Category: Copyright & Content

The high cost of getting permission to use archival footage and photos threatens to put makers of documentaries out of business.

In this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine:

The Tyranny of Copyright?
New York Times Sunday Magazine

A protest movement is forming, made up of lawyers, scholars and activists who fear that bolstering copyright protection in the name of foiling ”piracy” will have disastrous consequences for society — hindering the ability to experiment and create and eroding our democratic freedoms. This group of reformers, which Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, calls the ”free culture movement,” might also be thought of as the ”Copy Left” (to borrow a term originally used by software programmers to signal that their product bore fewer than the usual amount of copyright restrictions). Lawyers and professors at the nation’s top universities and law schools, the members of the Copy Left aren’t wild-eyed radicals opposed to the use of copyright, though they do object fiercely to the way copyright has been distorted by recent legislation and manipulated by companies like Diebold. Nor do they share a coherent political ideology. What they do share is a fear that the United States is becoming less free and ultimately less creative. While the American copyright system was designed to encourage innovation, it is now, they contend, being used to squelch it.

David Weinberger has written an excellent editorial for Wired, wherin he argues that the movement to strictly control the use of content via copy protection technology and the law violates basic social mores.

We’re on the verge of instituting digital rights management. What do computers do best? Obey rules. What do they do worst? Allow latitude. Why? Because computers don’t know when to look the other way.
We’re screwed. Not because we MP3 cowboys and cowgirls will not [sic?] have to pay for content we’ve been “stealing.” No, we’re screwed because we’re undercutting the basis of our shared intellectual and creative lives. For us to talk, argue, try out ideas, tear down and build up thoughts, assimilate and appropriate concepts — heck, just to be together in public — we have to grant all sorts of leeway. That’s how ideas breed, how cultures get built. If any public space needs plenty of light, air, and room to play, it’s the marketplace of ideas.
There are times when rules need to be imposed within that marketplace, whether they’re international laws against bootleg CDs or the right of someone to sue for libel. But the fact that sometimes we resort to rules shouldn’t lead us to think that they are the norm. In fact, leeway is the default and rules are the exception.
Fairness means knowing when to make exceptions. After all, applying rules equally is easy. Any bureaucrat can do it. It’s far harder to know when to bend or even ignore the rules. That requires being sensitive to individual needs, understanding the larger context, balancing competing values, and forgiving transgressions when appropriate.

Mickey Mouse gives an exclusive interview to Reason Online, in which he offers his perspective on the recent Eldred decision.

Did you know that the happy birthday song is protected by copyright? The publishing rights to the song, which brings in around $2 million a year, belong to AOL Time Warner. All those waiters in restaurants who sing “Happy Birthday” without paying royalties to AOL Time Warner are thieves.
“Happy Birthday” is one of many creative works that could move into the public domain if the Supreme Court rules in favor of Eric Eldred.

Some additional thoughts on copyright, sparked by the Eldred v. Ashcroft case:
Do we really need to have copyright?

Notice the point was not to promote large incomes for authors and inventors, much less for media conglomerates or patent attorneys. The government only got involved because of the general benefits that flow from innovation and creativity.

Copyright and the Commons

There’s the old saying that good artists copy and great artists steal, and that’s not based on outright theft, but the acknowledgement that we are all influenced by others’ work, and things like hip hop music and photoshop collages point out how great new art can be created when combining other works into new works.

Riding Along With The Internet Bookmobile

“Universal access to human knowledge is what we as a culture and as parents need to do, and we’re screwing up. Ninety-eight percent of all books are inaccessible to my child for any amount of money,” Kahle says, as we pull into Urbana, Ill. Ninety-eight percent of all books in copyright are “terminally” out of print, according to estimates by Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford University and lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the Eldred case. Universal access to human knowledge? The law is designed to prevent access to knowledge — at least the human knowledge that no longer earns its keep in bookstores and movie theaters.

One of the prevalent arguments for using a PC instead of a Mac has always been that more people use the former. For many, joining the hordes was always seen as a good thing. But there are compelling reasons to go against the grain (fewer virus headaches, for one).

Entertainment companies are increasingly pressuring technology companies to built strict digital rights management technology into computer products. Microsoft has rushed to the forefront of tech companies bending over backwards to appease the entertainment oligarchy, at the expense of the consumer. Dan Gillmor writes in his current column that Apple is refusing to follow the pack:

The era of Digital Rights Management, commonly called DRM, is swiftly moving closer, thanks to the Intels and AMDs and Microsofts. They’re busy selling and creating the tools that give copyright holders the ability to tell users of copyrighted material — customers, scholars, libraries, etc. — precisely how they may use it. DRM, in the most typical use of the expression, is about owners’ rights. It would be more accurate to call DRM, in that context, “Digital Restrictions Management.” But Apple has taken a different tack in its rhetoric and its technology.

I’m a bit pessimistic that Apple will hold out for long, but at least for now, it’s the platform to use if you want to control your world, rather than letting the world control you.

Beware of what that next Windows update will do to your ability to manage your content as you see fit. If you’re thinking of upgrading to a new version of Windows Media Player (or any other media software), carefully read and research exactly what you’ll be getting. Chances are, something will also be taken away.

On a related note: one of the new teachers here was astonished to find that his laptop DVD player limited his ability to watch DVD movies from both Japan and the U.S. He has to make a decision to watch either one or the other — not both. So even if he legally purchases a DVD disc in Japan, and then has brought DVD discs from America, he can’t watch them both. This was one of those silent hand-outs to entertainment companies that screws the customer. And this is similar to the kinds of controls that technology companies are being pressured to add (as “features,” no less) to their products.