer, put your hand down if you got it for free. About half of you got your first book by your favourite writer for free…

…Licenses that requires that librarians turn over their patrons’ reading habits? No librarian is going to do it, because we know that your behaviour changes when what you do is surveilled. We know that intellectual freedom requires a private space. So you guys that work in libraries, your collection acquisition people are really the suckers that every ebook publisher has square in their crosshairs, they really think that they can milk you for it, and that’s because many of you have bought these ridiculous subscriptions that disappear when you stop subscribing. They’ve got you marked for suckers. It’s time to stop being suckers. It’s time to start doing right by your collections and by your patrons…

Ok, now go read the whole thing!

Cory Doctorow interview on librarianship and media

James Boyle - The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind

I’m listening to the audio version of this right now and it’s brilliant. Here’s the video for your viewing pleasure.

In his new book The Public Domain, Professor James Boyle describes how our culture, science and economic welfare all depend on the delicate balance between those ideas that are controlled and those that are free, between intellectual property and the public domain —the realm of material that everyone is free to use and share without permission or fee

Intellectual property laws have a significant impact on many important areas of human endeavour, including scientific innovation, digital creativity, cultural access and free speech. And so Boyle argues that, just as every informed citizen needs to know at least something about the environment or civil rights, every citizen in the information age should also have an understanding of intellectual property law.

Is the public domain as vital to knowledge, innovation and culture as the realm of material protected by intellectual property rights? James Boyle thinks so and visits the RSA to call for a new movement to preserve it. If we continue to enclose the “commons of the mind”, Boyle argues, we will all be the poorer.

Don’t take data across the border

Yet another good reason for keep your portable data in the cloud.

The DMCA is endangering American security

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act effects more than copyright issues. According to Angel Gunn:

The cybersecurity review says we need to improve academic and industry collaboration on cybersecurity and other technology issues. It also states we should "expand university curricula; and set the conditions to create a competent workforce for the digital age."

What the cybersecurity review should have said is, "We are raising a nation of timid technophobes who mistake using MyTwitFace for being a geek. Meanwhile, we have comprehensively, at every educational level, stripped away useful teaching tools and criminalized modes of research and inquiry in the name of copyright and liability laws, and sooner rather than later we are going to reap the whirlwind."

Or, putting it simply: We made ourselves stupid and now we must pay.

Read the full article on betanews.

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video

From the American University, School of Communication, Center for Social Media:

You can get a PDF of the full report on the AUSOC site.

New copyright statement in Flickr for “government work”

For a while now, photos posted on flickr by the White House have been licensed under a CC-BY license. While this was the most lenient of the CC licensing options it wasn’t exactly appropriate as these photos were technically in the public domain. Because of this, the attribution requirement of the CC license, although a great suggestion that everyone should follow, was technically adding a requirement that wasn’t allowed by law.

The only other option previously available was that of the Flickr Commons project “no known copyright restrictions”. Again, not appropriate as in this case we know that there can’t possibly be even the potential of a copyright claim by anyone. Again, close but technically not appropriately.

So, the folks at flickr have come up with a new designation: “United States Government Works”.

What does this mean? Well, if you click on the link you’ll be taken to the relevant page of copyright law giving you the relevant information. At that point you’re on your own. Thanks, I think.

Why doesn’t flickr just have a “public domain” option? That’s a completely different discussion which I’m not going to have here. Check out the flickr discussion and flickr’s official opinion on the matter if you’re interested.

Change.gov changes to a CC license

I just want to officially state how happy I am that the content of Change.gov has been officially licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. I also have a response and a concern.

The response is to those that ask "but aren't creations of the federal government automatically in the public domain?" Well, yes, but the content of Change.gov is coming out of the "office of the president-elect" which isn't officially part of the federal government. Additionally, Obama has given up his Senate seat so he's no longer part of the federal government either. That is, not until January 20th. Then, he gets control of Whitehouse.gov and that's in the public domain.

The concern is about the page on Change.gov that has the license: http://change.gov/about/copyright_policy. The CC license is listed under the heading of "Copyright Notice". Trouble is, CC isn't Copyright. Copyright is a law, Creative Commons is a license. A picky detail I'm sure, but an important one.

