Copyright in a Digital Age (Comm/IS 429, fall 2007)

With the now hundreds of available Facebook applications, one has to wonder what implications there might be for copyright infringement. One application at least, BIG photo, has taken measures to protect IP rights. Under the application in someone’s profile, users have the option to “report infringing content.” The link takes you to this copyright policy, posted by the application’s creator.

“Jerome Poichet (”us” or “we”) respects the intellectual property rights of others and we prohibit users from uploading, posting or otherwise transmitting through any application or website offered by us any materials that violate another party’s intellectual property rights. When we receive proper Notification of Alleged Copyright Infringement as described below, we promptly remove or disable access to the allegedly infringing material and terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.”

Here’s another example of a copyright problem (blocking fair use of material): Western Digital is selling network hard drives that don’t let you share your movie files. The hard drive itself doesn’t actually block the sharing - it’s not a physical limitation, which would be a massive leap in content control - rather, it’s a software-based control. The software that comes with the hard drive controls file sharing from it and doesn’t allow sharing of specific file types over the Internet. It’s worth noting that changing the file extension is one easy way around this restriction. (Ha! Take that!)

Even before WD bought Mionet [the file sharing service on the hard drive], the service blocked people from sharing music and video files with friends.

So Western Digital either completely overlooked this issue with network hard drives- drives designed for sharing - or looked at this issue and decided to be “cautious.” In fact, it looks like the latter was the case. Here’s how the blog entry summarized what Western Digital Vice President for Corporate Communications Catherine Scott had to say on the matter:

Ms. Scott said the company needs to be conservative when so many Internet services that enable file sharing in one way or another are getting sued by Hollywood. … WD is trying to look at fingerprinting technology that will let it filter out copyrighted material and still allow sharing of other material.

If it can figure out a fool-proof way of doing this, I’m sure everyone in the world will be interested, so I’m slightly skeptical on this point.

Nielsen media ratings has developed a service to help eliminate online video piracy. Working with Digimarc, a digital-watermarking company that helps to produce authentic driver’s licenses, Nielsen hopes to work with Google and large media companies to filter online video content. If a user wants to load a video clip onto a Web site that uses the Nielsen/Digimarc filter, the filtering program uses its fingerprinting technology to identify the clip while it is loading. When identified, the filter will crosscheck its database for video-distribution rules given by the media company that produced the clip. The video may be allowed to load or only allowed to load it if it is attached to certain advertising, for example. If the content is unauthorized, it will not load at all. This service may seem like old news, but according to Rick Cotton, executive vice president and general counsel of NBC Universal, “The point is the big boys are coming, and that signals that this is a field that has reached technological maturity, It will achieve widespread commercial adoption, and from a content point of view, it will contribute dramatically to reducing the easy theft of copyrighted material online.”

Hey, since the class is ending, in your opinion, what’s the most valuable thing you have learned from it? I go first, it reshape my understanding of copyright works!

Some software still are expensive to individuals, like the products from Autodesk. (Microsoft and Adobe products are cheaper compared with Autodesk.) If we can raise the price for enterprise users (users in companies) and lower it for individuals, especially students and low income people, what do you think? Do those companies agree with this plan?

Check out this great article from Wired magazine that offers a view of the digital music dilemma from a side we don’t hear too often: the record label execs. The article offers an interview with Universal Music’s CEO, Doug Morris, and his thoughts on Apple’s market supremacy with the iPod. Basically, Morris has been consistently frustrated with the fact that the iTunes Store employs a type of DRM protection that is not an industry standard because Apple refuses to license their FairPlay right management technologies.

Now, Morris is courting the other major record labels to join together in an attempt to take some of Apple’s market share and knock them out of their market leadership. Morris’ model is called Total Music, and is a subscription service that would be an alternative to the iTunes Store. He hopes to unite many of the major record labels to give consumers unlimited access to song catalogs and early exposure to new releases for a monthly fee. Whether or not his idea will be successful remains to be seen, but it does offer a viable subscription model as an alternative to the iTunes Store. Regardless, Morris is steadfast in his aim to bring the power back to the record labels themselves:

“Our strategy is to have the people who create great music be paid properly,” he says. “We need to protect the music. I know that.”

