Copyright Tips for Review Sites | PlagiarismToday

 Copyright Tips for Review Sites | PlagiarismToday

Copyright Tips for Review Sites By Jonathan Bailey " Jan 6th, 2010 "

Whether you are looking to start a review site or have been running one for years, copyright is an issue you are almost certainly going to bump into. This is especially true if you're going to be reviewing copyrighted works, such as books, games or movies, but is true for just about any review you do. Even those who review electronics, for example, have to look at the packaging, manuals and promotional material as copyrighted works. Fortunately, copyright law gives a great deal of leeway when creating reviews, as it should, but knowing where the boundaries are and how to keep your site legal is important. Perhaps even more importantly though, it is crucial to be aware of ways in which your content could accidentally become a target for copyright enforcement, often by automated systems. However, with some common sense, some simple precautions and some common courtesy, you should be able to avoid any and all issues pretty easily. With that in mind, here is what you need to be aware of. For the rest of the ....

Copyright Tips for Review Sites | PlagiarismToday

 

In the end though, if youre looking to set up a review site or are running one now, you probably have no reason to fear so long as you are acting in good faith. Reviews, commentary and criticism are highly protected under copyright law and, generally, the bar for infringement is higher than mere distribution. If youre aware of the potential issues and work to avoid them, you most likely have very little to fear.

Copyright Tips for Review Sites | PlagiarismToday

Royalties measure rocks Congress - Jeanne Cummings - POLITICO.com

Royalties measure rocks Congress - Jeanne Cummings - POLITICO.com 

Royalties measure rocks Congress

By JEANNE CUMMINGS | 6/16/09 4:12 AM EDT

It seems like a chicken-or-egg sort of argument.

Do musicians make more money because radio stations play their songs, or do radio stations make more money because they play the artists’ songs?

That’s part of the conundrum facing lawmakers as they consider the Performance Rights Act, a proposed piece of legislation that would require local radio stations to pay royalties to musicians whose songs are played on their airwaves.

Picking a side in this dispute carries some political risks, given the powerful adversaries.

On the one hand, you have the artists, whose star power and photo op possibilities can instantly bring tears of joy to the eyes of even the most grizzled veterans of the House and Senate.

Artists will.i.am, Sheryl Crow, Dionne Warwick and even Martha Reeves and the Vandellas have attended town hall meetings and appeared on Capitol Hill to pose with politicians and promote the legislation.

On the other hand, you have the radio station owners and talk show giants, whose control over the airwaves can have a knee-rattling, nail-biting effect on even the longest-serving incumbents.

Among them is Eduardo Sotelo, better known as Piolin, a syndicated Latino talk radio host who reaches millions of listeners in 52 markets. Piolin has had two sit-downs with President Barack Obama and is largely credited with driving Hispanic votes to the Democratic ticket last fall. He opposes the proposed royalty payments.

Making matters even harder for lawmakers is that the two sides are starting to play rough.

The coalition representing the artists, including MusicFIRST and the Recording Industry Association of America, filed a complaint last week with the Federal Communications Commission accusing the broadcasting industry of intimidating artists who support the act by threatening to silence their recordings.

In addition, the performers’ advocates assert that radio stations are refusing to air ads that present their view even as the stations run their own commercials misrepresenting it.

The group is urging the FCC to launch an investigation that “should also serve as an appropriate foundation for license renewal determinations.”

Meanwhile, the National Association of Broadcasters and its allies are accusing House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), the House bill’s chief sponsor and a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus, of promoting legislation that would run small, minority-owned stations out of business.

The stations are using their inherent grass-roots advantage by urging listeners to press their local House or Senate members to oppose the legislation. When Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) voted against the proposal in the Judiciary Committee, she said it was because of heavy lobbying from Los Angeles station owners.

And the royalty opponents warn that aspiring artists would suffer if the legislation were passed, because radio stations would be less willing to pay untested talents without established fan bases.

“If this comes about, you won’t see very many new artists except on ‘American Idol,’” said Tom Joyner, a nationally syndicated African-American talk radio host. “That’s going to be the only place you can break in new artists. It won’t be the radio.”

Joyner tried to make that case when he met with Conyers on Capitol Hill this spring, but the congressman wasn’t moved.

Royalties measure rocks Congress - Jeanne Cummings - POLITICO.com

Can Scraping Non-Infringing Content Become Copyright Infringement... Because Of How Scrapers Work? | Techdirt

Can Scraping Non-Infringing Content Become Copyright Infringement... Because Of How Scrapers Work? | Techdirt 

Can Scraping Non-Infringing Content Become Copyright Infringement... Because Of How Scrapers Work?

Earlier this year, we couldn't figure out how Facebook's lawsuit against Power.com made any sense. Power.com tried to aggregate various social networking accounts in a single place, so you could manage them all at once through a single interface. Yet Facebook charged the company with all sorts of complaints, including copyright and trademark infringement, unlawful competition and violation of the computer fraud and abuse act. Power.com asked for the case to be dismissed, but last month the judge sided with Facebook, but did so in a troubling way, by basically suggesting that since Facebook's terms of service prohibited these uses, it made it copyright infringement. Michael Scott points us to lawyer Jeff Neuberger's take on the ruling, and separately Tom O'Toole has a good analysis of the ruling. Neuberger states the following:

Judge Fogel concluded that the allegations of the complaint made out a sufficient claim of copyright infringement because Power Ventures "need only access and copy one page to commit copyright infringement." The court also found that the ToU prohibited downloading, scraping or distributing content from the Facebook Web site content except that belonging to the user, and that in any event, using automated methods, i.e., "data mining, robots, scraping, or similar data gathering or extraction methods" to access any content were also prohibited by the ToU. Thus, the court found that the allegation that Power Ventures accessed Facebook via automated means constituted made out a claim of direct copyright infringement, while the allegation that Facebook users utilized the Power.com interface to access their own profile pages made out claim of secondary copyright infringement.

