Archive for June 2006
Not Everyone Can Edit at Wikipedia
“Wikipedia is the online encyclopedia that “anyone can edit.” Unless you want to edit the entries on Albert Einstein, human rights in China or Christina Aguilera.
“Wikipedia’s come-one, come-all invitation to write and edit articles, and the surprisingly successful results, have captured the public imagination. But it is not the experiment in freewheeling collective creativity it might seem to be, because maintaining so much openness inevitably involves some tradeoffs.
“At its core, Wikipedia is not just a reference work but also an online community that has built itself a bureaucracy of sorts — one that, in response to well-publicized problems with some entries, has recently grown more elaborate. It has a clear power structure that gives volunteer administrators the authority to exercise editorial control, delete unsuitable articles and protect those that are vulnerable to vandalism. Those measures can put some entries outside of the ‘anyone can edit’ realm.”
Katie Hafner. Growing Wikipedia Revises Its ‘Anyone Can Edit’ Policy. The New York Times. June 17, 2006.
CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Scholar Sues Over Fair Use
This story has been updated. Original CopyCense coverage: June 15, 2006.
“A Stanford University professor on Monday sued James Joyce’s estate for refusing to give her permission to use copyrighted material about the Ulysses author and his daughter on her scholarly Web site.
“In the federal court lawsuit filed here, Carol Shloss, an acting English professor and Joycean scholar, challenged the estate’s assertion that she would be infringing on its ownership of Joyce’s image by quoting his published works, manuscripts and private letters on her site. Instead, Shloss accused Joyce’s grandson, Stephen James Joyce, and estate trustee, Sean Sweeney, of destroying papers, improperly withholding access to copyrighted materials and actively intimidating academics to protect the Joyce family name.”
Lisa Leff. Stanford Prof Sues James Joyce’s Estate for Right to Quote Works. MercuryNews.com. June 12, 2006.
Related Stories & Documents:
- U.S. District Court, Northern District of California. Carol Loeb Shloss v. Sean Sweeney and the Estate of James Joyce: Complaint for Declaratory Judgment and Injunctive Relief (No. ___). (.pdf). June 12, 2006.
- D. T. Max. The Injustice Collector. The New Yorker. June 12, 2006.
CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Sweatshop Conditions Charged in iPod Manufacture
“Apple Computer Inc. is having an iPod-related public relations headache this week, following a report by a British newspaper on working conditions at Chinese factories where the popular music player is built.
“The Mail on Sunday reported that a Chinese factory that manufactures iPods employs 200,000 workers who live in dormitories where visitors are not permitted. Workers toil for 15-hour days for as little as $50 per month, according to the article.
“Apple said it is ‘investigating the allegations regarding working conditions in the iPod manufacturing plant in China.'”
Mike Musgrove. Sweatshop Conditions at IPod Factory Reported. WashingtonPost.com. June 16, 2006.
CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Senate Proposes Labeling Explicit Web Content
“Operators of commercial Web sites with sexually explicit content would have to post warning labels on each offending page or face imprisonment under a new proposal in the U.S. Senate.
“Caving to earlier demands from the U.S. Department of Justice, the 24-page proposed law focuses on a medley of new penalties related to child pornography and other sexual content on the Internet. For instance, Internet service providers that fail to report to authorities any sightings of child pornography on their networks would have to cough up fines that are triple those written into current law: $150,000 for the first violation and $300,000 thereafter.
“Called the Stop Adults’ Facilitation of the Exploitation of Youth Act, or Internet SAFETY Act, the bill actually beefs up the Justice Department’s suggested penalties for negligent Web labelers.”
Anne Broache. Web Labeling Mandate Surfaces In Senate. News.com. June 14, 2006.
CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
New Video Services Rip From YouTube
“Two services run by two people in Australia are giving people new ways to access and use video content from sites like YouTube and Google Video, and copyright holders may well find themselves up in arms about it.
“Known as Peekvid and Keepvid, the sister services are designed, respectively, to aggregate and index copyrighted YouTube content, and allow users to rip content from YouTube, Google Video and other services to their hard drives.
“Thus, though YouTube prohibits anyone except legitimate rights holders — such as NBC Universal, EMI Records and many others — from uploading copyrighted content to its site, such content does get posted illegally, and these sister services make it possible to easily view, and download, a wide variety of such content. A recent survey turned up clips including World Cup highlights, Beatles and 2Pac Shakur music videos, episodes of “Seinfeld,” an episode of “Lost” and dozens of other TV shows and music videos.”
Daniel Terdiman. Service Lets People Rip Videos From YouTube, Other Sites. News.com. June 14, 2006.
CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Did People Intentionally Leak Jolie-Pitt Baby Photos?
“After winning the very expensive rights to the first photographs of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, the editors at People magazine formed a publicity plan.
“Instead, days before their official publication, the pictures of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt cuddling their days-old infant first appeared on Gawker, PerezHilton.com and about two dozen other gossip blogs and Web sites. Some photos were taken from a bootleg copy of Hello! magazine, which had obtained the rights in Britain to the photos for a reported $3.5 million. Others that appeared later were from copies of People that the magazine says may have been stolen before official distribution. Within an hour of the first postings, lawyers for the magazine began unleashing cease-and-desist letters to the offending Web sites.
“But did the Internet publication of the pictures really undermine People’s publicity plan?”
Julie Bosman. In Web Era, Big Money Can’t Buy an Exclusive. The New York Times. June 12, 2006.
CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Unbalanced Webcasting Proposal Moves Forward With A Hush
“In September last year, I wrote about a very bad proposal being debated in the World Intellectual Property Organization. The proposal was to extend the length of an existing set of intellectual property rights for broadcasters, and even apply them to webcasting.
“Extending the rights to webcasting, despite the manifest differences between the economic structure and global reach of the two media, was a jaw-dropping move with obviously bad consequences. We should be focusing on rules about conduct, not rights over content.
“This proposal was so bad, so empirically threadbare, so unbalanced, that I had cherished a faint hope that the members of WIPO would abandon it. At least, I hoped there might be a comparative study of the nations that had previously adopted the protection and those that had not, to see if there was any need for such a change? What was I thinking!!?”
James Boyle. Constitutional Circumvention. FT.com. June 13, 2006.
Related Stories & Documents:
- James Boyle. More Rights Are Wrong For Webcasters. FT.com. Sept. 26, 2005.
CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
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