/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ the politics of IP en-us wex@hovir.com 2013-01-31T16:49:32-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/01/31/yeah_like_thats_going_to_help.php With the subject line above, a Copyfight reader forwarded me the news published in TechDirt that yet another Cartel legal eagle has landed a high-ranking job in the Obama administration. Long-time readers will remember that in 2009 I warned that the Cartel had virtually taken over the Department of Justice. It's not surprising since then that the US has pursued what is politely referred to as "copyright maximalism" ever since, including turning agencies like DHS into copyright cops. In this case, congratulations go to Ms. Karyn Temple-Claggett, who has left her illustrious work as destroyer of "pretty much any innovative... 76183@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Interesting People 2013-01-31T16:49:32-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/01/17/props_to_greg_sandoval.php Some people may recall that I've given Greg Sandoval a hard time in the past. Today's news that he's told CNET where to stuff it both surprises and delights me. I know a few smaller-scoped writers who have quit CNET or decided not to go there since this bomb first dropped, but Sandoval has major juice. He's been a well-respect, often-printed, and very public byline at CNET for years, often writing about intellectual property issues. Ironically, his resignation came over an IP-related story. In case you missed it, there was a big Consumer Electronics show recently. As they do, lots... 76148@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Interesting People 2013-01-17T14:57:16-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/01/14/in_memoriam_aaron_swartz.php No one's death is ever light reading, but sometimes a worthwhile conversation emerges. recommended reading all three. At Boingboing: Cory Doctorow's personal remembrances and responses. At Naked Capitalism: Aaron Swartz's Politics by Matt Stoller introduces us to a broader view of Swartz's life work. At the New York Times: Noam Cohen's "A Data Crusader, a Defendant and Now, a Cause" highlights the welcome news that MIT's new president has appointed the well-respected Hal Abelson to lead its own investigation into the 'tute's involvement and (one hopes) related policies.... 76136@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Interesting People 2013-01-14T10:34:39-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/01/12/a_sad_loss.php Today it was confirmed that yesterday's rumors were true: Aaron Swartz took his own life Jan 11. You may notice that Swartz's name is still listed on the left column here, as he wrote occasionally for Copyfight in the blog's early years. We also mentioned in passing that he had been in trouble for allegedly using MIT's network to download a vast archive of academic articles from JSTOR. What I had missed (and props to TechDirt for staying with this story when it fell out of the headlines) was that the government had vastly upped the ante in its attempt... 76132@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Interesting People 2013-01-12T13:53:03-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/01/04/can_freemium_models_work_for_deep_journalism.php Last week I noted that so-called deep journalism isn't something that we know how to do well in the 21st century. Investigative reporting - the most common type of deep journalism - requires investments of time (months or years) and resources that are hard to sustain without a regular paycheck. Deep journalism also produces results that aren't easily amenable to summary, nor to the quick-hit forms favored by many social media such as news aggregators, Twitter, etc. In his Guardian column this week, Dan Gillmor looks at the latest experiment by well-known political blogger Andrew Sullivan, who is building a... 76112@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Interesting People 2013-01-04T11:09:51-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/10/17/posner_on_ip_restricting_creativity.php (still catching up the backlog, obviously) At the end of last month Judge Richard Posner weighed in on his blog against "overprotection" afforded by patents and copyright. I find myself once again shaking my head in disbelief at something Posner has written. Posner has been in the news a good bit this year. He first made news when he involved himself in the ongoing patent wars between Apple and everybody and issued a ruling that blasted the lawyers involved. and last month he got into a semi-public tussle of theories with Supreme Court Justice Scalia. Part of Posner's theoretical framework... 75939@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Interesting People 2012-10-17T14:24:57-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/10/13/upcoming_volokh_postings_this_week.php If you do not have The Volokh Conspiracy on your regular blogroll you might want to add them this week. Eugene Volokh just announced today that Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman will be guest-blogging this coming week. Raustiala and Sprigman are co-authors of a new book, The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation. Here's the teaser blurb:Conventional wisdom holds that copying kills creativity, and that laws that protect against copies are essential to innovation–and economic success. But are copyrights and patents always necessary? In The Knockoff Economy, Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman provocatively argue that creativity can not only survive... 