Funferal » Intellectual property issues http://funferal.org/blog engraved and retouched and edgewiped and pudden-padded Tue, 07 Feb 2012 06:08:26 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 The interplay of copyright and creativity – a Storify collection http://funferal.org/blog/2012/02/04/the-interplay-of-copyright-and-creativity-a-storify-collection/ http://funferal.org/blog/2012/02/04/the-interplay-of-copyright-and-creativity-a-storify-collection/#comments Sun, 05 Feb 2012 04:42:40 +0000 Andrew Ó Baoill http://funferal.org/blog/?p=1530 I’ve recently started playing around with Storify. In the piece embedded below, I’m gathering together various different snippets concerning the interplay of copyright and creativity.

Storified by Andrew Ó Baoill
Mon, Feb 06 2012 01:43:55 ·
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Copyright and creativity

The interplay between copyright and creativity – the extent to which legal tools for enforcing copyright help or hinder the creative process – is a live issue, with the recent defeat of SOPA in the United States, and the debate over ACTA in the EU.

  1. Many scholars of copyright stress the importance of a permissive approach to appropriation and reuse, if we are to continue to have space for the emergence of new creative voices. From Lawrence Lessig, who has written on the importance of Remix, to Patricia Aufderheide’s work on strengthening Fair Use, there is a strong intellectual current pushing for a copyright regime that facilitates and protects new ways of using and exploring the act of remix, collage, and creative appropriation. That current is at odds with the strong lobby of the industries founded on intellectual property, on maintaining control of libraries of creative work, locking it up like De Beer’s diamonds, to create an artificial scarcity, and releasing it in drip-feed fashion, in a time and manner that maximizes financial return.
  2. EU leaders have approved the ACTA treaty – which implements SOPA-style provisions, but implementation may be challenged by the European Parliament, with leaders there charging the European Commission with ‘bad faith’ in the negotiation process. The protests and challenges have attracted the attention of the EU Observer – chronicler of activities in the EU institutions – and the New York Times.
  3. It can be amusing to see professional politicians shot down over copyright violations, particularly the use of popular music in their events and promotional materials, but for a proponent of permissive copyright laws, the legal issues at play can be unclear. Where a politician simply doesn’t bother to license music, the situation is clear – just as when any event organizer doesn’t pay licensing fees. But what professional operator is going to overlook that detail these days? This piece from the NY Times illustrates that the legal dispute usually involves not copyright law (which, in the US, is primarily focused on the market for a work, and the revenue accrued) but issues of reputation and endorsement, which are bundled with copyright law (under author rights) in some other countries, but in the US involves use of trademark law and, in some cases, charges that the association with the politician (even if they have paid a blanket licensing fee) can damage the original market for the work. (In this case, then, you have someone who falls foul of an element of the Fair Use test, without having asserted Fair Use!).
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    “
    Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Mr. Romney, said the campaign had stopped using K’naan’s song out of respect for his political views, even though the campaign bought blanket licenses from two public-performance societies — Ascap and BMI — which pay royalties to members.

    Experts on copyright law said such licenses, usually bought by restaurants and other businesses that play recorded music, do protect the campaign from many copyright complaints, but a politician can still be sued under the federal trademark law for false advertising if the use of the song implies that the musician has endorsed the candidate.

    Romney and Gingrich Pull Songs After …
    Wed, Feb 01 2012 17:25:08

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]]> http://funferal.org/blog/2012/02/04/the-interplay-of-copyright-and-creativity-a-storify-collection/feed/ 0 The perils of poor copy-editing http://funferal.org/blog/2011/12/27/the-perils-of-poor-copy-editing/ http://funferal.org/blog/2011/12/27/the-perils-of-poor-copy-editing/#comments Tue, 27 Dec 2011 18:58:58 +0000 Andrew Ó Baoill http://funferal.org/blog/?p=1506 This article about PhoneDog’s suing of a former employee, Noah Kravitz, over his twitter account is interesting in itself (they’re claiming rights to the account followers, as a customer list, and seeking compensation on that basis). However, what caught my eye was the claim in the RTÉ sub-heading that Kravitz “must pay” $2.50 per user, which matched rather too well what PhoneDog are listed, later in the piece, as seeking.

