Come ha già raccontato Luca, un paio di giorni fa al Rimini Web Marketing Event mi è capitata (o meglio, è capitata a una delle persone che stavano dietro il palco) una di quelle cose “a probabilità zero”.

Mi sono vista passare davanti agli occhi, sul megaschermo del palafiera, due slides che conoscevo benissimo, perché erano mie e di Luca: le #15 e #21 di “Turismo online 2.0: cifre, esperienze, tendenze” che avevamo presentato insieme il 31 maggio di quest’anno a Ravenna, durante la Borsa turistica delle 100 città d’arte, e che io poi avevo pubblicato in CC Attribution su Slideshare.

Così, durante la pausa caffè, ho raggiunto la persona in questione, e mi sono presentata chiedendo spiegazioni.

Ora, se mai vi venisse la tentazione di sfilare due pagine dal lavoro di qualcun altro e mettervele in tasca, presentandole poi davanti a un folto pubblico come lavoro vostro, credetemi sulla parola: trovarsi davanti l’autore non vi metterà di buon umore.

Ho ricevuto alcune scuse balbettanti (“mai avrei immaginato“, “conosco benissimo Luca“), e una chiamata in correo: “me le ha passate X, senza dirmi che fossero vostre“. Così stamattina, essendo X uno dei miei collegamenti LinkedIn, gli ho scritto chiedendo lumi sulla cosa. La prima risposta è stata un disinvolto

Non ho nessun problema a dirti che ho usato durante una mia presentazione due slide tratte dalla tua presentazione. Ovviamente con attribuzione della fonte e link diretto al file di slideshare. Come faccio sempre.
Non ho però distribuito la mia presentazione e quindi non so come Y (che conosco bene) possa aver preso le mie slide… cercherò di capirlo….

Ora, se tu usi robe mie ma poi ripubblichi online la presentazione con un link al mio Slideshare che chi legge possa seguire, ok. Ma se, durante una presentazione pubblica, metti da qualche parte un link a Slideshare, a cui nessuno farà caso (sempre ammesso che tu l’abbia fatto, perché non ho avuto il piacere di vedere il .ppt in questione), mi stai prendendo per i fondelli.

Così gli ho risposto che trovo un po’ discutibili le “presentazioni patchwork”, in cui si mescolano cose prese da ogni dove, che ovviamente saranno diverse per stile e impostazione; ho aggiunto che i dati sono ovviamente diffondibili all’infinito, ma che il lavoro di rielaborazione grafica e interpretazione e scelta era il nostro, e ci avrebbe fatto piacere essere almeno avvisati (non dico chiedere il permesso o ringraziare).

La risposta successiva era già più piccata:

l’idea di lasciare il formato originario era proprio per evidenziare (con una rottura grafica) la fonte e il fatto che era un inserimento esterno… cmq per me non problem: esistono decine di presentazioni analoghe basate sugli stessi dati. Vorrà dire che prenderò da altri se vi da fastidio…

Ok, se non capisci, non capisci. Luca ha preso a quel punto la parola, e ne ha ricevuto risposte decisamente oltre le righe

l’unica cosa che mi sembra patetica è tutta la vostra assurda polemica.

così ha scritto il suo post.

Io più ci penso e più mi sento di dire che, se confondiamo Creative Commons con “raccattare qua e là qualcosa da mettere insieme sullo schermo” ci stiamo facendo molto male.

Il fair use, per come lo intendo io, significa che se qualcuno scrive qualcosa di interessante, io lo racconto ad altri, citando la fonte. Ma lo faccio mettendoci, di mio, almeno il lavoro di confezionare quell’informazione costruendo un discorso coerente.

Se poi voglio fare una presentazione come si deve, curo anche la coerenza grafica, ricostruisco torte e istogrammi, scelgo le foto, inserisco tutto il materiale non originale in uno schema uniforme.

Non c’è bisogno di essere un guru come Avinash Kaushik (vedi ad esempio una delle sue ultime presentazioni), basta leggersi un paio di libri o di blog (Luisa Carrada, Presentation Zen, Giacomo Mason, per citare i primi che mi vengono in mente) e lavorarci sopra.

