All of which makes the composition of companies involved in the Computer & Communications Industry Association’s “Defend Fair Use” campaign especially telling.

Co-plaintiffs Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google in particular rely on the fair use rationale in their activities in indexing the contents of the Web. One particularly contentious area is in news, where Google’s News product is regular lawsuit fodder for many a news organisation relying on front-page or syndication advertising for revenue.

The CCIA’s new complaint to the FTC (PDF link, 1.5MB) particularly targets copyright statements and disclaimers which misrepresent U.S. copyright statues, citing several examples from television, sport, movies and literature. The examples from Major League Baseball and the NFL match broadcasts are particularly brazen:

“This copyrighted telecast is presented by authority of the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball. It may not be reproduced or retransmitted in any form, and the accounts and descriptions of this game may not be disseminated, without express written consent.”

“This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL’s consent is prohibited.”

So that puts paid to blogging your team’s victory then.

It remains to be seen how long the proponents of campaigns such as the CCIA’s will stick with the cause. The effect of mergers, acquisitions and new business sectors will be particularly brutal in re-aligning the companies’ interests, as has happened with Apple in the case of the iTunes Music Store.

Tech companies are also mindful of the MGM vs. Grokster ruling, realising that giving users the technical capability to infringe copyright without other measures to ‘prevent’ or dissuade it may expose them to partial liability if infringement occurs, DMCA safe-harbour provisions notwithstanding. The intersection of user-generated content and video sharing are naturally dangerous territory in this regard.

Priorities do tend to change once summons start arriving…

See the Ars Technica article for more information.

UK Think Tank Calls For Fair Use Of Your Own CDs:

jweatherley writes “The BBC reports that a UK think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, has called for the legalization of format shifting. In a report commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, they state that copyright laws are out of date, and that people should have a ‘private right to copy’ which would allow them to legally copy their own CDs and DVDs on to home computers, laptops and phones. The report goes on to say that: ‘it is not the music industry’s job to decide what rights consumers have. That is the job of government.’ The report also argues that there is no evidence the current 50-year copyright term is insufficient. The UK music industry is campaigning to extend the copyright term in sound recordings to 95 years.”

(Via Slashdot).

Traditionally, copyright has been firmly in the realm of ’stakeholder’ politics, but in an age where ’stakeholders’ include 15-year-olds uploading videos to SueTube (explanation), multi-billion dollar ‘content’ companies and the quasi-corporatist non-governmental organisations, isn’t it time for a proper debate?

The Parallel Politics of Copyright and Environment:

zumaya100k writes “In recent months, Slashdot has covered the rise of the Pirate Party and the battles in Europe over iPod interoperability. Canada’s Hill Times has an insightful column from Michael Geist that links these developments as the growing importance of copyright as a political issue. He argues that copyright is now tracking the environment as a mainstream political issue.” (Geist is talking about Canada here, but much the same can be said about the U.S. and other places.)

(Via Slashdot).

I, for one, welcome our digitising, organising, aggregating, comparison shopping, advertising, Mountain View overlords.

Publishers Thank Google for Book Sales:

eldavojohn writes “A few book publishers are actually thanking Google for an apparent rise in sales due to Google’s scan plan. Google is busy defending itself against authors and publishers that have brought lawsuits for ignoring copyrights. The director of the Oxford University Press said, ‘Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers.’ It seems to work in favor of the smaller publishers: ‘Walter de Gruyter/Mouton-De Gruyter, a German publisher, said its encyclopedia of fairy tales has been viewed 471 times since appearing in the program, with 44 percent of them clicking on the ‘buy this book’ Google link.’ Do you think that Google’s ’sneak peak’ search access increases sales or violates copyrights on intellectual property?”

(Via Slashdot).

Australian High Court Deals a Blow Against Ubercopyright (Donna Wentworth):

The Australian High Court today brings us refreshing copyright sanity.

It ruled for the mod-chippers in Stevens v. Sony, the case in which Sony was suing under Australia’s anti-circumvention laws to stop people from modifying the Sony PlayStation to play cheaper overseas versions of games. Specifically, it found that:

[The] true construction of the definition of “technological protection measure” must be one which catches devices which prevent infringement. The Sony device does not prevent infringement. Nor do many of the devices falling within the definition advanced by Sony. The Sony device and devices like it prevent access only after any infringement has taken place…[In] construing a definition which focuses on a device designed to prevent or inhibit the infringement of copyright, it is important to avoid an overbroad construction which would extend the copyright monopoly rather than match it.