Thus, because the terms of service said you can't do any automated scraping of the site, it's suddenly infringing? Even worse, the court found that even though the data being used by Power.com isn't owned by Facebook (it's the users') the scraping was still copyright infringement, because in order to scrape the non-infringing content, Power.com had to first "scrape" the whole page. O'Toole explains:

OK, so far the court has found that Power.com made unauthorized copies of the Facebook Web site. What about the fact that Facebook does not own the copyright in its users' profile data? Facebook surmounted this hurdle by arguing that the content of the Facebook page that surrounded the user's data is copyrightable and is owned by Facebook. According to Facebook, the Power.com scraper operated in a manner that required it to copy the entire Web page in order to extract the user's profile data....
Note that the court is conditioning its ruling on the assertion that the Power Ventures scraper necessarily copied the entire Web page before it processed the page and extracted the profile data. That comports with my (limited) understanding of how a Web scraper works. But is it true? If it were true, couldn't an argument be made that this is a fair use of the page? I'll leave that for better lawyers.

All of this seems a bit troubling, as it would effectively rule out scraping even non-infringing content, just because the scraper had to first read through copyrighted content to get to the non-infringing stuff. But, that seems to go against the entire purpose of copyright law. The fact that the scraper reads copyrighted content shouldn't mean that it's infringement. It's not doing anything with that content other than using it to find the content it can make use of. Anyway, this ruling probably doesn't mean all that much, since it was just to reject the dismissal request, but it does seem odd that the judge gave so much weight to Facebook's terms of service, and seems to indicate the mere act of scraping can be copyright infringement.

Can Scraping Non-Infringing Content Become Copyright Infringement... Because Of How Scrapers Work? | Techdirt

Teaching About Copyright and Fair Use for Media Literacy Education - Creative Commons

Teaching About Copyright and Fair Use for Media Literacy Education - Creative Commons 

Teaching About Copyright and Fair Use for Media Literacy Education

Jane Park, May 26th, 2009

Last November, the Center for Social Media at AU released a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education, which followed on the heels of a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. These guides were aimed at clearing up many of the urban myths surrounding copyright, especially when it came to classroom use of copyrighted materials.

Now, the Media Education Lab at Temple University has produced excellent resources based on the original guide to help teachers teach about copyright and fair use in their classrooms. Resources include lesson plans, Powerpoint slides, videos, case studies, podcasts, and FAQs. The lesson plans iterate on topics from the code such as “Understanding Copyright”, “The Cost of Copyright Confusion”, and “Defining and Applying Fair Use”.

What tickles me: that in order to find out just what you can do with these resources, you get to view and use them first—Learning fair use via fair using! To use these resources in your classroom or study group (or for simply personal edification), check them all out here.

Teaching About Copyright and Fair Use for Media Literacy Education - Creative Commons

MPAA: teachers should videotape monitors, not rip DVDs - Ars Technica

 

MPAA: teachers should videotape monitors, not rip DVDs

MPAA: teachers should videotape monitors, not rip DVDs - Ars Technica

Teachers don't need to rip DVDs to get clips for classroom use—they should just use a camcorder to record the DVD playing on a TV screen! So says the MPAA in a video it showed to the US Copyright Office in an attempt to argue that nobody should be ripping DVDs, even for educational use.

By Jacqui Cheng | Last updated May 7, 2009 9:44 PM CT

The Motion Picture Association of America has put itself back into the limelight as the DMCA exemptions hearings wraps up, thanks to a video circulating online suggesting teachers should use camcorders to record video instead of ripping DVD clips for classroom use. Though this suggestion has been floating around for some time now, the MPAA's attempt to push such a convoluted (and more costly) process into the classroom only highlights the industry's desperation to keep people away from DVD ripping—even when what they're doing falls into the category of fair use.

The video, posted on Vimeo, is actually of MPAA execs showing another video (meant to instruct teachers) to the US Copyright Office. The MPAA was showing the video as part of the triennial DMCA exemptions review, when all sides of the copyright debate whip out as much ammo as they can in an attempt to get the law extended to allow certain behaviors (or disallow, as the case may be) for the next three years.

In the video, the MPAA suggests that teachers who want to use movie clips as part of their curricula should use a camcorder to record the movie off of a TV set, and that this is an acceptable way to use video clips without breaking a DVD's copyright protections.

Nevermind that this solution results in video of questionable quality and requires teachers to learn even more tech in order to get the job done. It also requires schools (or, given the way most schools are run, the teachers themselves) to incur additional costs to purchase camcorders and videotapes if they don't have them already. Add in the extra time involved, and this "solution" is a laughably convoluted alternative to simply ripping a clip from a DVD.

Granted, teachers who want to rip DVD clips may still have to learn a bit in order to create a finished product, but that process still involves less equipment and fewer steps, not to mention a better-quality video. And, let's not forget that US copyright law already offers exemptions to teachers who want to use copyrighted clips for educational use—they shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get those same clips just because the MPAA insists on continuing to fight the already lost battle to keep people from ripping DVDs.

