COPYCENSE

“Raise your hand if you know that Google is being sued over its Google Book Search project.

“Of course, you know about this – everyone knows about this. Google’s announced in December 2004 that it would partner with several of the world’s preeminent research libraries to make digital copies of their collections and allow the text of those digital copies to be searched online. That announcement was so influential that it instantly provided legitimacy to digitization programs the world over in a way that thousands of information professionals could not.

“The announcement also ruffled the feathers of select groups of publishers and authors. Some of them ended up suing Google for copyright infringement in a New York federal court. These cases are pending.

“The Google Book Search (“GBS”) litigation has captured the fancy of information professionals nationwide. And as far as legal developments go in the information profession, the GBS litigation – with its high-profile, “Do No Evil” defendant fighting the comparatively less well-regarded publishing industry, and theories of fair use dancing around lawyers’ heads – is the sexiest legal issue out there right now.

“There are, however, two other issues that greatly affect information professionals as equally as the GBS litigation. Both of these issues – orphan works and Section 108 – have been under review and consideration from various groups for most of the last calendar year. Both issues likely will come to some resolution later this year. And like the GBS litigation, both issues will have a profound influence over the way information professionals use, copy, and access information long after this year’s initial determinations are settled into law or policy.”

A Searcher exclusive.

K. Matthew Dames. “Beyond Google: The Importance of Orphan Works and Section 108 Reform to Information Professionals.” Searcher. September 2006. p. 21.

CopyCense™: Code & Content.™ A venture of Seso Group LLC.

Technorati Tags: CopyCense, copyright, K. Matthew Dames

“Raise your hand if you know that Google is being sued over its Google Book Search project.

“Of course, you know about this – everyone knows about this. Google’s announced in December 2004 that it would partner with several of the world’s preeminent research libraries to make digital copies of their collections and allow the text of those digital copies to be searched online. That announcement was so influential that it instantly provided legitimacy to digitization programs the world over in a way that thousands of information professionals could not.

“The announcement also ruffled the feathers of select groups of publishers and authors. Some of them ended up suing Google for copyright infringement in a New York federal court. These cases are pending.

“The Google Book Search (“GBS”) litigation has captured the fancy of information professionals nationwide. And as far as legal developments go in the information profession, the GBS litigation – with its high-profile, “Do No Evil” defendant fighting the comparatively less well-regarded publishing industry, and theories of fair use dancing around lawyers’ heads – is the sexiest legal issue out there right now.

“There are, however, two other issues that greatly affect information professionals as equally as the GBS litigation. Both of these issues – orphan works and Section 108 – have been under review and consideration from various groups for most of the last calendar year. Both issues likely will come to some resolution later this year. And like the GBS litigation, both issues will have a profound influence over the way information professionals use, copy, and access information long after this year’s initial determinations are settled into law or policy.”

A Searcher exclusive.

K. Matthew Dames. “Beyond Google: The Importance of Orphan Works and Section 108 Reform to Information Professionals.” Searcher. September 2006. p. 21.

CopyCense™: Code & Content.™ A venture of Seso Group LLC.

Technorati Tags: CopyCense, copyright, K. Matthew Dames

“In June, The Wall Street Journal published an e-mail debate between Fritz Attaway and Wendy Seltzer about digital rights management (“DRM”). Attaway is a senior executive with the Motion Picture Association of America, while Seltzer is a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. I found the article interesting, not only because DRM squarely hits the intersection of business, law and technology, but also because it is a perfect example of how copyright debates get framed.

“As copyright increasingly has become a part of our daily discourse, an interesting, yet subtle phenomenon has occurred: discussion about copyright inordinately emphasizes owners’ rights over consumers’ uses. This phenomenon is important because it represents exactly the opposite principles that are codified in the Copyright Act of 1976 (also known as the “Act”). At a fundamental level, the Act gives creators six exclusive rights, all of which are codified in Section 106. (Visual artists get other rights codified in Section 106A.)

“On the other hand, the Act lists more than one dozen exceptions – listed in Sections 107 through 122 – that limit or sharply qualify those six rights. Said another way, copyright exceptions outnumber copyright rights by a ratio of two to one. Yet one would never know this from reading or listening to even the most widely respected news outlets because copyright discourse is alarmingly one-sided. ”

“Using the Journal debate as an example, this article looks at how our copyright news is delivered, how that message has been slanted in favor of content owners, and the importance of learning how to parse through the barrage of messages that, together, lead us to think more about rights than uses or exceptions.”

An Information Today exclusive.

K. Matthew Dames. “Framing the Copyright Debate.” Information Today. September 2006. p. 45.

CopyCense™: Code & Content.™ A venture of Seso Group LLC.

Technorati Tags: CopyCense, copyright, K. Matthew Dames

CopyCense Clppings: Week of September 11, 2006

After a bit of a hiatus, we’re back in the saddle with a classic Quote of the Week, and several interesting items and papers.

Article of the Week

Center for Democracy & Technology. Evaluating DRM: Building A Marketplace for the Convergent World (Version 1.0). (.pdf) September 2006. Perhaps the best outcome from last fall’s Sony BMG rootkit scandal is that consumers — finally — began to take DRM security threats (not to mention impaired economic value) seriously. While this paper from CDT continues to use Big Content’s frame — the mere mention of “digital rights management” suggests that content companies have an innate right to stealthily load virus-inducing software onto your computer in order to protect its revenue stream — it is a good start toward simplifying what can be a complex conversation. We’d like to see the DRM debate simplified even further, through questions such as: “If we pay full price for it, why are we getting less than full access?”

