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Mike C's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Another week gone and another chance for everyone to see Techdirt through someone else's eyes. While I may not be as prosaic and prolific of a commenter as some of the regulars, I hope you find some common threads in what I found poignant this week on Techdirt.
We start with the new research report from Floor64, The Sky Is Rising. While regular readers here were not surprised at the results, my first thought was how to get big content business to read and, more importantly, understand the sali...
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We're Living In the Most Creative Time In History
As we recently noted in our The Sky Is Rising study, all of the evidence shows that we're living in a time of true abundance in terms of the content world. All of the data shows this. It's really incontrovertible. And yet, we keep hearing from certain folks -- often legacy entertainment industry interests -- that somehow the content creation world is at risk. That's pretty difficult to square with reality. In fact, I think it could be argued that if the industry gets its way with some of it...
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Paramount Wants To Talk To Students About How They're All Thieves & Then Ask For Ideas On What To Do
As Hollywood struggles to come up for breath and understand the nature of what hit them last month in the SOPA/PIPA debate, it appears they're still thinking that part of this is an "education" issue -- and if they could just tell young people how evil file sharing is that everything would be good. A whole bunch of folks have been passing on variations on the news that Paramount Pictures (owned by Viacom -- one of the major backers of SOPA/PIPA) wants to go talk to college kids. A bunch of uni...
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Tom The Dancing Bug Takes On Insanity Of Copyright Extension And Disproportionate Punishment
One of the more interesting things over the past few months is just how mainstream copyright issues have suddenly become. This point has been driven home with the news that Ruben Bolling's famous Tom the Dancing Bug comic has taken on the excessiveness of both copyright extension and enforcement with his God-man character doing tremendous damage just to enforce the copyright on a work that should be in the public domain:You can check out some of the comments that people have left under the ...
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DailyDirt: Bacon Tastes Good. Pork Chops Taste Goood.
Pork is one of the most commonly consumed meats worldwide. Interestingly, even though it was marketed as the "other white meat" (that slogan was retired in 2011), the USDA always referred to pork as a "red meat" on its website. Here are just a few more fascinating tidbits on pig products.
A severe nosebleed (caused by a rare blood disorder that prevents normal blood clotting) can be stopped with a rolled up piece of salt cured pork. This salt pork remedy has actually been around for several de...
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Ubisoft Cuts Off Legit Players With DRM Server Migration; Pirates Play On
When it comes to DRM, nothing is more annoying and hated than DRM that requires a constant internet connection. This DRM regularly pings a server controlled by the creator of the game in order to prove that you, the paying customer who paid money to buy the game, are not a dirty pirate. One of the loudest critiques of this type of DRM is what happens when the DRM cannot make the connection to the server. We have already seen what happens to Ubisoft games when there is an unexpected server crash....
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Tell The USTR To Stop Being A Pawn Of Hollywood Lobbyists
Every year, the USTR puts out its infamously laughable Special 301 report (as I've pointed out in the past, I've seen people in the ideologically-aligned US Copyright Office mock the Special 301 report openly -- showing that even those who support it know that it's ridiculous). The way it works is that the USTR asks for comments about what countries aren't doing enough to protect US intellectual property abroad, and then puts out a "who's been naughty" and "who's been extra extra naughty" list ...
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Bulgarian MPs Wear Anonymous/Guy Fawkes Masks To Protest ACTA
We recently pointed out that a bunch of Polish politicians wore Guy Fawkes/Anonymous masks in Parliament to protest ACTA:It appears that some politicians in Bulgaria thought that was a good idea, and have done the same thing:It's really quite fascinating how much of a meme this has become within politics. While some still like to pretend that Anonymous is just a bunch of vandalizing kids, it certainly seems that some of what Anonymous stands for is having a real impact. I still think t...
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Young People Followed SOPA News More Than Election News
For people who still don't recognize that there's a generational shift going on when it comes to how people view attempts to regulate the internet, communications and copyright law, they might want to start paying attention. According to the folks over at the Pew Research Center, the story of SOPA was the most followed story for people under 30 -- even more than news about the Presidential election. That's probably because SOPA/PIPA had much more of a likelihood of impacting their daily lives....
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Poland Prime Minister Suspends Any Effort To Ratify ACTA; May Kill ACTA In The EU
This is getting interesting. Following the growing protests about ACTA in Europe, as well as signs of US meddling, Poland's prime minister is making it clear that Poland will not ratify ACTA for the time being, leading to speculation that the EU may not actually join ACTA.
Tusk's backtracking could spell the end of ACTA for the entire European Union. If Poland or any other EU member state, or the European Parliament itself, fails to ratify the document, it becomes null and void across the unio...
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Is The US Meddling In Polish ACTA Voting?
With the immediate threat from SOPA/PIPA on hold, people have started to turn their attention to the long-running saga of ACTA. While it was being negotiated behind closed doors, few people knew about it, and protests against it were muted. Now that it has finally emerged into the open and begins its last dash towards the finishing line of ratification, the pace of anti-ACTA activism is beginning to pick up quickly. That's especially true in Europe, where everything hinges on the result of the ...
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Watch Out: Widespread Protests Against ACTA Spreading Across Europe
As we've noted multiple times, it appears the entertainment industry still does not recognize what kind of beast it awoke with its efforts to shove through SOPA and PIPA. While it still believes it was the "tech community" that caused those bills to be shelved, it's been ignoring that a very large segment of internet users have been activated on these issues... and they're angry and willing to be proactive. We've pointed out that lots of attention has turned towards ACTA -- and while it's late...
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Hollywood Still Doesn't Realize That The Internet Drives Popular Culture Now
Stewart Baker, the former DHS official whose warnings about how SOPA would wreak havoc on online security were instrumental in convincing many of our elected officials that SOPA and PIPA were half-baked legislative disasters, now has a fascinating writeup for The Hollywood Reporter, trying to explain why the Republican Party turned strongly against SOPA/PIPA. We've pointed out a few times, that the different reactions by the Democrats and Republicans to the online protests threaten to cost the ...
