COPYCENSE

"For kids reared on comic books, what could be more natural than tumbling into the backyard with their friends to make up new adventures for their favorite superheroes? How many comic book fans adorned their grade-school notebooks with hand-drawn images of the X-Men, the Incredible Hulk, and Captain America?

"Apparently Marvel Enterprises Inc., which owns the copyright and trademark rights in these classic superhero characters, thinks that these generations of American children were all infringers, little better than the downloaders targeted by the music and movie industries. At least that’s the impression left by a complaint (.pdf) filed Nov. 10 by Marvel against NCSoft Corp. and Cryptic Studios, the operators of an online game called ‘City of Heroes.’

"Marvel is alleging copyright and trademark infringement, as well as a variety of state law claims. The chief claims are for contributory and vicarious copyright and trademark infringement. In other words, Marvel’s complaint is premised on the notion that NCSoft and Cryptic should be held responsible for the infringing activities of the players in the game. According to the complaint, the players are infringing Marvel’s copyrights and trademarks by creating characters that are recognizable copies of Marvel characters, including Wolverine and the Incredible Hulk."

Fred von Lohmann. Et tu, Marvel?. Law.com. Dec. 3, 2004.

See also:
Daniel Terdiman. Marvel Battles Role Players. Wired News. Nov. 16, 2004.

SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.

"MSN Spaces, Microsoft’s new blogging service, has sparked a new game for some of its users: trying to circumvent its censorship controls.

"BoingBoing, a popular Web log, on Friday reported that MSN Spaces is rejecting certain blog titles or URLs because they contain words that Microsoft has deemed inappropriate.

"However, like so many censorship tools, Microsoft’s is proving less than perfect. BoingBoing found that all of the most obvious profanities fell foul of Microsoft’s electronic sentries."

Graeme Wearden. MSN Bloggers Try to Foul up Censorship Tool. News.com. Dec. 3, 2004.

SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.

"As the number of people online in China has quintupled over the last four years, the government has shown itself to be committed to two concrete, and sometimes competing, goals: strategically deploying the Internet to economic advantage, while clamping down – with surveillance, filters and prison sentences – on undesirable content and use.

"Both trends, experts say, are likely to continue.

"China is already the largest mobile communications subscriber market in the world, with more than 320 million subscribers. Internet users – who numbered fewer than 17 million in 2000 – are now estimated to be somewhere near 90 million, according to the China Internet Network Information Center, the government’s clearinghouse for Internet statistics. China is second only to the United States in the number of people online, and the 90 percent of its total population around 1.3 billion who are not online still represents a vast, untapped market. "

Tom Zeller Jr. Beijing Loves the Web Until the Web Talks Back. The New York Times. Dec. 6, 2004.

(Editor�s Note: The Times allows free access to their stories on the Web for seven days before sending the stories to the paper�s fee-based Archive.)

SNTReport.com™ Covering the Intersection of Collaboration and Technology. A Seso Group™ Venture.

"The nation’s highest court will determine whether the controversial ‘Brand X’ ruling of a U.S. appeals court should stand. The case involves whether the government should regulate cable companies in the same way as phone companies. Phone companies are required to allow third-party providers to offer broadband service over their networks, but cable companies are not.

"The difference arises from the Federal Communications Commission’s classification of cable as an information service rather than a telecommunications service.

"The government can regulate telecommunications services, but cannot touch information services. In October 2003, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FCC was incorrect in making that distinction."

Jim Hu. Supreme Court to Hear Broadband Case. ZD Net. Dec. 3, 2004.

See also:
Charles Lane. Small Wineries Find Ally On Interstate Shipping. WashingtonPost.com. Dec. 5, 2004.

(Editor’s Note: The Post allows free access to their stories on the Web for 14 days before sending the stories to the paper’s fee-based Archives.)

SNTReport.com™ Covering the Intersection of Collaboration and Technology. A Seso Group™ Venture.

"Google has been brought to court for its use of thumbnails images in its image search engine. Pandia takes a look at Google’s use of thumbnails and cached versions of webpages. Google is a search engine. In return for your search query it gives you a list of web pages that contain content that hopefully is of relevance to your needs — it does not give you the webpage itself.

"Most website owners are very happy with this arrangement. They get visitors in return for letting Google index their pages.

"But what if Google decided to copy the pages and present them on their own server? Wouldn’t that be like hijacking pages? Wouldn’t that be in violation of international copyright law?"

No author. Google’s Copyright Problems. Pandia. Nov. 29, 2004.

See also:
Chris Gaither. Porn Publisher Sues Google Over Images. DetNews.com. Nov. 22, 2004. (Perfect 10 sues Google for infringement related to image caching.)

SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.

"There are probably not many that are familiar with the new search engine for finding material online that can be used without paying royalty or clearing copyright issues. Finding this kind of material is naturally of great interest to e.g. people in the media who need to know if they can use a given text, photo or stream etc. without risking a lawsuit.

"Since September a beta version of a Creative Commons search engine has been available that lets you search for just this kind of thing.

"This new search engine has not been launched in a big way, but in the new web browser FireFox 1.0 from Mozilla, it has high visibility: In the search box in the upper right corner, the Creative Commons search engine is right there among Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, Ebay and Dictionary.com!"

Lars Vage.  Creative Commons Search Engine in the New FireFox. Pandia. Dec. 2, 2004.

See also:
Creative Commons. Creative Commons Unique Search Tool Now Integrated into Firefox 1.0. (Press Release) Nov. 22, 2004.

SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.