We talked briefly yesterday about whether we should care if the legal and economic arrangements were going to have “experiential” implications, beyond the democratic ones we have focused on. This article and the blog response struck me as being in that spirit — they’re not really about copyright, or even new distribution systerms, but they are arguing that the environment for music (read: digital, distributed) may have implications for how we know music, its history, its importance, etc. read both, they’re an interesting conversation.

“The Segmented Society”, David Brooks, NY Times op-ed

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/opinion/20brooks.html

“Clueless”, Tim Mohr, Playboy

http://www.playboy.com/blog/2007/11/clueless.html

After our class today,I think I may have created a new word that describes
the responsible, civic minded buyer:

The citizumer!!

It can be used to describe any type of enlighted purchaser, from
those who only choose to do business with ethical firm to folks who buy based on carbon foot print to whatever.

Or maybe it’ll be the next big super hero!!!

Remember, you heard it here first!!!

I was quite surprised at Gandy’s reading “The Real Digital Divide: Citizens vs. Consumers” for many reasons, one of which includes the fact that they went all Twiligh zone-like on me. lol.

I was definitely not expecting the real divide in digital technologies as something that stems from our switching individual roles between citizens and consumers. Technology is driven forward by what we need/want. I guess as people we also wear different hats that enable us, like the architecture of new technologies, to do specific things and limits other things. Throughout the class we have been debating about how technologies function and what they do and what their role is–and to a certain extent that frames the topics in such a way that I started feeling frustration about all these laws and how they are supposed to protect our rights, but instead end up imposing on them. It’s a nice, pleasant surprise to have someone think the people still have the power.

For all those wondering how many Posts / Comments they have made to this Blog, I did figure out a way to check your own count without making Prof. Gillespie respond to a million e-mails.

For your posts, go to this address:
http://tarletongillespie.org/copyrightinadigitalage07/wp-admin/edit.php?author=IDHERE (replace the IDHERE with the number before your name from the list below).

For comments, go to this address:
http://tarletongillespie.org/copyrightinadigitalage07/wp-admin/edit-comments.php?s=NAMEHERE (replace NAMEHERE with whatever name you normally post comments under).

Hope this saves everyone some trouble.

List:
4 Barrett
5 Kelly
6 Josh
8 Lauren
9 Maria
10 Cameron
11 Eamon
12 Joanne
13 Alex K.
14 Brian
15 Rick
16 Maren
17 Eden
18 Carlos
19 Rebecca
20 Erika
21 Rachel
24 Stephanie
26 Ilana
27 Adam B.
28 Greg
29 Nikki
31 Karen
32 Luning
34 Adam P.
35 Robert
37 Tarleton

Tired of the Democrats? Tired of the Republicans? Then vote Open Source!

Ken Goffman (better known as RU Sirius, a sort of intellectual counter-culture icon) has proposed a 7-point party platform that addresses a handful of political issues that are increasingly relevant to technology and open democracy enthusiasts. While the entire proposal for a new “Liberal/Libertarian/Other unity party” is fairly interesting, point number seven really struck home:

Digital stuff exists in a land without scarcity. It is natural and spontaneous that when people reside there, they tend to share and to re-purpose content without guilt. On the other hand, “content creators” need to pay bills just as much as programmers and other virtual laborers do. We need to support the natural evolving ecology of copying and sharing on the web. At the same time, we need to find a way to sufficiently reward creative content.

Keep in mind that RU Sirius is promoting a political party where people meet online and debate the issues in an “open” manner. It’s a very interesting concept, espcially when considering all our talk of openDemocracy and Open Access. Now if only the Open Source Party had more than 6 registered members (although it is only a day old)….

