As you undoubtedly recall, months ago Google launched their Google Print Library Project scanning thousands of books from the country's libraries for potential search, putting up whatever fair use or the publisher would allow.

Publishers, in typical copyright-holder paranoia fashion, worried that perhaps the two line snippets Google would be providing of their books would spell the end of the world for their entire industry. They wrote articles attacking Google for their cruelty and finally, today, Google announced it would back down.

That's right: Google won't even scan any book copyright holders ask them not to, even though doing so is perfectly legal. It's as if copyright holders got to dictate what books get placed in libraries. Their short-sighted selfishness will cost us all, depriving us of our heritage in our online Library of Alexandria.

Details at the Google Blog, under the Orwellian title Making books easier to find.

UPDATE: the EFF's Jason Schultz attacks publishers: "This is a clear example of copyright failing the public in the digital age. Google isn't selling the books; they just need to scan them to help Internet users find what they're looking for. The fact that publishers are able to hold up this process works against consumers and the marketplace, not in their favor." And copyfighter Siva Vaidhyanathan attacks me.

There has been another terrorist attack, this time taking the form of a series of bombings in the London underground and a bus. Be careful and stay alert today, everyone. My prayers are going out to the innocent people who have been badly frightened, injured, or killed.

Ann Bartow has some thoughts for today, and every day.

Quick updates to two stories I blogged in the recent past:

1. The BBC reports that Brazilian Health Minister Humberto Costa has given Abbott Laboratories ten days to either agree to lower its prices or allow generic copies. If Abbott does not agree, Brazil will give the go-ahead to a local generic maker.

Previous blog entry: Patent Suspension? Or Let Them Die?
Response from Ernest Miller and commentary exchange with me: Drug Patent Suspension

2. Philippine President Gloria Arroyo admitted over the weekend that she did indeed make the now-famous "Hello Garci" telephone call that has become a ringtone sensation in Manila. She called it a "lapse in judgement" but still denies election meddling.

Previous blog entry: Friday Fun Stories

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, actor Warren Beatty is in a licensing dispute with Tribune Media Services, which claims control over the Dick Tracy character (Beatty sues Tribune Unit over Dick Tracy Rights):

''The Tribune is a big, powerful company and they think they can just run roughshod over people. They picked the wrong guy,'' Fields [Beatty's lawyer] said.

via I Want Media

UPDATE 18 May 2005

Hmmmm, this explains things (Outlaw Productions and di Bonaventura Pictures Team to Bring Dick Tracy to Television)

The producers recently secured rights from Tribune Media Services (TMS), a division of Tribune Company, and will attach a writer over the next month. The plan is to pitch a modern take on the classic crime-fighting hero to networks this summer.

Actually, I would kind of like to see a Dick Tracy television show.

Good ideas evidently come in twos:

• Downhill Battle: "The project is a free, open source set of software tools for watching and distributing high quality, full screen videos over the internet at almost no cost to the publisher (BitTorrent, baby). For viewers, this means you can elegantly and simply subscribe to your friends' channels, a channel for your zipcode, or organizations and watch a truckload of videos that you can't get on regular TV. For videomakers, you'll finally have a publishing tool for all your videos -- it will be as easy as blogging -- just upload your files and you have a channel."
  
• Xeni @ BoingBoing: "At present, Google Video allows you to search within an expanding archive of TV content -- sports, docs, and news, mostly. But today, with the launch of the company's Video Upload Program, Google has begun accepting video content from anyone who cares to upload it."
  

If EFF's white paper on horrendous end user license agreements was the stick, we now have the carrot. Reports Slashdot:

When Doug Heckman was installing a PC Pitstop program, he actually read the EULA. In it, he found a clause stating that he could get financial compensation if he emailed PC Pitstop. The result: a $1,000 check, and proof that people don't read EULAs (3,000 people before him didn't notice it). The goal of this was to prove that one should read all EULAs, so that one can see if an app is spyware if it is buried in the EULA.

Brilliant, brilliant idea.

So many links on copyright and fair use, so little time. Here are few that caught my eye in the past week:

Via Frank Field via CoCo, Metallica frontman James "let's sue Napster dead" Hetfield, on Beatallica, the band that recently received a C&D [PDF] for offering remixed versions of Beatles and Metallica tunes: "'Yeah. I heard that. That was amazing. Someone put a lot of thought and talent into that man!...I heard it online. It was about a year ago, or more. It was pretty amazing. It was pretty well thought out so I'm glad there's people like that in the world to do that and it's very entertaining for us, for sure!'"

