/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ the politics of IP en-us wex@hovir.com 2013-05-14T11:54:51-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/05/14/why_does_fashion_have_lots_of_copying_and_creativity.php An episode this week of Planet Money's podcast, called "Why Pink?", starts off being about the color of the T shirt they're making and ends up having some interesting things to say about copying in the fashion industry. The story starts with how the T shirt's hue is copied (or inspired by) predictions of trending influences, and elements like colors that are associated with those influences, and goes into a discussion about how the entire fashion industry lives around a copying and imitation model. This is, from a conventional protectionist-thought school, heresy. IP protection exists, protectionists would say, in order... 76416@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Big Thoughts 2013-05-14T11:54:51-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/04/30/mike_masnick_curbstomps_jaron_lanier.php Who, sadly, deserves it. This is sad because I used to like Lanier. Back in the ancient days, when rocks were soft, I did a little work in virtual reality. I respect the pioneering work that Lanier did in that field. Sadly, he seems to have turned into a cranky old damned-kids-get-off-my-lawn type these days, trading on his past good work to sell books about the impending collapse of things he cares about, and peddle nonsense in major magazines. Lanier's piece is an excerpt for his latest crank manifesto and it's just astonishingly full of wrong. People who are knowledgeable... 76379@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Big Thoughts 2013-04-30T08:42:57-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/04/18/how_is_selfpublishing_like_web_comics.php Author, artist, and web-comic maker Ursula Vernon has an interesting piece up on her "Tea with the Squash God" blog about the equivalence of these two forms. At least, as they're currently constituted, the two art forms share a lot of features, not least of which are their lack of ability to make a lot of money for a lot of people. Vernon recounts her own experiences as a self-published author, as an author who has worked with publishers, and as a comic artist. Although she resists drawing bigger conclusions I think her primary thought - there is on one... 76353@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Big Thoughts 2013-04-18T14:52:47-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/04/16/at_least_theyre_asking_the_right_question.php After a variety of efforts at what I've termed "downstream" fixes to the patent problem, the EFF appears finally to be turning its attention to the source of the mess, issuance by the PTO. The blog post by Daniel Nazer is titled "EFF Politely Asks PTO to Stop Issuing So Many Crappy Software Patents." Take out the word 'software' and I'd be in complete agreement. Bad software patents have gotten a lot of attention lately but rules for reforming patent examination and issuance need to be universal. You can't just single out bad software patenting practices and ignore errors if... 76348@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Big Thoughts 2013-04-16T13:12:07-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/03/21/more_on_asking_writing_for_free.php Earlier this month, Nate Thayer, a freelance journalist and investigative reporter was contacted by The Atlantic. The editor there wanted to re-use some of Thayer's posted writings; he asked Thayer to shorten the piece and to be willing to have The Atlantic use the shortened piece for free. Thayer wasn't happy about being asked to work for free, and posted the editor's request along with some heated response, highlighting his career as a professional journalist not to mention his need to pay bills, feed his children and so on. In general, Thayer noted, "[I] am not in the habit of... 76294@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Big Thoughts 2013-03-21T08:29:30-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/03/07/salmons_payment_economics.php A few days ago I noted Felix Salmon's blog entry in which he laid out his case for the freemium marketplace (although he doesn't call it that). Part 2 went up this week and to my surprise it's also in large part about Amanda Palmer's TED talk, which I (and pretty much every blogger on the planet) had noted as being pretty amazing and definitely worthwhile. Salmon comes in for a mention in the talk, but his reason for posting it is because he wants to talk about the same things that Palmer talked about: how do you convince (not... 76266@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Big Thoughts 2013-03-07T16:21:28-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/03/04/the_art_of_asking_the_art_of_trusting.php If by now you have not seen Amanda Palmer's TED talk, go watch it. I'll wait. Pretty much ever since she put her Kickstarter in motion a bit under a year ago one lingering question has been whether this sort of thing is unique to Palmer, or whether there's something reproducible in this experience. Although it's not framed as such, what I hear Palmer saying in her talk is "Here is how I did this and here's what you can try, too." It's not about the details (which is good and right for a TED talk) - it's about the... 76253@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Big Thoughts 2013-03-04T13:14:16-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/03/01/diffusion_lines_and_the_freemium_marketplace.php I'm trying to remember how long ago it was that Cory Doctorow wrote, "Giving my stuff away is selling the hell out of it" or words to that effect. (Actually, I don't have to remember because the Internet remembers it for me.) The notion that giving people something for free would entice them to pay more is as old as coinage, I believe. For a long time the notion of giving your stuff away was buried from mainstream sight. Buried first under the glare of celebrity/blockbuster/mega-hit productions in which corporations made stars of people and shows and books and things... 