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for a book titled “Digital Music Wars: Ownership and Control of the Celestial Jukebox” by Patrick Burkart to use in my paper. It’s charged from the Lincoln Music Library so I thought it would be worth a shot to see if someone in the class took it out. If you did and wouldn’t mind lending it for a few hours, I would be very, very grateful!!!

Thanks!

Vaidhyanathan’s “The anarchy and oligarchy of science” makes a great point about the state of science today and the threat it has come under from both copyright and the government. For one, the government has limited scientific free speech and doctored reports (examples: 1 2 3) for reasons such as national security. It seems highly unlikely to me that national security, for example, could be a good reason to supress something as benign (pun possibly intended) as cancer research.
Another issue is that of copyright and public scientific databases. The NIH has helped establish a database for researchers to submit their work and have it published in a month instead of five, which would be the case if the research were to be published in a standard journal. This allows for easier and faster access to research than ever before, and reduces the problems of making money off the article’s copyright (charging to view the research), potentially preventing open access. This also allows for easier collaboration and dissemination of information to the public, since the the database is open to the public. Private databases of research or information (such as genetic information, brought up in the reading) hinder these processes.
Finally, an interesting point was made that, together, the business of science hinders democracy, and I agree with that statement to an extent. I think that hindering information and communication of information does in turn hinder democracy. Does anyone disagree with this last point, because that would be an interesting argument to make I think?

After reading today’s articles and Ilana’s post I got to thinking a bit more about the issue of net neutrality and US control of the internet. As Vaidhyanathan points out, and Ilana continues on, the US has started to control and severely limit the flow of scientific information. This has led to a number of responses, including Russia’s call for an end to the US control of the internet. Currently, the US controls the internet domain name system (i.e. the registration of all those .com, .net, .edu, etc. domains) through ICANN, the non-profit agency based in California in which the government holds veto power. The US protested Russia’s call at a recent UN-sponsored conference on the internet, claiming that the US arrangements ensure the internet’s stability and open access for all.

I find it bothersome that the US is arguing to the world that it should retain control while it subsequently works to limit individual’s ability to share scientific research. Much of the growth of the internet was based squarely on that ability to share information. What kind of message does that put out to the world?

Along the same lines, the US is still in a debate over the issue of internet neutrality — the idea that ISPs should be able to charge a different price to individuals based on how they use the internet and what sites and services they use. While on one hand this makes sense, as spreads the cost of bandwidth around, it also is a horrible idea. If enacted, it means that ISPs could start to throttle specific sites that it does not hold commercial agreements with. ISPs could essentially hold sites and services hostage until their owners paid a set price to be included in that ISPs “package.”

Partially in response to the idea of net neutrality and partially in response to the issues Ilana raised, educational institutions in the United States have banded together to create the internet2 (the Abilene backbone) to provide a separate network by which they can share data and information separate from the public networks and the internet (of course, the greatly enhanced speeds played a role as well). By separating off their traffic and data and limiting access, educational institutions are only furthering the idea of a “government against enlightenment” while retaining separate control over their own network.

I find both of these issues worrisome. What do you think?

John Willinsky brings up many interesting points in his book The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship. One of the points that caught me was the purpose of the access principle: “commitment to the value and quality of research carries with it a responsibility to extend the circulation of this work as far as possible, an ideally to all who are interested in it and all who might profit by it.” People who believe this argument say that researchers and scientists should disseminate their works far and wide because everyone should be able to access their work. Knowlege is a public good, and it should be free for everyone to read and use. This is a lovely argument. It harks back to Bettig’s argument “copyright reifies economic rationalism.” People don’t just create for economic incentives, they have other reasons. Open access isn’t economic rationalism–scientists and researchers don’t want to make money–look, they’re giving away their work for free! However, we need to look closer.