Yep, Wal-Mart doesn't understand copyright at all

Don't try to take a studio portrait to Wal-Mart and scan it to make some prints. According to Wal-Mart "Copyright lasts forever. It's the law." This is what one customer was told when trying to make prints of an 80 year old photo of her dead grandmother.

Read more stories about this problem in "100 years old / Discuss" on flickr.

Canadian DMCA video contest: Bill C61 in 61 seconds

Via BoingBoing

The Open Rights Group

I've blogged about the Open Rights Group in the past and I just heard from them that they're running a support campaign right now. Even if you don't donate, you should at least check them out.

The Open Rights Group is a grassroots technology organization which exists to protect civil liberties wherever they are threatened by the poor implementation and regulation of digital technology. We call these rights our “digital rights”.

In 2005, a community of 1,000 digital rights enthusiasts came together to create the Open Rights Group. Since then, ORG has spoken out on copyright term extension, DRM and the introduction of electronic voting in the UK. We have informed the debate on data protection, freedom of information, data retention and the surveillance state.

These are issues that affect all of us. Together, our community, which includes some of the UK’s most renowned technology experts, works hard to raise awareness about them.

Our Goals

• To raise awareness in the media of digital rights abuses
• To provide a media clearinghouse, connecting journalists with experts and activists
• To preserve and extend traditional civil liberties in the digital world
• To collaborate with other digital rights and related organizations
• To nurture a community of campaigning volunteers, from grassroots activists to technical and legal experts

Mistake Shows Need for Clear Communication in Piracy Discussions

Let's say that I download the last episode of the recent season of Lost via BitTorrent. It's not yet available on DVD and I get broadcast TV in my home. Is this theft? Some in the entertainment world say yes. Here's an example:

In a demonstration for BusinessWeek earlier this year, Attributor executives showed how many times scenes from "The Sopranos" had appeared on 20 leading video sites since they first aired on TV. In all, 1,500 scenes from 52 episodes had been viewed 32 million times. For Time Warner's (TWX) HBO, those viewings might have brought in more than $1 million, said Attributor Chief Executive Officer Jim Brock. [Emphasis added.]

The quote talks about and HBO series which people do pay to see (by subscribing to HBO) but I've read similar statements regarding broadcast TV shows too. But here's the catch:

It turns out that Brock was estimating revenue from advertising that did, or could have, run next to the "Sopranos" clips. I'm glad I asked, because there's a big difference between an overlooked opportunity and outright theft.

Here is exactly where we need to separate the hype from the reality. Is the company losing money because of theft or because of their lack of understanding and missing of an opportunity?

Read the full article at Tools of Change for Publishing.

Warning to copyright enforcers: Three strikes and you're out

I think we should permanently cut off the internet access of any company that sends out three erroneous copyright notices. Three strikes and you're out, mate.

Having been disconnected, your customers can only find out about your product offerings by ringing you up and asking, or by requesting a printed brochure. Perhaps you could give all your salespeople fax machines so they can fax urgent information up and down the supply chain. And there's always the phone – just make sure you've got a bunch of phone books in the office, because you'll never Google another phone number.

Call it a modest proposal in the Swiftian sense if you must, but I'm deadly serious.

Read Cory Doctorow's full article on guardian.co.uk.

U.S. copyright renewal records available for download

Wondering if that book published between 1923 and 1963 is currently in the public domain? Well, now you can find out.

For U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963, the rights holder needed to submit a form to the U.S. Copyright Office renewing the copyright 28 years after publication. In most cases, books that were never renewed are now in the public domain. Estimates of how many books were renewed vary, but everyone agrees that most books weren't renewed. If true, that means that the majority of U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963 are freely usable.

How do you find out whether a book was renewed? You have to check the U.S. Copyright Office records. Records from 1978 onward are online (see http://www.copyright.gov/records) but not downloadable in bulk. The Copyright Office hasn't digitized their earlier records, but Carnegie Mellon scanned them as part of their Universal Library Project, and the tireless folks at Project Gutenberg and the Distributed Proofreaders painstakingly corrected the OCR.

Thanks to the efforts of Google software engineer Jarkko Hietaniemi, we've gathered the records from both sources, massaged them a bit for easier parsing, and combined them into a single XML file available for download here.

Read the full story on Inside Google Book Search.