È questione di rispetto per chi ci ascolta, e anche di fair use del tempo altrui; alla lunga, sono convinta che paghi.

E, se non altro, non si rischia di fare una bella figura di merda.

According to the Financial Times Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp and Microsoft have been in talks to create an exclusive deal ensuring that only Microsoft’s own “Bing” search engine carries Newscorp content. Microsoft obviously intend this as an attack on Google who are their main competitor in the developing cloud/distributed computing field. For Newscorp it’s more the bellow of a dinosaur confused and frightened and by the new world it finds itself in, similar to the repeated wailing and gnashing of teeth that has been coming from the entertainment industry ever since its attack on Napster and 12 year old girls failed to quench people’s desire to share. What neither company realises however is that far from hurting Google they are simply going to be improving the quality of the service it delivers.

Imagine a world where you are searching for news and no longer have to deal with the right wing garbage spewed forth by such wonderful resources as Fox News or The Sun! A world where should you want to look for the opinion of a right wing bigot you actually have to specifically go and look for it.! It will be like Daily Mail Island but in reverse. As tie goes on and people are exposed to less and less of the ignorance, bigotry and hatred that Newscorp loves so dearly we will enter a new age where people respect one another and don’t live in fear of one another.  A world with no Richard Littlejohn…

So Microsoft and Newscorp I salute you for your valiant attempt to commit sepuku in order to preserve the future for our children.

Oh and please don’t take the Glenn Beck videos off youtube, he’s funny as fuck.

The Grusome Twosome.

1. 
2. I’m pretty sure I can legally redistribute this under the fair use provision of the copyright act, but just in case wordpress takes it offline, download it and re-up it in ya own time

This week I’m revising a history of UCC Article 2B and UCITA. This has caused me to recall that just a decade ago, the great fear was that UCITA and digital rights management (DRM) would greatly enhance the power of publishers in the digital environment, and that fair use would cease to be an effective defense (or right, depending on one’s perspective) under U.S. copyright law. Because that legislation and copy protection technology promised to safeguard copyright owners’ property rights in literary works, the economic value of literary works in the digital environment seemed secure.

A decade later: UCITA was enacted in only 2 states (Maryland and Virginia); DRM is widely applied to literary works, but non-DRM copies of literary works proliferate; the U.S. Register of Copyrights has announced that, in her view, unauthorized digitization of entire copyrighted literary works, for the purpose of selling advertising against the digitized copies or portions of them, qualifies as fair use; accordingly, since the Register’s view amounts to a rejection of significant aspects of the property rights policies underlying the 1976 Copyright Act with respect to literary works, the economic value of literary works seems seriously threatened; and the strength of publishers appears substantially diminished. Today, fair use seems about to swallow up copyright owners’ exclusive rights in literary works. A startling turnaround in the course of ten years.

I predict that litigants will persuade federal courts to take Register Peters’s view of fair use and, slowly and steadily over time, extend it further and further, so that copyright protection for literary works becomes meaningless. And digitizers stand to profit not only from overt use of unauthorized copies, but as Joseph Esposito rightly points out, also from secret uses, such as data mining, that cannot be detected by copyright owners. The declining economic value of copyrighted literary works likely reflects the loss of revenue caused by both overt and covert uses of unauthorized digital copies.

As a result, say the wise publishing industry veterans of whose views I’m aware, we are preparing for a new publishing environment, in which authors and publishers attempt to generate revenue streams based, not on their property rights in the information they create or distribute (since those rights will have been effectively extinguished), but on services they provide in conjunction with that information. So mainstream publishing declines into a non-credentialed services industry, with enormous numbers of providers, engaged in fierce and unrelenting competition, with a predictable impact on the author’s ability to recoup his or her upfront cost of creating a literary work.

Judge Posner & Professor Landes long ago predicted what kinds of literary works were likely to dominate the market in the (effective) absence of copyright: “There would be increased incentives to create faddish, ephemeral, and otherwise transitory works because the gains from being first in the market for such works would be likely to exceed the losses from absence of copyright protection.” William M. Landes & Richard A. Posner, An Economic Analysis of Copyright Law, 18 J. Leg. Stud. 325, 332 (1989). That prediction was made in a predominantly print world; I’m very interested to see how it stands up in the digital environment.