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Hey Advertisers! Stop Believing The NFL's Lies About Trademark Law And Call The Super Bowl The Super Bowl
For years now, we've mocked how the NFL insists that no one can use the term "Super Bowl" in an advertisement unless they're an official sponsor of the event. That's why it's become so typical to see advertisers using "the big game" instead -- though, five years ago, the NFL even sought the trademark on "The Big Game" because so many advertisers were using it. However, Paul Levy rightly takes advertisers to task for being "weenies" and not standing up to the NFL on this. As he says:
Of cours...
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If Politicians Pushing SOPA/PIPA Want To Create Jobs, They Should Support The Internet -- And Stop Treating Copyright Companies As Special
A key element of the political rhetoric around SOPA/PIPA was the idea that it was about jobs, and that jobs are so critical in the current economic climate that safeguarding them overrides any other concern the Net world might have about the means being proposed to do that. But then the key question becomes: who are really more important in terms of those jobs - the copyright industries, or companies exploiting the potential of the Internet that would be harmed if the Net were hobbled by new le...
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When Judges Are Determining Whether Or Not Art Should Exist... We Have A Problem
We've written about the somewhat horrifying ruling in the Richard Prince appropriation art case before. If you haven't been following the details, Prince is an appropriation artist, who takes works he finds elsewhere, and modifies and transforms them into different pieces of artwork. The law around this kind of artwork is tragically murky -- with some cases ruling that appropriation art is fair use, and some ruling otherwise. The Prince case got extra attention for a few reasons. One is that...
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One Nation, Under Guard
Bad news about the impending police state here in America: it's already here. From the indefinite detention (without trial) of terrorism suspects both foreign and American to the escalating militarization of our nation's police forces, there's little to indicate that any level of government is willing to "walk back" the overreach of law enforcement, much of which stems from the Patriot Act's anti-terrorism aims.
The New Yorker recently published a piece on incarceration in America, highlighti...
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Copyright Troll Submits Entire Filing About How 'Radical, Quasi-Anarchist' EFF Should Be Blocked From Participating In Case
While not everyone agrees with the EFF's position on various issues, the group is still pretty widely respected in legal circles. So it seems a bit odd that a copyright troll has apparently decided to spend an entire filing trying to block the EFF from filing an amicus brief ("friend of the court" brief) in one of its cases, attacking the EFF directly as some sort of "radical" and "quasi-anarchist" group. The lawsuit involves Prenda Law, who took over the cases formerly brought by divorce lawy...
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Jenzabar Continues To Try To Censor Criticism Via Trademark Bullying
Some people continue to insist that intellectual property and censorship are two totally separate issues, but that's ridiculous. Yet another example is in the ongoing case concerning software company Jenzabar, which we've covered before. If you're just picking this up now, one of Jenzabar's founders, Chai Ling, many years ago, was one of the student leaders of the Tiananmen Square uprising -- a point that the company regularly used in its PR efforts. A documentary film from Long Bow Productio...
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Making The Case For PR Pros Editing Wikipedia
Obscured amidst the hysteria over anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA has been a valuable discussion bubbling up within public relations about PR people editing clients’ Wikipedia entries.
It’s a topic that has been debated for years. From Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales stating in 2006 that “PR firms editing Wikipedia is something that we frown upon very, very strongly” to last year’s Bell Pottinger lobbying scandal, where it emerged that the firm was surreptitiously...
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Congress Trying To Regulate Certain Wireless Spectrum Issues... In A Payroll Tax Bill?
We've all seen how Congress sneaks controversial issues into larger "must pass" bills. The folks over at Public Knowledge are highlighting how our elected officials are trying to sneak three questionable policies -- all related to wireless technologies and access -- into a single "must pass" payroll tax bill, that has absolutely nothing to do with wireless technologies:
No Net Neutrality Protections. Forget your feelings about the FCC’s formal Open Internet Rules. An amendmen...
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DailyDirt: Birds Do The Darndest Things
It's fascinating to watch birds, not just because birds can fly, but also because some birds are incredibly intelligent and can perform some pretty cool tricks. If you can step away from playing with Angry Birds for a bit, watch a few of these much calmer bird videos.
A flock of starlings is called a murmuration -- and when a large group of these birds swarms around, there's a really cool "phase transition" effect. Thankfully, these are birds and not killer bee formations.... [url]
Crows can...
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Do Not Discuss The Movie You Just Saw
Lots of folks have been sending over Jacob Sager Weinstein's rather amusing -- but all too close to true -- satirical pre-movie warnings. Here's just a snippet, but you should read the whole thing:
Any remaining memories are yours to keep and enjoy, provided you do not discuss them with others or make them available via mankind’s collective unconscious. In addition, your experience of this film may not be remixed in any form; dreams involving any of its characters must adhere strictly to...
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The SOPA/PIPA Protest Shows Why There Needs To Be Complete Transparency With TPP
Lawyer Jonathan Band has written up an execllent analysis for why what happened with SOPA/PIPA (pdf) demonstrates why the Obama administration and the USTR in particular must be significantly more transparent when it comes to TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. TPP, of course, is the evil stepchild of ACTA. Rather than learning that excessive secrecy in ACTA was the wrong approach, it appears that the USTR simply determined that since it got away with being so secret with ACTA, it mi...
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ICE Seizes 300 More Sites; Can't Have People Watching Super Bowl Ads Without Permission
Despite the massive failures of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) program to seize domains on questionable legal theories, it's right back at it. ICE has just seized over 300 domains apparently all related to the Super Bowl (of course). They did this last year too... and now the US government is in court over it with the Rojadirecta sites. Many of the sites were selling counterfeit merchandise, which is a more reasonable target, but still seems to be overblown. I'm still at a loss ...
