Copyright

Copyright and University Libraries

Today has been another travel day. Up to Stockholm for a day discussing copyright in relation to university libraries. As usual I found the librarians active and concerned about copyright issues. This is only natural since they are forced to be pragmatic about the way in which they react to copyright.

Most of the problems discussed today dealt with archiving. The most common forms of documents, which need to be archived (and are troubled by copyright), are student essays, licentiate theses and PhD theses.

Copyright creates problems in a couple of ways. First off can universities force student works to be archived and if so can they be put online? The same questions apply to the output of teachers and researchers (not always the same thing).

The whole question is complicated by the shifting practices among libraries, university departments and faculties. Actually the universities rarely have power in these issues since the decision making power is on the faculty level. For more on the dilemmas of university copyright see here.

As I mentioned the librarians were pretty cool. From totally ignoring the question of copyright and taking the â??just do itâ?? approach â?? to the more careful approach which is more concerned with the consequences. The lawyers on the other hand tend to be pessimistic and uncooperative. They want to risk nothing, do nothing, for fear of losing. Sometimes I wonder what they think they would lose in a battle? Since the slow disintegration of copyright is losing the war.

An interesting thing was that the librarians were very concerned about the potential malicious side effects of DRM use by publishers.

Posted on by mklang

Copyright Australian Style

From Matthew Rimmer we get an update on the copyright situation in Australia where the Australian Parliament is viewing an amendment of copyright (Copyright Amendment Bill 2006).

Matthew writes that instead of creating a US style defence of fair use or even reforming the defence of fair dealing, the Australian Government has actually narrowed the defence of fair dealing in respect of research and study. There are new minor exceptions on time-shifting, format-shifting, non-commercial use by libraries and archives, and satire and parody.

However, such provisions have been so narrowly framed that they are largely unworkable and inoperable.
Search engines, such as Google, will be in particular strife in Australia under such a regime. In addition, the Australian Government is providing copyright owners with stronger technological protection measures and a wide range of remedies.

A Parliamentary Committee will hear half a day of debate next week on the topic. Some of the submissions of interest are from: The Australian Digital Alliance, The Australian Libraries Copyright Committee, and the submission of Google.

Posted on by mklang

Danish Courts Discover Internet Censorship

Denmark has taken up the fight against the freedom of Internet traffic. In a recent court decision (in Danish here) the court has decided that the Internet Service Provider must prevent users carrying out illegal activities.

The background is the controversial Russian site AllOfMp3.com (more info about background controversies on wikipedia). The Russian company claims to follow Russian law while the IFPI claim that they have not paid for any western labels. In addition to this the music is not protected by DRM and can be freely transferred to others.

The Danish court has found that since the music is downloaded is actually copied onto the ISPâ??s equipment then they are guilty of copyright violation. The court has not seen this as aiding someone elseâ??s copyright violation but find that the ISP is directly responsible for carrying out the actions.

ISP liability for the actions of their customers has a long background and basically takes three positions. The ISP is totally innocent in the same way as the post-office is innocent of a blackmail letter it delivers. The ISP is guilty since without their equipment the crime could never have taken place. And thirdly the more complex: it depends. This last case must answer questions such as:

Did the ISP have knowledge of the actions?
Did the ISP take actions to prevent it?
Would it be possible (technically, economically, politically) to take action?

The result of this is that the ISP has been protected by its own strategic ignorance.

But now the Danish court argues that the ISP is not contributing or aiding crime (which in itself is a questionable stance as the questions above indicate) but is guilty of the crime itself.

The court writes

â??Retten finder … at ogsÃ¥ den flyktige og tilfældige fiksering af musikværket i form av elektroniske signaler, som foretages i de forskellige routers under datapakkernes transmission via internettet, er omfattet af ophovsretslovens § 2.â??

Basically: that the consequences of millisecond that it takes for the music to zoom through the companies routers is, in fact, the creation of a copy of digital music. This is done without the permission of the copyright holder.