Law school.

Divorce and suicide factory. Gateway to where I want to be in 5 minutes or 5 years. A chance to do good. An open door. A long, painful slog.

A place to close your mind to the world and study. $300,000 in loans I will spend 10 years paying off.

A chance to shine, to be among crazily-geeky policy wonks and fellow intellectuals. An elitist club for preppy frat boys only looking to make 100k after 3L.

A terrifyingly hierarchical, obsessively graded 3 years.

A place to get joyously lost in the law, to delve into my core beliefs about justice, to find my true intellectual home.

—

Every time I talk to law students, I swing between these beliefs like an overly enthusiastic metronome. So many lawyers I hear about hate their careers, and are fundamentally unhappy with the work they do. Of the lawyers I know, including my awesome uncle Pete, most of them are doing good and tangibly helping people. They are roughly as happy as my friends who are working in Computer Science, and tend to get the chance to act on their core beliefs more often than your average programmer.

When I think of the days I watched lawyers at Human Rights USA call up clients, help them prepare to fight to stay in the United States I can see myself doing that for years at a time. When we casually discussed the relationship between the UN Convention on Human Rights with US law, that was fun then and can only get more fun the more I know about it.

When I watched the lawyers at Human Rights USA struggle to influence and huge, and sometimes intractable legal system, I could see myself burning out on it. When my fellow interns, all of whom were law students, talked about the predatory, aggressive law student and lawyers, constantly looking for a 1-up in the fight to make Law Review or Partner, I could see a community of people I never want to associate.

The daily work of a lawyer involves a pile of paperwork (bleh), research (fun!), stilted writing (ugg) suffused with ethical arguments (yay!).

—

I keep on hoping my choice for a career will seem simple and clear. I went to a panel yesterday, which I helped put on, where current law school applicants talked about their experiences. So many of them saw this as their obvious career choice.

But as I keep growing and exploring, I know that I can foment justice in a socially conscious start-up, getting grants for a non-profit, writing for a magazine, working in the international giving department of a major tech company, working for the United States State Department, teaching as a Professor–or yes, being a lawyer.

I know I can find work I love and that fits my passions, with or without law school. The question I am face with, which anyone who is introspective and applying to law school is faced with is: is this the best use of my talents?

Given the people I know I like to work with, the kind of work I like to do, and the impact I want to make in this world, is law the only place I can find my true home? No. The best place?

That’s a question I am still working on.

Inspirational Quote:

You see, I’d recently committed to a non-negotiable understanding with myself. I’d committed to “The End of Suffering.” I’d finally managed to exile the voices in my head that told me my personal happiness was only as good as my outward success, rooted in things that were often outside my control. I’d seen the insanity of that equation and decided to take responsibility for my own happiness. And I mean all of it.

–Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear.

Paul Zukofsky, the son of poets Louis and Celia Zukofsky, has published an amazing Copyright Notice, in which he threatens to bring down a storm of litigation on anyone who dares to quote his parents without paying him the required fee. Describing his letter as “an obvious ‘do not trespass’ sign,” he says:

Despite what you may have been told, you may not use LZ’s words as you see fit, as if you owned them, while you hide behind the rubric of ‘fair use’. ‘Fair use’ is a very-broadly defined doctrine, of which I take a very narrow interpretation, and I expect my views to be respected. We can therefore either more or less amicably work out the fees that I demand; you can remove all quotation; or we can turn the matter over to lawyers, this last solution being the worst of the three, but one which I will use if I need to enforce my rights.

PZ may “expect [his] views to be respected,” but his expectations are not exactly the sort that are legally protected. Essentially, PZ is making a threat that either you do not use the work or pay him if you do, or else he will pursue you with vicious, expensive litigation that, while is unlikely to succeed on the merits, will bankrupt any grad student long before the merits could be reached.

This not an idle threat. Glancing around, I found a few examples of where scholarly commentary on Louis Zukofsky has been removed due to legally dubious copyright infringement claims made by PZ. He seems intent on making good on the threat contained in his Copyright Notice:

“In general, as a matter of principle, and for your own well-being, I urge you to not work on Louis Zukofsky, and prefer that you do not. Working on LZ will be far more trouble than it is worth.”