If I’m interpreting correctly (and that’s a big “if”), the Court has essentially said, “If you’re not using a technological protection measure to stop copyright infringement, you don’t deserve protection under copyright law. We will not uphold your ‘right’ to use technological protection measures to protect anything but copyright.”

In other words, the Court refuses to turn an appropriately limited monopoly right (copyright) into an unlimited “ubercopyright.”

Australian copyright expert Kim Weatherall has extensive analysis, explaining:

[Measures] like those used by Sony are about controlling use of and access to Sony PlayStation consoles. Sony controls all kinds of things about the way people use Sony consoles. For example: they control whether people can:

• play legitimately purchased games sold in overseas markets;
• play games created by someone other than Sony on the Sony console (something that cannot be done on a non-chipped console owing to the absence of an access code).

So while Sony can argue that it wanted to prevent piracy (it clearly did), and that the measures acted in part to deter piracy (they clearly could), Sony’s own approach to the measures muddies the waters. It doesn’t just act to prevent infringement, and that point is taken notice of by the Court here. One can’t help but suspect the legal reasoning would look different, in this case, if Sony only used its power over the console to actually prevent use of ‘pirated’ disks.

Very encouraging.

(Via Copyfight.)

UK digital rights group sets up:

A UK-based organisation to preserve digital rights and freedoms has been set up thanks to pledges of money by those passionate about such rights. It says it wants to highlight European and UK legislation which could threaten the rights of digital citizens.

Still at early stages, the Open Rights Group (Org) will serve as a hub for other cyber-rights groups campaigning on similar digital rights issues.

Org emulates US’s Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) digital rights group. The EFF has campaigned against entertainment industry attempts to limit what people can do with digital media. It has also provided guidelines and legal advice to bloggers at work, and has helped shape e-voting policies.

Org aims to nurture a grassroots community of volunteers to campaign on digital rights issues, such as ID card proposals, biometric passports, data protection, “fair use” rights over digital content, and vehicle tracking technologies.

(Via BBC News | TECHNOLOGY.)

BSA disgusted with critiques of their inflammatory piracy loss methodology:

The BSA’s claim were considerable, and they were taken to task for disingenuous tactics. Now they respond with an air of indignation. Oh, Scarlet!

(Via Ars Technica.)

Original Economist article here (day pass or subscription required).

Lawmaker Revs Up Fair-Use Crusade:

peipas writes “Wired News has posted an interview with Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA). In it he defends his stance in support of fair use and against the DMCA and other measures sought by the entertainment industry. The interview also touches on universal broadband and the recent overturning of the broadcast flag.”

(Via Slashdot.)

And here’s the Bill itself.

What UK’s copyright industries are up to:
Cory Doctorow: The BBC’s Matt Locke has written a great report on yesterday’s meeting on copyright in the UK that was held by a minister who is reported to have called for extending copyright on performances to the performer’s life plus one hundred years.

Adam Singer gave a response from the stage that was full of fantastic rhetoric, describing the emerging market for 3D printers as a harbinger of a world in which all creative IP is under threat from piracy: “It doesn’t matter if the button says ‘print’ [in reference to 3D printers] or ‘burn’ - all design will become simply a file to be shared”. He saw strong IP as the “intellectual hygiene of a networked world”, suggesting that IP law should be taught as the “new domestic science” in schools, as it was the most important future skill for creative entrepreneurs. His rhetoric, although very entertaining, was from the dystopian end of the telescope - “each time bandwith increases, another industry will fall [because of IP theft]“. You could try to unpick all the false assumptions in that last sentence, but frankly, its not worth it. Just sit back and bask in the warm glow of his fire and brimstone. In fairness, Adam Singer is far more measured and informed than the above quotes suggest (despite describing Lawrence Lessig as the “Martin Luther of copyright” that the music industry had failed to burn…), but he’s a great public speaker, and it’s his job to provoke.

I asked a question to the panel about the kind of industry trends that the DCMS were looking into when developing new IP models for the creative industries. Writers like Henry Chesbrough and Eric Von Hippel have documented trends in ‘old’ industries like Pharma and Engineering towards ‘open innovation’ models. Emerging best practise is to maximise your return from IP through a range of licensing models outside your own company, moving from old models of patent enforcement to open licensing models with peer companies and even Von Hippel’s ‘Free Revealing’, where IP is given up in order to drive other competitive advantages.

Link

(Via Boing Boing.)

On a related note, it looks like the late Sonny Bono is posthumously taking his views global via proposed European legislation. It is indeed a sad day.

EU music labels seek copyright expansion:

Seeking to achieve parity with US copyright law, EU Big Music demands greater protection for European artists. Term of Copyright arms race to follow.

(Via Ars Technica.)

