MetaFilter posts tagged with copyright

A secret treaty is bad news? I'm shocked! shocked!

jeffburdges — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:49:16 -0800

The Obama administration's proposed internet sections of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) have been leaked, the analysis says it's very bad. ACTA would force the disastrous U.S. style notice-and-takedown rules upon the other signatories, and create prohibitions on breaking DRM, even when lawful for other purposes. There are new requirements for ISPs far beyond even the U.S.'s DMCA : ISPs become liable for user contributed content, and must cut off internet access for users accused of infringement.

Artist vs. Copycat

Marky — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:44:23 -0800

Sculptor creates, copycat copies. We'll settle this in court! Bizarro world court that is... (via Consumerist) Sculpter John Ungar makes firepits from recycled propane tanks. Rick Wittrig copies them. Wittrig sues Ungar to strip him of his copyrights because...

"Defendant's Fire Pits are functional, utilitarian and useful articles that are not subject to copyright protection."

(from Federal Court Filing)

Sandra Burt gets some Satisfaction.

flapjax at midnite — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:19:17 -0800

"It's ridiculous. What's the world coming to when Big Brother wants to charge you for singing a wee tune?", Sandra Burt said. So, Big Brother thought about it a bit, and decided, well, maybe she's right.

Obey the Law

CheeseDigestsAll — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 10:56:47 -0800

Anthony Falzone and the Fair Use Project have dropped Shepard Fairey's case after he admitted he lied and submitted false evidence in his suit against the Associated Press. (Previously).

“We believe this is a revolution...Content retrieval is now centralized and production is decentralized.”

voltairemodern — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:29:36 -0800

Google makes public domain books available for instant custom printing. Show up anywhere that has one of the book printing machines. Select one of the millions of public domain titles in Google Books digital library. Pay around the price of a mass market paperback. The machine then prints a copy of your desired book* in a few minutes, as demonstrated in this lovingly narrated video. Yes, the machines have been available for a while. (Previously on the blue.) What hasn't been available until now is the Google Books digital library. How exactly Google's support will affect the spread of these book printing machines remains to be seen, but it probably won't hurt their sales. *Say the 1766 edition of Sam Johnson's Dictionary. Or one of James Maxwell's books, like Matter and Motion. Or the original Leibniz-Clarke correspondence. What I'm trying to say is you have some good options.

Ship ahoy, Captain!

jaduncan — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:40:42 -0800

You've heard of the Swedish Pirate Party. You may have seen their their elected MEP, and their 50,000 members. You may even have heard of the German Pirate Party's thousand members. But now the Open Rights Group does not stand alone in the UK's digital rights movement. On June 30th, the British Pirate Party was registered. Press reaction is here. The initial policies: • Reform copyright and patent law. We want to legalise non-commercial file sharing and reduce the excessive length of copyright protection, while ensuring that when creative works are sold, it's the artists who benefit, not monopoly rights holders. We want a patent system that doesn't stifle innovation or make life saving drugs so expensive that patients die. • End the excessive surveillance, profiling, tracking and monitoring of innocent people by Government and big businesses. • Ensure that everyone has real freedom of speech and real freedom to enjoy and participate in our shared culture. Shared policy discussion currently takes place on the wiki (and the Copyright Policy Working Group may be of particular interest). Twitter | Facebook Group | Forums

A Moveable Book

chrchr — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:23:56 -0800

A new edition of Hemingway's memoir A Moveable Feast, edited by the author's grandson, purports to complete the book as Hemingway intended it. Reviews are mixed. Now, the man who wrote the book on Hemingway and gave A Moveable Feast its title claims that the new edition is merely an attempt to by the editor to censor the negative portrayal of his grandmother.

canada copyright zombies

tamarack — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:44:37 -0800

Canada's Bill C-61 is being zombified as talks begin this week in Vancouver to attempt a dialogue on public opinion. But it's okay, cause they're using twitter this time. [Links]
Fair Copyright for Canada, courtesy of Michael Geist.
Search Engine on TVO (and older podcasts on cbc

Confidential to NY Times: Free as in speech

chesty_a_arthur — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 06:41:41 -0800

Getting smart about personal technology. NYTimes publishes Sonia Zjawinski's assertion that other peoples' images on Flickr are probably OK to download, blow up and use to decorate her house: And if you’re wondering about copyright issues (after all, these aren’t my photos), the photos are being used by me for my own, private, noncommercial use. I’m not selling these things and not charging admission to my apartment, so I think I’m in the clear. Other people think it's more complicated, and some are just pissed. Coincidentally, the Times photo editor is taking questions this week. Next, Zjawinski will also address the issue of tattooing Flickr photos without attribution (maybe.)