Quote of the Week

Couterfeit Chic. The President’s War on Copying. Sept. 8, 2006. This week’s QoTW is a classic — worth two paragraphs of commentary — and almost as ridiculous as former MPAA president Jack Valenti analogizing the competitive challenge of file sharing as his industry’s “terrorist war.” This year, it has become apparent that the fashion industry — not wanting to be left out of the copyright contretemps — is mobilizing itself in an what may become a full-fledged legislative attempt to gain copyright protection for designs. (See our Fashion & Ornaments archive for background on this issue.)

So, it is within this context that Council of Fashion Designers of America’s new president, Diane von Furstenberg, said the following last week to The Wall Street Journal when asked why the fashion industry was seeking copyright protection: “At first, my attitude was, ‘Oh well, my clothes are copied everywhere. There’s nothing you can do.’ And then I started to see how they pull it from fashion shows and copy it. You can see it on eBay. I started to say you have got to have some rules. … Laws are created to intimidate people [with the threat of litigation], to tell them no, you don’t do that. The more I talked about it, the more I realized this is good for everybody.” We always appreciate when public figures with absolutely NO understanding of copyright issue utterly asinine statements like this one. Valenti’s comment was in poor taste; von Furstenberg’s is worth a hearty chuckle. Bravo, Diane, bravo.

Clippings

• BusinessWeek Online. YouTube: Waiting For The Payoff. Sept. 18, 2006. It’s interesting to see how the press continues to report on businesses that usher in or popularize new business models. After the hue and cry comes the inevitable dismissal “it has yet to make any money.” The point many reporters seem to miss is that companies that are doing new things in new ways don’t always fit neatly into preconceived notions of success, such as profitability. (After all, this country still has accounting and tax systems that still are geared toward a manufacturing, physical asset economy, rather than the intangible, intellectual property economy that reflects today’s reality.) For a slightly broader view, consider Bambi Francisco’s recent article about the price escalation for video-sharing sites, and another article about how YouTube has helped create a market for Internet soap operas. YouTube may or may not turn out to be a “real company” with “real profits,” but it is undeniable that it reflects the derivative work-based “clip culture” and sharing ethos that is central to the future of creating and distributing content.
• Wired News. Amazon’s Online Video Gambit. Sept. 8, 2006. Amazon beats Apple to the video download game, and joins the party. Oh, but we (and Congress, and the federal courts) were told dowloading = piracy. I guess that equation applies only until you figure out a way to make money from downloading.
• Sarah Lacey. Facebook Learns from Its Fumble. BusinessWeek Online. Sept. 8, 2006. Privacy matters after all … even to the youngsters.
• Timothy J. Mullaney. Real Estate Ads Move to the Internet. BusinessWeek Online. Sept. 8, 2006. America’s real estate industry has yet to be crushed by Web-based technologies. Sure, Craigslist has created a new way to list rentals (as have mashups like ), but that has hurt newspaper classified profits more than the real estate industry, which deals more with single-family homes and commercial buildings. The industry’s crown jewel — the Multistate Listing Service (MLS) — largely has gone untouched. It is about to be touched in a rather rude way.
• Bruce Schneier. Quickest Patch Ever. Wired News. Sept. 7, 2006. The opening line says it all: “If you really want to see Microsoft scramble to patch a hole in its software, don’t look to vulnerabilities that impact countless Internet Explorer users or give intruders control of thousands of Windows machines. Just crack Redmond’s DRM.”
• Erica Ogg. Credit Card Companies Form Security Council. News.com. Sept 7, 2006. We’re not sure about you, but we really don’t want the credit card industry having anything to do with security, especially when it likely will involve sharing information. Aren’t these the same folks that (a) have their websites hacked, or (b) get slippery-fingered with financial data? Chris Sherman. Google Debuts 200 Year News Archive Search. Search Engine Watch. Sept. 6, 2006. First the Web reduced newspaper readership, then it crushed lucrative classifieds revenue. But if newspapers are savvy, they can make money from these sorts of deals.
• AppleInsider. Apple Cell Phone Is Real and Ready for Production — Analyst. Sept. 5, 2006. We never quite figured out what Apple was thinking when it tried to quiet select Web sites from publishing rumors and speculation about future products and innovations. That rumor mill is the best viral marketing Apple has. As for the prospects of a so-called iPhone coming to market, when the buzz gets this loud, the rumor likely is true.
• Eric Steuer. The Infinite Album. Wired. September 2006. This is one of the more interesting articles in Wired‘s “Music Reborn” issue. Just go to the newsstand and buy a print copy. It’s that good.
• Antone Gonsalves. MySpace To Let Musicians Sell Tunes Directly To Members. InformationWeek. Sept. 5, 2006. Distribution control represents Big Music’s final death grip over the industry. It will take a lot more than this deal to shake things up seriously, but the erosion already has begun. And in irony of ironies, Shawn Fanning’s new company, Snocap, is providing the technology behind MySpace’s service.
• BBC News. SanDisk Faces MP3 License Dispute. Sept. 4, 2005. Has anyone noticed the frequency with which allegedly open source or open standard technologies are the subject of legal wrangling between private parties? In the past year, we’ve already seen disputes over JPEG propriety and the new version of the GPL. Perhaps these technologies, too, are swirling down into the intellectual property litigation stew.

CopyCense™: Code & Content.™ A venture of Seso Group LLC.

Technorati Tags: CopyCense, copyright, DRM, K. Matthew Dames, licensing