Ronald Coleman @ Likelihood of Confusion, commenting on the tattoo artist suing NBA star Rasheed Wallace for displaying his copyrighted work in Nike ads: "Rasheed is a money tree and this guy wants to snip off a branch because he fortuitously got to carve something in the bark. He is seeking rent. There's no right or wrong about it, really, but the rules we decide on probably should address the almost certain expectations of both sides that the deal was a tattoo for $450 -- not a one-time license for a 'graphic.'"

Copyright guru/prolific Sivacracy author Ann Bartow, commenting on WB's planned remix of the Looney Tunes characters, the "Loonatics": "Cripes, can't the copyright maximalists do something about this travesty? :>)"

Prankster/author/professor Kembrew McLeod, describing his adventures in trademarking the phrase, Freedom of Expression®: "When talking to reporters who responded to a press release I sent out, I played the quasi-corporate asshole to Brendan's indignant anarchist underdog, spouting poker-faced lines such as 'I didn't go to the trouble, the expense, and the time of trademarking freedom of expression® just to have someone else come along and think they can use it whenever they want.'"

EULA critic Ed Foster, commenting on EFF's defense of three programmers against a Blizzard Games EULA that forbids reverse-engineering even though that's a fair use under federal copyright law: "The only things that are at stake in the case are open source programming, the concept of fair use, competition and innovation. Hey, no pressure, guys."

Annalee Newitz, encouraging those fed up with EULAs to do something about it: "With consumer activism, as well as actions that push our legislatures and courts to change consumer protection laws, we can prevent corporations from taking away our rights one mouse click at a time. If you have been harmed by a EULA, or threatened with legal action because of one, EFF wants to hear your story. Email us at EULAharm@eff.org. "

LawMeme blogger/Creative Commons & EFF alum/EULA critic James Grimmelmann, sharing the terms of the Best. Clickwrap. Evar: "'Incoherence Copyright (c) 2004-2005 Greg Hazel and Steven Hazel. All rights reserved. By installing this software, you agree that you have seen this copyright notice.' And that's it."

Phew. Thanks to everyone for your patience.

Sorry guys -- for the past two two days, no comments that you've posted have shown up on the site, although I've seen them come through email. Our technical people are looking into it -- hold tight.

Mark Glaser has put up a long and thoughtful piece summarizing the issues around pay-for-access archives of news content. This issue is particularly troublesome for bloggers and other instapundits who would like to be able to point to content in authoritative sources like nytimes.com but if they do so they risk their links becoming dead after a couple days.

Nobody's denying that the papers own this content. And they do realize some revenue from paid access to the archive content as well as database services such as LexisNexis. The argument revolves around what it means to be a source of record if that record only exists for a short time. I doubt many people dig through the archives of blogs - even Copyfight. But the fact that the archives are stable means that search engines can find and index the content. It means that the cross-referencing that makes the Web a vital peer communications medium can continue. But many newspapers continue to stand apart, protecting what may be in fact a tiny revenue stream rather than realizing the gains of being the source of record on the Web.

In my blogging I try very hard not to cite NY Times or Boston Globe (boston.com) stories because I know they'll go away. There are other sources, such as sfgate.com, which I consider equally authoritative and much more blog- and Web-friendly. Given the chance, I'll put up a link to them instead. Does that drive traffic and revenue for them? I dunno. But it sure as heck doesn't drive any for the gray lady.

Edward Felten's version of a blink.

For every $100 donated to EFF, Public Knowledge, or IPac during the month of December, Downhill Battle will give a lump of coal to the RIAA and MPAA:

EFF: Protects your civil liberties online and defends against bad lawsuits.

Public Knowledge: Builds coalitions to stop bad laws from being passed in Congress.

IPac: Supports political candidates who understand technology and will pass good laws.

Professor Felten teaches by showing, writing a tiny filesharing program in 15 lines of code:

I wrote TinyP2P to illustrate the difficulty of regulating peer-to-peer applications. Peer-to-peer apps can be very simple, and any moderately skilled programmer can write one, so attempts to ban their creation would be fruitless.