MPAA: teachers should videotape monitors, not rip DVDs - Ars Technica

Center for the Study of the Public Domain

Center for the Study of the Public Domain

"Excellent Site for the ongoing debate between copyright and public good of a creative work -- HSM"

The public domain is the realm of material—ideas, images, sounds, discoveries, facts, texts—that is unprotected by intellectual property rights and free for all to use or build upon. Our economy, culture and technology depend on a delicate balance between that which is, and is not, protected by exclusive intellectual property rights. Both the incentives provided by intellectual property and the freedom provided by the public domain are crucial to the balance. But most contemporary attention has gone to the realm of the protected.

The Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School is the first university center in the world devoted to the other side of the picture.  Founded in September of 2002, as part of the school's wider intellectual property program, its mission is to promote research and scholarship on the contributions of the public domain to speech, culture, science and innovation, to promote debate about the balance needed in our intellectual property system and to translate academic research into public policy solutions. The Center's Faculty Co-Directors are James Boyle, David Lange, Arti Rai and Jerome Reichman. Its Director is Jennifer Jenkins. The Center is supported in its operation by a generous founding gift and by grants from foundations.

 

Center for the Study of the Public Domain

Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily » An Attempt To Stop The Disney Machine

 Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily » An Attempt To Stop The Disney Machine

An Attempt To Stop The Disney Machine

I'm told that the Walt Disney Co is currently attempting to trademark the character name "Princess Aurora" for all media: stage, sound, film, TV, video, Internet, photographs, news. In short, everything except literature. The name comes from the 1697 Charles Perrault fairy tale and Aurora is the Princess's daughter (and thus a princess herself). The first use of "Princess Aurora" was in the 1890 Tchaikovsky ballet "The Sleeping Beauty," which Disney turned into the 1959 animated film. It has been used continuously since then in the ballet as the title character's name. The problem is that, if the Disney Company is successful, it will effectively control the legal right to all future performances of the ballet. The move also could sink any movie about the ballet or that uses a scene of the ballet in another movie. "This would be like a film studio trademarking the character name "Ebenezer Scrooge" for all media (no one has) and then no one could perform "A Christmas Carol" on a stage, TV, in a film, radio, etc without first securing the right to use the name from the trademark owner," a critic emails me. Not surprisingly, Disney is also seeking to trademark "Princess Aurora" for products. Therefore, a campaign has emerged to complain to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office if people feel this trademarking of a pre-existing character name should not be allowed.

Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily » An Attempt To Stop The Disney Machine

Should Ad Networks Pay Publishers For Stolen Content? The Fair Syndication Consortium Thinks So.

Should Ad Networks Pay Publishers For Stolen Content? The Fair Syndication Consortium Thinks So. 

Should Ad Networks Pay Publishers For Stolen Content? The Fair Syndication Consortium Thinks So.

by Erick Schonfeld on April 21, 2009

As newspapers and other publishers watch their revenues diminish, one common refrain among them is that maybe they should somehow go after Google or Yahoo for aiding and abetting the destruction of their businesses and sometimes the wholesale theft of their content. We’ve seen how the Associated Press wants to handle this: by aggressively going after anyone who even borrows a headline. Today, a consortium of other publishers including Reuters, the Magazine Publishers of America, and Politico are taking a more measured approach, but one which will no doubt still be controversial. They are forming the Fair Syndication Consortium, which is the brainchild of Attributor, the startup which tracks the reuse of text and images across the Web for many of these same publishers.

The Fair Syndication Consortium is initially trying to address a legitimate problem on the Web: the proliferation of splogs (spam blogs) and other sites which do nothing more than republish the entire feed of news sites and blogs, often without attribution or links. There are tens of thousands of these sites, perhaps more. Rather than go after these sites one at a time, the Fair Syndication Consortium wants to negotiate directly with the ad networks which serve ads on these sites: DoubleClick, Google’s AdSense, and Yahoo primarily. For any post or page which takes a full copy of a publisher’s work, the Fair Syndication Consortium thinks the ad networks should pay a portion of the ad revenues being generated by those sites.

I know a little bit about this because in January I was invited to a meeting at the A.P.’s headquarters with about two dozen other publishers, most of them from the print world, to discuss the formation of the consortium. TechCrunch has not joined at this time. Ironically, neither has the A.P., which has apparently decided to go its own way and fight the encroachments of the Web more aggressively (although, to my knowledge, it still uses Attributor’s technology). But at that meeting, which was organized by Attributor, a couple slides were shown that really brought home the point to everyone in the room. One showed a series of bar graphs estimating how much ad revenues splogs were making simply from the feeds of everyone in the room. (Note that this was just for sites taking extensive copies of articles, not simply quoting). The numbers ranged from $13 million (assuming a $.25 effective CPM) to $51 million (assuming a $1.00 eCPM).

 

Then they put up a slide with a pie chart showing which ad networks were serving ads on all of the abusive sites. It turns out a full 94 percent of the sites in question were serving ads from three ad networks: DoubleClick (45 percent), Google AdSense (24 percent), and Yahoo (24 percent).

