/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ the politics of IP en-us wex@hovir.com 2009-11-05T10:23:47-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2009/11/05/in_an_effort_to_prove_they_cannot_learn.php ...the Cartel are once again attempting to use law and regulation to control your home entertainment experience. Funny, it seems like just yesterday I was ranting about how they had stupidly misunderstood the value of PVRs. Oh, right, sorry, that was two days ago. Can't expect busy high-paid media executives to remember things for two whole days. So (with a hat-tip to Boingboing again for the alert) I direct your attention to Public Knowledge's latest attempt to keep the Cartel from driving the home entertainment experience off a cliff. The details are long and boring - what you need to... 74126@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Laws and Regulations 2009-11-05T10:23:47-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2009/08/17/a_win_too_fair.php At least that's what the DoJ thinks is fair, according to papers it has filed in the Jammie Thomas punitive damages debacle. Yes, certainly Congress intended low-income students and single moms to be ordered to pay USD 2 million because... um, because something. Well, the DOJ seems to think that huge damages are deterrent. Which we can clearly see from the massive drop in file-sharing that has taken place since Congress passed this law in 1999. File-sharing has gone down in the last decade, right? That's what deterrence means, right? "We are pleased that our sock puppets who have completely... 74021@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Laws and Regulations 2009-08-17T14:59:40-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2009/08/12/photographer_not_a_terrorist_uk.php Back in June of last year I suggested readers bookmark a link provided by Bruce Schneier that collected several items related to the false claims that anti-photography laws are a useful part of an anti-terrorism strategy. Today a friend pointed me to a blog entry by Phil Coomes, a picture editor (and photographer in his own right) for the BBC. In this posting Coomes relates several stories of photographers in the UK who have been harrassed or worse for taking pictures of public buildings, of police officers, and so on. It appears that the British photographers and photojournalists have had... 74014@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Laws and Regulations 2009-08-12T09:49:18-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2009/08/12/civil_rights_for_musicians_act_fight_gets_nastier_and_more_confusing.php A friendly Copyfight reader sent me a pointer to V. Dion Haynes' story in the Washington Post covering the next round in the fight over this bill. The article highlights claims by the MusicFirst Coalition that, among other actions, radio stations have been refusing to run ads supporting the legislation. Notably, the accusation is made against Radio One stations. Radio One, you may recall, made a splash a few weeks ago by pleading poverty and arguing that having to compensate artists would put them out of business. First, I want to acknowlege the comment made in this blog by Christopher,... 74013@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Laws and Regulations 2009-08-12T08:21:17-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2009/06/11/eh_mebbe_not.php The highest legal review body in France, the Constitutional Council, has said "non" to legislation trumpeted by the Cartel that would have allowed cutting off Internet access of people accused of copyright violations. The French constitution contains clauses promoting a presumption of innocence and the Council determined that the legislation - which had already passed in Parliament (WAKE UP YOU GUYS YOU'RE BEING OWNED) - violated those clauses as well as infringing on French Constitutional guarantees of free speech. The legislation already had to be revised once but passed on a second go. Now it's unclear whether the plan will... 73927@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Laws and Regulations 2009-06-11T14:55:40-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2009/06/09/and_now_a_pirate_mep.php In addition to Vikings, reindeer, and cute blonde girls, Sweden can now say it has a Pirate member of the European Parliament. According to Veronica Ek's story for Reuters (here reprinted by the Globe and Mail) about seven percent of the Swedish electorate cast ballots that sent a member of the Pirate Party into office. The party has been in existence for some time, largely known as a single-issue copyright deregulation group. However, the recent conviction of four operators of The Pirate Bay torrent-linking site has drawn attention to the party and its platform, though the site and the party... 73920@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Laws and Regulations 2009-06-09T12:16:10-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2009/02/09/dmca_rulings_overbroad_in_gaming_too.php 73729@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Laws and Regulations 2009-02-09T09:26:54-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2009/02/06/riaa_takes_over_doj.php 73728@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Laws and Regulations 2009-02-06T13:42:00-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2008/12/30/venue_matters.php Where a case gets heard can be as important as what's argued in court. Two items this week are bringing this lesson home: In the first case, the RIAA got its wrist slapped for pre-emptively trying to appeal in mid-trial. As Nate Anderson points out, you can't generally do that without the judge's permission, and in this case Judge Davis is not in a favor-granting mood. Part of the issue is that Davis presides in the Eighth Circuit, a district where the courts have held that "actual distribution" has to occur for a copyright infringement case to proceed. Other jurisdictions... 