EFF weighs in on "making available"

These two arguments are brilliant! First, Making Available == distribution:

It claims that the right "to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public" granted in the Copyright Act means that an actual distribution must be proven. This is a more demanding standard of evidence than simply showing a judge that copyrighted files exist in a user's shared file folder on a P2P network.

One of the key parts of this claim is that Congress showed in other laws that it could be quite clear about granting a "making available" right when it wished to do so. The fact that the Copyright Act doesn't include such language should be taken as an obvious sign that just attempting to distribute a work cannot be considered copyright infringement, said the EFF.

Second Media Sentry == the public:

"It is axiomatic that a copyright owner cannot infringe her own copyright," says the brief in its concluding section. "By the same token, an authorized agent acting on behalf of the copyright owner also cannot infringe any rights held by that owner. Accordingly, where the only evidence of infringing distribution consists of distributions to authorized agents of the copyright owner, that evidence cannot, by itself, establish that other, unauthorized distributions have taken place."

Read the full story on ars technica.

MPAA Says No Proof Needed in P2P Copyright Infringement Lawsuits

Never mind "innocent until proven guilty" when it comes to copyright infringement according to the MPAA.

"Mandating such proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances," MPAA attorney Marie L. van Uitert wrote Friday to the federal judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas trial.

"It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement," van Uitert wrote on behalf of the movie studios, a position shared with the Recording Industry Association of America, which sued Thomas, the single mother of two.

Red the full story on Wired.com.

Profs tell Thomas judge making available isn't distribution

It can't be easy for a federal judge to admit that he was wrong when giving jury instructions in a high-profile case, but the judge in the Jammie Thomas file-swapping case has stepped up and cast serious doubt on his own actions. Following other court rulings around the country, Judge Michael Davis indicated that he may grant Thomas a new trial after telling the jury that simply "making available" a copyrighted song on P2P networks counted as infringement. Now, Davis has asked for public comment on "whether the Court committed a manifest error of law in instructing the jury." The first public response to that question offers a resounding "yes" in response.

Nine copyright professors have filed a "friend of the court" brief (found via Threat Level) that addresses Davis' question. While the "making available" issue can be tedious, technical, and contradictory (different court rulings have gone different ways), the brief actually does a fine job of making the debate accessible.

The main thrust of the argument is a simple one: a close look at the actual words of the relevant copyright statute show that rights holders have the exclusive prerogative to "distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public." The key question concerns whether just making available a file in a shared directory counts as a distribution to the public, and the professors argue that it clearly does not.

Read the full story on ars technica.

Library-related topics on TWiT

I'm a bit behind on my podcast listening so sorry for the delay in posting this. The first 45-ish minutes of This Week in Tech episode #144 covers the following topics and is definitely worth a listen.

• Microsoft to shut down book search program in face competition from Google Book Search. Microsoft's comments.
• Text Archive, Open Content Alliance, and OpenLibrary.org. OCR is corrected by reCAPTCHA.
• Orphan works legislation now in Congress. Could be good or bad depending on how law is implemented.
• Internet Archive served by FBI in 2007 with national security letter seeking identity and behavior of Internet Archive user.
• Kahle and attorneys were under immediate gag order with penalty of incarceration.
• FBI served 200,000 such letters in four years, circumventing FISA court.
• Archive's only legal recorse was to sue government (Internet Archive v. Mukasey) with help of ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation, arguing law was unconstitutional.
• FBI settled before case was challenged before judge. Internet Archive settled on condition that it could go public.
• Six senators ask FBI for information on this case. Full text.
• Video on Archive.org about NSLs

The episode is listenable and downloadable from the TWiT site.

Microsoft on Copyright

I use Windows Live Writer to write most of my blog posts. (BTW, I love this program!) When I used the Insert Video function while writing my previous post on Obama I noticed a little link down at the bottom of the window labeled "Please respect copyright".

Here's what you get when you click on that link:

COPYRIGHT NOTICE & FAQ.

© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The following is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. If you need legal advice, contact a lawyer.

What is copyright?

