/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ the politics of IP en-us wex@hovir.com 2012-04-19T08:38:55-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/04/19/twitter_tries_to_break_patent_logjam.php Earlier this week, Adam Messinger, VP of Engineering at Twitter posted a notice on the Twitter blog, "Introducing the Innovator's Patent Agreement". If this works right - which is to say as intended - then it could potentially do a great deal to demilitarize the current worldwide patent war. Sadly, I think this is going to go the way of "Don't Be Evil" - a great idea that eroded to the perceived necessities of competitive business. Start by reading the agreement as posted to Github. There's a lot of discussion around it, and the specific language will likely change, but... 75581@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Counterpoint 2012-04-19T08:38:55-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/04/16/cartel_trumpet_crush_em_strategy_revise_history_still_miss_point.php Over a year ago, I pointed out that a potentially big story was being missed: people were migrating off file-sharing networks because of a change to always-on, high-speed, mobile Internet use that meant people would rather have their media streamed to them wherever they were, rather than held as bits on a single disk. Having media in the cloud was worth more than downloading, legal or illegal. Sure, there's still a ton of copyrighted files flowing on Bittorrent but there are also files on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and any other social media you care to name. More interestingly,... 75573@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Counterpoint 2012-04-16T06:42:47-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/04/06/copyright_official_fails_techdirt_foams.php Let's start with a couple things we agree on: Maria Pallante, the Register of Copyrights, is a copyright maximalist. As you can see from her public background, she's worked for organizations like the National Writer's Union and the Guggenheim Museum that consistently hold a maximalist, and author-centric view of copyright. It's also clear that she believes the purpose of copyright is to help people make money, and that exceptions to copyright monopolies should be narrowly drawn. Why this is surprising, or why it causes Techcrunch's Mike Masnick positively to foam at the mouth is beyond me. Masnick notes that in... 75561@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Counterpoint 2012-04-06T14:04:15-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/01/31/scalzi_vs_franzen_on_ebooks.php Jonathan Franzen is profiled in the UK Guardian, as an author unhappy with e-books and concerned about their effects, when compared to physical books. John Scalzi takes a moment to respond in his blog. Franzen is concerned for the physical book. He comes across as not precisely anti-technology/anti-Internet, but as someone who sees the creative writing environment and its output as physical books as somehow separate and better. Scalzi is, shall we say, skeptical. Both make good points and are worth reading. I am myself conflicted. I live my life online and am constantly connected. But I have also been... 75416@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Counterpoint 2012-01-31T10:20:53-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2011/10/04/are_mathematical_communities_unique.php Contrary to my off-hand assertion about the replicability of community models from mathematical sharing groups a couple of items came to my attention today that argue the opposite case: that these communities are not like others. The blog entry on m-phi is initially concerned with discussing how a possibly revolutionary proof in fundamental mathematical theory was published, subject to scrutiny, and rapid consensus formed that an error had been made. The consensus and supporting arguments were sufficient to convince the original author of the theory to retract his assertion. This is no small thing, particularly since he had a book... 75208@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Counterpoint 2011-10-04T09:18:52-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2011/06/15/only_amateurs_care_about_copyright_registration_in_hollywood.php Television writer Chad Gervich has some pretty strong opinions on people who are concerned about protecting their ideas in the world of television script-writing. In a piece for Scriptmag online earlier this month he responds to readers' questions about the need for registering their works with the Copyright Office or the Writer's Guild (WGA). He reminds would-be screenwriters that ideas can't be protected in the first place, only tangible forms in which the idea is fixed. In addition, he notes that: [T]here is no bigger sign of an amateur than someone who’s worried about their stuff being stolen In Hollywood,... 75046@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Counterpoint 2011-06-15T10:57:20-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2011/03/24/cnet_and_others_get_it_wrong_miss_the_actual_story.php I've been avoiding writing about the LimeWire debacle, not least because of potential conflict of interest (*). As always, I speak for me and nobody else. Not Corante, not my company, and certainly not Gorton or LimeWire. With that out of the way, let me just say: CNET, you're wrong. Your headline writer is wrong, and Greg Sandoval (whom I normally think better of) is wrong. Allow me to demonstrate. The headline is "LimeWire demise slows music piracy." And Sandoval faithfully repeats the claim of research firm NPD Group that the percentage of Internet users who download music via peer-to-peer... 74921@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Counterpoint 2011-03-24T08:36:29-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2011/02/26/sometimes_things_couldnt_be_better.php The band Arcade Fire recently won a Grammy and, as they're not a big-name, mass-produced, Cartel-controlled act there was a good bit of whining from that contingent over it. Suck it up and deal. I particularly liked this response from Scott Rodger, the band's manager: "Arcade Fire are now one of the biggest live acts in the world. It's not all about record sales. It's about making great records and it's about building a loyal fan base. Ther band make great albums, they're not a radio driven singles band. On top of that, they own their own masters and copyrights... 