Cyberlaw

The end of Hitler parodies…

Picking the strongest internet meme is impossible – but if there was such a list the Hitler bunker scene remix must be one of the most recurring. Check out this short list of examples from YouTube.

Unfortunately TechCrunch reports that Constantin Film, the German film company, who made the movie has begun removing the parodies. Attempting to see them on YouTube often results in the text:

“This video contains content from Constantin Film, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.“

The amount of files will rapidly disappear once YouTube’s smart content system begins to locate and remove the clips. The question is not whether Constantin has the legal right to act the way they do but the effect of the action. TechCrunch again:

Downfall is a great movie, but it’s also in German which sadly means that many people outside that country will never watch it. But I’d bet these clips have sparked an interest in the film beyond what any type of traditional marketing could have done.

One could also ask what damage the making of the clips has. The clips don’t make less people see the movie or affect sales in any way. Are the clips creating a negative image of the serious movie? This is a doubtful argument as anyone watching the movie will realize the enormous difference between the comedy and the tragedy.

Constantin Film has acted with questionable legality (parodies are within the law) and have definitely not helped in promoting creativity.

Naturally I fully expect someone to create a Hitler parody to express the outrage we all feel at the loss of this important social commentary!

Update: Read the commentary from EFF Everyone Who’s Made a Hitler Parody Video, Leave the Room

Posted on by mklang

Public Domain Day or welcome out Sigmund Freud

January first is not only the day for a global hangover. Its also Public Domain Day!

The Public Domain Day is a worldwide celebration of the wealth of human culture and more specifically the expiration of copyright protection of works. This is the way in which copyright works – eventually the term of protection ends and the work becomes free. It belongs to us all.

Every year on New Year’s Day, in fact, due to the expiration of copyright protection terms on works produced by authors who died several decades earlier, thousands of works enter the public domain – that is, their content is no longer owned or controlled by anyone, but it rather becomes a common treasure, available for anyone to freely use for any purpose. (Public Domain Day)

Some of the “big” names coming out this 1 January are

Unfortunately most of the names (long list here) are unknown to most of us. Even the links to wikipedia are empty. Maybe we should use this day to revive their works and bring them back to life. Otherwise the expiration of copyright simply proves that they are no longer relevant to our lives.

Posted on by mklang

Being a queen is no laughing matter

Birmingham radio station BRMB turned on the Queen’s speech by mistake (The Telegraph) DJ Tom Binns makes some anti-royal remark about the France doing fine even after beheading their royals and switches over to the song Last Christmas by Wham! with the comment “from one Queen to another” (which Queen should be upset by this?)

What happens? He gets sacked! He must of known it was a bit of a provocation – but seriously to sack the man? The Telegraph writes that

Orion Media which owns the station said Mr Binns’ comments were inappropriate and confirmed the presenter would not be working for the station again…

“We do not condone what he said in any way, whether said in jest or not,” said Mr Lloyd. “Tom will now not be featuring again on our radio stations.”

The owners naturally have the right to fire their employees but isn’t it a bit spineless to react in this way because some listeners complain?

Posted on by mklang

Collecting Societies & Creative Commons

Moa Bergsten has written her final thesis for the completion of Masters in Law on the topic of collecting societies and Creative Commons licensing. But the essay is more than a theoretical standpoint it is an analysis of the situation in Sweden where the main copyright collecting  society has begun to allow member to use Creative Commons licenses. Thus the title of Moa’s work is Stim & Creative Commons Licensing.

Thus, the purpose of this paper is to analyze judicial problems that may arise when a copyright collecting society draws up conditions for the use of CC licenses within the scope of their right management mandate. (p6)

And from her conclusions we may read that the collecting societies are forced to accept both digital realities and to proide a continued service to their members.

The initiative of STIM to allow CC licensing is an outflow of flexibility and adaption to the digital reality. As a result a new member category is created and STIM is obligated to carry out the management with respect to the member group with due diligence and fulfill its responsibility as a trustee.

No doubt the new opportunity will cause complex interpretational determinations. However, this fact does not deprive STIM from its obligation to carry out the management in best manner possible. (p76)

Congratulations Moa on a well written, insightful and important work! Thanks for writing it in English. And thank you for allowing me to post it online. I only wish you had licensed it under a Creative Commons license.

Posted on by mklang

Hatcher on Open Data Licensing

Here is an interview with Jordan S. Hatcher on “Why we can’t use the same open licensing approach for databases as we do for content and software.”

The mission of Open Data Commons is to provide legal tools for open data, and we’ve produced two legal tools to date.  We’re looking to expand our work to do more education and research around open data, as well as to build out a robust framework for the organisation and updating and maintaining the licenses. We’re very excited that the Open Street Map community is looking to adopt the Open Database License for their materials.

Posted on by mklang

Three-strikes law is misguided

The three strikes approach to internet-regulation is a misguided approach to the problem. Read David Canton‘s arguments on the topic:

The three-strikes law is misguided, even if you believe such activity should be controlled.

Whether someone has violated copyright is often not a black-or-white issue. Copyright law is complex, and knowing in any given instance whether an infringement happened isn’t easy.

To implement these policies on a mass basis, in a similar manner to handing out parking tickets, ignores this complexity. And the penalty is more than paying a few dollars in parking fines.

Posted on by mklang

Cat & Mouse of internet regulation

Regulating technology is (almost) hopeless. When giving a speech to the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre Symposium on ‘Meeting Privacy Challenges’ in 2008 Senator John Faulkner  said

Trying to legislate to control technological development or the ways people use technology is not perhaps ordering the tide to not come in, but it is certainly like trying to empty a bathtub with a teaspoon.