Valenti signs Betamax tape for fan at Grokster hearing: “Xeni Jardin:

Given that the datestamp is 4/1/2005, I’m guessing this may be a spoof. But. According to Copyfight: En route to the Supreme Court Grokster hearing, former MPAA chief Jack Valenti — who famously predicted in 1982 that the VCR would choke the life out of the movie biz — stops to sign a Betamax tape for EFFer Annalee Newitz.

‘I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.’

Link

Update: Cory sez, ‘This is no hoax. My cow-orker Seth Schoen (the guy who wrote the DeCSS haiku) scored a bunch of old Betamax tapes and gave one to Annalee, who cornered Valenti and asked him to sign the tape. Valenti apparently did not get the irony here — he’d gone to Congress in 1982 to get the Betamax banned as the certain death of the movie industry, but from Annalee’s look of unholy glee, it’s clear that she was nearly busting open at this juncture. The tape has been given to Fred von Lohmann, EFF’s Senior IP Attorney, the rockstar lawyer who successfully argued Grokster in the 9th Circuit.’

Update: Xeni sez, holy crap.

BB reader Luis Villa says, ‘I and probably a hundred others saw it the morning of the case. Stills of Cindy Cohn of EFF with the tape, including a fairly clear shot of the signature: One, Two.’

Nick Disabato adds, ‘I was in line a few places in front of it happening, and posted an image of his signing it from the back: Link, a few pics down, or here is the actual jpeg.’

EFF Policy Director James S. Tyre says, ‘It was an unauthorized TV recording of Woody Allen’s Sleeper. More snapshots, including ‘the signing,’ by EFFer Chris Palmer here.’”

(Via Boing Boing.)

Spoken Word Principle Investigator Jerry Goldman’s excellent OYEZ Supreme Court audio archive site has an excellent quality MP3 of the original arguments made. I’m listening to it now, and it’s remarkable how close the 1983 case parallels the current one.

A straw poll of Google News sources suggests that Supreme Court justices were divided in their response to oral evidence from both sides, but that the substance of peer to peer technology should be safe. Let’s hope so.

There’s more info on the EFF site (the EFF are defending Grokster/StreamCast).

BSA doesn’t think the DMCA goes far enough:

“The Business Software Alliance has published a white paper that outlines their political aspirations for 2005, which unsurprisingly feature copyright and patent law reformation and enforcement at the top of the list. One of the complaints is that the DMCA doesn’t go far enough in granting power to intellectual property holders.

One of the quaint gems given to this fine country by the DMCA is § 512 of Title 17 of the United States Code. Titled as ‘Limitations on liability relating to material online,’ this section of the statute sought to shield online service providers from liability for what end users did on their networks. In short, it was legislated that an online service provider could escape liability if that provider both responded to subpoenas for the identification of a network user suspected of infringing activity,” and complies with properly formed subpoenas issued by a clerk of any United States district court, the provider could essentially avoid unwanted legal action.

Hence, the birth of the “take down notice,” and the subpoena for identification. The latter, however, has stumbled in recent years. While the argument of “secondary liability” brought down the likes of Napster, that same argument when applied to internet service providers completely failed.”

The number of DCMA take-down notices served recently is frightening. What’s worrying is that, as Ars points out, material can be removed simply on the accusation of copyright infringement - no injunction required. The BSA’s goal is apparently to extend this presumption of infringement to communications companies identifying infringing customers.

Free Culture

I’ve just downloaded Lawrence Lessig’s new eBook Free Culture, which is being released as a PDF under a Creative Commons license. Looks like a good read. Lessig argues early on in the introduction that too rigid an IP regime can lead to a negative incentive to innovate, contrary to the claims of the lobby groups:

But just as a free market is perverted if its property becomes feudal,so too can a free culture be queered by extremism in the property rights that define it.That is what I fear about our culture today.It is against that extremism that this book is written.

Lessig, Lawrence (2004), Free Culture, http://www.lessig.org

In fact, any first year economics textbook will tell you that intellectual property protections, such as patents and copyright, are always a balancing act. Too light a regime will lead to anarchy and no incentive to innovate, yet as Lessig argues, allowing rights holders a pseudo-governmental role stifles cultural and economic growth, because derivative works are and always have been an important facilitator of human endeavour.

One of the most worrying provisions of the DMCA is that prohibiting the circumvention of copy-control measures, even for academic purposes. Its implications are obvious, but even from the content owners’ point of view, it makes no sense. How do they expect to get a strong crypto regime in place without the beneficial effects of the peer review process? The number of vendor-introduced DRM systems (remember the Cactus CD marker pen trick, or Fairplay, the iTunes store cracks) in the past couple of years would support this.