Via copyright guru Ann Bartow: United States Patent 4,022,227:

Method of concealing partial baldness
Abstract

A method of styling hair to cover partial baldness using only the hair on a person's head. The hair styling requires dividing a person's hair into three sections and carefully folding one section over another.

Inventors: Smith; Frank J. (233 Cosmos Drive, Orlando, FL 32807); Smith; Donald J. (517 Brockway Ave., Orlando, FL 32807)
Appl. No.: 643681
Filed: December 23, 1975

Good Santa: "So in the spirit of the times (sussing great gift ideas), I've convinced an old friend, and my former Dean, to spend a couple days in this space talking about his new book, Perilous Times. Starting Wednesday, Geof Stone will be blogging here about the book. It is a great and amazing history, both optimistic and depressing. It will be Geof's first time blogging, so please make him welcome.

And were I to use this space to self-promote, I might point to Businessweek's pick of the top ten books of the year. But I won't waste your time with that."

Bad Santa: "In their zeal to stop people from using their legitimately purchased content, [some] companies have gummed up their media with so much copy-prevention garbage that it's practically impossible to watch or listen to anything at your leisure. You might as well wrap your digital media presents in chains.

And then, after you eagerly unchain your presents, get ready to see a lot of contracts called end user license agreements (EULAs). ...Why would I want to give my sweetie a neat entertainment device or program if it might spy on him or her or simply stop working if he or she tries to run it in a nonapproved player?"

We've been waiting for an active, successful "GeekPAC" for years, and now we've got IPac, an intellectual property PAC that focuses like a laser beam on a worthy goal: bringing constitutional balance back to copyright law. But some supporters worry that in supporting candidates who support balance, they might also inadvertently support other, not-so-great things.

"There are many candidates out there who may stand for the copyright fight but may be against personal beliefs and views concerning our society and politics," writes a supporter. "This, for me at least, presents a moral dilemma. Though I understand and agree with being non-partisan, how can I vote for someone who is against my social and moral beliefs, and how can we know that we are voting into office the best person for a job based on one area of concern?"

It's a good question, and IPac's Matt Stoller has an good answer. The organization encourages you to support IPac in any case, of course, but if you're uncomfortable with that, give selectively.

"As election time approaches, we will send you notices on who we endorse, and the reasons why we endorse them," writes Matt. "You can choose to give to specific candidates at that time, and though IPac will have no control over where the money goes, those candidates will know that you care about the issue of copyright reform. This gives you the advantage of being able to control for ideological factors and isolate your donations to those with whom you are politically comfortable."

Giving to IPac means you're going to give to a political campaign -- and no one has control over what a candidate will do once elected. IPac will help you learn about the candidates beforehand, and you can "control" for other factors that way. That's all any group could do to help ensure that your money is going in the right direction. The advantage of giving through IPac is that your candidate will know it's because you support balance in copyright law.

There are so many straw men in the Neil Turkewitz anti-Larry Lessig/EFF screed, you can't keep track of them all. It's especially amusing that he calls Larry's attitude toward copyright "casual." As clearly evidenced by his three books, countless classes and lectures, multiple court challenges, and nonprofit organization devoted to the subject.

A little bird tells me that Siva Vaidhyanathan is scheduled to write a response for the Cultural Commons site. Stay tuned.

It's a short, one-sentence blog post + a link, à la Kottke remainders (see below for an example). We'll be using "blink" posts here at Copyfight to share links to articles, resources, and websites of interest that do not necessarily require paragraphs of context or analysis. Enjoy!

Edward Felten, responding to Ben Edelman's analysis of the now notorious Gator spyware End User License Agreement (EULA):

There are two solutions to this overEULAfication problem. A court could throw out this kind of egregious EULA, or at least narrow its scope. Alternatively, users could raise the price of this behavior by refusing to use overEULAfied products. Realistically, this will only happen if users are given the tools to do so.

I would love to see a "EULA doghouse" site that listed products with excessive EULAs, or that rated products by the content of their EULAs. At the very least, EULA evaluation could become standard procedure for people writing reviews of software products.

Great idea.

The dreadful Induce Act may temporarily be shelved, but the Induce Act Blog isn't. It provides a near-constant stream of news about/analysis of pending IP legislation, and it does it very well.

Ben Edelman bites back.

