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Archive for the ‘Copyright’ Category

Perhaps the RIAA’s “threaten & sue” business model for combating music piracy needs to be reconsidered.

“So all in all, for a 3 year period, they spent around $64,000,000 in legal and investigative expenses to recover around $1,361,000.”

The RIAA claims to be protecting the artists, but despite all their “protection” the artists are still getting the shaft.

ASCAP recently launched a campaign to counter the perceived evils of Creative Commons (as well as EFF and Public Knowledge). Their attack is full of wild misinformation, distortion of the facts, and outright lies. Lawrence Lessig, one of the founders of Creative Commons, has responded in a rational, gentlemanly manner.

“This isn’t the first time that ASCAP has misrepresented the objectives of our organization. But could we make it the last? We have no objection to collective rights organizations: They too were an innovative and voluntary solution (in America at least) to a challenging copyright problem created by new technologies. And I at least am confident that collecting rights societies will be a part of the copyright landscape forever.

“So here’s my challenge, ASCAP President Paul Williams: Let’s address our differences the way decent souls do. In a debate. I’m a big fan of yours, and If you’ll grant me the permission, I’d even be willing to sing one of your songs (or not) if you’ll accept my challenge of a debate. We could ask the New York Public Library to host the event. I am willing to do whatever I can to accommodate your schedule.

“Let’s meet and address these perceived differences with honesty and good faith. No doubt we have disagreements (for instance, I love rainy days, and Mondays rarely get me down). But on the issues that your organization and mine care about, there should be no difference worthy of an attack.”

In a letter to their members ASCAP writes that “Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.” This is a blatant falsehood. None of these organizations has ever argued that all music should be free. What they have argued is that people who want to share their works should have that option. Copyright is all or nothing. A CC license allows you to pick and chose which of those rights you want to protect. ASCAP is actually fighting to restrict and reduce what creators can do with their works.

“If their views are allowed to gain strength, music creators will find it harder and harder to make a living as traditional media shifts to online and wireless services.” FUD much lately? This is a fact-free attempt to frighten composers. If you can create enough Fear Uncertainty and Doubt, you don’t have to worry about evidence, facts, or cogent arguments.

I hope that Williams responds, educates himself, and learns that Creative Commons is not his enemy.

Many musicians sign up with organizations like ASCAP, or BMI, or SESAC. These three organizations are performing rights organizations, and for a fee, they visit public places to listen to the music played and collect money if any music by their clients is being performed in a public venue.

If you go see a cover band, technically someone should have paid one of these three organizations to make sure the creator received some compensation for the use of their work.

Just like Marco Rubio or Charlie Crist are not supposed to use a musicians work without permission and compensation, neither are coffeehouse folk-singers performing covers of copyrighted folk music.

In the northeast the performing rights organizations are becoming so aggressive that many small venues are simply abandoning live performances.

“One proprietor of a small restaurant in Western Massachusetts, who says he’s lucky if 25 people show up for live music on Tuesdays and Thursdays, has written letters to each of the PROs explaining that entertainers in his establishment play only originals and traditional folk songs, which aren’t protected by copyright.

‘They wrote back and said, “I don’t believe you,” he said. ‘They say that the problem is I don’t know every song that’s been written and someone could throw in a song that I’ve never heard. How do I get around that? Buy a license that covers everything.’”

For example, you might think that “Happy Birthday,” or “This Land Is Your Land,” or “God Bless America” are traditional songs, but they are not. You need to pay a performance fee if you want to sing these songs in public. ASCAP alone covers over 4 million songs.

Many musicians sign up with organizations like ASCAP, or BMI, or SESAC. These three organizations are performing rights organizations, and for a fee, they visit public places to listen to the music played and collect money if any music by their clients is being performed in a public venue.

If you go see a cover band, technically someone should have paid one of these three organizations to make sure the creator received some compensation for the use of their work.

Just like Marco Rubio or Charlie Crist are not supposed to use a musicians work without permission and compensation, neither are coffeehouse folk-singers performing covers of copyrighted folk music.

In the northeast the performing rights organizations are becoming so aggressive that many small venues are simply abandoning live performances.

“One proprietor of a small restaurant in Western Massachusetts, who says he’s lucky if 25 people show up for live music on Tuesdays and Thursdays, has written letters to each of the PROs explaining that entertainers in his establishment play only originals and traditional folk songs, which aren’t protected by copyright.

‘They wrote back and said, “I don’t believe you,” he said. ‘They say that the problem is I don’t know every song that’s been written and someone could throw in a song that I’ve never heard. How do I get around that? Buy a license that covers everything.’”

For example, you might think that “Happy Birthday,” or “This Land Is Your Land,” or “God Bless America” are traditional songs, but they are not. You need to pay a performance fee if you want to sing these songs in public. ASCAP alone covers over 4 million songs.

