copyright

U.S. eyes China, Russia, 44 others over piracy

The Bush administration on Friday again singled out China, Russia, and seven other countries for allegedly not doing enough to stop piracy and counterfeiting on their turf.

In its annual report (PDF), the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative named nine trading partners to its "priority" watch list and 36 others to its lower-level watch list. Paraguay is also being monitored in a separate category, bringing the total up to 46 countries.

Aside from China and Russia, which were highlighted as areas of particular concern, the priority list also contains Argentina, Chile, India, Israel, Pakistan, Thailand, and … Read more

Why Microsoft's "open" protocols may be wise to avoid

Still plowing through Van Lindberg's excellent book on open-source software law, and he discusses a court case that I somehow missed in three years of law school.

Van references IBM's efforts to keep PC clones out of the market. IBM apparently made its BIOS information (and source code) widely available as a way to poison the well. In other words, any engineers who saw the BIOS code and then attempted to reverse engineer it would be in violation of IBM's copyrights.

Hmm....While I believe Microsoft made its protocols available for public inspection due to pressure from the European Commission, … Read more

YouTube's filtering issues still not 'moot'

LAS VEGAS--A year ago Wednesday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt delighted an audience of TV and radio broadcasters when he promised to roll out a system that would mean the end of piracy at YouTube.

"We are in the process of developing tools which are called 'Claim Your Content,'" Schmidt said at the National Association of Broadcasters 2007 conference. "If people tell us this is a licensed copy, our computers will automatically detect that an illegal copy has been uploaded and then automatically delete it."

Schmidt went on to say YouTube was "close to turning this (system) on&… Read more

Who says Hulu is no YouTube competitor?

LAS VEGAS--Hulu CEO Jason Kilar was trying to make a point about why Hulu is Hollywood's best option against online piracy. But he needed something to illustrate copyright violations.

That was when YouTube appeared.

During a presentation Wednesday at the National Association of Broadcasters 2008 conference, Kilar stood in front of an image of a YouTube Web page that featured a clip from the TV show Felicity. Kilar told the audience, "the only way to get (Felicity) is from unauthorized sources."

He noted that at Hulu, TV and film companies could promote their content online using high-quality … Read more

Pirate Bay launches uncensored blogging site

The Pirate Bay, a popular BitTorrent tracking site, has launched a blogging service where bloggers won't have to fear censorship, according to TorrentFreak.

The new blogging site, dubbed BayWords, is powered by Wordpress and will eventually make money off ads.

The Pirate Bay already has an uncensored image-hosting site call BayIMG and has confirmed it is working on an uncensored video-hosting site.

Brokep, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay, told blog TorrentFreak that the group decided to launch BayWords after a friend's Wordpress blog was removed for linking to copyrighted material.

"Many blogs are being … Read more

Publishers sue university over publication of class reading materials

A group of academic publishers filed a lawsuit against Georgia State University officials on Tuesday, alleging a systematic abuse of copyrighted works in the online distribution of coursework reading materials.

Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Sage Publications allege the university "facilitated, enabled, encouraged, and induced" professors to upload the copyrighted materials to its online system for students to download, without first obtaining the necessary permissions or paying licensing fees.

The lawsuit, filed in a U.S. District Court in Georgia, may mark the first time publishers have challenged universities over the electronic distribution of written copyrighted … Read more

You think you know copyright?

Today on the Real Deal podcast, Tom and I interviewed Colette Vogele, attorney, Fellow at Stanford's Center for Internet and Society, and host of the Rules for the Revolution podcast. We started to cover the concept of copyright from the perspective of the content producer separately from that of the consumer, but found that the line between the two is increasingly fuzzy. We all consume content. But with digital technologies, almost every one of us also produces, copies, or otherwise mangles the content that we are consuming.

We talked with Vogele about this, and went over not just the … Read more

Should software patents have shorter life spans than other patents?

There are a lot of strong opinions with respect to software patents. Many people are highly critical of them because they feel that copyright alone is enough protection for software. The argument goes that copyright is a better fit than patent law.

For example, copyright is self-executing. That means that you get a copyright in your program as soon as you write it. In contrast, a patent is obtained only after filing and prosecuting - and in the process spending a lot of money on - a patent application.

Moreover, copyright is supposed to protect a specific expression - not broader ideas found in that expression. One major argument against software patents is, that in order to maintain the lightning pace of software innovation, developers must to be free to use general concepts pioneered by others so long as they don't copy the actual code.

RIAA: N.Y. judge's 'making available' ruling was no setback

The Recording Industry Association of America says a New York judge's ruling earlier this week really wasn't much of a setback for them. In fact, they say they don't mind it much at all.

This is my article from Tuesday to which the RIAA is responding. And here's e-mail from Wednesday that I was asked to attribute to the RIAA's lawyers, which I've reproduced in full:

The statement in the very first sentence of the posting that the court requires the record companies 'to demonstrate that unlawful copying took place' is entirely inaccurate and … Read more

Creative Commons gains $4 million grant, loses CEO Lessig

Creative Commons, the nonprofit dedicated to reforming copyright in the digital age, said Tuesday it has received a $4 million grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

The money will bolster Creative Commons' five-year financial plan, which has also seen support or pledges of support from Google, Mozilla, Red Hat, and the Omidyar Network.

Out of the $4 million from the Hewlett Foundation, $2.5 million will go to the main Creative Commons organization over the next five years, and the remaining $1.5 million will go to its CCLearn education project.

Meanwhile, Lawrence Lessig, the organization's founder, … Read more