Copyright law protects original works, such as websites, books, music, paintings, photos and video. A work is “original” if it contains some elements you created and did not borrow from others. Typically, when you create an original work, you own the copyright. As the copyright owner, you can control how others use your work. For example, if you write a movie script, you have the right to, and can prevent others from, copying your script, sharing it with others (“distributing it”), making a movie or book from your script (a “derivative work”), or publicly performing your script as a play or movie. You also have the ability to sell or give away these rights. In other words, you could sell the right to make a movie based on your script to a movie studio.

If you use someone else’s copyrighted materials without permission, that use generally violates the copyright owner's exclusive rights, and is copyright infringement. So if you create a new work and include parts of other people’s works in it (such as an existing photo, lengthy quotes from a book or a loop from a song), you must own or have permission to use the elements you borrow. For example, if your script is based on an existing popular series, you should obtain permission to use the elements you borrow from the series.

Copyright law is different from the law of personal property. If you buy a physical object, such as a movie on DVD, you own the physical object. You do not, however, obtain ownership of the “copyrights” (the rights to make copies, distribute, make derivatives and publicly perform or display) in the content of the movie. The fact that you have obtained physical possession of a DVD does not automatically grant you the right to copy or share it.

If you make your own movie, it may include many copyrighted works in it. So, if you decide to make a movie based on your script, you must either create all elements of it on your own, or have permission to use the elements you borrow. Especially keep in mind that photos or artwork hanging on the walls of your sets and music on the soundtrack (even if you own the CD or MP3) may be copyrighted. You should not include copyrighted works such as these in your movie without authorization.

A few other things to keep in mind are:

1.

Just because a work does not include a copyright notice (e.g., © 2006 Microsoft Corporation) does not mean the work is in the public domain. Copyright notices are generally not required for works to be protected by copyright.

2.

Just because a work is easily available on the internet or elsewhere does not mean you may use the work freely. Look for terms of use, such as Creative Commons, that explain how works you find on the Internet may be used.

Isn't it in the public domain?

Just because a work is freely available, does not mean it is in the “public domain.” Copyright is for a limited term; it does not last forever. In the copyright context, “public domain” means the copyright term has expired. Once a work is in the public domain, it may be freely used without permission from the copyright owner.

Determining the term of copyright can be complex, particularly because copyright laws vary from country to country. Also, even if the copyright on a work has expired, you should be careful about how you use a public domain work. For example, a book may be in the public domain, but it might not be ok to scan the book cover to cover and post it on the internet. This is because the particular version of the book may contain new copyrightable material that is not in the public domain, such as cover art or footnotes.

What about fair use?

In limited situations, you can use copyrighted works without permission from the copyright holder. It can be difficult to figure out whether use of copyrighted works without permission is legal, though, because the laws in this area are often vague and vary from country to country.

The copyright law in the United States has a doctrine called “fair use”. Fair use provides a defense to copyright infringement in some circumstances. For example, fair use allows documentary filmmakers to use very short clips of copyrighted movies, music and news footage without permission from the copyright owner. Fair use is a difficult concept because determining whether something is a fair use involves weighing four factors. Unfortunately, weighing the fair use factors rarely results in a clear-cut answer.

Rather than applying a fair use test, many other countries have specific exceptions to copyright infringement. The number and type of exceptions vary by country, but they frequently allow copyrighted materials to be used without permission from the copyright holder for activities such as nonprofit research, teaching, news reporting, or private study.

If you incorrectly decide that something is a fair use or falls into an exception to copyright infringement, you could be held criminally and civilly liable and have to pay damages. We suggest you talk to a lawyer if you have questions regarding fair uses of copyrighted works.

What happens if you upload copyrighted materials to one of our websites without permission?

By law, we are required to take down videos, music, photographs or other content you upload onto a website hosted by Microsoft if we learn that it infringes someone else’s copyright. If you believe that we have mistakenly taken down content you uploaded that you own or have permission to upload, you can also let us know that. Finally, if you upload infringing content repeatedly, we will terminate your account and you could face criminal and civil penalties. So please, respect other people’s copyrights.

What if my stuff is on a Microsoft website without my permission?

If you believe that anything on a website hosted by Microsoft infringes your copyright, let us know. Just provide us with the information requested here and we will see that your copyrighted works are taken down.

I want to share my content, but...

