/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ the politics of IP en-us wex@hovir.com 2012-05-21T11:53:40-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/05/21/drew_wilson_and_the_science_of_file_sharing.php We've been here before, but never so comprehensively: actual real science indicates that the Cartel's claims about both file sharing and the legal responses to it are bunk. Hokum. Bad science. Bad conclusions drawn from bad research that was slanted toward a foregone conclusion. What Drew Wilson over at ZeroPaid has done in this past month is lay out in painstaking extensive detail just exactly what's wrong with the Cartel's propaganda-masquerading-as-science. The link above takes you to his conclusion piece and from there you can link back to the individual stories. It's a lot of reading, particularly if you want... 75650@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ IP Use 2012-05-21T11:53:40-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/05/02/uk_academics_move_to_free_up_taxpayerfunded_research.php The Guardian reports that the UK government has engaged Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to help with a project intended to unlock taxpayer-funded research. One of the little-reported aspects of the current situation in academic research publishing is that much (most?) of the work that is put into these very expensive academic journals is paid for by the taxpayer. In the US there are funding agencies like NIH, CDC and of course ARPA that funnel taxpayer dollars to researchers. In the UK and elsewhere there are similar agencies and grant programs that make this research possible. Given, then, that the work... 75609@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ IP Use 2012-05-02T11:45:31-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/04/04/facebook_sues_yahoo_right_back_atyoo.php About two weeks ago, Yahoo sued Facebook over a set of ten patents, which caused a lot of bloggers to go into hyperdrive and flail around. Today, Facebook counter-sued. As TechCrunch gleefully points out, Facebook is suing in part based on a patent filed with the work of a former Yahoo employee. Facebook is also suiing Yahoo for violating precisely ten patents. Anyone who thinks those are coincidences is not paying attention. This is how tech geeks call each other out. It's also Facebook's way of saying "let's negotiate" - they're showing that they can bring weight to the table,... 75558@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ IP Use 2012-04-04T12:25:08-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/03/15/what_if_there_was_a_tablet_before_apples.php To follow on to the Yahoo/Facebook patent kerfuffle I thought it worth revisiting the Apple-versus-the-world lawsuits over tablet devices in particular. We've talked about how Apple is starting to win cases on patents that look strong. We've talked about how Samsung is working to show that important concepts of the tablet computer were already in the public sphere prior to the filing of some Apple patents. This is sort of the canonical prior art: if you can show that an invention from a patent was in fact already known publicly then the patent can't stand. You can still patent new... 75527@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ IP Use 2012-03-15T12:08:52-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/03/15/yahoo_sues_facebook_bloggers_hyperventilate_massively.php Earlier this week, Yahoo! filed suit against Facebook alleging that it infringed on 10 different Yahoo! patents. Normal course of business, except for the timing and the companies involved. Facebook is involved in trying to go IPO, and a big-name public lawsuit could monkey-wrench the whole works. Yahoo! is floundering desperately trying to find someone to lead it and some business in which it can compete, or at least have enough going for it to be worth someone bigger buying. The meat of the suit seems broad - Yahoo is hitting at Facebook on ad generation, customization, and aspects of... 75526@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ IP Use 2012-03-15T11:09:04-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/03/09/copyright_rules_for_college_students.php Copyfight reader Jasmine Hall sent me a pointer to an article recently posted on a site she works for, onlinecolleges.net. The site appears to be a clearinghouse of information and resources for people who are looking to pursue online higher education at for-profit or non-profit electronic universities. Like any in-person university, students at these institutions need to prepare papers and other work to turn in for classroom grade. So what does onlinecolleges.net think students ought to know about copyright? The article is titled "15 Copyright Rules Every Student Should Know" and is credited to "Staff Writers", of which I have... 75514@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ IP Use 2012-03-09T10:33:56-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2011/11/12/tattoos_as_speech.php A bit ago I poked at the issues surrounding the copyrightability of tattoos. One possibility is that a tattoo is a purely expressive design element, which might appropriately be covered by something like a design patent or a copyright; though, as I blogged last time, there are a raft of unanswered questions as to how that IP protection would be read. In addition to artistic design, tattoos can do much more : they can contain messages as words, and they can convey messages by their choices of symbols, images, or even colors. The question then naturally follows: is a tattoo... 