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Full Text Of Slovenian Ambassador's Apology For Signing ACTA
Yesterday, we wrote about the Slovenian ambassador to Japan, Helena Drnovsek Zorko, apologizing for signing ACTA last week in Japan. We later updated the post with a link to a Google translation of her apology that was a bit confusing. However, she's also posted a version in English, in which she admits that she signed it because her government told her to, and "out of civic carelessness" in not bothering to understand what ACTA meant before signing it. She talks about being overworked, and a...
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Documentary Filmmaker Arrested At Congressional Hearing For Filming With A Different Opinion
In a rather troubling move, it appears that the leadership of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment had a documentary filmmaker arrested on Congressional property for daring to try to film a hearing that was taking place on the subject of "fracking" -- an issue for which this filmmaker, Josh Fox, is well known for covering in his documentary Gasland. As far as I can tell, it appears the reason for his arrest was that he was "filmmaking with a different opinion than subcommittee Chair...
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Beach Boys Lyricist Goes After Artist Who Dared To Paint Works Inspired By Beach Boy Songs
Peter Friedman alerts us to yet another ridiculous copyright claim (of which there have been a few) from a member of The Beach Boys. You may have heard that, last year, the Beach Boys' Smile album was finally released, despite being recorded in 1966. An artist, by the name of Erik den Breejen, found out about this, and he (a lifelong Beach Boys fan) set out to create a series of paintings inspired by the songs on the album. Sounds good, right? Art inspiring art. Not so much. After completi...
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Redbox Won't Cave To Warner Bros. Demands; Will Buy WB DVDs From Other Sources And Rent Them
With all the talk of movie studios trying to create a new window between DVD releases for sales, and DVD releases for rentals, it's sometimes forgotten that Redbox tried to fight this fight a few years ago... and ended up in a big legal battle with the studios, before caving and agreeing to delay rentals. However, it appears that the company may be ready to fight back again. Rather than accept an increased 56 day window with other annoying restrictions, Redbox is apparently telling Warner Bros...
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Why Piracy Is Indispensable For The Survival Of Our Culture
Last Year Techdirt wrote about the case of the huge collection of historic jazz recordings that had been acquired by the US National Jazz Museum. The central problem is that even if the recordings can be digitized before they deteriorate, very few people will hear them because of their complicated copyright status.
But as this eye-opening article from Benj Edwards explains, bad as that situation is, it's even worse for the entire category of software creations. For example, consider the earlie...
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Neil Young: Piracy Is The New Radio (But The Quality Sucks)
Neil Young apparently isn't too concerned about copyright infringement these days, according to his comments at the D: Dive into Media conference:
It doesn't affect me because I look at the internet as the new radio. I look at the radio as gone. [...] Piracy is the new radio. That's how music gets around. [...] That's the radio. If you really want to hear it, let's make it available, let them hear it, let them hear the 95 percent of it.
Of course, that's a bit of a reverse from back when he wa...
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Whistle-blowing Scientists (Trying To Prevent Dangerous Products From Reaching The Market) Sue FDA For Snooping On Their Personal Email Accounts
Last year, we wrote about the federal whistle-blowing act, which was designed to give protections to federal employees who blow the whistle on federal fraud and abuse. For reasons that still aren't clear, that bill was killed by a secret hold by either Senators Jon Kyl or Jeff Sessions. That fact only came out due to an amazing effort by the folks at On The Media, who kept hounding all 100 Senators to find out who would possibly kill such a bill. Recently, On The Media revisited the topic, no...
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Kickstarter Becomes The Darling Of Sundance By Financing Lots Of Movies... Without Movie Studio Arrogance
We've certainly talked about the massive growth of Kickstarter, especially in the movie space, and apparently that's being noticed at famous movie festivals like Sundance. David Carr has an article at the NY Times, in which he compares Kickstarter to a movie studio but without the arrogance of a studio. And, of course, it is a very different proposition. Unlike in a studio relationship, the artist retains the ownership of the work. Unlike in a studio relationship, there's no one at Kickstart...
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Rather Than Bitching About The Failure Of SOPA/PIPA, Rupert Murdoch Should Take A Closer Look At His Own Policies
It's well established that Rupert Murdoch threw a bit of a hissy fit on Twitter, after public protests helped put SOPA and PIPA on hold. However, as plenty of people have been pointing out, perhaps the real problem is with Murdoch's (and others') own business model choices. Danny Sullivan recently put forth an open letter to Murdoch, talking about the difficulty of getting The Simpsons legally, despite paying for it:
That’s right. I pay you three times for The Simpsons. First, I get it ...
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Estonia Next In Line To Receive US 'Encouragement' To Adopt Harsher Anti-Piracy Laws
Numerous Wikileaks cables have highlighted the pressure that the US has brought to bear on several foreign governments behind closed doors in an attempt to get the latter to pass maximalist copyright laws. But it's worth noting that plenty of arm twisting takes place openly. Here, for example, is a letter (pdf) from the American Chamber of Commerce in Estonia addressed to the Minister of Justice, and the Minister of Economic Affairs and Communications of that country:
We find that the level o...
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Lomax Jukebox Going Digital Is Great News... But Let's Not Forget That He Claimed Copyright On Cultural Works That Weren't His
The NY Times recently reported on the excellent news that "technology has caught up to the imagination of Alan Lomax." In case you don't know, Lomax was something of a global folk music archivist and "ethnomusicologist." He traveled the world, recording local folk music in huge collections. He did this for decades, and apparently wanted to create a giant jukebox so people could hear everything he recorded. And, now, ten years after he died, the collection -- including more than 5,000 hours o...
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DailyDirt: Making Manned Space Travel More Comfortable...
Astronauts don't have an easy job. Getting up to space is an inherently risky trip, and then once they're up there, they need to be re-supplied with just about everything to continue to survive. But space agencies are at least trying to make things more comfortable for them. Here are just a few examples of some spaceships and amenities that could make astronauts' lives a bit nicer.
NASA is developing a laundry machine for space stations, so that astronauts don't have to wear dirty clothes for ...
