Eric Crampton's Library tagged copyright →  View Popular

Illegal MP3 file-sharing? Pirated movie downloads? Contraband cellphones? Mark Twain, call your office

he bill has implications for educational institutions, libraries and internet service providers (ISPs), but also contains amendments that relate to seemingly innocuous activities such as adding your favourite CD to an iPod or other portable music player.

The legislation will legalise "time shifting" or the recording of broadcasts for watching later. However, there are a few catches:

- the recording must be made for private and domestic purposes and for the sole purpose of time-shifting;

- the copy is only permitted to be made if the programme is not available on demand (for instance, you would not be able to record a "pay per view" movie that is still available through a broadcaster or to record something that is available on-demand)

- the copy will become an infringement if it is retained longer than is necessary for viewing or listening to the recording at a more convenient time. So, it may be legal to record a rugby match showing live at 4am in the morning, but you cannot keep the copy indefinitely.

Research supports the idea that free downloading gives breaks to smaller artists. In a 2002 paper titled Stardom, Peer-to-Peer and the Socially Optimal Distribution of Music, M.X. Zhang of the Sloan School of Management at MIT argued that marginal and new musicians benefit from the way file sharing disseminates their music from hard drive to hard drive. In a 2003 review of the economics literature about piracy for the German economics institute CESifo, researchers Martin Peitz and Patrick Waelbroeck summarized Zhang's findings:With the help of peer-to-peer networks, "marginal artists can gain from the exposure effect Â… in an asymmetric world [with stars and niche performers], the current technology [i.e., CDs] favours the promotion of stars. With digital copies, niche performers can more easily access consumers."

But this isn’t news, nor is it particular to the digital age. History tells us: convenience wins, hubris loses. “Who is going to want a shitty quality LP when these 78s sound so good? Who wants a hissy cassette when they have an awesome quadrophonic system? Who wants digitized music on discs now that we have Dolby on our cassettes? Who wants to listen to compressed audio on their computers?” ANSWER: EVERYONE. Convenience wins, hubris loses. [check Fredric Dannen’s comments here]

I’m here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I’m not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I’ll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won’t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don’t have any more time to give and can’t bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life’s too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.

If, on the other hand, you’ve seen the light too, there’s a very fun road ahead for us all. Lets get beyond talking about how you get the music and into building context: reasons and ways to experience the music. The opportunity is in the chasm between the way we experience the content and the incredible user-created context of the Web.

A dispute between an atheist group and a creationist group over some postings on YouTube has critics of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act crying foul. They say it's a new and inappropriate use of DMCA, which is becoming a frequent weapon in nasty political and cultural battles.

YouTube yanked several videos last week that had been posted by the self-avowed atheist group Rational Response Squad. The videos criticized the Creation Science Evangelism ministry. YouTube removed the videos and at one point suspended Rational Response Squad's account.

The videos included content owned by Creation Science Evangelism. But Rational Response Squad argued in an open letter to YouTube that the content fell under fair use.

The videos were eventually reposted, and Rational Response Squad's account was reinstated. "The default, unfortunately, is that (sites like YouTube) take it down, and leave it to the user to issue a counter-notice," said Corynne McSherry, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "It was clearly fair use, and their claim was clearly bogus. It was just the fastest way they could think of to get it taken down."

The Rational Response Squad have lost their YouTube account, which is the account that we've been posting videos with ever since we lost ours. Apparently "Creation Science Evangelism Ministries" had been submitting false DMCA copyright requests and after RRS came to their defense, they were banned. For all of the details about this issue visit the homepage of http://rationalresponders.com.

So what really happened to the music industry, and what will it look like in five or ten years?

That’s the question we put to five smart people in our latest Freakonomics Quorum. I found their answers to be incredibly interesting, full of real information and clear-eyed thinking. (If you haven’t already done so, you should also read Lynn Hirschberg’s really good recent profile of Rick Rubin in the Times Magazine.) Huge thanks to all our participants.

The easiest way to clone a product is to use a "ghost shift": A factory contracted to make legitimate goods moves to 24-hour operation, churning out copies—some made with inferior materials, and others exactly the same, designed to be sold on the black market—from midnight to morning.

The only problem with ghost shifts is that they can't run full time. In the mid-'90s, developers began to build shadow factories—identical plants, often constructed from the same blueprints legitimate manufacturers used to launch their ventures. Sometimes the plans were sold by managers at the genuine facilities. Other times, local officials and organized crime conspired to create a second set of blueprints.

In recent years, the economics of pop music have been upended. The market for CDs has collapsed, and not even the rise of legal downloading can offset the damage to record companies. Meanwhile, demand for live performances has rocketed

For now, all the CCIA wants is an injunction barring rightsholders from using overly-broad warnings. "Our ultimate goal is to expose this for what it is and to make it clear to people that their rights are being violated," explained Ward. "We'll get to the issue of whether fines are necessary down the line."

Indeed, the complaint asks the FTC to order the organizations named in the complaint to stop misrepresenting US copyright law, "including but not limited to consumers' fair use rights." The CCIA also wants the FTC to force the NFL, MLB, and studios to come up with a plan to keep these sort of mispresentations from happening again as well as a model copyright notice that is "accurate, balanced, and consistent with all provisions of the US Copyright Act and Federal Trade Commission Act." Lastly, the CCIA would like to see those named in the complaint forced to foot the bill for fair use education. (Maybe they can pay for Fair Use Day celebrations next July.)