Mark Helprin vs The Mouth Breathing Morons

shoesfullofdust — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:56:15 -0800

The overall effect is like listening to an erudite gentleman employing $20 words while he screams at a bunch of punk kids to get off his front lawn. A review of Mark Helprin's Digital Barbarism : A Writer's Manifesto. This is an insanely long review of Helprin's book by Lawrence Lessig. You can read Helprin's 2007 NYT editorial, the impetus behind all of this, here. [previously]

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

Artw — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:13:08 -0800

Home taping didn’t kill music, says Ben Goldacre - but where did all the money go?

Emily the Strange goes to Court the Federal

schoolgirl report — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:35:41 -0800

We previously discussed the similarities, or lack thereof, between Emily the Strange and Rosamond from Nate the Great. Apparently, Nate the Great's writer (Marjorie Sharmat) and illustrator (Marc Simont) started making noise about the situation, though they have yet to file suit. Now Cosmic Debris, creator of the Emily empire, have beaten them to the punch by going to the U.S. District Court in California seeking a declaratory judgment (.pdf) that Emily does not infringe. (via) The document includes a brief history of the "goth girl", with example illustrations ranging from Wednesday Addams to Halloween costumes. Cosmic essentially argues that (a) Emily is simply another iteration of the unprotectable idea of the "goth girl", (b) the text in the original Rosamont illustration is unprotectable, (c) they don't use the allegedly infringing illustration any longer, and (d) they've used Emily since 1991 without a peep from Rosamont's creators.

C'est la vie, says the old folks, it just goes to show you never can be too careful

hypersloth — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:03:53 -0800

The Tarantino Mixtape from Eclectic Method is not the first mashup to cross the audio/video copyright streams, but they are pretty good at it.
via the always excellent giavasan Biography Lock Up Your Videos ^

A Strange Erotic Journey from Milan to Minsk

Horace Rumpole — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:44:26 -0800

In September 1969, Simon & Schuster was preparing to publish Irving Wallace's The Seven Minutes, a novel about the obscenity trial of a fictitious book of the same name by the fictitious author J.J. Jadway. Maurice Girodias, head of the erotica and avant garde literature publishing house the Olympia Press had a clever idea: what if I publish Jadway's book? Not surprisingly, he didn't get away with it, but did re-release it under the (barely) new title The 7 Erotic Minutes (full text of the book, NSFW). Russ Meyer directed a movie based on Wallace's novel, but the film was a flop.

A logo's worth

wundermint — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:14:29 -0800

Today has turned into a real-life nightmare. I wish I could wake up. This nightmare started 9 months ago and has been recurring ever since.

Designer Jon Engle is being billed $18,000 by stockart.com. Some people are trying to save Jon. Jon Engle's gallery at logopond / one reddit commentator's comparison of Jon's logos with stockart.

YouTube embeds considered illegal in Latvia

laacz — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:14:45 -0800

Latvian copyright agency in Latvia wrote emails to over 500 local bloggers asking them to pay copyright fees for embedded YouTube videos (so far only one english post). Even more - in an interview spokesperson announced, that in Latvia YouTube is, in fact, operating illegally. If you dare to translate with google, more information can be found in latvian.

MGMT vs France

filthy light thief — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:34:46 -0800

The French UMP party are being sued by the duo MGMT over the use of their song Kids. UMP paid a standard €53 fee to France's music licensing body, but MGMT's lawyer Isabelle Wekstein says that this was not enough to cover subsequent uses of the song, particularly on the Web. UMP has admitted using it, but said it was a mistake and has offered a symbolic gesture of one euro (£0.89). The story is getting more coverage as the UMP has been pushing hard for a 'three strikes law' that would banish pirates from the Internet after two ignored warnings, which may be close to passage in the French National Assembly.

With Great Scanners Come Great Responsibility

Legomancer — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 13:55:10 -0800

Scans_daily is was a LiveJournal community specializing in posting scans of comic books, both older and current ones. On Friday night, however, the community got suspended, allegedly because comics author Peter David complained that one of his books was posted to it (David denies this in the linked blog post.) Regulars at scans_daily are outraged that the community has been shut down, claiming that the ability for people to "try before they buy" encouraged readers to buy more comics. Other comics fans are not so kind and cite that, for better or worse, the community was knowingly violating copyright. The community has resurfaced and is at least discussing what changes should be made to avoid this "unpleasantness" in the future and make the community more "copyright friendly". We've seen these issues come up with movies, games, and music; now it's comic books' turn to try to figure out what to do about the internet and digital technology.