Despite P. Zukofsky’s assertions that his motivations are “almost purely economic,” and that he is merely protecting his financial interest when he “insist[s] on deriving income from that property,” I suspect money is not the true issue. First, istis quite obvious that the stance PZ is taking will lead to less income from the copyrights he now holds. By forbidding any substantive commentary on his parents, he is ensuring that their works will rush prematurely headlong into a grave of literary obscurity — as with no one talking about their poetry or discussing their works, there are no new potential fans to become intrigued enough to purchase a copy of the Zukofskys’ poetry for their own.

But second, and more importantly, the “Copyright Notice” is not at all some dry and dour admonishment, written in legalese, as you would expect with a true peremptory cease & desist notice, but rather it is a self-aware “irascible [and] recalcitrant” rant. It reveals too much about the author himself, such as his apparent daddy issues, (“I hardly give a damn what is said about my father (I am far more protective of my mother)”), to not have been intended as a form of literary speech in itself, separate from any legal warning it may also convey. This becomes most obvious in the letter’s following paragraph, in which PZ mocks the uselessness of grad students and their dissertations on poetry:

I can perhaps understand your misguided interest in literature, music, art, etc. I would be suspicious of your interest in Louis Zukofsky, but might eventually accept it. I can applaud your desire to obtain a job, any job, although why in your chosen so-called profession is quite beyond me; but one line you may not cross i.e. never never ever tell me that your work is to be valued by me because it promotes my father. Doing that will earn my life-long permanent enmity. Your self-interest(s) I may understand, perhaps even agree with; but beyond that, in the words of e.e.cummings quoting Olaf: “there is some s[hit] I will not eat”.

e.e.cummings is, of course, still under copyright, and by all indication PZ is not nearly so dense that he could have lacked awareness at the irony of quoting another poet in a diatribe about how no one should ever quote the Zukofskys. The use of the copyrighted quotation was a deliberate act by PZ. Moreover, Louis Zukofsky himself wrote many volumes of critical commentary– the “so-called profession” PZ refers to with scorn is his father’s own profession, and many of the copyrights that PZ is trying to protect are rights in poetry critiques. So I do not believe that PZ could have been less than fully aware that his actions are an abuse of copyright and contrary to his own father’s feelings on poetry; instead, PZ’s Copyright Notice is itself a critique of Zukofsky scholarship, albeit one unfortunately backed with the color of law.

Paul Zukofsky is brilliant and accomplished in his own right, and I actually cannot find it in me to condemn his instinct to protect and control the literary works of his parents, as well as their legacy. It’s the asinine structure of our copyright system that is to blame, for giving PZ the power to wield the American legal system against scholarship he dislikes, or to shut down any criticisms or homages of his parents that he disagrees with. Copyright’s only true purpose is to provide incentives for future creators — instead, perversely, under our laws today, copyright’s purpose has become to serve whatever whims the copyright holder might have, even if that whim is to have a poet’s work never be discussed again.

-Susan

p.s. If you want to at least listen to Zukofsky’s works, a bunch are available online here.

p.p.s.: Or read LZ’s Poetry/For My Son When He Can Read. The closing paragraph takes on a new meaning in light of Paul Zukofsky’s attempts to prevent others from finding new meaning in LZ’s own poetry:

“Writing this Paul, for a time when you can read, I do not presume that you will read ‘me.’ That ‘me’ will be lost today when he says good night on your third birthday, and not missed tomorrow when he says good morning as you begin your fourth year. It took all human time to nurse those greetings. And how else can the poet speak them but as a poet.”

Except Viacom might have a little less contempt for you than it might originally be thought.  The General Counsel at Viacom (the entertainment behemoth responsible for Showtime, MTV, Comedy Central, BET, Paramount Pictures, and a slew of other holdings) recently addressed Yale law students, and he let them know that suing infringers felt like terrorism, and that he’s a big fan–really!–of fair use. What he’s most interested in, he says, is copying the entirety of a particular content.  (Source)  (He’s also a fan of DRM–though not in the way it’s been implemented, and of three-strikes laws, which is something’s I’m planning on taking up a little later.)

There’s a video of the talk on YouTube, and it might be worth taking a look-see.