A quick search reveals that the case is still being litigated. Thus, the ‘must pay’ is merely the claim being made by his former employer, and no damages have yet been assessed. Indeed, if what Kravitz says is correct, it looks like this is a counter-suit aimed at balancing out his claim for a share of PhoneDog’s advertising revenue.

RTÉ’s headline is fine, but the sub-heading implies that the suit has been settled, and compensation levels set. I’m not sure how much copy-editing RTÉ employs before adding news articles to its site, but this is something that could have been caught (and easily corrected) by a good copy-editor – or caused by poor editing that sought to simplify an overly complex construction in the draft lead.

]]> http://funferal.org/blog/2011/12/27/the-perils-of-poor-copy-editing/feed/ 0 Yes Men bow to BP complaints – in their own way http://funferal.org/blog/2008/03/10/yes-men-bow-to-bp-complaints-in-their-own-way/ http://funferal.org/blog/2008/03/10/yes-men-bow-to-bp-complaints-in-their-own-way/#comments Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:39:38 +0000 Andrew Ó Baoill http://funferal.org/blog/2008/03/10/yes-men-bow-to-bp-complaints-in-their-own-way/ To be a satirist necessitates a certain thickness of skin. You’re going to be upsetting people (if you do it properly), and need to be comfortable staring them down. So what do you do when you get a letter from a potential target complaining about a satire that never actually got completed and distributed? Well, if you’re the Yes Men, you prioritize completing that project, and roll it out immediately, of course.The story begins with a letter from BP complaining about a page they’ve found on the Yes Men website:
Our attention has been drawn to the existence of the following web pages. http://www.theyesmen.org/agribusiness/beyondpetrol/ You will note that these pages bear a remarkable similarity to the genuine www.bp.com website.You will observe that the webpages in question include multiplereproductions of the BP logo. BP p.l.c. has not authorised this andsubmit that this infringes the copyright in BP’s trademarks.In addition, we are concerned that there is a real risk of that genuinevisitors could be confused and being diverted away from the genuine www.bp.com site. For example, please refer to link to the “Contact Us” page http://www.theyesmen.org/agribusiness/beyondpetrol/contactusdisplay.html  

 So there are some pages, on the Yes Men site, and BP are worried people will think they are official BP pages. That the ‘www.theyesmen.org…’ URL won’t trigger people’s suspicions. And why, you might wonder, did the Yes Men have this set of pages anyhow – what purpose was it serving, sitting there on their site?

Back in 2006, we began preparing some satires on a number of companies that we considered to be the world’s prime malefactors, in order to help expose their monstrous crimes in a humorous way. These companies included ExxonMobil, Halliburton/KBR, and a number of other entities, including your own.Sadly, while we did get around to fully realizing some of the spoofs – including the ones on Exxon and Halliburton – we actually *forgot* about yours shortly after we began work on it, and it thus remained in the execrable half-finished state in which, to your horror, you found it last week. It didn’t even have its own URL!  

 Obligingly, the Yes Men responded to the BP complaint by removing the pages from their site – and giving them a domain name, and a site, of their own. Behold Beyond-Petrol.com.

]]> http://funferal.org/blog/2008/03/10/yes-men-bow-to-bp-complaints-in-their-own-way/feed/ 0 The Cliff Richards performance copyright extension http://funferal.org/blog/2008/02/15/1299/ http://funferal.org/blog/2008/02/15/1299/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2008 23:19:28 +0000 Andrew Ó Baoill http://funferal.org/blog/2008/02/15/1299/ The EU commission is proposing to extend copyright terms for performers of music, to match the existing terms for composers. The notion of retroactive extension is problematic (though not unprecedented), but there are some interesting aspects to the proposal:
For session musicians, the record companies will set up a fund reserving at least 20 percent of the income during the extended term to them. For featured artists, original advances may no longer be set off against royalties in the extended term, which means the artist would get all the royalties during the extended term.

The commissioner also intends to propose a “use it or lose it” provision. In the case where a record company is unwilling to re-release a performance during the extended term, the performer can move to another label.