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Senator Wyden Attacked For Actually Trying To Get Stuff Done, Rather Than Playing Partisan Politics
We've written a lot about Senator Ron Wyden around here, mainly for his roles in pushing back against government surveillance efforts as well as his strong leadership in preventing bad internet regulations. But, it seems that he's becoming a target within his own party. We'd already noted that with SOPA/PIPA, unfortunately, it seemed like many Democrats (Wyden's party) were planning to stick with the bill, while it was the Republicans who had moved against it. So, despite Wyden's leadership o...
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iPhone Data Debunks Recording Industry's Report On How French Three Strikes Law Increased Sales
The annual Digital Music Report (pdf) of the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is a curiously conflicted production. On the one hand, it must celebrate "a healthy 8 per cent increase in our digital revenues in 2011 -- the first time the annual growth rate has risen since records began in 2004 "; on the other, it must continue to push the party line about how the industry is being destroyed by piracy.
The IFPI has a stab a reconciling that contradiction, writing: "...
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The End Of The Global Internet? Google's Blogger Starts Using Country-Specific Domains To Permit Local Censorship
Twitter has taken quite a lot of heat for putting in place the capability to block tweets on a geographical basis. This begins to look a little unfair in light of the fact that Google quietly adopted a similar policy before Twitter. That's shown by the answer to a question on Google's Blogger site about blogs being redirected to country-specific URLs, which at the time of writing was last updated on 9 January 2012. Here's what it says:
Q: Why am I seeing a URL change?
A: Over the coming week...
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CreativeAmerica Literally Resorts To Buying Signatures
Remember CreativeAmerica? This is the slickly produced operation that claims to be a "grassroots" organization in favor of SOPA and PIPA... but which is actually funded by the major studios, staffed by former MPAA employees, and has had all the major studios directly pushing employees and partners to sign up for the program -- even to the point of threatening to take away business if they don't sign.
This is also the group that was caught copying an anti-SOPA activism letter, and using the exa...
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Supreme Court Denies Appeal For The Pirate Bay Founders
Despite significant questions raised on some of the specifics of the lower court's ruling against the folks behind The Pirate Bay, the Swedish Supreme Court announced today that it would not hear the appeal in the case. In theory, this means that the four individuals may face jail time pretty soon -- though, as Torrentfreak notes, it's pretty standard in Sweden for cases that have gone on this long to take 12 months off of the sentences, which might mean no actual jail time. One of those still...
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Slovenian Ambassador Apologizes For Signing ACTA [Updated]
Well, this is getting strange. The Slovenian ambassador to Japan, Helena Drnovsek Zorko has apparently issued a public apology for signing ACTA last week. There aren't many details, unfortunately, and I don't see the statement on the English-language Slovenian Japanese embassy website, nor on the Slovenian government's news page. Still, it makes you wonder, if she's sorry just a week after signing, why did she sign it in the first place? Did she not do the research? And what happens now? C...
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Angry Birds CEO Explains How The Company Embraces Piracy
I was in the audience to see Eliot van Buskirk interview Rovio's CEO, Mikael Hed, on Monday morning at Midem, but with so much going on at the conference (and then traveling), I'm finally getting a chance to write it up. Hed made a point of telling music industry execs that not only was the music industry's approach to piracy entirely wrong, he believed Rovio's approach was much smarter: embracing the piracy. I'd heard that Hed made it a special point to make sure that the interview included a...
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Hollywood Gets To Party With TPP Negotiators; Public Interest Groups Get Thrown Out Of Hotel
We've been talking about the ridiculous levels of secrecy around the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) agreement -- a trade agreement that is being designed to push through basically everything that Hollywood wants in international copyright law. Last week, we mentioned that various civil society groups were planning to hold an open meeting about TPP in the same hotel where the negotiations were being held (in Hollywood, of course).
However, it appears that once the USTR found out about this, it...
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White House Says It Can't Comment On Possible Chris Dodd Investigation
This isn't a huge surprise, but following the popularity of the petition asking the White House to investigate Chris Dodd (after Dodd's own statements suggesting that he expects politicians who get Hollywood money to pass Hollywood's preferred bills no questions asked), the White House has officially stated that it can't comment on the matter. As per the terms of the White House's "We the People" petition site, it can refuse to address issues that deal with law enforcement:
consistent with the...
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Channeling That Anti-SOPA Energy Into Getting Important DMCA Exemptions
We've talked a bunch of times about the (somewhat ridiculous) process by which the public gets a shot, once every three years, to beg the US Copyright Office to throw the public a bone and grant "exemptions" to the ridiculous DMCA anti-circumvention clause. This process is completely backwards. The anti-circumvention clause is a disaster that should be dumped completely. It goes against the basic principles of fair use and leads to all sorts of ridiculous situations. The fact that the public...
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Dutch ISPs Refuse To Block The Pirate Bay Without A Direct Order
While some Dutch ISPs have been ordered by a court to block access to The Pirate Bay (after fighting it in court for years), the order only applied directly to two ISPs: xs4all and Ziggo. BREIN, the local anti-piracy group, had then demanded that other ISPs also start blocking access. However, it appears that KPN and T-Mobile are refusing, saying that they will not do so without a direct court order:
“KPN sees the blocking of websites as a drastic measure for which a court order is requ...
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Homeland Security Denies Entrance To UK Tourist Because Of Twitter Joke
I am actually writing this post sitting in a French airport, getting ready to board my flight back to the US... but I think I'll hang onto it and post once I'm back in town. That's because it's about some UK tourists who were taking a little vacation to the US... until Homeland Security refused them entrance, because one of them had joked on Twitter about digging up the grave of Marilyn Monroe and "destroying" America (by which he meant partying). Apparently, DHS has figured out how to monitor...
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Another Reason We Need Open Government Data: To Avoid Information Asymmetries
Can the future aggregate actions of people be predicted from relevant sets of data that describe them? That, of course, is what Isaac Asimov's invented mathematical discipline of psychohistory was supposed to do. Some Japanese researchers claim to have made some progress towards that goal:
These guys have used ideas from statistical mechanics to model the behaviour of humans influenced by word-of-mouth interactions and advertisements. In this paper, Ishii and co derive a bunch of equations tha...