Many of our websites and services allow you to share content you create, such as video, music and photographs. Though there is no way for us to ensure that your content will not be misused when you share it online, you may consider making it available under a Creative Commons License.

Creative Commons licenses are a simple way for you to let people know what uses they can make of your creative works and under what conditions. Creative Commons licenses are customizable based on your preferences and are automatically generated through the use of an online form. The form includes questions such as whether your work may be used only for non-commercial purposes and whether the work may be modified. As such, a variety of licenses are possible. For example, an “attribution only” license allows others to make any use of your work as long as they indicate that you are the copyright holder.

Creative Commons is continually developing new licenses tailored to needs identified by creative people like you. To learn more about Creative Commons, or to prepare a Creative Commons license, visit their website (http://creativecommons.org/).

What if I don't want my website crawled?

Microsoft search services (MSN Search and Windows Live Search) follow the Robots Exclusion Standards. This means that you can control which pages Microsoft search engines index and how often Microsoft bots access your website. To learn how to do so, or for more information regarding Microsoft’s webcrawling and site indexing practices, please visit http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx.

Over all I'd say that this is a reasonable document. Nothing here particularly made me cringe and that surprised me when reading a document from such a company as Microsoft. I will say though that I'm not exactly a fan of this advice: "We suggest you talk to a lawyer if you have questions regarding fair uses of copyrighted works." Why not at least attempt to explain how Fair Use works instead of pointing in the direction of a lawyer. (Yep,  Microsoft's afraid of liability issues I'm sure.) 

Author Sues Booksellers for Selling His Books

More proof that Copyright as it stands is totally bonkers. (Even if this case gets tossed out, which it should, the fact the someone thinks this is reasonable under the current law proves my point.)

But the Los Angeles-based Valerie F. Horn, Townsend's attorney, said that although the claim is rooted in an issue with Nazca (which is, for all intents and purposes, an individual named Herbert R. Moseley), the bookstores are legally entangled. According to Horn, Nazca, aka Moseley, copied Townsend's works without permission and then distributed the books to the booksellers. This, she said, results in "liability to all those within the chain of distribution." Horn also added that whether the booksellers named knowingly or unknowingly sold ripped-off books is irrelevant, as per the copyright statute.

Read the full story at Publishers Weekly.

Digital copyright: it's all wrong

Check this one out, the US proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement:

The ACTA draft is a scary document. If a treaty based on its provisions were adopted, it would enable any border guard, in any treaty country, to check any electronic device for any content that they suspect infringes copyright laws. They need no proof, only suspicion.

They would be able to seize any device - laptop, iPod, DVD recorder, mobile phone, etc - and confiscate it or destroy anything on it, merely on suspicion. On the spot, no lawyers, no right of appeal, no nothing.

Read the full story in The Sidney Morning Herald.

Police Chief Faces High Court Anti-Piracy Action

Tired of suing customers, music industry group goes after the cops. I kid you not!

UK music licensing outfit the “Performing Right Society” (PRS) - the guys that come asking for money when you play any music within earshot of the public - is rolling out the big guns ready for a High Court showdown with a little known group of music pirates, known in the UK as ‘the police’. Not the band of the same name, but that government organization people rely on for keeping law and order.

According to a report, the police in the county of Lancashire have apparently committed a terrible crime and let the whole country down. Rather like the copyright infringing tea-rooms and their carol-singing occupants we wrote about last year, it appears that the police have been recklessly listening to music in stations all over the county - without a license. The PRS aren’t happy.

Read the full story on TorrentFreak .

Chuck D on Piracy

Via The Pirate's Dilemma

Get The Pirate's Dilemma for free

Matt Mason has officially released his latest book The Pirates Dilemma for free online.

Why would an author give away a book for free? Obviously it makes a lot of sense given the arguments in this particular book, but it’s true for all authors that piracy isn’t a threat, it’s an opportunity...

By treating the electronic version of a book as information rather than property, and circulating it as widely as possible, many authors such as Paulo Coelho and Cory Doctorow actually end up selling more copies of the physical version. Pirate copies of The Pirate’s Dilemma are out there online anyway, and they don’t seem to have harmed sales. My guess is they are helping. To be honest, I was flattered that the book got pirated in the first place.

Get it at http://thepiratesdilemma.com/download-the-book. (If he'd released it under a CC license I'd be adding it to the NLC's online collection. Alas not.)