Several years ago, friend-of-the-site RationalWiki posted a stunningly thorough side-by-side refutation of a Conservapedia article on creationism. Conservapedia, naturally, could offer no argument in defense, but happily threatened the site with a copyright suit, because if you can’t beat ‘em, sue ‘em, “fair use” notwithstanding.

Now, history is set to repeat itself. Another RationalWiki user has posted a thorough, well-sourced, compelling refutation of William Dembski’s latest attempt to ground creationism in science, and rather than engage in a debate on the merits, Dembski himself is now threatening to sue.

By means of background, Dembski is not a lawyer. But it’s common knowledge that U.S. copyright law explicitly preserves the right to excerpt a work, even substantially, for comment and criticism. See 17 U.S.C. § 107. Dembski’s complaint against RationalWiki is so wrong that no lawyer would take it; and if they did, they’d be laughed out of court. But it’s still further proof that (1) creationists can only protect their views by censorship and, (2) they’re willing to ignore established law when convenient, be it the Establishment Clause or federal copyright statutes.

Disappointing to be sure, but not surprising. Though the Bible may not be much for science, it does have some good insights on human nature. And as the author of Ecclesiastes would’ve put it, “there is nothing new under the sun” (1:9-14).

U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup ruled on Friday that Psystar was guilty of copyright infringement against Apple, according to Natalie Weinstein of CNET. The whole case revolves around Apple’s Mac operating system. Unlike Windows or Linux, which you can install on whatever hardware you like, Apple only wants the Mac OS to belong to Apple computers.

That hasn’t stopped hundreds of enterprising hackers from building their own machines and installing Mac OS X. But because Apple designed the operating system with a particular hardware and BIOS configuration in mind, the OS doesn’t always work properly on an unauthorized machine. And the process of installing a non-native operating system is complicated and can require a lot of troubleshooting — it’s not something the computer novice should attempt.

That’s where Psystar stepped in. The fact that hackintoshes (the common name for a PC running the Mac OS) exist shows that people want computers running the Mac OS but they don’t want an actual Apple computer. Maybe they don’t like Apple’s product design, or perhaps they feel that the Mac line of computers is too expensive. In 2008, Psystar began to sell PCs running the Mac operating system. The company took care of the tricky process of installing the OS on non-Apple hardware (though Psystar also explained that the computer might not always behave as it should).

Apple slapped Psystar with a lawsuit claiming the company had infringed upon Apple’s copyright by installing the Mac OS on non-Apple hardware. Psystar countered that its approach fell under the protection of fair use. Psystar also said that Apple’s licensing agreement was unfair because it created a monopoly for machines running Mac OS.

The judge has sided with Apple on these matters, stating that Psystar is guilty of copyright-infringement and violating the Digital Media Copyright Act. Whether this means Psystar will have to stop selling their PCs remains to be seen. In December, the two companies will meet in court again as Apple lays further claims against Psystar, including trademark infringement.

This isn’t going to stop people from building their own hackintoshes. As long as Apple stays out of the netbook game, people will try to find ways to create their own Mac netbooks. It’s just going to take a lot more work than buying a computer from Psystar.

If you want to hear more about Psystar and hackintoshes, there are two episodes of TechStuff in which Chris and I discuss them.

Learn more about operating systems at HowStuffWorks.com:

How Operating Systems Work
How Hackers Work
How Copyright Works

The following new free resources on copyright have just come to my attention:

Copyright Watch: Hosted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, CW includes a user-friendly database of national copyright laws from around the world, and a blog; the site is intended to be a place to share information about copyright legislation and developments on a global level.

Columbia University Libraries Copyright Resource page: Includes some excellent summaries and tools, including case summaries, model agreements, and much more; I particularly like the Fair Use checklist.

“Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums” : a new book by Peter Hirtle, Emily Hudson and Andrew T. Kenyon from Cornell University Libraries, available as a free download.

A few days ago Rupert Murdoch (of News Corp) announced to Sky News Australia, that he was going to remove all of their news content from search engines (including Google News). News Corp owns a number of newspapers (notably the Wall Street Journal) and is presumably frustrated with giving away its valuable news content for free. I understand the challenge that newspaper publishers face in the Internet age, but there are (at least) two problems with this strategy: News Corp doesn’t hold a monopoly on news coverage, and people don’t like to pay for content at all.