 

Go after those three ad networks, and the majority of the problem could be solved. There is certainly precedent for this type of approach. Look at YouTube’s Content ID program, which splits revenues between YouTube and the media companies whose videos are being reused online. Except this proposal would take money that would otherwise be distributed to the splog sites themselves, and give a portion of it to the publisher as an automatic syndication fee without the consent of the site owner.

How would the ad networks know that the content in question belongs to the publisher? Attributor would keep track of it all and manage the requests for payment. The consortium is open to any publisher to join, including bloggers. (Attributor runs a free version of its service called FairShare to give publishers a sense of how much of their stuff is being copied without attribution). It is certainly better than sending out thousands of takedown notices, but many issues still need to be worked out.

I’ve seen some of the data for TechCrunch, and there is no doubt that Attributor catches a lot of abuse, not fair use. But some of the sites that fall within Attributors net might still fall within fair use. For instance, I can imagine, a short post two or three paragraphs long being copied in its entirety and being surrounded by commentary. (Although, a minimum 125-word-count limit and exclusion of content clearly in quotes is meant to address such a scenario). Also, I am not sure that demanding payment is the way to go. For the most part, a link and attribution is good enough for us. But if the Fair Syndication consortium gets the ad networks on board and they take a conservative approach to asserting copyright, we might take another look. What do you think, should we join?

Should Ad Networks Pay Publishers For Stolen Content? The Fair Syndication Consortium Thinks So.

Fair Use Held Hostage by ABC-Disney « Just TV

Fair Use Held Hostage by ABC-Disney « Just TV 

Fair Use Held Hostage by ABC-Disney

My textbook, Television and American Culture, has hit the streets (or at least the postal system - order yours now!). I received my first copy yesterday, and am happy to say that it looks great. This is due not to my own work (I’m solely to blame for the content), but the excellent staff at Oxford University Press who made the design and editing process a pleasure, with great results as well.

One decision that my editor and I made early in the process was that the book’s internal illustrations would be frame-grabs from DVDs and over-the-air broadcasts, and that we would claim fair use for these images instead of seeking permissions. This is in keeping with a longstanding position articulated by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies back in 1993 (I’m a member of the SCMS Public Policy Committee and we are currently working to update this position statement for the digital age). As far as we know, the use of frame-grabs as fair use has never been challenged in court - if a publisher supports this right, they will not bend to pressure from copyright holders. And OUP has certainly been supportive of our fair use rights in this regard, encouraging me to use dozens of images (and using high-quality paper to make them look great).

The use of images becomes complicated regarding cover art. Fair use applies within books and articles, as the function of the illustrations is educational and critical, used to deepen and support analysis. Cover images can have that function, but they also help market the book. So the tradition is that publishers (or authors) license rights for images on book covers for a fee. The book’s cover design, which I love, features seven screens in need of content - the designer selected images that connect to examples discussed in the book, creating a wonderful visual collage of devices and programming. OUP’s staff set-out to license these images, after which the book went to press.

The problem emerged when ABC-Disney, who’d agreed to license the image of Lost in the center of the cover, asked what other ABC-Disney illustrations were in the book. OUP replied that the others were frame grabs under fair use provisions, and thus required no permissions. ABC-Disney then maneuvered into what my SCMS colleague and fair use guru Pat Aufderheide termed “a hostage situation”: they said that they would not agree to license the cover image unless we paid for the internal illustrations. The book was already at the printers, so nothing could be changed except at great cost. OUP paid the ransom for the internal images, and the book came out as designed.

To be clear, ABC-Disney did nothing illegal - they own the image of Lost, and we were required to pay for its use on the cover on their terms. The terms they stipulated had strings attached that, while morally wrong and based on a misreading of copyright law, are within their rights to demand. We paid for the internal images not because of copyright, but because ABC-Disney demanded it in exchange for the cover image. They made the decision to hijack fair use in exchange for a fee of less than $1,000, petty cash for a corporation like ABC-Disney. This was not the only option, as NBC-Universal had rights to the majority of cover images and licensed their use with no strings attached.

So what are the lessons to be learned here? Many media companies want to assert their copyright privileges beyond legal limits - not for petty cash, but for petty power. They aim to establish the precedent that they are in control, regardless of their legal standing. I’d guess the last thing ABC-Disney would want is to sue me or OUP over the frame grabs, as a loss in court would firmly establish the limits of their claims (and an unlikely win would yield little in revenue anyway). What they really want is bully power, the ability to make outsiders assume that rights holders also hold all the power. Unfortunately because the book was already in press, we had to yield - if we were able to, both my editor and I wanted to swap out the cover Lost image to avoid having to pay for the frame grabs that we had the right to use, thereby implying that fair use did not apply.

We do have some power here to push back. ABC got some of OUP’s money this time around, but I can say that no future editions of Television & American Culture will have ABC-Disney images on the cover. Instead we’ll use many ABC-Disney framegrabs without paying, via our fair use rights - and I encourage fellow scholars to follow suit. And I’ll use my own bully pulpits of this blog, my work with SCMS, and the tight-knit community of scholars interested in fair use to spread the word that ABC-Disney is willing to hold a non-profit academic press hostage over a tiny amount of money. Hopefully that kind of publicity offsets the pittance they received from us.

Fair Use Held Hostage by ABC-Disney « Just TV

Ryan J. Davis: Idiot Copyright Holders

 Ryan J. Davis: Idiot Copyright Holders

Idiot Copyright Holders

Idiots who overprotect their copyrights really bother me.