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The Red Light Camera Saga In Houston Continues: Court Lets New Parties Enter The Case
We've been following the somewhat bizarre legal situation in Houston, involving a legal fight over the red light cameras in that city. The details have been somewhat confusing, but the short summary is that there was a public referendum that voted against the red light cameras, which created a legal mess. That's because when the cameras had been installed, the city signed a long-term contract with the company supplying them, ATS. ATS then sued the city, and confusion ensued. Some of the deta...
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DailyDirt: To The Moon, Alice!
The Earth's moon seems like a nice place to visit, but there are a surprising number of people who seem to want to go there permanently. Manned spaceflight has seen better days, but is it really time to invest in a moon colony now? The land is pretty cheap up there, and no one's making any more of it... but there's a tiny problem of getting there. Here are just a few more links about manned trips to the moon.
Newt Gingrich's proposal to create a moon base by 2020 (excluding the 13,000 colonist...
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How Patents Have Held Back 3D Printing
The purpose of the intellectual property system that we have is to promote the progress. When there is strong evidence that certain elements of it hold back the progress, it seems like something that should be explored. Glyn recently wrote about the plans to make 3D object plan files available on the Pirate Bay. In that post, he pointed to a great interview with Michael Weinberg from Public Knowledge, who had really been at the forefront of getting people to think about the legal consequences...
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Why Can't Europe Just Forget The Ridiculous Idea Of A 'Right To Be Forgotten'
We've talked about what a dumb idea a "right to be forgotten" is in the past, and yet, Europe keeps looking into just such a law. A leaked copy of the EU's new Data Protect Directive includes a clear "right to be forgotten" initiative:
To strengthen the 'right to be forgotten' in the online environment, the right to erasure should also be extended in such a way that any publicly available copies or replications in websites and search engines should also be deleted by the controller who has ma...
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Warner Bros. Just Keeps Pushing People To Piracy; New Deal Also Delays Queuing
Sometimes you really have to wonder about some legacy entertainment industry execs and their thought process. Warner Bros. is the most aggressively stupid when it comes to willfully going against what consumers want and pushing them to pirate instead. It, among the big Hollywood studios has been the leader in trying to hold back rentals in the bizarre belief that if people can't rent a video legally, they're suddenly more likely to pony up many times the amount to buy the full DVD. This is wh...
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Pro-SOPA Folks Push Fact-Challenged Op-Eds
It seems that, in the wake of the big protests that helped shelve (for now, at least) SOPA and PIPA, the pro-SOPA folks have started pushing people to write op-eds in various publications about how important SOPA/PIPA are -- while simultaneously dismissing the concerns of those who opposed the bills. I keep seeing more of them, but wanted to dig into three recent examples, all of which show how the pro-SOPA folks are trying to distort the debate through either outright falsehoods, or carefully ...
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Author Jonathan Franzen Thinks That Ebooks Mean The World Will No Longer Work
It's sometimes entertaining to see people who have lived in a particular world for a long time get totally freaked out by new technologies. Such is the case of famed author Jonathan Franzen who seems absolutely horrified by the concept of ebooks. Why? Because digital just doesn't feel permanent enough for him:
"Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I'm handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the ...
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Like Clockwork: Copyright Holders Mistakenly Freak Out About Presidential Candidates Using Their Music
This seems to happen every four years like clockwork during Presidential elections. Some musician gets upset about a politician he or she disagrees with, making use of his or her music during campaign rallies. This time around the candidate is Newt Gingrich, and the upset musician is songwriter and member of the band Survivor, Frank Sullivan, who co-wrote the song "Eye of the Tiger" which Gingrich has apparently been using during presidential campaigns:
The complaint states that the violation...
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Copying Is Not Theft, But Censorship Is
This morning a friend shared with me some amusing American Sign Language videos, and in return I wanted to share with him my favorite ASL video of all time: B. Storm's interpretation of the Gnarls Barkley song Crazy. Only I couldn't because it was gone. Why? Because "This video contains content from WMG (Warner Music Group), who has blocked it on copyright grounds." This is appalling for many reasons, not least of which being the video is almost certainly fair use.Copying is not theft, but c...
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Please Keep The ACTA Debate Fact-Based
As we noted in our ACTA primer, there appeared to be a lot of misinformation spreading about the agreement -- which many people were comparing to SOPA/PIPA. While we appreciated that folks who had become interested in SOPA/PIPA were turning their attention to the (very problematic) ACTA, it didn't do anyone any good to spread misinformation. Tim Lee, over at Ars Technica, has taken it up a notch by putting together a very good debunking of some of the exaggerated statements that people are mak...
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Will Academics' Boycott Of Elsevier Be The Tipping Point For Open Access -- Or Another Embarrassing Flop?
It's now widely recognized that the extreme demands of SOPA/PIPA catalyzed a new activism within the Net world, epitomized by the blackout effected by sites like Wikipedia on January 18. But as Techdirt has reported, SOPA and PIPA are not the only attacks by the copyright industries on the digital commons: another is the Research Works Act (RWA), which attempts to remove the public's right to read the articles written by tax-funded researchers in open access journals form.
But, like SOPA/PIPA,...
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Does President Obama's Google Hangout Represent A Milestone?
Yesterday, President Obama used Google Hangout to do a kind of online virtual town hall meeting, which was both live streamed and is now up on Youtube:Being a "first" such use of a relatively new technology is bound to get some attention, and I thought the coverage from Anthony De Rosa and Alex Howard were both worth reading. The point that Howard makes is that one of the more interesting elements in the event was the actual back-and-forth that happened, rather than just taking questions an...
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FIFA Orders Brazil To Overturn Ban On Selling Beer At World Cup Matches
One of the recurrent themes on Techdirt is the sense of entitlement the owners of various kinds of monopolies display, and their common belief that being able to maximize the profit from those monopolies trumps any other consideration.