You can find the story in numerous places online. Here’s a short story from the BBC (a news organization!) and a more humorous account from Wired.

Here’s some loot that I stole from that book I’ve been reading, lovingly screencapped from Google Books. The guy she quotes, Krause, represents the ideas about textual ownership that evaporated in 18th century Germany.

So let’s think about my thievery here for a second (if that’s what it is). When I read that passage, I thought, “Holy smokes, I need to type this passage out and put it online.” If I had done so, there would surely be no breach of law; any claim that Krause’s estate might have ever been able to make about his intellectual property claim for this text–which he clearly wouldn’t want to make anyway!–has long since expired. Though I didn’t check, I have no doubt that his quote is in the public domain.

But instead of typing it, I saved myself some trouble by copying the screen from the Google Books scan of two pages of Woodmansee’s copyrighted book and then pasting them together with Photoshop. And that means, perhaps, that I’ve stolen the trouble that was spent back in 1994 to find and choose and translate this passage of Krause’s, massage it into original text, lay it out on the page, and publish the book that Google scanned. Is a screen shot of an actual book scan considered differently by the law than text that was retyped? And concerning fair use, it’s good that I only used a teensy bit of Woodmansee’s book, but it’s kind of up in the air if I’m using this image for any remixed new sort of purpose, since I’m really praising it–but I’m also saying more than that, aren’t I? Does my Photoshopping (can you find the seams in the image?) count as artistic or rhetorical manipulation for a new purpose?

Part of what makes the Fair(y) Use Tale so important is the the use of YouTube.  Since it’s creation in 2005, YouTube has provided an outlet for home grown creativity.  While maybe in yesteryear a creative young soul might have enough money to buy a second hand camera, shoot a short film, he was limited to showing it to his friends.  While mass production techniques had been applied to almost every other area of life…no one was thinking about mass production of creativity.  And I’m not talking about Mass Production Model T style where you can have it in any-color-as-long-as-it’s-black production.  I’m talking sheer volume.  Because, say that kid does manage to get a second hand camera.  He’s got to know what to do with it.  He needs to know how to edit, how to splice film, run a projector, make copies…what ever it is that he has to do to get that film in viewable form.  Now…pshhht.  Most (if not all) PCs and Macs come standard with video editing software.  With a few video clips and some easy dragging anyone can create a short film, and with the click of a button, open it up to the critique of millions.
And this opens up a new dialogue of creativity, legality, and the movement of technology that a Fair(y) Use Tale tries to discuss.  It is of almost negligible importance that Faden created this video for his class.  His real intent was to post it on YouTube.  Not only an example of time, skill, effort–it is utterly relevant.  Here is a video that has the perfect combination of elements to make it a viral sensation, and it is speaking to those people who use YouTube for its intended purpose: user generated creativity.  I would argue, and I think Faden would agree, that the idea of policing YouTube for anything other than outright copying of movies, films, tv shows, etc is ridiculous.  Therefore the application of copyright is ridiculous.

The other can of worms that this video (and what it represents) so deftly pries open, is what it means to be creative anymore.  It is an idea that Paul Miller (DJ Spooky to many) refers to in his essay Loops of Perception.  The idea that nothing new is created, just “remixed”; adapted to exist in a new time and age.  To use my previous example of The Thief and the Cobbler and Aladdin: first, there was an oral tradition in the Middle East, and one of the stories was of the poor tailor’s son “Alāʼ ad-Dīn” which was Anglicized to Aladdin.  Eventually, new media caught up to the spoken folk tale and it was written down to be included in the book A Thousand and One Nights.  After this it continually shifted forms.  Soon, we get The Thief and the Cobbler, which, granted has made some significant changes but any one can see that its foundations are in the original story.  We have some cross pollination of animators and suddenly you have some very similar characters to be found in the hit Disney film,  Aladdin.  Great, so we have a rip off, of a rip off, of a rip off.  Where is this going?  Well, now, on YouTube you get things like this. So who owns it?  The creator fingolfin897? Disney?  Mirimax?  The poor goat herder a thousand years ago who came up with a tale to entertain his grandkids?  Rather hard to decide isn’t it.

