COPYCENSE

CopyCense Clippings: Week of July 10, 2006.

• Yehuda. The Copyright Code, In Verse. July 7, 2006. Cute, very cute.
• Declan McCullagh. FBI Plans New Net-Tapping Push. News.com. July 7, 2006. See McCullagh’s other story, below, for commentary.
• Martin Davies. Capitalism Encroaches On Virtual Utopia. The Guardian. July 6, 2006. Real intellectual property issues in an imaginary world: just one more thing to vex lawyers and judges.
• Declan McCullagh. Congressional Confusion on Internet Privacy. News.com. July 5, 2006. Why is that politicians are willing to crack down on data brokers for divulging data, but will force ISPs to divulge data to law enforcement? What part of “privacy” don’t they understand?
• Elinor Mills. Google Is Ready to Take Your Order. News.com. July 5, 2006. Google steadily is amassing and leveraging a database of all things digital. Do we want any company — even the “Do No Evil” one — having exclusive domain over our private information?
• Mike Musgrove. France Offers Apple a Loophole. WashingtonPost.com. July 4, 2006. For a while, it really looked like the French government was going to make meaningful strides in unmasking the DRM demon. We should have known better.
• Reuters. Google Says Bill Could Spark Antitrust Fight. News.com. July 4, 2006. Google threatens to file antitrust complaints against Big Telecom if telephone companies abuse additional powers granted to it under a Senate Commerce Committee proposal. Just recently, the press was agog about how Google was being outdone in the strategies and tactics of big business, particularly lobbying and litigation. It seems like the company has grown up rather quickly.
• Marc Kaufman. Petitions to FDA Sometimes Delay Generic Drugs. WashingtonPost.com. July 3, 2006. “The process is paramount”: that’s a paraphrasing of an adage some of us are used to hearing. This story confirms the adage. It should be no surprise that members of Big Pharma have exploited an FDA procedure called citizen petitions to stop or delay generic drugs from entering the marketplace.
• Kim Hart and Sara Kehaulani Goo. Tech Faceoff: Net Neutrality, In the Eye of the Beholder. WashingtonPost.com. July 2, 2006. A simple, but effective piece on “Net Neutrality,” whatever that is (or has come to mean).
• Greg Sandoval. Is YouTube A Flash In the Pan? News.com. June 29, 2006. We are always amazed at how or why comments from so-called “analysts” are significant enough to warrant news coverage. (That we’re commenting on this story suggests we’ve fallen into the same trap.) So let’s get this straight: one guy from one firm (which issues a press release) opines that YouTube will not make money from its video sharing operation, in part because its customer base will not accept advertising. What the report — or at least the report of the report — does not say is how it thinks YouTube will or should make its money. We suppose that will have to wait for another report. While we’re on this topic, we think YouTube’s future is as a sponsored ally of various tentacles of Big Content. YouTube’s biggest problem is the DMCA automatic takedown provision. Allying with Big Content virtually ensures that Big Content won’t sue YouTube out of existence. It also virtually ensures decreasing public utility and inventiveness.
• Anne Broache and Declan McCullagh. Senators Target Net, Phone Taxes. News.com. June 28, 2006. While the cell phone tax moratorium is just a proposal at this point, this movement will spark renewed battles between Congress and the states, as state legislatures increasingly look to tax Web services and commerce as a means of generating revenue.
• Brooks Boliek. Senate Panel Clears Broadcast Flag. Billboard Radio Monitor. June 28, 2006. The Senate Commerce Committee has approved both the broadcast flag and the audio flag, but final passage of either proposal into law remains sketchy, particularly since it is a midterm election year.
• James Kanter. A New Battlefield: Ownership of Ideas. International Herald Tribune. May 1, 2006. Granted, this article is quite old. But given the international debate over “rights” and the legal constructs that govern their access, use, dissemination and reproduction, the issues articulated in the story are timeless.
• Jason Mazzone. Copyfraud. New York University Law Review (via SSRN). 2006. The Copyright Act of 1976 cannot be copyrighted, but it’s astounding how many publishers claim copyright protection for reprinting it. Is such an action a case of copyfraud? The author argues that citizens should be able to bring private lawsuits for such causes of action.

CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

We are going to try something new beginning this week: for now, we’re calling it “CopyCense Clippings.”