Last night saw the season finale for the hit series Glee and only a profound catastrophe will keep it from returning next season.

Perhaps next season the kids will be sued for the millions of dollars of copyright infringement in which they engage regularly. Christina Mulligan at Balkinization explains how a real-life Glee would be risking hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for doing what they’re doing.

“The fictional high school chorus at the center of Fox’s Glee has a huge problem — nearly a million dollars in potential legal liability. For a show that regularly tackles thorny issues like teen pregnancy and alcohol abuse, it’s surprising that a million dollars worth of lawbreaking would go unmentioned. But it does, and week after week, those zany Glee kids rack up the potential to pay higher and higher fines.

“In one recent episode, the AV Club helps cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester film a near-exact copy of Madonna’s Vogue music video (the real-life fine for copying Madonna’s original? up to $150,000). Just a few episodes later, a video of Sue dancing to Olivia Newton-John’s 1981 hit Physical is posted online (damages for recording the entirety of Physical on Sue’s camcorder: up to $300,000). And let’s not forget the glee club’s many mash-ups — songs created by mixing together two other musical pieces. Each mash-up is a “preparation of a derivative work” of the original two songs’ compositions – an action for which there is no compulsory license available, meaning (in plain English) that if the Glee kids were a real group of teenagers, they could not feasibly ask for — or hope to get — the copyright permissions they would need to make their songs, and their actions, legal under copyright law. Punishment for making each mash-up? Up to another $150,000 — times two.”

Remember kids, singing and dancing, making mash-ups and putting them online, is for professionals only. Don’t try this at home! Just sit back, watch the show, and keep in mind that muting commercials is the same thing as stealing.

Read the rest here: Copyright: The Elephant in the Middle of the Glee Club

Good for Google. They just made it easier to claim Fair Use for materials you post to YouTube. If I just copy a Madonna video and post it to YouTube, that is a legitimate transgression and should be removed if the rights-holder complains. If I use a clip of a Madonna song in a video I made making fun of her, that is Fair Use. Parody (i.e. mocking, making fun of) has been consistently protected in the courts.

There are some real gray areas when it comes to Fair Use, but now the burden is on the rights-holder rather than the people posting material to YouTube.

This decision came shortly after all the parody videos of Hitler from the movie Downfall were removed from YouTube because of a complaint by copyright holder Constantin Film AG. Unfortunately, the re-mixes using the Bunker scene from Downfall pretty clearly fall under the parody aspect of Fair Use and should not have been removed. Kudos to Google for correcting this. It’s been a long time coming.

# When you receive a notice in your account via Content ID, we tell you who claimed the content, and direct you to a form that lets you dispute the claim if you so choose.

# If you believe your video is fair use, check the box that reads “This video uses copyrighted material in a manner that does not require approval of the copyright holder.” If you’re not sure if your video qualifies, you can learn more about fair use here.

# Once you’ve filed your dispute, your video immediately goes back up on YouTube.

# From this point, the claimant then makes a decision about whether to file a formal DMCA notification, and remove the content from the site according to the process set forth in the DMCA.

This is for the intellectual property/open source/free culture geeks.

What If The Very Theory That Underlies Why We Need Patents Is Wrong?

The paper points out that the “devil’s bargain” of granting monopoly rights in order to create incentives for producer-driven innovation makes less and less sense:

The work in this paper and that of many others, suggests that this traditionally-struck ‘devil’s bargain’ may not be beneficial. First, there is increasing evidence that intellectual property protection does not increase innovation. … There are also many examples in which strong intellectual property rights may have impeded subsequent progress …. Indeed, recent empirical work has actually shown a negative relationship between patenting and subsequent progress in both biotechnology … and software….

This is for the intellectual property/open source/free culture geeks.

What If The Very Theory That Underlies Why We Need Patents Is Wrong?

The paper points out that the “devil’s bargain” of granting monopoly rights in order to create incentives for producer-driven innovation makes less and less sense:

The work in this paper and that of many others, suggests that this traditionally-struck ‘devil’s bargain’ may not be beneficial. First, there is increasing evidence that intellectual property protection does not increase innovation. … There are also many examples in which strong intellectual property rights may have impeded subsequent progress …. Indeed, recent empirical work has actually shown a negative relationship between patenting and subsequent progress in both biotechnology … and software….

A manifesto! I love manifestos. Sometimes I think they’re the only form of literature that can really affect society (think Marx’s Communist Manifesto, or Paine’s Common Sense).

Check out the Public Domain Manifesto.

“Our markets, our democracy, our science, our traditions of free speech, and our art all depend more heavily on a Public Domain of freely available material than they do on the informational material that is covered by property rights. The Public Domain is not some gummy residue left behind when all the good stuff has been covered by property law. The Public Domain is the place we quarry the building blocks of our culture. It is, in fact, the majority of our culture.” (James Boyle, The Public Domain, p.40f, 2008)