In 1947 Tennessee Williams wrote a masterpiece of a play, Streetcar Named Desire, which has been a major part of the American dramatic cannon for over sixty years. Everyone has read it or seen it, it's something most of us were forced to read in high school or college.

It's now 2009 and Mark Sam Rosenthal has put together a satirical look at the government's response to Hurricane Katrina through the eyes of Blanche DuBois, Streetcar's leading lady. The play, Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire, is a one person drag performance that didn't really work for me - but certainly is not in anyway infringement on Tennessee Williams' intellectual property.

That's not how the copyright holders feel, they sent the producers a cease-and-desist letter stating the performance was an "infringement on the university's valuable intellectual property rights." For some reason Streetcar's copyright is held by The University of the South, which has no interest in exploring their play or creating new work - those silly educationy things. They love money and they set out to stop the production as quickly as possible.

Rosenthal's reaction mirrored mine: "I don't think Tennessee Williams would approve of anything they're doing in the name of protecting his work, not one bit. He was one starving artist, and I don't think he'd do anything to hurt other starving artists."

Beyond that, the whole idea of some university holding the copyright on one of America's most famous and beloved plays and then not allowing people to develop things based on it is absurd. Are these lawyers so clueless that they haven't seen the now famous Simpsons episode lampooning a community theater production of a Streetcar musical? (Which was un-satirically made into a real-life opera for some reason.) Is it really realistic that a play showing in a 99 seat theater in SoHo can hurt their internationally known play's reputation?

I think if they truly cared about the play, they wouldn't have let Roundabout Theater put on that dull revival a few years ago, which caused serious damage to their 'property.'

Even more ridiculous than some southern college claiming to stick up for Tennessee Williams is the AP taking Shepard Fairey to court for drawing a poster. (You know - that world famous Obama Hope one) based on a picture they took. Markos on Dailykos responded, "This is quite the novel claim by those assholes at the AP -- that artwork based on a photograph is now a copyright violation. Not use of the photo, or even use of part of a photo. But that an entirely different work, on a different medium, is now somehow owned by the AP because it happens to be based on that photo."

I'm no stranger to frivolous copyright lawsuits. In 2007, while producing a male beauty pageant with Broadway actors benefiting a gay youth homeless shelter, we picked an obvious name: Mr. Broadway. Little did we know, that some 150 year-old man had trademarked Mr. Broadway as his personal nickname. I'm serious! He sued us and for the last two years we had to use a less convincing title- The Broadway Beauty Pageant. At least he's been made fun of in the NY Post for being such a jerk.

In this era of YouTube and blogs, our copyright laws need some serious work. Something else for President Obama to put on his to-do list. If he's too busy, give it to Lawrence Lessig to figure out.

Ryan J. Davis: Idiot Copyright Holders

Fair Copyright in Research Works Bill Reintroduced

Fair Copyright in Research Works Bill Reintroduced

The Fair Copyright in Research Works bill (H.R. 801) was reintroduced on Tuesday, February 3rd, after being reshelved in 2008.

Library Journal: Copyright Research Bill Reintroduced (04 Feb 2009)

Library Journal: New Wrinkles as Bill Banning NIH-Like Public Access Resurfaces (05 Feb 2009)

FAST Supports New Zealand's Three-Strikes Plan for File-Sharers

FAST Supports New Zealand's Three-Strikes Plan for File-Sharers

"seems like the slippery slope that youtube is employing -- just make a claim of infringement and the party is guilty, the same scare tactics which make 'fair use" ineffective because it makes users more cautious and self imposes penalties or rules above which may be needed" -- HSM

 

FAST Supports New Zealand's Three-Strikes Plan for File-Sharers

posted by soulxtc in file sharing // 1 day 2 hours 59 minutes ago

The UK's Federation Against Software Theft (FAST IiS) has given a "cautious welcome" to New Zealand's new copyright protection laws, which will terminate Internet access for repeat copyright infringers. FAST now appears to be promoting a similar system for use with UK broadband ISPs

According to James Craig, Legal Counsel at FAST IiS, the proposal offers a possible option for the UK to follow: “This is definitely something the UK can look at, albeit with tightly-defined definitions,” says James.

“At FAST IiS we favour a three strikes and you’re out policy," it says in a press release. "This allows a gradual build up of pressure on copyright infringers that ranges from notification of wrongdoing, possible reduction in bandwidth for a second offence, and termination of connection for persistent content thieves.”

Section 92 of New Zealand's Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act, enacted this past April and set to take effect at the end of February, requires ISPs to act on "guilt upon accusation," disconnecting those users merely alleged of engaging in copyright infringement.

Section 92A reads:

“(1) An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.

“(2) In subsection (1), repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using 1 or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do a restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.

Whats's of concern is that it doesn't require the creation of a process whereby individuals can challenge any copyright infringement accusations made against them. The ISP isn't going to go out of its way to determine a person's guilt and will instead not want to risk breaking the law or lawsuit by a copyright holder.

However FAST, unlike certain creative industry representatives’ in the UK, does at least acknowledge that the methods used to identify illegal file sharers is prone to error.

"Technology is not foolproof and care needs to be taken to ensure innocent parties who may have suffered hijacked wi-fi, or the unwitting owners of a shared computer are not unfairly blamed," it continues. “These issues need to be taken into consideration before anyone is sanctioned, as unfounded accusations do not benefit anyone in the consumer or copyright community.”