The experiment is borne out of an unusually busy workload and reduced summer readership. We want to continue to provide the news and angles we normally provide, yet allow for a bit more flexibility in our publishing schedule (which normally is Monday through Friday). Instead of publishing our normal five to seven stories per day, we’ve culled together some of the most interesting stories of the past two weeks and summarized them in a single story.

Most of the entries are consistent with CopyCense’s traditional code and content coverage. Others — like our Malcolm Gladwell post — initially seem off-topic, but somehow we try to tie the subject matter in to what we normally do. The hope is that Clippings will allow us to continue posting regularly (but less than daily), while continuing to provide the “connect the dots” coverage to which our readers have become accustomed.

We concede there are some pitfalls to this approach. First, Clippings is more a “Week In Review” approach than a daily approach. Some will like that, some won’t. Another thing we lose with this approach is our categorization scheme, which we hold sacrosanct here. We’re testing different solutions that may supplement or replace our traditional approach to categorizing stories.

Let us know what you think.

CopyCense Clippings: Week of Monday July 3, 2006

• Wade Roush. Inside the Spyware Scandal. Technology Journal. July/August 2006. (A great article about the Sony-BMG spyware scandal, the class action lawsuit it engendered, and how Big Content executives try to rationalize criminalizing its customers and using DRM.)
• Spencer Reiss. The Wired 40. Wired. July 2006. (Verizon enters the Top 40 for the first time, as Wired points to its fiber optic offerings. We’d point more to its pioneering stance on DMCA subpoenas, and its more traditional Luddite stance on Net Neutrality.)
• Michael Orey and Moira Herbst. Inside Nathan Myhrvold’s Mysterious New Idea Machine. BusinessWeek Online. July 4, 2006. (Profile on former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold’s new company, Intellectual Ventures, which specializes in buying small companies and patent portfolios.)
• Linda Greenhouse. Roberts Is at Court’s Helm, but He Isn’t Yet in Control. The New York Times. July 2, 2006. (Political Washington often waits with bated breath for Greenhouse’s end-of-term analysis of the Court’s activities, which often is the final and most influential commentary about each term. Like Patry, below, Greenhouse asks questions about Chief Justice Roberts’ influence after his first term.) Tame The Web. Ten Rules for the New Librarians. June 30, 2006. (Michael Stephens’ Rule 4: “Understand copyright and the Creative Commons very well and understand what it means for our future content creation-driven culture.” If only more librarians really took this seriously.)
• Alice LaPlante. Media Distribution Rights: Here Come The Judges (And Congress). InformationWeek. June 29, 2006. (A good summary of pending legislation that hinders buyers’ ability to freely use digital content they’ve paid for. It’s a Congressional election year, there is a low likelihood that any of these initiatives will passed into law on their own. Still, since it is an election year, one has to be careful that such bills don’t get passed as part of larger, omnibus legislation that becomes so popular and has so much political momentum that the content bills get passed under broader political cover.)
• Bambi Francisco. NBC Embraces YouTube. MarketWatch. June 29, 2006. (Interview with NBC Universal Television Group executive John Miller about his company’s strategic alliance with video sharing site YouTube. In the NBC and YouTube deal, NBC will have its own dedicated channel on the video-sharing service.)
• Digital Music News. RIAA Taps i-Safe on Internet Awareness, Education Push. June 29, 2006. (The new battle in the copyright wars is over “education.” Big Content has been working all year in the California state legislature seeking to make its version of copyright education a requirement of receiving funds from the state’s technology grant. Now, news arrives that Big Content has teamed with an organization that bills itself as “the worldwide leader in the Internet safety education” and “endorsed by the U.S. Congress.” Be afraid, be very afraid.)
• Anne Broache and Declan McCullagh. Senate Deals Blow to Net Neutrality. News.com. June 28, 2006. (The Senate Commerce Committee failed to approve a Democrat-backed amendment that would have ensured all Internet traffic is treated the same no matter its “source” or “destination.”)
• TMCNet. Spain Outlaws P2P Filesharing. June 27, 2006. (“Spaniards caught grabbing content from, say, eMule, will have to reimburse rights holders for losses — although such losses will be difficult for authorities to track. But the government is going after Internet service providers; it’s a criminal offense for ISPs to facilitate unauthorized downloading.”)
• Anne Broache. Senators Endorse Broadcast Flag Plan. News.com. June 27, 2006. (A bill that would revive a controversial anticopying system for digital television cleared a U.S. Senate panel last week. The entire communications bill won’t become law unless it receives final approval by the full Senate and is reconciled with a much different House version.)
• Elinor Mills. Brewster Kahle’s Modest Mission: Archiving Everything. News.com. June 23, 2006. (Profile of Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle.)
• Sara Kehaulani Goo. Concerns Raised Over AT&T Privacy Policy. WashingtonPost.com. June 23, 2006. (You had to know this was coming. As data becomes the currency of choice for the Internet Age, privacy policies will continue to tighten. Regular CopyCense readers shouldn’t be surprised at AT&T’s actions — read Anne W. Branscomb’s 1994 book Who Owns Information? for more insight. In keeping with Gladwell’s theme, though, we want to know why the Post buried this story on the fifth page of its print business section?)
• The Patry Copyright Blog. Is the Supreme Court Broken? June 23, 2006. (In talking about the Court’s decision not to decide a patent case, one of our favorite commentators skewers the august institution and the Nine Robes over, among other things, “what [he] perceive[s] to [be] a pattern of taking important intellectual property issues and then dodging them.” Patry also criticizes Chief Justice Roberts’ “fractured way of working.” Ouch.)
• Gladwell.com. The Times’ Drug Problem. June 21, 2006. (Author Malcolm Gladwell analyzes skewed reporting by The New York Times in its reporting of name-brand drug prices. This story is posted not so much because it relates to code and content, but because it relates to how stories get covered, how issues get framed for wider public consumption, and the influence of large companies — in this case, Gladwell calls them Big Pharma — all of which influence the code and content debate.)
• Eric M. Weiss. Studio Sues Over Internet Film Based On Stone’s Script. WashingtonPost.com. June 21, 2006. (Using a bootlegged script, a Washington, D.C. amateur filmmaker creates a 12-minute version of the upcoming Oliver Stone movie “World Trade Center.” Paramount Pictures sues, claiming the amateur’s version likely will confuse audiences who want to view the Stone version, which opens August 9 and features Nicolas Cage and Maria Bello.)
• Anthony Ramirez. Library Phone Answerers Survive the Internet. The New York Times. June 19, 2006. (Ever wonder what happened to telephone reference in the Internet Age? Apparently, it remains alive and well at The New York Public Library.)

CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“A former freelance film critic for the Boston Herald and past president of the Boston Society of Film Critics is to be sentenced in October after pleading guilty in a San Jose, Calif., court last month to aiding in copyright infringement.

“Paul Sherman , 46, of Malden, sold on eBay copies of DVDs he had received to review, including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

“One man who bought Sherman’s DVDs put several of them on the Internet, where they could be viewed before their commercial release, the Chronicle reported Thursday.”

Richard Cherecwich. Film Critic Pleads Guilty In Movie Copyright Case. Boston.com. June 24, 2006.

Related Stories & Documents:

• William Triplett. Critic Cops to Selling Screeners. Variety. June 21, 2006.

CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Leading French lawmakers voted Thursday to water down a draft copyright law that could force Apple Computer Inc. to make its iPod music player and iTunes online store compatible with rivals’ offerings.

“Currently, music bought on Apple iTunes can be played only on iPods, and an iPod can’t play songs purchased from rival stores, such as Sony Corp.’s Connect. Critics have called the restrictions anti-competitive and anti-consumer, but the lock-in is a key part of the companies’ business models.

“The National Assembly, France’s lower house, voted in March to force companies like Apple and Sony to abandon their closed approaches and hand over exclusive copy-protection technologies to any rival that wants to offer compatible music players and online stores. While the compromise adopted Thursday still asserts that companies should share the technical data essential to such ‘interoperability,’ it tones down many of the tougher measures backed by the lower house.”

Laurence Frost and Nathalie Schuck. French Lawmakers Soften iTunes Proposal. MercuryNews.com. June 22, 2006.

Related Stories & Documents:

• Jo Best and Estelle Dumout. France Rolls Over on iTunes DRM-Busting Law. News.com. June 23, 2006.
• Ars Technica. C’est la DRM! French Bill Falls Flat, Leaves Major Interoperability Loophole. June 23, 2006.
• Bill Rosenblatt. France Approves Modified Copyright Bill. DRM Watch. June 22, 2006.

CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.