The leagues and studios named are certain to fight the complaint tooth and nail, as their actions have demonstrated that they prefer consumers to remain in the dark about their fair use rights. In the meantime, the lobbying on Capitol Hill for tougher copyright laws—such as this piece of legislation that would impose onerous restrictions on recording radio broadcasts—will continue unabated.

In a victory for the recording and film industries, a select committee backed changes set out in the Copyright Amendment Bill that would impose stiff penalties on people who helped consumers to break digital rights management tools designed to prevent piracy - for example, by getting around safeguards built into a DVD to prevent it being copied.

"Format-shifting" music between different media, such as CDs and MP3 players, is currently illegal but is common practice.

The bill would make it legal to transfer a single copy of an audio track, if it was for the personal use of the individual who bought it, or for someone in their household, and that this was not banned by the copyright owner.

Helping people crack digital rights technology used to protect copyright would become a criminal offence punishable by a fine of up to $150,000 or five years in jail.

But the commerce select committee said the penalties should not apply if the safeguard aimed to restrict the sale of DVDs to certain parts of the world by preventing them from being played elsewhere.

"We consider that the Copyright Act is not intended to protect access-control technologies that are used to price-discriminate or control the geographical distribution of works to the detriment of users in New Zealand," it said.

"Copyright abuse can shut down online artists, political analysts, or--as in this case--ordinary families who simply want to share snippets of their day-to-day lives," said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "Universal must stop making groundless infringement claims that trample on fair use and free speech."

The lawsuit asks for a declaratory judgment that Lenz's home video does not infringe any Universal copyright, as well as damages and injunctive relief restraining Universal from bringing further copyright claims in connection with the video.

This lawsuit is part of EFF's ongoing work to protect online free speech in the face of bogus copyright claims. EFF is working with Stanford University's Fair Use Project to develop a set of "best practices" for proper takedowns under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The British government rejected a plea to extend copyright laws for sound recordings to beyond 50 years on Tuesday, prompting the music industry to accuse it of not supporting musicians and artists.

The music industry had won support from opposition politicians and a parliamentary committee in its bid for a copyright extension that would allow veterans such as Cliff Richard and Paul McCartney to carry on receiving royalties in later life.

This is the first part of a two-part series on the decline of the record industry. Today we're including Brian Hiatt and Evan Serpick's report on where the music business went wrong, from the current issue of Rolling Stone, as well as an interactive graphic illustrating the industry's slide. Tomorrow, check back with RollingStone.com for interviews with industry leaders on the future of the music business.

Geller's tireless attempts to silence his detractors have extended to the popular video-sharing site YouTube , landing him squarely in the center of a raging digital-age debate over controlling copyrights amid the massive volume of video and music clips flowing freely online.

Don't get caught up in the Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) latest sting. Media Defender, a company which does the dirty work for the MPAA, has been caught setting up 'dummy' websites in an attempt to catch those who download copyrighted videos - entrapment comes to mind.

The site, MiiVi.com, complete with a user registration, forum, and "family filter", offers complete downloads of movies and "fast and easy video downloading all in one great site." But that's not all; MiiVi also offers client software to speed up the downloading process. The only catch is, after it's installed, it searches your computer for other copyrighted files and reports back.

ZeroPaid, acting on a tip from The Pirate Bay, found MiiVi to be registered to Media Defender using a whois search. Shortly after, the registrar information was changed, but the address still reflects Media Defender's address at 2461 Santa Monica Blvd., D-520 Santa Monica, CA 90404.

Not 10 hours after the site was found to be registered to Media Defender, the site went dead. There's no telling how long it was up; however, the domain was registered on February 8, 2007.

Perhaps Media Defender won't use its own name on the registrar the next time around, but it just goes to show the lengths at which the MPAA is willing to go, to fight piracy.

A nasty feud between New York restaurants is about as commonplace as a basket of bread, and usually as interesting.

But Ms. Charles has taken it to a new level by claiming Mr. McFarland, as her sous-chef, owed her a "fiduciary duty," the same legal relationship that exists between lawyer and client, doctor and patient, or teacher and student.

This notion, that a chef can be sued for imitating a former employer, has struck a note of menace in the restaurant industry, which thrives on an endless cycle of apprenticeships to preserve the great traditions of food.

And by raising the possibility of a patented recipe, it has forced the awkward question of whether, in cooking, there is ever truly anything new under the sun.

Earlier this month, Telus ordered YouTube to take down at least 23 videos posted to the site. Each short movie was potentially embarrassing to the telecom's public image since they documented instances of the company's rocky labour relations. Telus claimed their presence on YouTube, a user-generated website, was an act of copyright infringement.

YouTube's owners complied and took the videos off-line, but that set off alarm bells among union activists, who argue much of the footage never belonged to Telus in the first place.

The move also raised hackles with Internet free speech advocates because it appears to be part of a pattern that sees the telecom giant manipulating the web for anti-union purposes. They point to what happened in 2005, when Telus made international headlines by blocking 766 websites in order to bar access to a single pro-union one.

Companies from across IT face criminal sanctions, including prison time for employees, if their networks, software programs or online services are ever used to carry illegally copied material such as music or film, according to a draft law from the European Commission supported Tuesday by a committee of the European Parliament.

The proposed directive switches the onus from end users to the technological conduits, which could include ISPs (Internet service providers), mobile phone operators, instant-messaging services, video- and music-sharing Web sites such as YouTube, as well as open-source software producers.

The controversial draft law has sparked an outcry, uniting rivals within the IT industry, ranging from free and open-source software advocates, the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, at one end to a lobbyist for the world's biggest software companies, the Business Software Alliance (BSA), at the other.