75930@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Interesting People 2012-10-13T21:45:54-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/09/19/copyright_copying_and_magic.php Remember earlier this week I said there's a copyright angle to everything? In a piece full of reverence for magic and mystery, Chris Jones's story in Esquire about Teller (the magician) contains yet another interesting copyright angle. As Jones tells it, theft is rife among magicians. They copy each others' tricks and sometimes outright 'steal' a performance piece. In this case a magician performing as Gerard Bakardy appeared to have stolen - in the sense of copied and performed in an altered form - one of Teller's signature tricks. The signature trick was the subject of a 1983 copyright registration... 75873@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Interesting People 2012-09-19T11:34:08-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/08/16/byrnes_long_view_on_music.php David Byrne has been a force in music and on musicians since Talking Heads first broke into the national spotlight decades ago. His collaborations with Eno are often cited as some of the most influential of their time, and he's still rocking out, appearing recently on-stage with Amanda Palmer. Byrne sent out an announcement today of his upcoming book "How Music Works" to be published next month by McSweeneys. In the book he reflects on his life experiences in the music business and on how technological and cultural influences have interacted to shape our experience of music. This one is... 75816@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Interesting People 2012-08-16T10:05:33-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/08/14/great_artists_steal_but_not_from_me.php Since we're on the topic of remixes today, I wanted to direct your attention to Kirby Ferguson's posting of his TED talk to YouTube (h/t Boingboing for the original pointer) Ferguson, best known for his series "Everything is a Remix" and his work on copyright policy in the US, puts the basic idea in front of the TED audience. Unfortunately, although his examples are interesting, the talk is a bit disjointed as he jumps from the notion that creativity is external, not internal, to the ongoing smartphone patent wars, with a very fleeting touch on the notion that the current... 75810@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Interesting People 2012-08-14T13:01:00-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/08/14/gotye_remixes_people_remixing_gotye.php I haven't talked about remixes much lately because they've fully infiltrated the culture. I couldn't resist this one, though, because it's so delightfully meta. I'm sure by now you've heard about a hundred different forms of Gotye's current hit "Somebody That I Used to Know." There's the five guys/one guitar version, and parodies of that. There are famous covers and infamous covers. There's even an artistically expressive ASL interpretation. And now gotyemusic has posted a remix of these interpretations and covers, called "Somebodies: A YouTube Orchestra." It's a wholly delightful production even if, like me, you're pretty tired of hearing... 75808@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Interesting People 2012-08-14T11:03:54-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/06/06/the_economist_on_afp.php The Economist's Babbage blog does a decent job looking at Amanda Palmer's Kickstarter as a business project. Certainly they seem to have more of a grip on things than the Times did. They delicately refer to her as Ms Palmer (I'm trying to imagine The Economist printing 'amanda fucking palmer' as she signs herself) and warn their readers about her "exuberant nudity" and "salty" language in her updates. But for all the properness, the blog notes that this was not off-the-cuff; it was three years in the planning and followed three self-releases and a smaller Kickstarter last year, as well... 75691@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Interesting People 2012-06-06T12:06:21-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/06/05/nytimes_discovers_palmer_is_doing_something_different.php It's cute watching conventional media struggling to "get" things that are outside their usual purview. Used to be they didn't get SF, or tech. Now they kinda mostly get some of that. Ben Sisario does his best to translate the AFP phenomenon for the mass Times audience. That right there? That's the first problem: as Palmer said, the music business is built on the idea you have to trick people into parting with cash. Her Kickstarter model is based on the idea that she has a tight, dedicated (if small) fan-base that are willing to part with cash - to... 75687@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Interesting People 2012-06-05T11:52:27-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/05/28/twain_on_creativity.php Apropos of the ongoing discussion of what it takes to create, today's Quotation of the Day blog entry is worth quoting:"It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing--and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite--that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can... 75664@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Interesting People 2012-05-28T06:18:34-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/05/25/afp_kickstarter_funding_report_part_2.php As a follow-up to her previous "Where is the Kickstarter Money Going" post, Amanda Palmer has put up part two, answering questions related to the theme, and hitting several points I think are good for the ongoing discussion of what does this model take. This post is much more Q&A than the first, but the answers still come in Palmer's unique voice, which makes it fun to read. I'll cherry-pick a few highlights, but recommend it highly to anyone who cares about these models. She notes, for example, that this kind of thing doesn't work for acts that are too... 75661@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Interesting People 2012-05-25T06:24:46-05:00