74881@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Counterpoint 2011-02-26T09:30:08-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2010/07/15/pistols_at_dawn_sir.php Jane Park, Communications Coordinator for Creative Commons wrote to let me know that Lawrence Lessig has thrown down the gauntlet on behalf of CC against the accusations made by ASCAP. Lessig has challenged Paul Williams, the president and chairman of ASCAP, to a debate. Why? Well, it seems that Mr. Williams is at best uninformed and at worst... um, I think the word is lying about what Creative Commons does. It seems to have started with a tweet from Mike Rugnetta. He got a fund-raising missive from ASCAP and posted a picture of it. In the letter, ASCAP asks for... 74585@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Counterpoint 2010-07-15T13:02:58-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2010/07/01/how_a_real_musician_responds.php Back in May, I noted that Marc Weidenbaum was making the assertion that even if the current record industry structure went away there would still be music, still be musicians and there would be things like this. Go ahead and watch; I can wait. What you have there is a real musician, Lenny Kravitz, coming unexpectedly on a group of people performing his music ("Fly Away"). So what does a real musician do? He doesn't ask about if they have the right to play this music - he listens, he claps, he jams with them, sings with them, and generally... 74563@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Counterpoint 2010-07-01T10:26:52-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2010/05/12/for_there_will_be_musicians.php ...even if the (current) music industry dies the death it seems so richly to deserve. So assures us Marc Weidenbaum , publisher of the online electronic 'zine Disquiet. Normally, Disquiet only has things to say about its musical topics, which are primarily ambient and electronic music. However, in the May issue of The Atlantic, editor Megan McArdle took to task the current generation of "freeloaders", complaining that "...a generation of file-sharers is ruining the future of entertainment." Are we, now? Responding to the news that last year was yet another dismal year for the recording portion of the Cartel,... 74465@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Counterpoint 2010-05-12T15:06:58-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2005/08/12/siva_vaidhyanathan_google_is_right_to_hit_pause_on_library_plans.php Siva Vaidhyanathan responds to Aaron Swartz's post below on Google's decision to press pause on the Google Print library project in order to allow publishers to opt out of scanning: Google did not have the right to make wholesale copies of millions of copyrighted books without permission from the copyright holders. Google's original plan fails every possible fair use test ever tried. See, for example, American Geophysical Union v. Texaco. If copyright is to mean anything at all, then corporations may not copy entire works that they have never purchased without permission for commercial gain. I can't imagine what sort... 10481@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Counterpoint 2005-08-12T13:57:15-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2005/06/21/scriveners_error_replies_to_stallman.php Just below, Jason Schultz links and excerpts Richard Stallman's recent piece in the Guardian (Patent Absurdity). Scrivener's Error has an interesting (and harsh) critique of Stallman's essay (Time is of the Essence). Petit of Scrivener's Error focuses on the limited term of patent. He's right about that, but I imagine that a patent on literary works would have a tremendous effect on the market nevertheless. I suspect we would be looking at much more consolidation among publishers, for example. And a market that is much more expensive to enter.... 10345@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Counterpoint 2005-06-21T10:54:37-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2005/04/13/am_i_a_journalist.php There's a good conversation going on over in the thread replying to my latest screed on the Apple v Does case. I wanted to opine a bit in response to a comment from Seth Finkelstein. He notes that "Journalistic purpose isn't a get-out-of-court-evidence-free card" and that it's a boundary we as society have to draw. He's not arguing where the boundary should be, but I want to, in part because I think the boundary goes right through the middle of me. (I want to be crystal clear that I'm speaking in this post solely for myself. Not for anyone else... 10111@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Counterpoint 2005-04-13T15:58:20-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2004/06/09/monolith_an_uninteresting_experiment_in_copyright.php BoingBoing links to a new "copyright experiment" (Monolith and digital copyright). The software project, called Monolith, takes two digital files and XOR's them (what the author refers to as "munging"), creating a third file. The author calls the two input files "element" and "basis." I think many people might call them "plaintext" and "key." The output file (aka the "monolith" file) would be called the "cryptotext." The conceit of the concept is that neither the cryptotext nor the key is copyrighted. Thus, it should be legal to distribute both. Otherwise, the author of Monolith claims, everything is copyrighted and nothing... 9308@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Counterpoint 2004-06-09T13:49:54-05:00