Although scientists and researchers don’t create simply for economic rationalism and monetary rewards, they are not complete altrusts. Willinksy brings up a point that reminds me of Ayn Rand’s philosophy: everyone is selfish and is motivated by their own personal desires. In scientific publishing, this takes the form of personal pride: “the pride one cannot help but take in seeing one’s work…or seeing it cited in someone else’s work…the economic driver of scholarly publishing…the particular ego economy of beign cited by name, and of being so cloely identified with one’s published work.” Seemingly pure and purpose-driven quests have selfish motivation. Willinsky sums up his argument perfectly when he hypothetically quotes an open access advocate: “Did someone mention journal impact factors and citation counts?” Creation in our society is so tied into personal gain that at this point, it may be impossible to separate.

I have been doing some research over break about the Authors Guild et al vs. Google, Inc. court case. This legislation deals with the Authors Guild’s objections to the Google Book Search capability. When I started researching this case, I thought it was similar to the Napster court case, which claimed its service was justified under the fair use doctrine. This Authors Guild vs. Google case also deals with fair use. It is interesting to see previous court cases (Kelly and Sony cases) that will be applied in making a decision for the Google case. Specifically, the courts must determine the nature of the use, the nature of the works, the amount and substantiality of the portion used, and the effect of the use on the market. Although there is more to the decision than this, the courts must recognize further implications of their decision regarding this new technology.

Check out this link http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/google-print-and-authors-guild.html. Here is the blog posted by Susan Wojcicki, Vice President of Product Management for Google. This blog serves as Google’s response to the Authors Guild’s complaints on September 20, 2005. Let me know what you think about the topic. What do you think the outcome should be? What do you think are some of the benefits or harms of putting digital copies of books online?

The Copyright Alliance has begun sending out questionnaires to presidential candidates in an effort to find their position with regards to copyright and intellectual property law. On behalf of its members, who include the MPAA and the RIAA, and the 11 million creative workers in America, the letter calls upon presidential hopefuls to consider piracy and copyright law as they develop their platform. They hope to receive replies from all campaigns and will make the responses available to the public sometime in the future.

After looking at some of the questions, it’s obvious that the Copyright Alliance is pushing an agenda with its mailing and it is reflective of the self-interest of Big Content, NOT a concern for the public domain. The questions are loaded, bias, and ultimately, foolish. Here’s my favorite one: “How would you promote the progress of science and creativity, as enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, by upholding and strengthening copyright law and preventing its diminishment?”

Patry’s got a bunch of them posted on his blog: http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2007/11/there-they-go-again-copyright-alliance.html

I read the Samuelson article. Several times, she made her arguments on the assumption that computing professionals would want to “contribute to more balanced intellectual property policy.” I didn’t pick up on why these computing professionals would want to do so?

Again, she hit on, in what I believe, is the primary reason as to why DRM is not the way to go. This is because copyright law was created by people to serve people and it is carried out and adjudicated on by people that may or may not be subjective in interpreting the law. Setting up a technology, which by nature cannot be subjective, to govern how copyright is applied, defeats the original purpose of the law.

One other thing that Samuelson brought up in her article was about broadcast flag technology. She wrote that it could mark programs that would not be able to be recorded by viewers. How much is this technology used already?

I found “The anarchy and olligarchy of Science” very interesting.   Seeing the copyright discussion expand to the scientific realm was eye-opening and easy to follow after all of the information we have accumulated this semester.  I found myself trying to compare copyright’s influence on science to its influence on music and film.  While copyright’s influence on both is occurring silmultaneously, I feel as if the guidelines that regulate music and film are more advanced and concrete.  If that is true, then possibly the fate of music and film can be used to predict the future of science with regard to copyright.

One area in which I tried that sort of prognastication was  the peer-to-peer networks.  Networks such as Kazaa and Napster were once the meccas of free distribution.  Everyone came in need and everyone left happy.  That is certainly not the case it today’s day and age.  No matter how brazen you are, when you illegally download, you feel the risk.  You have seen the lawsuits in the papers and know that record companies and production companies mean business.