For example, FIFA, the world governing body for soccer/football, uses its monopoly on organizing the World Cup to demand some rather extraordinary privileges. Here are just some of the things the UK government was prepared to accept as part of its bid to host th...
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Newzbin Lawyer Struck Off For Posting Insulting Tweets During Case -- & Failing To Declare He Owned The Company He Defended
Well, this one's bizarre. Back in March 2010 we wrote about the UK Usenet aggregator Newzbin being found liable for the copyright infringment of its users. A year later, the ISP BT was ordered to block access to Newzbin2, its successor. What amounted to the UK's first Internet censorship order was upheld soon afterwards.
That on its own would make the Newzbin saga noteworthy; but it turns out that there's an extra twist to the story -- involving the lawyer who represented the site:
Mr Harri...
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DailyDirt: Ads Are Content
One of the recurring themes around here is that advertising should be engaging and entertaining, not annoying. Every year, there are excellent examples of this truism -- during the halftime of the Superbowl. Some ads are easily forgotten, but some are remembered for decades (and even associated with the products they were trying to promote). Here are just a few more reminders, just in case you're busy this coming Sunday.
Apple's classic "1984" superbowl ad seems to be one of the few things rem...
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Is The 'Legislative Solution' To Online Infringement To Create A Content Use Registry?
While the White House has been asking the tech/internet world to come up with their own "best ideas" concerning legislative solutions for copyright issues, it's a question that rubs many the wrong way. As folks like Tim O'Reilly have noted, this seems to be starting from a pre-determined outcome without evidence. Furthermore, as Nat Torkington has pointed out, the tech industry has been offering tons of solutions for years, in the form of new and useful tools and services that create new busin...
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The SOPA/PIPA Protests Were Not Pro-Piracy... They Were Anti-Crony Capitalism
Larry Lessig has an excellent article over at The Nation, that puts the events of January 18th into perspective. He talks about the Supreme Court's Golan ruling, which rejects the idea that copyright is really limited in any way under the Constitution:
The Supreme Court, however, reversed that finding, crafting an opinion that all but guarantees Congress a constitutional “free ride” within the copyright field. Only two justices dissented—Justice Breyer, who had dissented in E...
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Can Reddit Write Legislation, Too? Proposes The 'Free Internet Act'
I have to admit that one of the more fun aspects of watching what has happened over the past few months with the SOPA/PIPA debate is watching the Reddit community jump on this issue... and evolve with it. The thing with the Reddit community isn't just it's sheer power as a large group of people who are more than willing to stand up for what they believe in, but their willingness to take on big challenges that most people would back away from. Not all of them work out, but as a community, they ...
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Megaupload Users Plan To Sue... As Their Files & Data Are About To Be Destroyed
Soon after Megaupload was shut down, we heard from some lawyers for (legitimate) users of the service who were exploring whether or not they could sue the US government for taking away their access to the data. There was some uncertainty as to whether or not there was a real legal claim here, but now it appears that at least some of the users are, in fact, planning to sue the US government. Perhaps even more troubling, however, is the fact that all of the Megaupload data may be destroyed, pote...
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Apparently Veoh Isn't Dead Enough For Universal Music; Asks For Rehearing Of Its Bogus Copyright Lawsuit
One of the key examples of what happens when you have bad, overly draconian copyright laws that burden companies falsely accused of infringement is Veoh. We've talked about them a bunch in the past, but Dmitry Shapiro, who had been CEO of the company, has written up a great (though depressing) first-hand explanation of how bad copyright law kills good companies. He talks about having the vision for an online video service (which he came up with before YouTube existed, though both happened at a...
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Entertainment Industy Back To Demanding That Search Engines Censor The Web... Through 'Voluntary' Measures
We've pointed out before that the short-term troubles of some legacy media players appears to have more to do with their own mistakes, rather than piracy. But they just keep on lobbying for more laws (none of which have actually worked). We've also pointed out that while defeating SOPA/PIPA was a good thing, the supporters of the bill, undoubtedly, were already hard at work trying to get similar efforts through elsewhere -- however possible. TorrentFreak has news of the IFPI submitting a list...
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NBC News Doesn't Understand Fair Use; Demands Mitt Romney Remove Ads That Use TV News Clips
Here we go again. Four years ago, during the presidential campaign, we had CBS News threaten the McCain campaign for using some news footage clips in a campaign ad. And here we are, four years later, with NBC Universal demanding that the Romney campaign remove an ad it's using against Newt Gingrich, making use of old TV news footage. This strikes us as bizarre (and ridiculous) as it did four years ago. In many cases, these ads are likely to be considered fair use. But, secondly, is it reall...
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The Sky Is Rising: The Entertainment Industry Is Large & Growing... Not Shrinking
Announcing the release of our new research report, The Sky Is RisingToday, in Cannes, at the Midem conference, I did a presentation that was something of a follow up to the presentation I did here three years ago, about how Trent Reznor's experiments represented the future of music business models. This time, the presentation coincided with the release of a new research paper that we've spent the past few months working on, sponsored by CCIA and Engine Advocacy, in which we did a thorough lo...
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Using Wikileaks To Figure Out What The Government 'Redacts'
We've talked in the past about the ridiculousness of the US government pretending that the State Department cables that were leaked via Wikileaks are still confidential. The reasoning, obviously, is that they're afraid that declaring anything that's become public is no longer confidential is that it creates incentives to leak more documents. But the actual situation is simply absurd. Documents that everyone can see easily and publicly... live in this world, a world where anyone in government ...
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Misguided Twitter Protests... And Why Twitter Could Have Explained Itself Better
Last week, Twitter announced that it now had the ability to block tweets geographically, if necessary. As we noted at the time, this appeared to be a way to limit the impact of censorship to certain countries. That is, rather than completely taking down content (as it would do before), instead it would limit the blocks to just the geographic region. On top of that, it would be quite transparent about this -- posting all info to ChillingEffects, and trying to let users know if they were visiti...