One problem is that some P2P file-sharing networks add spoof or fake IP addresses into their systems to confuse the identification of wrongdoers, which can be problematic for legitimate users utilizing the real IP address.

Another concerns the issue of false positives that prove the haphazard nature of IP address identification. If you recall, University of Washington researchers released a study a little over 7 months ago that illustrated how the current method employed by copyright holders to make copyright infringement claims against BitTorrent users can not conclusively determine if actual copyright infringement has taken place.

"By profiling copyright enforcement in the popular BitTorrent file sharing system, we were able to generate hundreds of real DMCA takedown notices for computers at the University of Washington that never downloaded nor shared any content whatsoever," reads part of the conclusions in "Challenges and Directions for Monitoring P2P File-Sharing Networks."

"Further, we were able to remotely generate complaints for nonsense devices including several printers and a (non-NAT) wireless access point. Our results demonstrate several simple techniques that a malicious user could use to frame arbitrary network endpoints."

So concerns that innocent users can be caught up in the dragnet with no legal recourse are justified.

“The issue of online copyright theft is of global concern. Other Governments are articulating their intentions and working to uphold the rights of legitimate businesses and consumers of digital content. Here in the UK a coherent strategy that works for all copyright holders who suffer digital theft would benefit the entire country, safeguard jobs and taxes and allow the UK to compete with our competitors in the international marketplace.”

“It is important to protect our UK creative industries which employ 1.9 million people and generates eight percent of our GDP. That’s a lot of people who depend on the law to safeguard their products and their jobs, ” James concluded.

That may be so, but are the majority of the people of the UK always going to be expected to limit their ability to communicate freely with one another so that a minority can have a job? What about the job creation possible if the govt prevents private business interests from filtering the Internet and forces them to finally evolve?

FAST Supports New Zealand's Three-Strikes Plan for File-Sharers

AASLBlog » New Fair Use Guidelines for Digital Media

AASLBlog » New Fair Use Guidelines for Digital Media 

New Fair Use Guidelines for Digital Media November 14, 2008

Posted by jhurd in : Check this out! , trackback

Anyone working in libraries knows the confusion among faculty and students regarding the relationship between copyright, fair use and educational practice.  The Center for Social Media recently released their Code of Best Practices, a guideline “that helps educators using media literacy concepts and techniques to interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use.”

From their website:

The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education outlines five principles, each with limitations:
Educators can, under some circumstances:

1. Make copies of newspaper articles, TV shows, and other copyrighted works, and use them and keep them for educational use.
2. Create curriculum materials and scholarship with copyrighted materials embedded.
3. Share, sell and distribute curriculum materials with copyrighted materials embedded.
Learners can, under some circumstances:
4. Use copyrighted works in creating new material
5. Distribute their works digitally if they meet the transformativeness standard.

AASLBlog » New Fair Use Guidelines for Digital Media

Mendeley Blog

Ran across this looking at Zotero stuff.. and it seemed to fit...HSM

Mendeley Blog

It describes how Chris Boulton’s thesis was repeatedly turned down for publication because its data contained copyrighted material (excerpts from fashion ads), the use of which should have fallen under the “fair use” doctrine.

For scholars who study media, the internet has broadened research horizons and expanded the reach of teaching and publications. But powerful gatekeepers remain. From academic journals seeking to control our intellectual property to lawyers crying foul when we quote from copyrighted material, we are bombarded with a myriad of confusing and dubious restrictions. In short, the implied threat of legal action creates a chilling effect that impacts us all. Some have pushed back, arguing that our educational activities are protected under the “fair use” statute. But this is a risky game to play. The rules aren’t always clear. And when it comes to fair use, we either use it, or lose it.

Via Open Students via A Blog Around the Clock.

Mendeley Blog

'Harry Potter' Author J.K. Rowling's Copyright Case: What Is Fair Use? - News Story | Music, Celebrity, Artist News | MTV News

 'Harry Potter' Author J.K. Rowling's Copyright Case: What Is Fair Use? - News Story | Music, Celebrity, Artist News | MTV News

"Of all things a very good explination of fair use and its from someone at MTV" -- HSM

'Harry Potter' Author J.K. Rowling's Copyright Case: Behind All The Legal Jargon

Case against 'The Harry Potter Lexicon' hinges on the doctrine of fair use — but what does that mean?

By Shawn Adler

It's a setup that could find a place in "Harry Potter" itself: One is powerfully magical, learned in the ways of witchcraft and wizardry, in control of an empire that spans generations and continents. The other is a boyish figure, whose large, round glasses and mop of dark hair dominate a childish face.

It's unofficially a duel between the richest, most successful author in the world and a 50-year-old librarian, but the case of J.K Rowling v. RDR Books, now playing out in a federal court in New York, doesn't hinge on magical knowledge, superior weaponry or even powerful friends, but on a somewhat-complicated U.S. law known as the doctrine of fair use.

So what, exactly, is fair use, and why is Rowling arguing in court that "The Harry Potter Lexicon" breaks the guidelines established for it to work? And why can we quote liberally from "Harry Potter," at seeming random if I like ("Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!"), while Steve Vander Ark is being enjoined from doing what, at face value, appears to be the very same thing?

The answer lies in a piece of legislation only 30 years old and the four provisions it outlines as the foundation of fair use.

First, to understand the case, it's important to understand the basic principles of copyright law, a constitutional right that essentially grants artists and inventors exclusive rights to their writings and discoveries. As the author of the seven "Harry Potter" novels and their two companion books, that right, in this case, naturally belongs to J.K. Rowling.