Medicine and science could face a similar fate.  The article described “free and open collaborations” that scientists are using to disseminate information.  The people putting out these collaborations are often frustrated with the restrictive nature of Science in America.  The aforementioned people may be analagous  to the Shawn Fannings of the world.  At this point it seems like a great idea, but toes are certainly being stepped on.  How many infringement claims are going to come from these public libraries of science?  Granted, the scientific networks are often peer reviewed and more “legitimate” than Napster, Kazaa, etc., but I still think the respective fields are analagous and could follow a similar course.

Hannibal Travis’s (2006) study on Google Books and fair use referenced in a recent post by the professor cautions courts to be “skeptical about publishing industry assertions that by scanning books, Google will seize control over content in the world.”  After all, Google is not stopping other organizations from competing and creating their own free eBook libraries or other similar versions of Google Book Search.

If you search “free eBooks” using Google, you will find that there are 11,700,000 hits, clearly indicating that while Google Book Search is a well-known eBook finder and content search vehicle, there are many other resources of its type  available on the internet.  While Google Book Search is different because it is more that just an eBook library, why should Google be punished for its innovative idea that provides a way for readers to preview content that is copyrighted and still in print?

 I think Google Book Search is being attacked because of its strong brand name identity, and the most adamant attackers are antitrust advocates and care more about media/business conglomerate issues than they do about copyright protection.  What do you think?

Vaidhyanathan presents an interesting arguement in the section entitled “Governemnt against enlightenment” in The anarchy and oligarchy of science. He describes that much of our flow of science information was restricted post 9/11, and that the government called for strict security on the public’s access to certain information. He also goes into that restrictions were placed on researchers and students who were not allowed to communicate with non-US scientists.

I found an interesting article that goes into some detail about scientific restrictions put forth by the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) that prevented the exchange of information on satellite technologies. On one hand, I can understand the arguement that restriction such information is really important in developing new technologies for the US to fight terrorism. On the other hand, one may argue that the cease of information exchange is troubling to the flow of information in society. Restrictions on military and satellite technologies are one thing, but is it right to somehow restrict the flow of other sciences? In the article by Skolnikoff, he explains that, “By discouraging many fine professors and students from working in the aerospace arena, disrupting working relationships between industry and universities, and discouraging collaboration between U.S. and non-U.S. scientists, they have clearly harmed rather than helped national security.” Do you agree?

Vaidhyanathan’s article presents a very bleak outlook on our apparent commencement down a path of an isolationist scientific philosophy. Science, arguably more than any other “industry,” for lack of a better word, relies on the free exchange of information. How can advancements in a field be made without prior knowledge of experiments and information? As a simplistic example, how can we make a cell phone without knowing how a landline works, and how could we make touchtone phones without knowing how rotary phones worked? I understand that there are security issues that we need to be concerned about, but we cannot let those issues make people feel apprehensive about pursuing scientific careers with us, and we can’t let our security concerns limit what scientists we choose to get information from. The us vs. them philosophy only leads to “us” isolating “ourselves” from them. In science above all else people should be able to find common ground in the desire to advance scientific discovery. Vaidhyanathan’s last paragraph probably sums it up best:

What if during the second world war the United States had considered scientists of German, Italian, or even Danish descent too suspicious or untrustworthy to be involved in code-breaking, radar development, or weapons research? What if during the cold war the United States had restricted – instead of encouraging – scientific communication between its scientists and those behind the iron curtain? What if Leibniz had had to ask Newton for permission to work on the calculus?

Also, we’ve very briefly thrown out there the idea of copyrighting different genes, etc. but the idea of Myriad Genetics, Inc. pretty much having two mutant genes all to itself and renting out access to them is absurd, and is leading towards an isolationist philosophy not even between international borders, but between different research companies. It’s like the creation of a lot of small iron curtains between many companies.