 

]]> http://funferal.org/blog/2008/02/15/1299/feed/ 0 Of strikes and solidarity http://funferal.org/blog/2007/11/24/of-strikes-and-solidarity/ http://funferal.org/blog/2007/11/24/of-strikes-and-solidarity/#comments Sat, 24 Nov 2007 22:35:07 +0000 Andrew Ó Baoill http://funferal.org/blog/2007/11/24/of-strikes-and-solidarity/ The Writers’ strike has garnered quite a bit of support, both from other entertainment workers and from the wider public. One idea for support that originated with fans, before being picked up by the union, is to send pencils to the media moguls that run 6 of the major companies targetted by this strike. The idea is, of course, based on the successful fan campaign to save the Jericho series. In this case you can donate online to fund the purchase of boxes of pencils (at $1 per box) to be sent en masse to the networks and studios. Funds left over will go to the Union Solidarity Fund that supports non-WGA members affected by the strike. You could also go to Strike Swag and buy one of their products (t-shirts, etc., with slogans of solidarity with the WGA) which also benefit the Solidarity Fund.

A strike that has received much less coverage has been that of the United American Nurses union members striking at Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH) hospitals since 1st October. A Union Review piece republished on Alternet details the intimidation the strikers are facing:

hired security guards on the picket lines who routinely harass the nurses. The company also has resorted to surveillance cameras taking shots of who walks the picket and when. And now, though it is not clarified yet that its their doing, the company appears to have orchestrated the burning of a car that belonged to one of the union staff who was on hand to assist the nurses.

The AFL-CIO are co-ordinating donations for the nurses.

]]> http://funferal.org/blog/2007/11/24/of-strikes-and-solidarity/feed/ 0 A Critical Ear – latest edition http://funferal.org/blog/2007/11/15/a-critical-ear-latest-edition/ http://funferal.org/blog/2007/11/15/a-critical-ear-latest-edition/#comments Fri, 16 Nov 2007 05:06:19 +0000 Andrew Ó Baoill http://funferal.org/blog/2007/11/15/a-critical-ear-latest-edition/ This week’s show is now online. It lasts just around an hour, and features Bob Naiman and myself discussing Pakistan, Iran, and the success of Brazil’s AIDS drugs policy. Locally we discuss SEIU’s possible strike and the growing support from the campus community, and the CCHCC protest about the exclusion of 40% of the local community from healthcare facilities at Carle clinic.

Edited to add: The first part of the show, focusing on US foreign policy and international affairs is now online as a separate file.

]]> http://funferal.org/blog/2007/11/15/a-critical-ear-latest-edition/feed/ 0 Solidarity efforts for WGA http://funferal.org/blog/2007/11/13/solidarity-efforts-for-wga/ http://funferal.org/blog/2007/11/13/solidarity-efforts-for-wga/#comments Tue, 13 Nov 2007 20:50:39 +0000 Andrew Ó Baoill http://funferal.org/blog/2007/11/13/solidarity-efforts-for-wga/ As the Writers’ strike continues into a second week, word of an interesting solidarity action as many of the blogs that usually cover the content generated by these writers are ‘going dark’ for a day to express their support. This at the same time that another group of writers, working for CBS news, vote to authorize a strike – they have been working under an expired contract since 2005, and have not be at the bargaining table since January.

Here in Urbana we face the possibility of a strike soon by quite a different group of workers, as SEIU local 73, representing food and building service workers at the University of Illinois, face off against the University. Having sat at the table with the University earlier this year (as a member of the GEO bargaining team) I can appreciate what they are going through. Hopefully, of course, the contract can be settled without having to resort to a strike, but if it does come about I’m happy that various departments, including my own, have announced that they will respect the right of workers, such as myself, to honour the picket lines.

]]> http://funferal.org/blog/2007/11/13/solidarity-efforts-for-wga/feed/ 0 Derivative works, public domain archives, and copyright http://funferal.org/blog/2006/09/28/derivative-works-public-domain-archives-and-copyright/ http://funferal.org/blog/2006/09/28/derivative-works-public-domain-archives-and-copyright/#comments Thu, 28 Sep 2006 03:52:10 +0000 Andrew Ó Baoill http://funferal.org/blog/?p=1178 An intriguing little debate happening over at Wikimedia-UK where there’s interest in the Royal Society’s decision to put copies of all their journals, going back to 1665, online. The rub is that the free access to the journals lasts only through to December, with the material going behind a pay-wall at that time.

In part, the discussion centred on whether the material was in the public domain (and thus could be mirrored on a site like Wiki Source). In the US, in line with Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. (also summarised here) there is no copyright in mere reproductions of public domain material, irrespective of the skill and effort that must go into creating the reproduction.