76249@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Big Thoughts 2013-03-01T15:51:55-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/02/14/on_the_used_and_pirate_markets_for_digital_goods.php While we wait for a decision on Kirtsaeng a couple of interesting news items have crossed my radar and I wanted to write about them together, as they both relate to the marketplace for used electronic goods, and the non-trivial relationship of those goods to piracy. This is a bit of a long walk but I promise it all ties together. The first item is the reporting around Amazon's recent patent announcement. This isn't an actual service that Amazon is providing, or has even stated that it's going to provide. Instead, it's a patent they were awarded at the end... 76213@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Big Thoughts 2013-02-14T13:53:55-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/01/15/why_do_creators_get_so_little.php In November, I posed the question of how (in streaming music at least) can we get more than pennies to flow to recording artists? Yesterday, in a posted preview of his talk for O'Reilly's TOC conference, Cory Doctorow looks at the question of why writers get so little. The answers, as you might expect from Cory, revolve around markets, business structures, piracy, and the complex web of incentives that are created by laws and traditions. It's not entirely accurate to say authors get paid poorly because they've always been paid poorly but it's also not entirely wrong - there has... 76141@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Big Thoughts 2013-01-15T15:36:16-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/01/11/highly_interconnected_creativity.php As I've written this blog I've tried to push the notion that creativity is a shared, situated, interconnected experience. The Western ideal of a lone genius in an isolated state suddenly having a light bulb moment when the creative product springs fully formed from their brow is just wrong. Creators are embedded in cultures, have seen, heard, been told past stories and respond to them even as they use them. The first PBS Off Book episode of 2013 takes on this notion full force. Called "The Art of Creative Coding" it examines at high speed a few of the prominent... 76131@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Big Thoughts 2013-01-11T12:23:36-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/12/04/what_exactly_is_the_patent_problem.php Last month, Steven Levy had an extensive piece in WIRED with the title "The Patent Problem." Levy is a long-time tech journalist who's probably best known for his in-depth books on tech and culture, starting with his Hackers up through last year's paean to Google called In the Plex. To my knowledge, Levy hasn't written much about patents or IP before, but he brings his exhaustive attention to bear in this article. It's long, and I won't try to summarize it - you should read the original. Levy doesn't fall into the trap of assuming there is a single problem... 76045@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Big Thoughts 2012-12-04T12:12:59-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/11/24/when_conservatives_are_optimistic_about_ip_it_looks_libertarian.php Coincidental with the recent ripples caused by the RNC Copyright policy-revision memo, David Post noted on the Volokh blog that a new book on the topic is coming out soon. Called Copyright Unbalanced, the book attempts to capture current thinking from conservative and libertarian writers on how current US copyright law has gone awry and what might be done to fix it. Solutions include fighting against "crony capitalism", rolling back criminal penalties and forfeiture in copyright cases, and returning to a more originalist vision of copyright, in which the monopoly is given to serve a public good, not to enrich... 76021@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Big Thoughts 2012-11-24T23:14:05-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/11/12/lauren_weinstein_advocates_the_nuclear_option.php Weinstein, who is probably best known for his long work on privacy and technology, has also had more than a few choice words to say about the sad state of copyright and patent in the US. In his blog post today he takes on the current high levels of patent and copyright legal activity, the ills of which have been amply documented. He focuses on what he sees as "extortion" in which the threats of patent lawsuits and copyright infringement (DMCA takedown) notices are used to harass, suppress, and otherwise impede actual work and innocent people, as I noted again... 75994@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Big Thoughts 2012-11-12T15:08:29-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/09/14/can_looking_backward_help_fix_the_software_patent_mess.php Here's a big thought for you: maybe we already have the laws we need to untangle (some of) the current mess around software patents. This is the thrust of an upcoming paper by Professor Mark Lemley (Stanford) which is previewed in today's InfoWorld column by Simon Phipps. To begin with, you should know that Phipps is himself a strong proponent of open source development (his column is called "Open Sources", for example) and a recent opponent of software patents in part because they interfere with open-source development. So when he says there might be something good in the legislation we... 75865@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Big Thoughts 2012-09-14T11:26:30-05:00