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Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
This week's "most insightful" winner has one of the highest vote counts I can remember. Running away with first place is Mike C.'s comment in response to Hollywood unions calling SOPA opponents hackers and liars and then saying it hopes that any further discussion has a conciliatory tone:
Is it just me, or did anyone else read "We hope a new tone can be set that does not include website attacks, blacklists, blackouts, and lies" and immediately think:
Ok. You first.
Coming in second, we have ...
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Senator Ron Wyden's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
When Mike asked if I'd be willing to write this week's "Favorite Techdirt Posts of the Week," I'm fairly
certain he thought I’d say no. He noted how busy I must be -- which is true -- but in a display of his
trademark humility, he said he could think of a number of reasons that a U.S. Senator might not want to
be associated with a site called "Techdirt." I can't think of anything further from the truth.
While I know I’m supposed to write about my favorite Techdirt posts from this we...
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Knowledge Is A Universal Natural Resource -- And Locking It Up Hurts Everyone
One of the more important points in understanding some of the fights over the ridiculousness of today's copyright and patent laws is to recognize how knowledge (information) is a natural resource. It is the input that makes other great things. Economist Paul Romer's famous research really showed how knowledge and information as a resource is what creates economic growth. Once you recognize that fact, you begin to run into problems when you think about locking up that natural resource. Think...
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Apparently, If Your Domain Has 'Dirt' In The Name, Section 230 Safe Harbors Don't Apply (Uh Oh...)
Back in 2010, we wrote about an attempt to sue the website TheDirty.com for libel... in which the lawyer for the site accidentally sued a different site, called TheDirt.com. This resulted in some hilarity with a bogus default judgment and plenty of confusion. We joked how, given the similarities in the names of those sites to Techdirt, perhaps we should be happy that we weren't sued as well. However, once all the mistakes were realized, the case did shift to actually suing TheDirty.com's owne...
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Security Theater... Or Why I Had To Go Dumpster Diving At The US Capitol Last Week
We've had plenty of stories about the ridiculousness of security theater at airports, but it's been spreading elsewhere as well. Last week, I was in Washington DC from Monday through Thursday, for a few things (mostly related to the SOPA/PIPA debate). On Thursday morning, I took part in a press briefing about the SOPA/PIPA fight (this was before it had been shelved, but after the web blackouts) at the US Capitol. I was actually heading to the airport soon after, so I had checked out of my hot...
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DailyDirt: Faster Food, Faster!
There are a lot of food options out there, and fast food is certainly one of the more popular choices for people on the go. Not surprisingly, though, fast food establishments usually don't have the best reputation for healthy dining, but some of them are trying to change their image. Here are just a few stories on fast food news.
Burger King is testing out a home delivery service for its food in the DC area. Best sentence in the coverage: "There are some real food-quality issues here," says Ro...
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Responses To Nimblebit Point Out That Inspiration Comes From Lots Of Places
We just wrote about Nimblebit's response to Zynga upon discovering Zynga's game that looks a lot like a Nimblebit game. In that post, we noted that even Nimblebit's game was hardly the first such game out there, and now (as pointed out in our comments), someone decided to take the format of Nimblebit's letter, and redo it as a letter to Nimblebit about the other games that inspired Nimblebit's game. The tone is a little snarky -- and to be honest, I never got the feeling from the original that...
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Hawaiian Politician Wants To Track Everyone Online Because Someone Doesn't Like Her... Backs Down After Public Backlash
Always beware of politicans pushing legislation because of a personal experience. Declan McCullagh has the story of an astoundingly, ridiculously broad data retention bill in Hawaii that would require anyone who provides internet access to keep a detailed dossier on every website everyone who uses their service visits (tied to their name). The bill includes a broad definition of internet access provider, such that anyone who provides free WiFi may be forced to keep this same info. Furthermore...
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Universal Music Claims Copyright Over Song That It Didn't License, Just Because One Of Its Artists Rapped To It On A Leaked Track
Last year, when Universal Music issued a very questionable takedown of a Megaupload commercial -- which involved some Universal Music artists -- UMG suggested that it had extra special rights with YouTube in which it could take down videos that it didn't even have a direct copyright on. Google later said that UMG was greatly exaggerating the details of their deal, and all UMG could do beyond issuing normal copyright takedowns was to take down live performances.
So a bunch of folks are scratchi...
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Bar Fight! Sony Sues Karaoke Distributor For Infringement; Gets Sued Right Back For 'Copyright Misuse'
A great many drinkers have watched helplessly as their BAC became inversely proportionate to their common sense, throwing around cash as thought it were Monopoly money before grabbing the mic to belt out Adele's latest track. Karaoke has been the go-to bar sport for thousands of people who feel the only thing keeping them back from superstardom is sobriety. It's a proven money-maker, but does it make ridiculously large damages-type money? Sony/ATV sure thinks so:
[O]ne manufacturer and distribu...
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MPAA Exec Admits: 'We're Not Comfortable With The Internet'
There have been a ton of post mortems about the whole SOPA/PIPA fight, with many trying to figure out where and how the MPAA "went wrong." After all, this is a group that is very used to getting its way inside DC. And it got slaughtered. We've already discussed our thoughts on why the MPAA failed, but what stuns me is how every time someone from the MPAA opens their mouth, they seem to make the situation worse by demonstrating just how tone deaf they are to the online community and what their...
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An Infographic Showing Just How Frequently Hollywood Has Cried Wolf About 'Piracy'
A few folks have sent over this excellent infographic about the frequency with which Hollywood insists every new technology will destroy the movie business. It's based on the list that Steve Blank put together of Hollywood being totally wrong on lots of things:Figured some folks here might appreciate this...