And yet we keep digging away with the teaspoon. Take for example the latest developments on The Pirate Bay site (via Slashdot)

“The Pirate Bay has shut down their BitTorrent tracker. Instead TPB is now using Distributed Hash Table to distribute the torrents. The Pirate Bay Blog states that DHT along with PEX (Peer Exchange) Technology is just as effective if not better for finding peers than a centralized service. The Local reports that shutting down the tracker and implementing DHT & PEX could be due to the latest court rulings in Sweden against 2 of TPB’s owners, and may decide the outcome of the case.”

Check out warsystems for a better and more thoughtful analysis of tpb’s latest move.

And thats just it. No matter what the single state may attempt to do, technical individuals will find a way to evade the problem for a little while longer. It is doubtful whether this can go on forever, the individuals will still lose but the problems will remain and grow. At best any victory will be a Pyrrhic one.

Posted on by mklang

The UK goes for three strikes law

The UK is merrily going down the same yellow brick road as many other jurisdictions. This report is from Technollama:

The air of inevitability surrounding three strikes legislation in the UK came to its fruition yesterday with the announcement by Lord Mandelson that the government will seek to pass legislation that will force intermediaries to disconnect users involved in file-sharing. I hate to say “I told you so”, but I have been harping about three strikes for a while. The blogosphere is already replete with replies to the new development, so I will not add my voice to the overwhelming condemnation of this step by directing readers to ORG and PanGloss.

Posted on by mklang

The top 10 laws of the Internet

In its effort to supply basic education to readers who daily use the internet but may be unaware of its history The Guardian today lists the top 10 laws of the internet. Very nice! Well to be honest I did not know all of them but I have definitely followed most of them.

Here is the list – but dont forget to read the whole article with explanations, examples and discussions:

1. Godwin’s Law
The most famous of all the internet laws, formed by Mike Godwin in 1990. As originally stated, it said: “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” It has now been expanded to include all web discussions.

2. Poe’s Law
Not to be confused with the law of poetry enshrined by Edgar Allen Poe, the internet Poe’s Law states: “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing.”

3. Rule 34
States: “If it exists, there is porn of it.” See also Rule 35: “If no such porn exists, it will be made.” Generally held to refer to fictional characters and cartoons, although some formulations insist there are “no exceptions” even for abstract ideas like non-Euclidean geometry, or puzzlement.

4. Skitt’s Law
Expressed as “any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself” or “the likelihood of an error in a post is directly proportional to the embarrassment it will cause the poster.”

5. Scopie’s Law
States: “In any discussion involving science or medicine, citing Whale.to as a credible source loses the argument immediately, and gets you laughed out of the room.” First formulated by Rich Scopie on the badscience.net forum.

6. Danth’s Law (also known as Parker’s Law)
States: “If you have to insist that you’ve won an internet argument, you’ve probably lost badly.” Named after a user on the role-playing gamers’ forum RPG.net.

7. Pommer’s Law
Proposed by Rob Pommer on rationalwiki.com in 2007, this states: “A person’s mind can be changed by reading information on the internet. The nature of this change will be from having no opinion to having a wrong opinion.”

8. DeMyer’s Laws
Named for Ken DeMyer, a moderator on Conservapedia.com. There are four: the Zeroth, First, Second and Third Laws.

The Second Law states: “Anyone who posts an argument on the internet which is largely quotations can be very safely ignored, and is deemed to have lost the argument before it has begun.”

The Zeroth, First and Third Laws cannot be very generally applied and will be glossed over here.

9. Cohen’s Law
Proposed by Brian Cohen in 2007, states that: “Whoever resorts to the argument that ‘whoever resorts to the argument that… …has automatically lost the debate’ has automatically lost the debate.”

10. The Law of Exclamation
First recorded in an article by Lori Robertson at FactCheck.org in 2008, this states: “The more exclamation points used in an email (or other posting), the more likely it is a complete lie. This is also true for excessive capital letters.”

Posted on by mklang

Social Networks & Law

Ryan Calo over at the Standford Center for Internet and Society (is this the new Berkman?) is asking some very interesting questions about the legal issues of web2.0

An Australian court rules that a mortgage company can issue notice of a lien over Facebook. A court in the UK permits an injunction to be served via Twitter. A woman is arrested in Tennessee for “poking” someone over Facebook in violation of a protective order. Meanwhile, a 1978 provision of the Bankruptcy Code still provides that notice shall “be published at least once a week for three successive weeks in at least one newspaper of general circulation.” New forms (and norms) of communication are both expanding and contracting the avenues for legally meaningful notice. Just how do we know, in this uncharted new landscape, when notice is enough?

  1. Is the communication sufficiently engaging to reflect the gravity and context of the relevant legal process?
  2. Where’s the Miranda warning page?

In our joy of technology we must ensure that we do not forget to transfer the civil liberties developed over the course of our legal cultural history. To his list of examples I just want to add two more headlines New York man accused of using Twitter to direct protesters during G20 summit and Fraud Fugitive in Facebook Trap.

Also I want to mention the early work of Caroline Wilson who presented “Twit or Tweet? Legal Issues Associated with Twitter and other Micro-Blogging Sites” at GikII Amsterdam. (Jordan Hatcher’s liveblog of the event) for some additional questions.

Posted on by mklang