YouTomb

The folks over at MIT Free Culture have created YouTomb.

YouTomb is a research project by MIT Free Culture that tracks videos taken down from YouTube for alleged copyright violation.

More specifically, YouTomb continually monitors the most popular videos on YouTube for copyright-related takedowns. Any information available in the metadata is retained, including who issued the complaint and how long the video was up before takedown. The goal of the project is to identify how YouTube recognizes potential copyright violations as well as to aggregate mistakes made by the algorithm.

While it doesn't make the original videos available you can at least find out why that particular video you're looking for is no longer available.

Another amusing copyright statement

"All rights reserved. All lefts gregarious. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission form the publisher, or special dispensation from the Archbishop of Cydonia Mensae." (Look it up ;-)

Understanding Anti-Piracy Enforcement

TorrentFreak has a great post explaining some of the most common misconceptions about anti-piracy enforcement today. They are:

1. There have been very few actual legal cases, as yet, that have involved torrents.
2. The majority of copyright cases are CIVIL, not criminal
3. What most people think of as being the law, often isn’t.
4. The RIAA and the MPAA never get involved in anti piracy evidence collection directly.
5. Most of the time, people are going from what someone they have met on a forum had read in an IRC channel.

Each of these are addresses in detail on TorrentFreak.

Think Like a Dandelion

In Cory Doctorow's latest Locus column he discusses the reproduction methodology of the dandelions (something I'm currently fighting in my own back year, literally,) and relates it to artists in the Internet world.

Dandelions and artists have a lot in common in the age of the Internet. This is, of course, the age of unlimited, zero-marginal-cost copying. If you blow your works into the net like a dandelion clock on the breeze, the net itself will take care of the copying costs. Your fans will paste-bomb your works into their mailing list, making 60,000 copies so fast and so cheaply that figuring out how much it cost in aggregate to make all those copies would be orders of magnitude more expensive than the copies themselves.

You can read the full article on Locus Online.

Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song

Woah! It looks like Happy Birthday might not actually be under copyright.

"Happy Birthday to You" is the best-known and most frequently sung song in the world. Many - including Justice Breyer in his dissent in Eldred v. Ashcroft - have portrayed it as an unoriginal work that is hardly worthy of copyright protection, but nonetheless remains under copyright. Yet close historical scrutiny reveals both of those assumptions to be false. The song that became "Happy Birthday to You," originally written with different lyrics as "Good Morning to All," was the product of intense creative labor, undertaken with copyright protection in mind. However, it is almost certainly no longer under copyright, due to a lack of evidence about who wrote the words; defective copyright notice; and a failure to file a proper renewal application.

SSRN-Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song by Robert Brauneis

One bielyon dollars!

Ok, I exaggerate a little but this is getting a smidge ridiculous. The MPAA is demanding $15.4 million from The Pirate Bay to "cover the damages they suffered from 4 movies and 13 TV-episodes that were made available via the popular BitTorrent tracker". Sorry, but by that logic, never mind the insane math involved in coming up with that number, the MPAA should be suing Google too since I can find torrents of The Pink Panther via their search engine too.

Pirate Bay's response: “The worst thing is that I lost 100 kronor on a bet on the number they would come up with,” Sunde added. “And, it sucks that they didn’t claim more than for Napster and the other sites. It’s cooler to break the record.”

BBC removes Doctor Who fan’s knitting patterns from the Web

I'm not a knitter but I've been watching a lot of the photos on Flickr (especially the recent Face of Bo and Adipose creations) and wishing someone would love me enough to knit some of these for me. So when I read the story of the person who's received a cease and desist from the BBC for posting homebrew knitting patters online I felt just a little sick.

“We note that you are supplying DR WHO items, and using trade marks and copyright owned by BBC. You have not been given permission to use the DR WHO brand and we ask that you remove from your site any designs connected with DR WHO. Please reply acknowledging receipt of this email, and confirm that you will remove the DR WHO items as requested.”

Really, who is this hurting? No money is changing hands and the BBC isn't loosing any market share since they're offering no such thing officially. Hey Russell, what do you think about this?

Read more and link to the full story on the The Open Rights Group Blog.