Later: James Grimmelman: "This agreement, whether characterized as a 'license' to use Gator's copyrighted software or a 'contract' between you and Gator, is still a manipulative, low-down, dirty, no-good document."

Later #2: Edward Felten: "I would love to see a 'EULA doghouse' site that listed products with excessive EULAs, or that rated products by the content of their EULAs. At the very least, EULA evaluation could become standard procedure for people writing reviews of software products. Unfortunately, there hasn't been much progress on this front."

Remember when the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) proudly debuted its copyright "education" campaign for school-age children? There was a handy classroom booklet entitled "What's the Diff?" in an evident attempt at kidspeak. And the kiddies already had a wascally weasel mascot, which, if you took the booklet's "lessons" at face value, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) blatantly stole from Walt Disney Comics.

Now, Downhill Battle has published the inevitable rejoinder, sans tangible condescension. Kids who can use Google (know any?) will able to check it out and absorb its lessons -- including how best to poke fun at transparent corporate propaganda.

This isn't a true copyright counter-curriculum, of course, but it makes a valuable point: kids aren't stupid. There are subtleties in copyright law, and feeding children a cartoonish "dumbed down" version will only decrease -- not increase -- the "respect for copyright" that the MPAA and BSA want so dearly to cultivate.

Bonus link: fellow Copyfight author Aaron Swartz details his encounter with the copyright police at Stanford (scroll down to "What the F***k Is Fair Use?"):

[Stanford Senior University Counsel Lauren Schoenthaler ] gripes a little about a 2005 state law making filesharing a crime, which she thinks is unnecessary. But her real purpose is to "get the word out on the DMCA." She claims the DMCA says you can't fileshare and, furthermore, permits copyright holders to track the Internet for people sharing. (Neither of these are true. When contacted by email, Ms. Schoenthaler defended the statement by saying that while it is "less than precise" but communicates the "big picture." This seems an odd position for a lawyer.)

In what has to be among the most bizarre-yet-cool trademark infringement settlements ever, Postal Service, the pop sensation whose song is covered on the excellent Garden State soundtrack, will be granted free license to use the name "Postal Service" in exchange for working to promote using the mail. Reports the NYT (reg. req.):

Future copies of the album and the group's follow-up work will have a notice about the trademark, while the federal Postal Service will sell the band's CD's on its Web site, potentially earning a profit. The band may do some television commercials for the post office. The group also agreed to perform at the postmaster general's annual National Executive Conference in Washington on Nov. 17.

It's interesting to compare/contrast this solution to the one proposed by the evidently clueless garbage collection company Sunset Scavenger, which has forced Wide Hive Records to change the cover and title of the DJ Zeph CD, "Sunset Scavenger." DJ Zeph might have helped Sunset Scavenger improve its profile; it sure wasn't going in the other direction.

Later: James Grimmelmann, who evidently was thinking the same way about this, but 4 days earlier: "Americans who buy stamps, a tiny bit of your money is going to hire some musicians to play a show. San Franciscans living in the Sunset, a tiny bit of your money is going to sue a musician and force him to pay to reprint an album. Which of these two seems like a better deal?"

My apologies for the relative quiet here @ Copyfight. For the past week or so, I've been blogging at Deep Links about e-voting. Now I'm in recovery from the election. Looking for the America in my heart.

A bit of good news for copyfighters: As Larry points out, 5 out of 6 candidates backed by IPac won. For this I am grateful.

I'm going to be spending the next day or so blogging over at EFF's Deep Links about any e-voting problems that may will arise.

Needless to say, I'm far from alone in the endeavor. Below, three good spots for e-voting news and analysis, including updates on pending lawsuits, etc.:

The Computer Doctors - Evoting-Experts.com
When they say "experts," they're not kidding -- the roster includes Avi Rubin, David Dill,Bruce Schneier, and Edward Felten, among others.

The Lawyers - ElectionLawNews.com
Brought to us by the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, this site plans 'round the clock coverage starting today until...well, none of us are sure about that, are we?

The Indian Chief -- er, the Pollster - Electoral-vote.com
This is a one-man operation, and the one man, Andrew Tanenbaum, will be staying up all night on Election Day to give us the latest news on which candidate has captured which state.

One last pointer, to Marty Schwimmer's post on common-sense steps to take as you prepare to vote. Nice to have that information in one spot.