Este video, que proviene de la Media Education Foundation,  utiliza una serie de pequeños clips tomados de varias películas muy conocidas de Disney para enseñarnos sobre la Ley de Copyright norteamericana y el Fair Use.

A parte de ser muy valioso como documento educativo pues explica de manera clara, sencilla y divertida los conceptos básicos del Copyright, es también una “prueba de campo” sobre el Fair Use pues utiliza material protegido, propiedad de Walt Disney Co.  Ojo al momento en que hablan del Fair Use, refiriéndose a él como una posible defensa legal si utilizamos material protegido sin autorización y no como un derecho a utilizar material sin dicha autorización.

(Vía Bibliotecas 2 punto y pico)

In a move unprecedented by any major publication of any kind, much less the audience-starved newspaper industry, News Corporation founder Rupert Murdoch threatened to make the entirety of his media empire “invisible to Google users” when it launches its much-anticipated paid-content strategy.

It has been noted that to do so is extremely easy, as all it takes to prevent the indexing of a website is to include a robots.txt file explicitly telling automated search “bots” from, well, indexing the site. However, despite this ease of implementation, News Corporation media sites such as Fox News and Wall Street Journal remain fully indexed by Google’s news aggregate.

What are Murdoch’s motives for doing so?

The driving force behind Murdoch’s decree is almost certainly ideological in nature. It has been speculated that taking News Corporation off of Google’s search engines amounts to a nearly 25% decrease in readership, amounting to a loss of readership numbered in the millions across the world.

However, two key tenets to Murdoch’s media philosophy could very well overshadow this fact. The first is simply that Murdoch believes that news aggregates are a form of intellectual property theft. This is despite the fact that aggregates like Google News only “samples” the first paragraph or so of an article and provide a link to the actual website, driving readers directly to the news publisher.

However, to Murdoch, even this sampling of the first paragraph or so amounts to theft. While such samplings have traditionally been legally considered “fair use,” Murdoch heavily disagrees with the practice.

To quote him directly, “There’s a doctrine called fair use, which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether… but we’ll take that slowly.”

What are the consequences of News Corps pulling out of web searchability?

Pure numbers. Physical media now only penetrates roughly 13% of US households, and the loss of the online audience threatens quite clearly to turn the News Corps owned publications obsolete.

As noted by Twitter commentators, it is expected that the loss of News Corps’ presence on online aggregates would give more focus and attention to its rival businesses.

another link from Wired this morning: pro bono group’s challenge to patent on naturally-occurring genetic material allowed to proceed:

U.S. District Judge Robert W. Sweet of New York, in ruling that the case may proceed to trial, noted that the litigation might open the door to challenges of a host of other patented genes. About one-fifth of the human genome is covered under patent applications and claims.

Allowing patents on genes isolated from living things is bad policy, because it delays and imposes costs on important research even while it raises administrative costs by promoting speculative land-rush patent filing. The patent act was never meant to encompass natural phenomena, and the last 20 years of biotech patenting can only be explained by the fact that 20 years ago, patent examiners and judges didn’t understand the science well enough to reject these claims on the grounds that the claimed “invention” was occurring on its own, naturally, without human intervention.

Hopefully this is just another sign of an ongoing rollback in the scope of patentable subject matter. If Bilski ends the era of business method patents, it will probably have the collateral effect of putting a stake through the heart of software patents at the same time. If this case about gene patents is also carried through effectively, we’ll have come a long way back towards sanity in the US patent system.

And, incidentally, created a lot of work for patent litigators specialized in challenging business method, software, and gene patents on behalf of new market entrants.

I think that it is fairly well known that Disney not only takes ideas from other sources but that it recycles its own work as well.  Here are some Youtube clips that make it abundantly clear. More after the jump.

Also, I mentioned previously that there are some very distinct similarities between The Lion King and a less well known Japanese film, Kimba the White Lion…hey isn’t the main character in The Lion King named Kimba?  Oh wait, no…it’s Simba!  Silly me…they don’t sound anything alike!  Any way, this website has done a fantastic job breaking down the similarities between these two films.  Definitely an enlightening read.