Wow! The Danes have really begun something here. First of all you can hardly read, listen or see coherent information while it flies through the router. Since information online is mixed up in many packets and mixed together with other packets and all the little packets can take different routes to their final destination.

IF the Danes were right then I should be able to sue the Danish ISP for copying all my emails which happen to go through Denmark without permission.

Another problem is that the Danish court has ordered this whole problem to be resolved by blocking all traffic from the Russian site. This implementation is both unpoductive and dangerous. It is unproductive since those who want can still download – site blocking is a minor impediment. It is dangerous since it shows a lack of understanding of how the Internet works. Faith in blocking only leads to the false impression that something is being done.

(via Oscar Swartz, Copyriot)

Posted on by mklang

You Cannot Patent Software

…and yet there are software patents.

In a long draft article entitled “You Canâ??t Patent Software: Patenting Software Is Wrong” – Peter Junger states that which most lawyers fail to see. Maybe because they are blinded by economics?

Computer programs are texts, not machines as some lawyers have confused themselves into believing, and thus they may be copyrighted and protected by the First Amendment, but they are not patentable as machines. Computer programs are indeed processes, but they are not patentable processes because what they process is information and what they produce is information, not some modification of material goods or articles of commerce. The simple fact is—though the reasons for it may be hard for most lawyers to grasp—that, as the title of this article puts it: “You can’t patent software: patenting software is wrong.”

A nice, old school, scholarly legal paper which hammers home it’s point. It’s a good way to start the week with a work like this.

Posted on by mklang

What is wrong with DRM?

What is wrong with DRM?

Most people tend to steer clear of three letter acronyms that they donâ??t immediately understand. DRM (Digital Rights Management) began as a vision of using technology to ensure that owners of intellectual property could maintain control over their property.  In other words it would be impossible to do that which was illegal. So far so good. Making it impossible to do that which is illegal is good. Frustrating illegal behaviour is right.

The problem is that DRM can also prevent behaviour that is not illegal.

A current example is the media player â??Zuneâ?? from Microsoft.

To maintain control over the music stored in the media player Zune is designed to limit music sharing. If music is shared between friends it can only be played three times or stored for three days.

The problem occurs when the music shared is either (1) not copyrighted, (2) in the public domain, or (3) shared with permission.

Supposing you create a song. Really. Or maybe a you create a snappy little limerick. You send it wirelessly to a friend. After three days. Or your friend plays it three times â?? it is gone. This is because Zune wraps all music which is sent in this way in DRM nomatter the rights you have as a creator or listener.

Therefore Microsoft Zune limits the legitimate rights of the user in an effort to comply with or control intellectual property. This is bad.

But wait â?? it is worse!

In the book 1984, Orwell introduces a method of control through the language called Newspeak. The idea was that by limiting the meaning of words we the party in power would eventually limit the way in which the citizens think. In the book the example given was that the term free would loose all connections with freedom and only be used with the idea to be rid of something. The example in the book is that a dog will be free of lice. But the concept of freedom as liberty will be lost.

This is the most damaging part of DRM systems. By controlling what is physically possible they create amongst the users an illusion of what can be done. A technical limitation to our use becomes a law of nature. Copying becomes bad not because it is illegal but because it is impossible.

Therefore by controlling the physical reality the manufacturers of DRM are slowly changing the way in which we see what is possible and impossible. In extension this will also limit our ability to envision what could be possible.

Posted on by mklang

Late News From Rome: CC is OK

So I am late, again! But in going through some old mails this was particularly interesting. It is relevant to a post I wrote (4 Sept – Call for Copyright Activists):

Rome, August 7th 2006.

For the first time in Italy, Siae (the Italian collecting society), with a non-expiring resolution active from July 25th 2006, (documento protocollato presso l’Ufficio Multimedialità al nr. 1/290/06/FDP) recognizes the opportunity and right for the public playing of ambient music inside a commercial space, without compensation to be paid, thanks to the adoption of copyleft licensing schemes (like CC, Art Libre, Copyzero x, Clausola Copyleft) or in the public domain.

Inside the ice cream shop Fiordiluna, in the heart of the Trastevere district in Rome, there is a multimedia space (32″ lcd monitor and Bose speaker system) managed by a Linux pc with free software on it, through which audio, video and literary works with copyleft-like licenses or in the public domain are publicly played.

This major historical achievement has been made possible by the work of Ermanno Pandoli (Giapster and Quindicino) who is a member of the Liberius digital window of the FrontiereDigitali network and who has represented the Fiordiluna ice-creamery to Siae.

Those interested in exposing their works inside the ice-creamery may inform the relevant groups inside the FrontiereDigitali network. To obtain more information on the legal and logitical procedures to follow it is also possible to contact the Liberius digital window.

English translation by Luigi Canali De Rossi, Master New Media Association.

This is an excellent way of bringing about change in the present copyright regime. By enabling businesses to avoid paying the collecting societies and (as in the case above) making a name for themselves we can see how creativity can make a difference. And how it can work outside the narrowly defined conventional music models.

Posted on by mklang

Outraged by Copyright Law

xkcd Webcomic has elegantly captured a feeling:

Fighting bad copyright laws and attempting to explain why the myth of copyright is harmful to creativity, innovation and individual rights is enough to get anyone down. Relax. Take a deep breath. Remember why it is important. Resume the discussion.

Posted on by mklang

Broadcast & Podcast Rights

This is straight from Cory Doctrow at Boing Boing – not even going to edit it. Copyright is under fire from almost every angle imagineable. This is about the aweful Broadcast Treaty.

The Broadcast Treaty is an attempt to force the world’s governments to give a new right to broadcasters, a right to control the use of works they don’t own. The Broadcast Right will allow broadcasters to stop you from copying or re-using the programs they transmit, even if those programs are in the public domain, Creative Commons licensed or composed of uncopyrightable facts.

Fair use doesn’t apply to the broadcast right. It will have its own rules for fair use, separate from copyright. You’ll have to pay your lawyer twice, once to make sure you’ve got a fair copyright use, and again to make sure you’ve got a fair broadcast right use. And you might get sued twice — once for violating copyright and again for broadcast right violations.

Worse yet, they want this to apply to the Internet. A few US corporations — Microsoft, Yahoo — have hijacked the US position on the Broadcast Treaty and now the US is using every trick in the book to get the world’s governments (who roundly reject the idea) to create a “webcasting right” at the same time as the broadcast right.

This is deadly to podcasters. The webcasting right will break podcasters’ ability to quote and re-use each others’ work (even CC-licensed works), and other video found on the net. It will allow podcast-hosting companies like Yahoo to tell people how they can use your podcasts, even if you want to permit retransmissions. And it will hurt organizations that are tying to find novel ways to use podcasts, like

The webcasting stuff has been “narrowed” to try to make it apply only to “professional” webcasts and not podcasts, but this is a short-sighted view of the future of podcasting. The term podcasting was only coined 20-some months ago. The idea that we can predict what a podcast will look like tomorrow is ridiculous — it’s like designing a copyright for printed books ten seconds before the photocopier comes along and changes everything.

Luckily, the webcasting stuff is on the ropes. Mark Cuban, who founded Yahoo’s Broadcast.com, has signed onto an open letter from 20 technology organizations that reject the webcasting right. Last week, dozens of companies, libraries and public interest groups signed an open letter rejecting the treaty altogether.

Now it’s the podcasters’ turn. EFF has created an open letter on behalf of podcasters everywhere, rejecting the webcasting right. WIPO is supposed to be making treaties that protect creators. We podcasters are the Internet’s native creators. WIPO has no business trying to break the Internet so that it is better-suited to the business-models of yesterday’s broadcasters.

If you are a podcaster — or better yet, a podcasting organization — sign onto this letter now! It will be presented Monday morning to the WIPO committee that’s creating the Broadcast Treaty in Geneva. This is your best-ever chance to be heard. Link

Posted on by mklang