COPYCENSE

“The maker of BlackBerry wireless e-mail devices agreed yesterday to pay $612.5 million to a McLean firm to resolve a long-running patent dispute and put to rest concerns that the popular gadgets might be shut off.

“Under the deal, Research in Motion Ltd., the Canadian company that pioneered the BlackBerry service, will license technology to keep it in business and allow it to transmit e-mail that government, emergency services and much of professional Washington have come to rely upon.”

Yuki Noguchi. BlackBerry Patent Dispute Is Settled. WashingtonPost.com. March 4, 2005.

See also:

Stephen Pritchard. The Trouble’s Not Over For BlackBerry. The Independent. March 5, 2006.

Mike Musgrove. For NTP, Battle Worth Fighting Ends in Vindication Over Patent. WashingtonPost.com. March 4, 2006.

ag-IP-news. “A Case Like the BlackBerry One is Bound to Happen in Europe” — Mueller Warns. March 4, 2006.

Theresa Tedesco. RIM Pays $612M To Settle U.S. Suit. Canada.com. March 4, 2006.

Simon Avery and Barrie McKenna. Marathon Talks This Week Led to Agreement. Globandmail.com. March 4, 2006.

Ian Austen. BlackBerry Service to Continue. The New York Times. March 4, 2006.

Research In Motion. Research In Motion and NTP Sign Definitive Settlement Agreement to End Litigation. March 3, 2006.

John Shinal. RIM Took Too Long at Two Key Steps. MarketWatch. March 3, 2006.

Michele Chandler. BlackBerry Deal Reached. MercuryNews.com. March 3, 2006.

IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband. The Real Reason Why BlackBerry Settled. March 3, 2006.

Arik Hesseldahl and Heather Green. BlackBerry Won’t Get Squashed. BusinessWeek Online. March 3, 2006.

Updates:

John Markoff. In Silicon Valley, a Man Without a Patent. The New York Times. April 16, 2006. (Profile of Geoff Goodfellow, who held the patent for wireless e-mail before NTP, the holding company with which Research In Motion settled.)

Tom Krazit. For NTP, Is There Life After RIM? News.com. March 7, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“At the Ontario Library Association Superconference earlier this month, [Jenny Levine] argued that library schools need to offer a course in copyright, licensing agreements for electronic products, and digital rights management, because they all affect the future of how libraries will interact with our users as entertainment and information becomes increasingly digital.

“It’s unfortunate that at a time when the broadcast flag is again rearing its ugly head and media and publishing companies continue to try to buy legislation giving them free rein with users’ rights, most librarians are completely unaware of just how much these moves could affect them.”

ALA TechSource. When Owning Isn’t Owning. Feb. 28, 2006.

See also:

K. Matthew Dames. “Associations’ Silence on Book Search Is Not Golden.” Online. March/April 2006.

K. Matthew Dames. Demystifying Fair Use. CopyCense. March 2, 2005.

K. Matthew Dames. Library Schools and the Copyright Knowledge Gap. Information Today. February 2006.

K. Matthew Dames. Library Copying in the Digital Age. CopyCense. Jan. 31, 2006.

K. Matthew Dames. First Sale in the Digital Age. CopyCense. Jan. 23, 2006.

K. Matthew Dames. Buying E-Content: Librarians, Salaries, & Opportunities. CopyCense. Dec. 13, 2005.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Amanda Palmer hardly fits the profile of an Internet outlaw, but her obsession with the ABC show Lost makes this mum the television industry’s worst nightmare.

“Like thousands of other British fans, the 30-year-old personal assistant can’t bear to wait the nine months it can take for new Lost shows to air in England. So, soon after the closing credits roll in America, she downloads each episode off file-sharing networks.

“And most alarming to TV industry executives, Palmer admits not a twinge of guilt. ‘It’s TV, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘It would probably be different if it was a movie. If it is free on everybody’s TV, why worry about it?'”

Dawn C. Chmielewski and Meg James. TV May Be Free but Not That Free. LATimes.com. March 1, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“In the digital age, ever-increasing amounts of material are available in an expanding number of formats. The DVD player, home PC, MP3 music player, mobile phone, game platform and pay-TV system are features of many Australian homes. The need of copyright owners to protect their work in the digital context has seen the development of a range of technological protection measures (TPMs).

“These are recognised and protected by Australian domestic copyright law and, with the signing of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA), Australia has given further undertakings to protect these TPMs from circumvention. While the AUSFTA sets out for seven specific areas where circumvention of TPMs will be permitted, this Committee has been given the task of assessing whether any further exemptions should be considered by the Australian Government.”

The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, House of Representatives (Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs). Review of Technological Protection Measures Exceptions. (.pdf, 1.8 MB) February 2006.

See also:

LawFont.com. TPM Inquiry Report is Out. March 2, 2006.

EFF Deep Links. An Australian Perspective on DMCA Rulemaking. March 2, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“When it was announced over a year ago that The Complete New Yorker: Eighty Years of the Nation’s Greatest Magazine would be released on eight DVDs, I immediately put in my pre-order. After it arrived, I took out the first DVD and stuck it in my Linux box, expecting that I could start looking at the collected issues.

“No dice. The issues were available as DjVu files. No problem; there are DjVu readers for Linux, and it’s an open format. Even worse, if you do install the software, and then perform a search using the somewhat klunky search tool built in to the proprietary DjVu reader, you’ll soon find yourself in DVD-swapping hell as you jump from issue to issue.

“I finally got so frustrated that I decided to break through The New Yorker’s limitations and DRM, both to access the content I wanted to use and to prove to myself that it could be done. It took a while, but it worked.”

Scott Granneman. The Big DRM Mistake. Security Focus. March 1, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

A. INTRODUCTION

This edition of CommuniK.™ features the fifth and final part of a series about copyright law exceptions that are available to libraries, schools, and archives. This is the second of a two-part article that discusses Section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act, otherwise known as the “fair use” doctrine.

Fair use serves as the broadest copyright exception available in copyright law, one which is generally applicable to all circumstances. Fair use, however, is a paradox. First, fair use is very difficult to apply properly without experience. Second, while federal courts have decided a number of fair use cases in a way that seems to strengthen fair use, other factors (including a hyperactively litigious content industry) have served to diminish the doctrine’s practical viability.

This article goes beyond a strict interpretive analysis of Section 107. Instead, the article discusses fair use within the context of risk management, including how to analyze a potential fair use situation with a cunning eye that gives equal parts consideration to unlicensed use and the copyright owner’s exclusive rights.

Portions of this article originally appeared in the November/December 2005 edition of Online magazine.

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