copyright

RIAA: No need to force ISPs by law to monitor piracy

WASHINGTON--It's no secret that Recording Industry Association of America President Cary Sherman despises piracy, and he's a vocal fan of proposed laws that would beef up penalties for copyright infringers.

But here's one area where he says the government need not intervene at this point: forcing Internet service providers to be more proactive in curbing pirated content on their networks.

"I don't think anyone here is trying to relegislate this issue," Sherman, said at an Internet policy conference here on Wednesday. "We're much more interested in finding a marketplace way of going … Read more

Congresswoman: Let ISPs probe for pirates

WASHINGTON--Congress must not interfere with Internet service providers that are trying to filter pirated content from their networks, a Republican politician said Wednesday.

The recommendation from Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) came in a steadfastly pro-copyright speech at an Internet policy conference here, during which she railed against what she described as rampant online piracy.

"I believe the best chance we have for achieving any success against digital piracy is to allow those entities and individuals who manage networks to have the flexibility and agility to take necessary and lawful steps to stop piracy online before it starts," … Read more

Intellectual property rights: You can't have it both ways

Have you ever, I mean ever, copied software, a CD, a DVD, or a video tape without permission or paying? How about downloading music, video, pictures, or art?

If you answered yes, congratulations, you're just like everybody else.

On the other hand, you probably also think U.S. screenwriters are being screwed by the studios. And that China and other countries shouldn't be illegally copying and selling material copyrighted in the U.S.

That, my friend, is called a double standard.

Something else to consider:

Did you read this post about Trend Micro suing Barracuda Networks for patent infringement. Do you agree with the blogger? Do you think companies like Qualcomm, Rambus, or Trend Micro are patent trolls that unjustly enrich their shareholders at the expense of consumers?… Read more

Did Slate violate copyright law?

Slate, a popular news site, seems to be openly violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

That law, much hated in cyberrights and computer security circles, is a thorn in the side to many researchers. The interesting question that we must ask is: Will Hollywood let Slate's probable violation slide, or will they lawyer up and go after the site owned by The Washington Post Co.?

A few days ago, Slate released a video mashup of footage of Hillary Clinton and a few scenes from the movie Election, starring Reese Witherspoon. The video is mildly amusing, and did at least … Read more

Underexposed blog: Links of the day

Picasa Web Albums Uploader for BlackBerry--Upload to Picasa Web Albums from a BlackBerry smartphone. Bonus: automatic geotagging if your BlackBerry supports it. Jeffrey Friedl offers "Piglets": Plug-ins for Lightroom Plug-ins--This time, Friedl has built Tim Armes' LR/Mogrify export plug-in so it can be used as a subcomponent of Friedl's Flickr/Zenfolio/SmugMug/Picasa export plug-in. First time I've seen the word "fourth-party" used in a while. World's longest dialog box too. ImageReporter: Extract data from Lightroom database--Analysis tool for extracting information from the metadata stored in Lightroom's catalog. … Read more

Does China need international cooperation with online infringement?

Internet-based copyright infringement is pretty much the only way people can keep track of TV and movies from abroad in Beijing. It's hard to even find legal DVDs, and if there aren't even illegal DVDs to buy, it's often trivially easy to find entire movies on Youku or Tudou.

Yesterday, a Chinese public-security ministry official asked for international help in copyright enforcement, noting that many infringers use Web sites hosted outside Chinese jurisdiction.

"Copyright infringements, by their very nature, are international crimes. To effectively curb such activities, (we) need enhanced international cooperation on law enforcement," … Read more

'Scrabulous' debate may rewrite the rules of the game

"I'll go on a hunger strike!"

So said one adamant Facebook user in the wake of the news that game manufacturers Hasbro and Mattel were trying to do something about the wildly popular, unquestionably addictive online game known as Scrabulous.

The game, which rose to fame when its creators turned it into an embeddable Facebook application, is a word game that's a whole lot like the classic board game Scrabble. It uses a playing board with "bonus" spots just like Scrabble. In fact, the rules are identical to Scrabble's.

The companies in charge … Read more

Underexposed blog: Links of the day

Nikon still leads Canon for SLR market in Japan - It's not the whole world, but Japan is a very important market. Pentax is a distant third. Novel GPS widget geotags photos on your flash card - This is a great idea: you insert your camera's flash card into this GPS device and it handles the geotagging from there. A much simpler work flow. But does it work with raw formats? Wacky Microsoft Popfly live-action demo - Putting something of a human face on an obscure coding exercise. Dan Heller's Photography Business Blog: Gaming the Creative Commons for Profit … Read more

Remixing culture and the problem with copyright

We live in a remix culture. Open source, user-generated content and its reuse, etc. But overly broad enforcement of copyright threatens to stifle the next generation of creativity and innovation, a new report from the Center and American University's Washington College of Law finds.

The study, entitled "Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video," details how such video reuse fits into the Fair Use doctrine. NBC Universal and other copyright holders, however, are determined to reinterpret the law and this doctrine to the detriment of culture. Our remix culture. (Same as it ever was.)

The courts tell us that fair use should be "transformative"--adding value to what they take and using it for a purpose different from the original work. So when makers mash up several works--say, The Ten Commandments , Ben-Hur and 10 Things I Hate about You , making Ten Things I Hate about Commandments--they aren't necessarily stealing. They are quoting in order to make a new commentary on popular culture, and creating a new piece of popular culture.

Big deal, you say? Consider the alternative.… Read more

Fair use? Are you sure?

On Sunday, the Washington Post published a story which suggested the RIAA is expanding its copyright-infringement lawsuits against end-users to encompass files ripped from an audio CD to a user's hard drive. In other words, most of the files on the 100+million iPods sold, not to mention the countless files on computer hard drives and other devices. A lot of readers took the story at face value, and expressed dismay that the RIAA would target such copying for personal use. Isn't that fair use?

Turns out that the story's wrong: as the Patry Copyright Blog (and … Read more