Not singing the blues anymore.

bookish — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:49:27 -0800

Nina Paley's animated film, Sita Sings the Blues, has been mentioned here several times before. It's a retelling of the classic Indian epic Ramayana, featuring the 1920s jazz recordings of singer Annette Hanshaw, interspersed with the story of Nina's own troubled marriage-- and despite critical accolades, it's been languishing due to copyright issues surrounding the 80-year-old Hanshaw songs. But things seem to be finally looking up for Ms. Paley: she has worked out a distribution plan, the movie will be broadcast on New York PBS station WNET on March 7, and the whole thing is finally available online, at thirteen.org. Higher quality versions will be available soon. The film is, appropriately, being released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License; according to Nina "you will be able to watch the film on your computer, make DVDs and distribute them, and hold public screenings (the film will circulate online in high-resolution formats appropriate for screenings). Your activities can be commercial or non-commercial, that’s up to you."

C-Span Nazis

augustweed — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:00:25 -0800

C-SPAN claims ownership of ALL domain names containing its service mark “C-SPAN” or any variation of it. What kind of pull does C-Span have that Walmart doesn't?

Michael Jackson, Manu Dibango, Rihanna in copyright infringement?

joeclark — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:08:24 -0800

“Mamase mamasa mamamakusa” or “Mamaku mamasa makumakusa”? Michael Jackson is sued for copyright infringement – again – by Cameroonian singer Manu Dibango (Flash homepage with autoplaying audio). Dibango’s Duala-language original phrase mutated into something else (Swahili?) in “Wanna Be Starting Somethin’.” They settled out of court – but then Jackson licensed that phrase to Rihanna, a right that Dibango claims Jackson never had. PRI’s The World podcast (and sibling The World in Words) cover the topic, quizzing a copyright lawyer and playing snippets from all three songs.

Tragedy of the anti-commons

stbalbach — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:27:39 -0800

Tragedy of the anti-commons is the opposite of tragedy of the commons - it's when too many owners create grid-lock, nothing can get accomplished. It exists everywhere from copyright law, tech patents, music industry, airport runway expansion, medicine, etc.. it is pervasive across all aspects of modern capitalist societies. The concept was coined by Professor Michael Heller who published a book in 2008 called The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives. In an excellent Authors@Google video, Michael Heller explains what it is and how it undermines capitalism, in particular over the past 30 years with increased privatization.

What me, worry?

humannaire — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 07:51:08 -0800

AP alleges copyright infringement of Obama image. Related. Also, see previously [1] [2] [3].

"It's rare to come to face-to-face with the people behind the software, music, and media we pirate on regular basis; I guess that's part of the problem."

ND¢ — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 14:42:11 -0800

So there is this guy named Jona Bechtolt and he is an electronic musician and multimedia artist who performs as YACHT. He recently described in an interview some audio software that he had illegally downloaded, adding "Does all this piracy make me a bad person?". The company that makes the software that he illegally downloaded apparently saw his comment and wrote a blog post where they linked to his interview and stated "We've put up with rampant idiocy from people that style themselves members of the creative community but are actually members of some kind of bullshit that doesn't have a name." Then Mr. Bechtolt commented on that blog post kind of apologizing, but also saying "I'm a musician and I haven't bought music in years, nor have almost all of my musician friends." Then the company wrote him an open letter explaining why they did not accept his apology. [via Pitchfork]

"Essentially, it is all about money and power."

Toekneesan — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:48:59 -0800

"It would be naïve to identify the Internet with the Enlightenment. It has the potential to diffuse knowledge beyond anything imagined by Jefferson; but while it was being constructed, link by hyperlink, commercial interests did not sit idly on the sidelines. They want to control the game, to take it over, to own it. They compete among themselves, of course, but so ferociously that they kill each other off. Their struggle for survival is leading toward an oligopoly; and whoever may win, the victory could mean a defeat for the public good. ...We could have created a National Digital Library—the twenty-first-century equivalent of the Library of Alexandria. It is too late now. Not only have we failed to realize that possibility, but, even worse, we are allowing a question of public policy—the control of access to information—to be determined by private lawsuit."—Robert Darnton on what the proposed Google Book Settlement could mean for the pursuit of knowledge—Google and the Future of Books