Intellectual property is anything that result from intellectual activities, such as artistic creations, literature, scientific discoveries, and inventions. There are laws granting the owners time-limited rights to the use of his/her creation, protecting the owners (individual or business) from unlawful use of their creation by other parties and also to allow other parties to make use of such creation in certain manners. These laws do not protect the physical products themselves, but the intellectual portion of the creation.

The Fairey/Associated Press case centers around the agrument about Fairey referencing an AP photograph, taken by photographer Mannie Garcia, and produces his iconic “HOPE” poster and associated merchandise. In February this year, the Associated Press claimed that poster artist Shepard Fairey violated copyright laws by using one of the photographs by Garcia, created his poster art and maintained all the quintessential details of the image, and, the AP is, therefore, entitled to licensing fees and damages. In response, Fairey filed a lawsuit against the Associated Press and argued that his transformation of the art is protected until the fair use provision of the copyright laws. He also pointed out that he referenced a different image from the one that the AP claimed that he used.

Mannie Garcia claimed that he owns the rights to the image in discussion because he was never an AP employee. Instead, he’s a freelance photographer and he never signed the rights of his images to the AP. So, early July, he filed a motion to be admitted to be part of the defendents, siding with the AP against Fairey.

To further complicate this case, on October 16, Fairey admitted to the public that his initial claim of using a different AP image was false. He also admitted that, in order to conceal his mistake, he submitted different images to the court and destroyed some other ones. While the Associated Press reported that Fairey’s attorneys have withdrawn from the lawsuit, Anthony Falzone, one of Fairey’s attorneys denied it. Falzone said that they still believe strongly that the main issues are fair use and free expression, and they believe Fairey will win on both grounds. However, yesterday, Fairey successfully obtained permission from the court to switch his legal team, despite opposition from the Associated Press.

After researching several sources regarding the fair use doctrine, I found myself as confused as I was before the study. Perhaps it is because of all the legal jargons that I cannot understand; or perhaps the law is just so ambiguous that the court has to decide on a case by case basis, but here’s how I feel: According to copyright laws, reproduction of copyrighted materials may be considered fair if it’s used as “criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.” In the case of Fairey vs. the Associated Press, Fairey’s posters and other related merchandise do not fall under any of these categories. If Fairey was to “reference” the said image for his own enjoyment in creating his art, I feel that it can be considered fair use. However, if he chose the image knowing that the resulting work will be used for commerce, it would have been necessary for him to obtain proper permission prior to using it in order to, if nothing else, cover his own basis.

These days, just about everything published is copyrighted. This is to protect the creators so other people cannot freely use or reproduce their hard work. At the same time, all artists get their inspirations from other people or their surroundings, but this doesn’t mean that we can assume it is appropriate to use someone else’s work. While the case is still going on and we have yet to find out how the court is going to rule in this legal battle, we should all keep this in mind when “referencing” other people’s creations. Or, better yet, create our own originals.

I used to work for a small design firm. Toward the end of my tenure there, we were to design a catalog for a new client. During our initial meeting, our client brought us their company and product information along with a competitor’s catalog for referencing. This catalog was formatting in a creative way that was unlike any other that we’d seen. My boss / creative director decided to copy the exact format of the competitor’s catalog and replace the information with our client’s. I remember feeling odd at the time but did not question but followed his directions. As soon as the catalog was printed and distributed, our client received a letter from the competitor, stating the violation of copyright laws and requested a cease-and-desist. I contacted my boss, my production director as well as our printer and they all decided to ignore the matter. Nothing happened between then and the time when I left the company, and I didn’t hear anything about it afterwards. I hope our client was able to resolve the issue with their peers without any legal trouble.

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/04/ap-accuses-shepard-fairey_n_164045.html

http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/

http://markberkeygerard.com/?p=456

http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/content_display/photo-news/legal-news/e3i30319b161b10e5dc4f2cf70da19d7036

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/10/shepard-fairey-admits-to-wrongdoing-in-associated-press-lawsuit.html

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/10/shepard-faireys-lawyers-say-that-have-not-withdrawn-from-ap-case.html

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/11/judge-rules-shepard-fairey-can-switch-lawyers-in-ap-case.html

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html