The original case deals with reproductions of fine art, where somewhat ironically (though logically, when you think it through) an exact reproduction has no claim to copyright in itself (lacking the tranformative/creative touch) but an amateur copy that has original features (an example given is someone standing beside or obscuring the artwork) might be sufficiently different to merit protection.

When we move to scans of public domain journals, by analogy there would be no copyright in these derivative works, as they lack sufficient originality to be protected.

However, the situation in the UK is quite different (at least under case law) and the Royal Society has contacted Jimmy Wales and Wikimedia to assert their interests:

It has come to our attention that there is some confusion regarding the copyright status of the Royal Society’s digital journal archive.

The entire digital archive is covered by copyright. This mean that systematic downloading and hosting by third parties is prohibited.

There’s an interesting issue at play here. There’s obviously effort involved in scanning the journals, and one line of thought would suggest that such effort should be encouraged (and thus rewarded). The other line (coming from the American tradition of rewarding creativity per se) would suggest that mere reproductions should not be protected. Obviously, in an online world, with multiple jurisdictions, making this material available at all is like letting a genie out of a bottle. At the same time, with several dozen GB of pdfs in question, it’s unlikely that an individual would host this stuff on a personal website, and a larger organisation might be wary of the legal liability involved.

Similar legal issues will also, obviously, play out in the archives being created by Google and others. My sense is that Google will make their archive available in a manner that makes it difficult to ‘slurp’ their data, thus protecting their investment through technical means rather than legal threats (difficult given their US base), but we shall see. I wonder, also, if the proposed European version(s) of the digitised library archives will be freely available, or whether copyright will be asserted (and protected) in the material. Watch this space….

]]> http://funferal.org/blog/2006/09/28/derivative-works-public-domain-archives-and-copyright/feed/ 0 Web 2.1… http://funferal.org/blog/2006/05/26/web-21/ http://funferal.org/blog/2006/05/26/web-21/#comments Fri, 26 May 2006 12:37:24 +0000 Andrew Ó Baoill http://funferal.org/blog/?p=1158 …is my solution to this problem – the hype of of the joined-up internet, without the intellectual property craziness.

]]> http://funferal.org/blog/2006/05/26/web-21/feed/ 0 Copyright licensing for music in podcasts http://funferal.org/blog/2006/03/26/copyright-licensing-for-music-in-podcasts/ http://funferal.org/blog/2006/03/26/copyright-licensing-for-music-in-podcasts/#comments Sun, 26 Mar 2006 20:54:25 +0000 Andrew Ó Baoill http://funferal.org/blog/?p=1134 The MCPS and PRS in the United Kingdom have just launched a licensing scheme for music in podcasts. Interestingly, it allows non-DRM’d podcasts, but only if the first and last 10 seconds of the track are obscured with speech or a station ID. That’s a long fade. It also appears that cross-fading between tracks might not count. And what, I wonder, about tracks where the lyrics at the very start are of the essence?

Further, music must not consist of more than 80% of the podcast, and individual podcasts must last at least 15 minutes each. For many podcasts – other than those focused on music – that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. There are various other requirements, most of which seem not overly burdensome. The one that could be problematic is that podcasters must not produce podcasts that contain recordings from a single artist or that have more than 30% of the musical works written by the same composer or writing partnership. While this would allow tribute shows to some artists, it could cause problems for those who pay more attention to artists than composers. Further, what if you’ve got fewer than three tracks in your podcast? (I really hope they got that situation covered).

So, the restrictions are a bit of a mixed bag. Which brings us to the cost:

The greater of 12% of gross revenue or the minimum fee per track downloaded as part of the podcast: full-track 1.5p; half-track (less than 50% by duration) 0.75p.

By my reckoning, if you’ve a half-hour podcast, with 24 minutes of music, averaging 4 minutes per track, that works out at 9p (sterling) per copy downloaded. A small audience of 100 people would be affordable (£9 per edition) but scale up much above that and it becomes expensive very fast, without necessarily entering commercially viable territory, while probably heading out of the possible listener supported range.

The good news, it would seem, is that these license agreements are really themselves situated in a global market (since the various agencies represent each other’s artists in their own territories) so 1.5p per track would appear to be the upper limit of such royalty costs. Whether it’s also the lower limit would depend, I suppose, on whether those licensing agencies act in a cartel-like fashion. And I can’t imagine that – can you?

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