Of Librarians, Photography, Copyright & Creative Commons

Before you read this post be sure you've read these other posts and I don't really feel like summarizing them, just responding to the issues at hand.

• 50 Reasons Not to Change
• Copyright Infringement and Creative Commons
• Creative Commons, Copyright and the Murky Middle
• Free Use Photos
• So What Are the Rules for Photographers?

I was going to post about this since I seem to be the "CC Guy" in the library world post-CIL2008 but then I decided not to as I'm not in the mood to write something worthy of what I have to say about it. Now, is looks like we will be discussing the issue on tonight's episode of Uncontrolled Vocabulary so I've decided to create this less-than-perfect response if for no other reason than to organizer my thought in preparation for tonight.

Resolved:

Whereas the original blogger of the image in question did not own the copyright on the image in the first place, they are just as "wrong" in republishing it on the Net as anyone involved.

Whereas the original blogger states "Please note that this image has a copyright, for non-commercial distribution with attribution" then displays the CC BY-NC-SA license, this wholly makes no sense. Either the image is under traditional copyright or it's under a CC license. You can't have it both ways.

Whereas Michael Casey followed the license as far as I can tell I consider him pretty much faultless in this situation.

Whereas the original blogger insists that you use her code to post that image anywhere else, that both a) does not jive with the CC license given and b) is not something most Web publishers will do since she could change the image to something else at any time and therefore that would display new, non-approved content on my site.

Whereas the original blogger is stating a copyright, and stating a CC license, and then stating that others must only post the image the way she wants, she is trying to have her cake and eat it too and that just won't work. Pick one. You can't have all three.

Whereas the original blogger issued a DMCA takedown notice to Yahoo! (owner of Flickr), I consider this to be a complete overreaction to the situation. She should have contacted Michael first and tried to work it out with him personally. I'm sure he would have been reasonable about it.

Whereas Yahoo! received the DMCA takedown notice they did the only thing that the law allowed them to do, and took the image out of Michael's account. Michael and I see this as completely unreasonable but I still find Yahoo! faultless since they had no choice under the DMCA. I hope that Yahoo! will restore the image pending their investigation.

Whereas Flickr does not allow for a public domain license, I agree that they should. Anyone know who to write to in encouragement of adding a PD license?

Whereas the new Free Use Photos Flickr group has been created, I believe this might only cause additional confusion and problems as most of those photos are in the "Free Use Photos" group yet still have a traditional full copyright listed for rights. In other words, we teach users to check the rights but now have to say "but as long as it's in this group, you're allowed to ignore the listed rights."

Whereas I was invited to participate in this group I have decided to respectfully declined. I am more than happy to let pretty much anyone use my photos as long as they give me credit. (In fact I've allowed several commercial organizations to use my photos without paying me.) My CC license allows for this just fine. I'm not willing to put my photos into the public domain at this point since then others could use my works without giving me credit.

Therefore I believe that the problem is not Creative Commons but a distinct lack of understanding of one or more of the parties. The solution is not to give up on CC as Michael has done, but further education.

More interesting Copyright Statements

In preparation for my upcoming Creative Commons presentation I've found myself reading copyright statements in books. I posted an amusing one last week. Here's a few more which are amusing, but in these cases, are meant to be serious. Italics are emphasis I've added.

Justin Charles & Co - 2003
“All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other that that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.”

Borderlands Press – 2007
“This book is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America, and all of the countries covered by the International Copyright Union (including the countries covered by the International Copyright Union including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth), and all of the countries covered by the Pan-American Copyright Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention, and of all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio broadcasting, television video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical electronic reproductions such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are strictly reserved.” [All that in just two sentences.]

February 2008 – Cemetery Dance
“All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, or his agent, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a critical article or review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper, or electronically transmitted on radio or television.”
[According to this quoting in a review on Amazon.com or your blog isn't allowed.]

Funniest copyright statement ever

I was saving this for my CC talk at CiL but it's too funny not to post.

All rights reserved under the International and Pan- American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced, replicated, reiterated, duplicated, conduplicated, retyped, transcribed by hand (manuscript or cursive), read aloud and recorded on audio tape, platter, or disk, lipsynched, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including genetic, chemical, mechanical, optical, xerographic, holographic, electronic, stereophonic, ceramic, acrylic, or telepathic (except for that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press who promise to read the book painstakingly all the way through before writing their reviews) without prior written permission from the Publisher.