Does anyone of us have the Uris copy of the Paul Goldstein book Copyright’s highway: from Gutenberg to the Celestial Jukebox?

If so and if you don’t need it, I’d love to look at for a bit

Thanks,

Adam B.

Earlier in the semester, I wrote a post about Google books (which seems to be a hot topic right now!) and Amazon.com’s new electronic book reader, Kindle. I thought I would do a little update post because the Kindle was just released. The new device is being lauded as the iPod of books, and it’s interesting to look at all the commentary surrounding it. Newsweek’s cover story this past week was all about the Kindle and how it will change the way we read, but it also addresses the copyright aspect of it.

Obviously, the books you purchase for use on the Kindle need some sort of copy protection so you can’t just pass the book out to whoever you want or profit from it yourself. With the Kindle, you can buy books and store them, but (unlike conventional books), it’s impossible to print a page, copy any portion, or share the book with a friend. As the author of the Newsweek article puts it,

Though the copy protection doesn’t affect book-reading, it is limiting, and annoying. You can’t print out a passage, e-mail it to a friend or copy it into a document. You can’t lend a book to someone, or sell it after you’re finished.

You can learn more about the Kindle from Amazon here.

Just to remind us all that we aren’t the only ones dealing with this issue, check out this article from Mashable about a new agreement just passed in France. This agreement between content providers, ISPs and the government means that if repeat infringers don’t change their ways they could find their internet access suspended by their ISPs. This is similar to actions taken on some campuses around the US, like Stanford where students get disconnected after receiving pre-litigation letters, and then need to pay a fee to be re-connected. What kind of messages are such actions sending? To me, this makes it sound like stopping illegal downloading is now the biggest policy concern on the internet, instead of things like increased access to educational materials or even increased social connectivity. What do you guys think of this step?

I agree with Pamela’s point in the paper DRM {and, or, vs.} the Law and I will choose DRM and the Law. DRM is more likely a code to regulate what we can do and what we can’t do. It doesn’t really manage digital right. The copyright law is the thing about “right”. Although DRM has many merits and great power to control digital media than copyright, it can’t be a replacement. Another thing is that DRM can help us control the infringement of commercially valuable digital media content. So the relationship between DRM and the Law is not “or” or “vs”. It’s “and”.

There has been lots of popular discussion of the Google Books project, like this NY Times article written by the editor of Wired:

http://www.kk.org/writings/scan_this_book.php

Siva Vaidhyanathan, who we’ve read, is working on a book on Google, and has written about the case:

http://www.futureofthebook.org/sivavaidhyanathan/archives/002445.html

These I haven’t read, but they look interesting, and they may have useful references:

Google Book Search and Fair Use: iTunes for Authors, or Napster for Books?
Hannibal Travis
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=944048

Google Book Search: Fair Use, Fair Dealing and the Case for Intermediary Copying
Paul Ganley
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=875384

So, I am home talking to my friends about illegal downloading. A few years ago a good friend of mine was running a website that supplied users with ringtones for nextel phones, backgrounds, and directions for getting free internet on your nextel phones. Users would “donate” to become a member of the site. By donating, you got certain privileges, one of which was access to instructions on getting free internet. The main reason that people donated was to get the instructions for getting free internet. This site was one of the only websites to promote the internet this way, and was tailored to people who did not have knowledge of intricate programs that could provide the same content. You could enter the site and click on a link for simple directions.

Soon after the site was up and running, my friend received a cease and desist letter from Nextel ordering him to shut down the site or they would bring him to court. They also required him to transfer the domain to Nextel. Now the site is owned by someone else, but not Nextel.

The site currently looks like this.

Lots of work in this area is being done at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society (Harvard), the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, and the Yale Information Society Project. Berkman and Yale post all their research and such:

Berkman: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/research_publication_series

Yale: http://isp.law.yale.edu/publications/default.aspx