But like most rights, even constitutional ones, that principle is not absolute. Under the Copyright Act of 1976, others are allowed to incorporate copyrighted materials "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship or research." When we quoted "Harry Potter" above, our use clearly fell into the category of "news reporting" and was therefore not a breach of copyright law.

The central issue of the court case is whether "The Harry Potter Lexicon," an encyclopedic reference of all things Potter, falls into any of the above categories as well.

To determine whether or not it does, the court will use four main guidelines:

1. The "purpose and character of the use." In simple terms, this boils down to an opinion on whether the work is "transformative," meaning, does it add to the culture's appreciation and/or knowledge of a work, or does it merely seek to supersede the original?

This is the point of contention most argued in the court case, with lawyers for Rowling insisting that "Lexicon" "takes too much and does too little." In other words, it adds little or no commentary or criticism.

By way of example, take our recent shot-by-shot analysis of "The Dark Knight" trailer and assume it wasn't for a news organization. The article was a second-by-second look at the trailer — there's not a copyrighted shot that we didn't describe in detail or, in some cases, pull for readers to view. But each shot was then obsessively dissected, and the hope, of course, was that we added to the discussion of the work while not superseding the original. Writing about the trailer didn't stop anyone from actually watching it.

Rowling's lawyers argue that "Lexicon" does not meet that burden, that it is in no way transformative but is merely derivative. It simply "rearranges the furniture of Rowling's novels," attorney Dale Cendali said in her opening statement.

The defense, meanwhile, argues that the value of the book far outweighs its use of copyrighted material.

Under this guideline, a judge may also take into account the profit motives of a particular work. Hence, the repeated questions in court Monday over whether "Lexicon" was more a money grab or a "passion" project.

2. The "nature of the copyrighted work." Is it fiction or nonfiction, published or unpublished? This guideline isn't particularly applicable in this case, as nobody argues, for instance, that Dumbledore or Harry Potter are in any sense "real."

In testimony Monday, Rowling touched on this when comparing a description she wrote of a "Chinese fireball" with one from "Lexicon," stating that it wasn't as if they were both describing giraffes. "It's not as if we are describing something that exists outside my imagination," she said.

Interestingly, under this guideline, if Rowling actually had a written copy of her long-promised "Harry Potter Encyclopedia," it might be afforded protection even though it was unpublished.

3. "The amount ... of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole." How much of the whole text appears in the work? Generally speaking, the less you use, the more likely that it's fair use, but of course there are instances in which you can quote the entirety of something and get away with it.

At its most basic, this guideline asks whether or not a user takes only the material needed for his or her intended purpose. Vander Ark's purpose, of course, is to be a comprehensive compendium of all things Potter, so naturally he's going to be taking a lot.

4. What is the effect of the use on potential market value? Will the publication of "The Harry Potter Lexicon" take away from sales of "Harry Potter" or stop anyone from seeing the movie, buying toys or going to the soon-to-be opened theme park? Almost certainly not, of course. But it's an avenue Rowling's lawyers are exploring in earnest. This was especially evident in Rowling's testimony. "This trial has decimated my creative work over the last month," she said. "You lose the [plot] threads and worry whether you'll be able to pick them up again. Should my fans be flooded with a surfeit of substandard books — so-called lexicons — I'm not sure I'd have the will or heart to continue."

In consideration of this guideline, courts ask: Is the work a direct substitute? (It would be, if Rowling had written her own encyclopedia.) They also ask: Could potential harm exist beyond being a direct substitute? (It could if Rowling didn't write her own encyclopedia.)

'Harry Potter' Author J.K. Rowling's Copyright Case: What Is Fair Use? - News Story | Music, Celebrity, Artist News | MTV News

Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project Defends RDR Books Against Copyright Lawsuit Brought by J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros.

 

Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project Defends RDR Books Against Copyright Lawsuit Brought by J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros.

Trial Opens in Harry Potter Lexicon Case

STANFORD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A federal court in New York will hear opening arguments today over whether an independent book publisher has the right to publish the Harry Potter Lexicon, an unofficial reference guide to the Harry Potter series of books and movies.

In a trial that is expected to last two to three days, attorneys from the Fair Use Project of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, along with co-counsel, will argue that their client, RDR Books, has the right to publish the Lexicon under the fair use doctrine. The doctrine safeguards the use of copyrighted material so long as it is used transformatively and does not damage the market value of the original work.

The suit began on October 31, 2007, when Warner Bros., which owns the film rights to the Harry Potter books, and Harry Potter author J.K Rowling filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to block the Lexicon’s publication.

“J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. are asserting a startling claim,” said Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project and counsel on the case. “The right to create literary reference guides like the Lexicon has remained nearly unquestioned for hundreds of years. The Lexicon is a valuable resource that helps people better understand and enjoy the Harry Potter books. It’s exactly what copyright law should encourage, not suppress.”

Falzone and Fair Use Project Associate Director Julie Ahrens join RDR’s lead trial counsel David S. Hammer, a former federal prosecutor, and RDR’s long-time counsel Lizbeth Hasse, founding partner of the San Francisco-based Creative Industry Law Group.

“All of the material that’s going to be published in the Lexicon has been available on the Harry Potter Lexicon website for a long time without objection from Ms. Rowling or anyone else,” said Hammer. “To suggest that the Lexicon might affect the market for a companion guide Ms. Rowling plans to publish some day, perhaps years from now, is inconceivable given her stature and reputation.”