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Another Interesting White House Petition: Reduce The Term Of Copyright
The White House's use of its "We The People..." petition system has been interesting to watch over the last few months since it was introduced. While they quickly raised the "threshold" necessary to get a response, lately it's been used in some interesting ways. We've highlighted a few different petitions -- specifically those related to SOPA/PIPA, Chris Dodd and ACTA. In the case of SOPA, it was in finally responding to the two related petitions that the White House finally came out against ...
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UK Court Says You Can Copyright The Basic Idea Of A Photograph
We've talked a lot in the past about the "idea/expression dichotomy." This is an important concept in copyright law that says you can only copyright the specific expression, and not the idea. This is supposed to protect people from getting accused of copyright infringement for basically making something similar to what someone else made. Unfortunately, as we've been noting with dismay over the past few years, the idea that there's some bright line between "idea" and "expression" has been slow...
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As USTR Insists ACTA Doesn't Need Congressional Approval, Wyden Asks State Dept. For A Second Opinion
Back in October, we noted that Senator Ron Wyden had sent the Obama administration a letter pointing out that it appeared unconstitutional for the President to sign ACTA without getting Congressional approval. The USTR had been insisting that because ACTA does not require any change to US law, it doesn't need any such approval. Of course, that ignores a few issues. First, while it may not change US laws, it seems likely that it would restrict future changes to laws if we wanted to stay in com...
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The Onion Explains SOPA And PIPA (As Only The Onion Can)
Well, it took some time, but with so much disinformation that was spread online about SOPA and PIPA, we really needed someone to cut through the clutter... and who better than The Onion? They've finally done so with their simple SOPA/PIPA explainer that includes some of the finer points of the law that you may have missed if you hadn't read the bill carefully:
Music review sites can only allude to a song's title and content in vague terms
All pirated material available only at the Commerce Depa...
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Tales From Ubisoft DRM: Latest DRM Goes From Horrible To Slightly Less Horrible
We all know Ubisoft. That company that seems to think that piracy is such a huge problem on the PC and that DRM is the only way to stop it -- even when fans complain about how horrible the DRM is. So it is really no surprise to find out that Ubisoft is still at it. It still thinks that annoying legitimate customers is going to prevent piracy of its games. This latest story of Ubisoft DRM woe comes from Guru3d. Gurur3d had wanted to do a benchmark test of one of Ubisoft's latest titles, Anno 207...
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Sorting Out the Sharing License Shambles
At the heart of the various movements based around sharing -- free software, open content, open access etc. -- lie specially drawn-up licenses that grant permissions beyond the minimal ones of copyright. This approach has worked well -- too well, in fact, since it has led to a proliferation of many different licenses: the Open Source Initiative recognizes over 60 of them for open source. That's a problem because slight incompatibilities between them often make it impossible to create combined ...
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Twitter Decides To Censor Locally, Rather Than Block Globally, In Response To Government Demands
Twitter just announced that it has set up the ability to block content on a country specific basis (e.g., if Germany demanded some content be taken down, Twitter can now just have that content blocked in Germany). I know some people saw this and got upset about "censorship!" but looking at the details, it actually looks like Twitter is doing a smart thing here. You could argue that the proper response would be to stand up to local governments and say, "sorry, we don't block anything" -- and I...
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DailyDirt: Looking For Science Projects...
Lots of companies are trying to encourage budding scientists to test out their wacky ideas. We've covered some of the more well-known contests before, but here are a few not-as-widely-publicized challenges for young scientists out there.
BioCurious and Assay Depot have a opened up a challenge asking for testable hypotheses and research plans that could be tested at a community laboratory or posted on Assay Depot's online marketplace for scientific research. A 1-2 page proposal is due by April...
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European Parliament Member Marietje Schaake Explains How Europeans Can Stop ACTA
As we've been discussing, there's been a lot of misinformation flying around concerning ACTA -- especially in the EU, where it has not yet been officially voted on. While we've tried to explain some of the problems with the agreement, there is still plenty of confusion over what to do about it. Thankfully, Marietje Schaake, a Member of the European Parliament (whose excellent work we've discussed before) has taken to Reddit to provide a lot more detail about the process itself, and what people...
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Court Finds Copyright Trolling Lawyer Evan Stone In Contempt; Orders Him To Pay Attorneys' Fees
Remember Evan Stone? He's one of a "new breed" of copyright trolling lawyers, who has been trying to sue large groups of John Does based on IP addresses, claiming they infringed on a client's work. Of course, the end game of these lawsuits is not to actually take these people to court, but to find out who they are, send them a nastygram... with an offer to "settle," and then get as many people to settle as possible. It's basically a way to use the court system to force lots of people to give ...
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Polish Politicians Don Guy Fawkes/Anonymous Masks To Protest ACTA Signing
There's been lots of talk today about how various EU governments are agreeing to sign ACTA (which still needs to be ratified by the EU Parliament). It's gotten the most attention in Poland, where there were mass protests -- but the government there still signed. Of course, not everyone in the Polish government agreed. Amazingly, officials from the Palikot's Movement held up the famed Guy Fawkes/Anonymous masks in Parliament to protest the vote:Of course, we should note that, from the pict...
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Tiny Gamemaker Takes The Right Approach To Giant Zynga Copying Its Game: It Thanks Them
It's no secret at all that casual gaming giant Zynga has a dreadful reputation for copying the games of others, and then crushing them in the marketplace. What's even more ridiculous is that Zynga also has a habit of using IP laws to go after competitors. There's been a lot of news this week over the story that Zynga's new tower sim game Dream Heights appears to copy another game, Tiny Tower from Nimblebit, a small, 3-person development shop. As with any "big company copies little company" st...
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European Parliament Official In Charge Of ACTA Quits, And Denounces The 'Masquerade' Behind ACTA
This is interesting. Kader Arif, the "rapporteur" for ACTA, has quit that role in disgust over the process behind getting the EU to sign onto ACTA. A rapporteur is a person "appointed by a deliberative body to investigate an issue." However, it appears his investigation of ACTA didn't make him very pleased:
I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency fro...
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Mike C's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