73663@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Laws and Regulations 2008-12-30T11:36:08-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2008/11/28/immoral_patents_or_so_say_the_europeans.php On Friday, the EPO (European Patent Office) upheld an earlier decision rejecting a patent application from the University of Wisconsin-Madison' Alumni Research Foundation in the US. The patent was for stem cell technology, and it was rejected because the process disclosed in the patent apparently required the use or destruction of human embryos. I was curious about this because, so far as I know, there are no grounds in US law for rejecting patents on ethical or moral bases. Certainly US defense contractors get patents on all kinds of horrific killing technologies and I believe there was at least one... 73629@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Laws and Regulations 2008-11-28T09:13:08-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2008/11/25/right_to_own_right_to_view.php In this blog I spend most of my time on the production side of the issues - talking about business models, distribution, artist compensation, and so on. Once in a while it's important to remember that there are also complimentary rights - your right to own materials produced by creators, for private viewing. Making or buying legal copies of creative works is an essential part of the process - all the author rights in the world don't mean jack if nobody can buy what's created. Sometimes we need to remember those rights because they get attacked. On Monday of this... 73625@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Laws and Regulations 2008-11-25T10:37:30-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2008/11/24/riaa_v_joel_tenenbaum_the_fleet_is_in_motion.php Almost a year ago, Eric Bangeman wrote a piece on ars pointing out that the Cartel has somehow managed to avoid noticing that students at Harvard share music files, too. Despite its widespread and very public campaign of suing its under-25 customer demographic, the RIAA seemed unwilling - some would say scared - to take on Harvard. Bangeman, along with others, noted that the Cartel's attack dogs seemed to be taking on easy targets. Bloggers attributed this 'oversight' on the RIAA's part to the presence at Harvard of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, an organization noted for its... 73623@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Laws and Regulations 2008-11-24T09:41:08-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2008/10/22/law_enforcement_seizes_biker_gang_ip.php I'm tempted to file this under "weird IP stories you don't expect to read" but I don't have a category for that. Buried at the very bottom of the AP story on the Feds busting up the Mongols biker gang appear the following paragraphs:U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien has asked for an injunction that would seize the Mongols' trademarked name. If the order is approved, any Mongol would no longer be able to wear a jacket displaying the gang's name or emblem. "It would allow law enforcement to seize the leather jackets right off their back," O'Brien said. I suppose, in... 73590@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Laws and Regulations 2008-10-22T08:19:07-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2008/09/30/orphan_works_and_emphatic_words.php Once again I'm finding myself trying to make sense of something and hoping others can help me out. I got a pointer from a freelancer friend to a page posted by the Illustrator's Partnership of America. This page contains a harsh critique of The Orphan Works Act of 2008. That name sounded familiar but I hadn't heard it recently, so I went back into the archives and found a Nate Anderson piece on ars, from back in April, that talked about this proposed legislation. Anderson does a good job of summarizing the problem that the bill is trying to solve... 73558@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Laws and Regulations 2008-09-30T13:22:06-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2008/08/21/in_which_our_hero_triesto_comprehend_eu_copyright_issues.php OK, I'm in need of help here. Have I got this right? I got an interesting pointer from a European Copyfight reader indicating that I should take a look at the growing controversy over the European Parliament's proposed new telecoms package. As far as I can tell the source of this controversy is here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/eplive/expert/shotlist_page/20080708SHL33636/default_en.htm This is a set of innocuous-sounding proposals to "co-ordinate" and "harmonise" radio spectrum use. It contains high-minded phrases like "safeguard media pluralism." It proposes setting up some kind of overarching governing body (Body of European Regulators in Telecommunications (BERT)). National regulators would have to submit... 73509@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Laws and Regulations 2008-08-21T14:29:53-05:00