75270@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ IP Use 2011-11-12T08:57:41-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2011/11/07/two_more_modern_business_copyfight_models.php Time again for me to tie together two things that start out looking different but that I see through the same lenses. First, an article published last month on Boingboing by new novelist Bill Barol. In his piece, Barol describes how he came to give away his first novel, Thanks for Killing Me. He discovered that regular publishers didn't want it, and self-publishing isn't all it's cracked up to be. For example, CreateSpace sets a minimum price - he could self-publish there for about USD 8 and take home 30 cents per copy sold. The discrepancy is interesting. You can... 75262@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ IP Use 2011-11-07T12:47:32-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2011/09/27/how_to_get_selfpublished_how_to_get_loaned.php Mark Glaser, whom I just started following on Google+, linked to a couple of Mediashift stories of interest to Copyfighters, I think. In the first story Audrey Watters takes up a particular instance of the problem with lending libraries and e-books: school libraries. These libraries, like others, are facing incredibly tight and shrinking budgets these days and may not be able to afford a major transition from traditional physical books to e-readers/e-books and the potential additional financial implications of setting up a lending program for electronic books. It won't surprise anyone here to read that DRM is a (maybe the)... 75197@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ IP Use 2011-09-27T12:20:13-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2011/09/16/scholar_experiments_with_new_media_models.php Hot on the heels of Megan Lisa Jones' successful experiment (see her comment to the entry) a friend who loves Lovecraft sent me another pointer to an interesting dual-publish experiment in that field. David Haden has a new work out on H.P. Lovecraft through publisher Lulu.com. So far so good, standard publication paperback you can put on a shelf. The interesting bit for Copyfight is that Haden, through his D'Log blog, is also offering a free PDF download. In exchange, he's asking people who take advantage of the free offer to provide some form of publicity - a tweet, a... 75181@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ IP Use 2011-09-16T10:05:12-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2011/09/14/what_if_you_deliberately_used_bittorrent_to_distribute_your_book.php That's the question being asked by new author Megan Lisa Jones. As we've discussed many times, one of the biggest problems facing new authors is getting noticed. Despite the decline of the book publishing industry thousands of new novels are published each year by established authors. First novels may receive some extra promotion and attention if the publishing house can spare it, or thinks they have a potential mega-hit on their hands, but the vast majority of first novels go by with little or no notice, piled in a virtual corner few people will take the time to browse. Over... 75177@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ IP Use 2011-09-14T08:34:44-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2011/06/02/this_is_how_we_mash_2011_business_models.php I know I said I wasn't going to write more about mash-ups but this is one of the better examples of corporations making use of the new ways people interact with music content so I wanted at least to nod in their direction. Vevo puts a lot of official music vids up on YouTube. As I mentioned back in March, there's now an expectation that your device will be able to connect to the cloud and get you the music you want so there's really no need to keep your own MP3 copy of it. Vevo is supplying this demand... 75024@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ IP Use 2011-06-02T16:14:26-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2011/05/25/borderlands_shared_universe_reappears_shares_a_bit_more.php For a while in the 80s and 90s it seemed like shared universes were all the rage. The idea was that one or two authors would create a premise - usually an idea/event/location/character and then invite their friends to write in that universe. Reusing characters, sharing settings familiar to readers, and building on the central foundation were all common themes. The two shared universes I spent the most time in were the Wild Cards and Borderlands spaces. Commentaries about teen escapism can be elided, thank you. After more than ten years with no material, Terri Windling's Borderlands have returned with... 75014@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ IP Use 2011-05-25T09:47:54-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2011/05/25/the_power_of_few_calls_on_power_of_many.php This is not exactly a remix - it's more of a 'choose your own ending' with a remix twist. According to Variety, the writer (and director) of the film, Leone Marucci, has invited people to write their own ending for the film. In order to do this, raw footage, prerecorded audio tracks, the script, and editing tools on the film's Web site are being made available for online fans. The result, called "Scene 64" in the contest, will be posted for voting and a popular fan choice will be incorporated into the film, with the remixer getting a screen credit.... 75011@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ IP Use 2011-05-25T08:20:05-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2011/04/21/the_gaga_saga.php A friend pointed me to an interesting blog entry from Weird Al Yankovic on his difficulties getting permission for a parody of a new Lady Gaga song. The blog entry describes his attempts to get permission from Gaga for a parody song Al intended to be the lead piece on his new album. As Al notes in the blog entry, his parody tunes fall under one of the traditional fair use exemptions and as such do not technically require anyone's permission. However, as a matter of his "personal policy" he seeks permission beforehand. In the old days, a tune that... 74958@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ IP Use 2011-04-21T10:07:28-05:00