“It is important that perspectives of lesser-known authors and small publishers like RDR Books also be published,” said Hasse. “Copyright law recognizes their right to research and comment on popular works.”

RDR Books planned to release the Lexicon in the United States on November 28, 2007. The 400-page book is a print counterpart to the fan-created website, The Harry Potter Lexicon (http://www.hp-lexicon.org), which includes information on the series’ characters, places, animals, magic spells, and potions along with atlases, timelines, and analyses of magical theory. Created in 2000 by librarian Steve Vander Ark and several contributors, the site has an estimated 25 million annual visitors and the content is free of charge. Among the site’s supporters is J.K. Rowling, who bestowed the HPL with a Fan Site Award in 2004 and wrote on her website: “This is such a great site that I have been known to sneak into an Internet café while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of Harry Potter (which is embarrassing).”

“The importance of this case goes beyond the world of Harry Potter and its fans. This decision could have a far-reaching impact on the literary landscape, and beyond, to discussions of any fictional work in any medium,” said Lawrence Lessig, founder and director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society and the C. Wendell and Edith M. Carlsmith Professor of Law, who is co-counsel on the case. “It’s essential for copyright law to leave room for others to build on creative works. That’s the point of fair use.”

The suit filed on October 31, 2007 claimed that RDR Books and unnamed defendants misappropriated Rowling’s “fictional characters and universe” in violation of the Copyright Act, the Lanham Act, and New York state law. On November 8, 2007, Judge Robert B. Patterson Jr. issued a temporary restraining order, voluntarily entered into by both parties, delaying RDR’s completion and distribution of the book.

The case, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. et al v. RDR Books et al, is being heard by Judge Patterson at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse in New York, N.Y.

More details about the case can be found on Anthony Falzone’s blog (http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu). Case documents are available here (http://news.justia.com/cases/featured/new-york/nysdce/1:2007cv09667/ 315790/). (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

About the Fair Use Project

The Stanford Center for Internet and Society’s Fair Use Project (“the FUP”) was founded in 2006. Its purpose is to provide legal support to a range of projects designed to clarify and extend the boundaries of “fair use” in order to enhance creative freedom. The FUP represents filmmakers, musicians, artists, writers, scholars, and other content creators in a range of disputes that raise important questions concerning fair use and the limits of intellectual property rights. In doing so, it relies on a network of talented lawyers within the Center for Internet and Society, as well as attorneys in law firms and public interest organizations who are dedicated to advancing the mission of the FUP.

About the Center for Internet and Society

Founded by Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig in 2001, the Center for Internet and Society is a public interest technology law and policy program at Stanford Law School that engages students, academics, technologists and policy makers in exploring the interactions between technology, law, and society.

About Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig, founder and director of the Center for Internet and Society and the C. Wendell and Edith M. Carlsmith Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, is a leading figure in the United States and abroad in intellectual property law. An advocate for the “innovation commons,” a free space where culture, ideas and expression can flourish, Lessig is the founder of Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org), which lets authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry.

About Stanford Law School

Stanford Law School (http://www.law.stanford.edu) is one of the nation’s leading institutions for legal scholarship and education. Its alumni are among the most influential decision makers in law, politics, business, and high technology. Faculty members argue before the Supreme Court, testify before Congress, and write books and articles for academic audiences, as well as the popular press. Along with offering traditional law school classes, the school has embraced new subjects and new ways of teaching.

About RDR Books

For fifteen years, the Michigan-based RDR Books (http://www.rdrbooks.com/) has been publishing travel literature, Judaica, guidebooks, history, biography, education, sports, guidebooks and children's literature. Named as one of the nation's top 100 independent book publishers by Book Marketing Update, RDR's list includes the I Should Have Stayed Home trouble travel series, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free by Arjun Makhijani, Taking Risks by Joseph Pell and Fred Rosenbaum, What's Whole in Whole Language by Ken Goodman, Waterwalk by Steven Faulkner, and The Best of Michael Rosen by the bestselling children's author himself.

About Participating Attorneys

David S. Hammer is a New York-based trial lawyer with extensive experience in all aspects of criminal and civil litigation. He was a federal prosecutor in the Southern Districts of Florida and New York and has served as an advisor to the Office of Policy Planning in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. Hammer is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, where he was on the law review, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Anthony T. Falzone is Executive Director of Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project. He is an experienced intellectual property litigator who has represented writers, publishers, filmmakers, musicians and video game makers in a wide array of intellectual property matters, including copyright, trademark, rights of publicity, and patent matters. He is also a lecturer in law at Stanford Law School. Prior to joining Stanford Law School, he was a litigation partner in the San Francisco office of Bingham McCutchen LLP.

Julie A. Ahrens is associate director of Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project, where she represents writers, filmmakers, musicians, and others who rely on fair use in creating their art, documentaries, scholarship, critiques, or comments. Before joining Stanford, Ahrens was a litigation attorney in the San Francisco office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP.

Lizbeth Hasse is founding partner of the San Francisco-based Creative Industry Law Group. Her practice encompasses advising and negotiation in intellectual property, media, and entertainment matters. Hasse is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley Law School and the Graduate School of Jurisprudence and Social Policy.

Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project Defends RDR Books Against Copyright Lawsuit Brought by J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros.