Bored in Spanish class, I thought of the following:
There are those who passively accept change; that is easy. There exist those who lament change, which is harder. Most difficult, though, is the task of those who justify change.What do you think? Agree/Disagree?
The latter deserve the ease of the first, while the first deserve the world those who lament promote.
Lawrence Lessig awoke me to the problems with the current copyright regime from a legal perspective. My interest was, and remains, in the law.
However, copyright is innately tied to the creative industries. Though Lessig has often highlighted the benefits to art in a looser copyright regime, his purview remains the legal side of the issue. Jonathan Lethem, who I've written about recently, is clearly the thought leader on the artistic ramifications of copyright.
In the below video, he discusses how copyright must not just be approached as a business decision, but it must consider the aesthetic.
I hope he continues this important work -- defining copyright on the terms of artists, not companies.
EFF had recently sued Viacom over a take-down notice for what was a clear fair use of their material. EFF has apparently dropped the suit after Viacom admitted its error.
I imagine they didn't try to set a precedent because Viacom has enough money to bankrupt the EFF in trial costs...
Consider donating to the EFF; they do great work.
Jonathan Lethem gave a more revealing interview to Salon.com. Quote:
But the truth is, I could write a whole book detailing the plot of a "Simpsons" episode, describing Homer's yellow skin and protuberant eyes, and no one would ever be able to block my choice as an artist there, or make it too expensive for me to do it. But if a visual artist or a filmmaker or a digital montage maker tried to capture that image, which is just part of a visual language that is floating around, they don't have my freedom.
Jonathan Lethem is the author of the best-selling novel "The Fortress of Solitude" and winner of the MacArthur "genius grant." Further, he is the author a recent article in Harper's which I mentioned earlier.
In a way no lawyer can, Lethem is tackling copyright reform. Wired News reports that he is selling stories to dramatists and filmmakers for a dollar each. As a writer and music fan, he recognizes the value of adaption and derivation. To this end, he wants to create a world where artists dictate the terms of use for their works.
Listening to Lethem, one imagines a world where every artist crafts an idiosyncratic copyright notice, with its own strange rules, to adorn the front page or liner notes or gallery notice fronting her creations.
This approach, to me, seems burdensome to those who want to create using other material. If I have to read a new agreement every time I want to use a work, my desire to create will decrease. Instead, the Creative Commons practice of standardized licenses seems to allow artists to understand a half-dozen limitations as opposed to thousands.
What makes the most sense to you? Complete artist control or a set of commonly accepted tools?
Eric von Hippel is an MIT professor and author of two books on innovation (Sources of Innovation and Democratizing Innovation). Unlike most authors, he releases his books for free downloads. In an interview he provides evidence to support that of Cory Doctorow - releasing material for free increases sales.
There have been 12,700 downloads of Sources of Innovation since I put it on the web last year, running about 20 per day. Sales before posting in 2005 (the book was published in 1988) were about 325 per year. In the year after posting, they were about 575.Democratizing Innovation has been downloaded 55,000 times so far, with downloads from my MIT website running about 50 per day. I don’t think this has hurt hard copy sales – and it actually may have helped. MIT Press told me that hardcopy sales are higher than their pre-pub estimate of what they would have been without the option of free downloads.
Here are the links to the downloadable copies of his books - Sources and Democratizing.
I hope to interview some people who have had similar experiences in the future and get their anecdotes and views on the changing industry of publishing.
Earlier this year at ETech, EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann debated Mark Cuban. The video of the debate is below. For the record, I tend to think the DMCA safe-harbor provision is beneficial to technologists but would like to see the case law strengthen to remove the doubt some have as to whether or not services like YouTube qualify as ISPs.
I think Mark Cuban has a fundamental misunderstanding of the statute and would have loved to see Fred demonstrate this, but the nature of the debate was too relaxed for that to be appropriate.
Nowhere do I see in the DMCA that an ISP needs a "customer relationship" with the user as Cuban suggests. In fact, here is Section 512 of the DMCA:
(a) Transitory Digital Network Communications.— A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the provider’s transmitting, routing, or providing connections for, material through a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, or by reason of the intermediate and transient storage of that material in the course of such transmitting, routing, or providing connections, if—The only possible problem I can see with YouTube is that they alter the content to encode it properly and that might interfere with point 5. This was the contention in the Universal v. MySpace case which was filed a while back. However, since it is automated and does not modify "the content" only the form, I think YouTube is safe.(1) the transmission of the material was initiated by or at the direction of a person other than the service provider;(2) the transmission, routing, provision of connections, or storage is carried out through an automatic technical process without selection of the material by the service provider;(3) the service provider does not select the recipients of the material except as an automatic response to the request of another person;(4) no copy of the material made by the service provider in the course of such intermediate or transient storage is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to anyone other than anticipated recipients, and no such copy is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to such anticipated recipients for a longer period than is reasonably necessary for the transmission, routing, or provision of connections; and(5) the material is transmitted through the system or network without modification of its content.
The folks over at p2pnet have a survey about the "spin masters" at the RIAA. Check it out.
Since the beginning of digital copyright enforcement, proponents of copyleft have searched for somewhere to place servers full of pirated material. In 1999, at the height of the bubble, Ryan Lackey tried to transform the questionably autonomous sea platform of Sealand into a "data haven." More recently, the torrent site The Pirate Bay tried to purchase the platform off the coast of England. The plan failed, but the hope lives on.
Wired's Epicenter blog brings the story of entrepreneurial individuals hoping to transform Native American Reservations into modern day "data havens."
Jim Griffin found a legal precedent indicating that "Congress hadn't intended Indian tribes to be covered by copyright law, and that the exemption extends to their off-reservation commercial endeavors."As Lessig pointed out in his first book, Code, and Tim Wu did in his recent book, Who Controls the Internet, cyberspace is very much under the control of real space. Were tribes to begin such businesses, the RIAA and MPAA would just lobby for increased control which would probably limit gambling and tobacco sales -- something the Native Americans definitely don't want.
A new report by Vidmeter, an industry analyst, says that only 9.23% of videos on YouTube are found to be infringing and removed by copyright holders. These clips account for even less of the views on YouTube - 5.93%.
By recording the number of views on the most popular clips several times a day and determining which were removed as copyright infringement, Vidmeter learned that the vast majority of YouTube content is, in fact, user generated and legal.
Viacom, the media giant suing Google over YouTube, is far and away the "victim" of the most "infringement" with 40 percent of the 9.23% being removed by Viacom DMCA take-down notices. In other words, 3.7% of videos on YouTube allegedly infringe upon Viacom copyrights.
Though I have my reservations about the exact methodology for determining infringement -- they used a successful DMCA take-down as "evidence" of infringement -- the study does provide true data which shows YouTube (and its peers) are not hotbeds of infringement.
As reported earlier, the entire EMI catalogue will now be available for sale without DRM in the iTunes Store. However, hidden in the Apple and EMI press releases are some caveats:
EMI Music will continue to employ DRM as appropriate to enable innovative
digital models such as subscription services (where users pay a monthly fee for
unlimited access to music), super-distribution (allowing fans to share music
with their friends) and time-limited downloads (such as those offered by
ad-supported services).
It is a step in the right direction, but the cost increase shows that they are still scared of piracy.
The WSJ is reporting that EMI will drop DRM in a deal with Apple tomorrow. I imagine they will also introduce the Beatles into the iTunes Store. I will buy a ton of EMI music if this is in fact true.