Creative Commons @ MPOW

I don't usually cross-post between this personal blog and the office blog but a project I've been working on for about a month has just been implemented and I'm totally excited about it. Check out the details on the NLC blog.

If the RIAA & MPAA had brain scanners

Granted, neither of them worry (officially) about book piracy but today's xkcd makes me want to go read the new Harry Potter in a bookstore without buying it. Or, I could just download the PDF.

Sicko isn't on YouTube any more

It was reported over the weekend that Michael Moore's new film Sicko was available in it's entirety on YouTube. Well, despite Mr. Moore being on record saying as "I don't agree with the copyright laws and I don't have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people as long as they're not trying to make a profit off my labour. I would oppose that… I do well enough already and I made this film because I want the world to change. The more people who see it the better, so I'm happy this is happening." it seems he isn't in charge. Lionsgate films has ordered it taken down.

On presenting copyright

On Saturday I attended a training day for school media specialists. The three afternoon sessions were on Flickr & Blogging (presented by a co-worker of mine), Copyright (presented by someone I don't know) and Podcasting (presented by YT). I caught the end of the flickr presentation, sat through the whole copyright presentation and then did mine. At the request of a couple of folks who read my tweets during the copyright presentation, I've written this post.

Important note: I am not criticizing the presenter. Her presentation style was just fine and her information was accurate in the strictest sense. So please, do not view this a anything vaguely related to a comment on the presenter herself.

The first problem with presenting an issue such as copyright is the fact that it's a legal issue and the final arbiter of whether you're violating copyright lays with a judge or a jury after presenting a bucket-load of facts. Those situations generally require lawyers to sort out the details and several times the presenter reminded the audience "I am not a lawyer". This is not to say that she shouldn't present this topic. I've attended presentations on copyright with a panel of lawyers, and they couldn't do much better since many times the answer to a given scenario is "it depends".

Because of this, most copyright presenters will err on the side of caution, especially when presenting to people from schools as, after all, you don't want to do something that will get your school sued by a copyright holder. So, for example, the presenter mentioned this example from the flickr presentation in which the Westmont Public Library is using flickr to promote new materials. According to the presenter, before doing this, the library should "check the license" in the book to see if this "use" is allowed and, not finding such permission in the item, contact each of the publishers individually, get permission, file that permission away, and then proceed with photographing the item and posting it on flickr.

O.k. that might follow the letter of the law but I would hardly call that a realistic course of action. (In fact, School Library Journal would say that this falls under fair use.) Granted, that is the exactly the technically correct advice to give and I don't blame her for it. But such advice, in my opinion, needs to be tempered with a bit of reality. Maybe something along the lines of "this may, or may not, fall under fair use and be prepared to stop doing it should a publisher object." However, no such advice was given and I could tell that by the end of the hour, every school-media specialist in that room looked a bit more paranoid than they did at the beginning of the hour.

I am not trying to say that this is the fault of the presenter. She's presenting on copyright and therefore does not want (I assume) to run the risk of giving someone "bad advice" and getting in trouble for it later. That's natural. However, the fact that she's in the position she's in, shows just how screwed up the current copyright law is.

P.S. I will give the presenter kudos for pointing out that Mickey Mouse is the driving force behind copyright updating.

P.P.S. From NPR's Morning Edition today: Stanford Center Advocates for Fair Use on Web

University of Nebraska won't play along

I can't say that living in Lincoln is going to turn me into a Huskers fan but this news has started to turn me into a fan of someone on campus. Turns out that University of Nebraska will bill RIAA $11 for each threatening letter received from the RIAA. The RIAA has backed down!

How I Became A Music Pirate

Some wonder why people think it's o.k. to do things with music they've purchased that the RIAA doesn't want you to do. Well here's the story of how one man became a "music pirate".

"'Well' she responded, 'You didn't actually purchase the files, you really purchased a license to listen to the music, and the license is very specific about how they can be played or listened to.'"

Viacom sues Google/YouTube for (insert Dr. Evil joke here)

Here's the basic story and the Google Copyright Blog has the full text of the complaint as a PDF.

"YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google."