Archives for March 2006
Slate: The Secret of George Mason
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How Much Can You Protect Your Photographs on the Internet?
Great article by a photographer on Newsvine about protecting your pictures online. The takeaway: “I don’t know of anything that will absolutely guarantee that no one will ever be able to take your image from the internet. . . . If you’re terribly concerned about your images being stolen don’t put them on the internet. It’s really that simple.” To me the conflict over copying on the net is a case of clashing norms. It’s a widely accepted practice on the net to use pictures you find elsewhere on the net to illustrate your blog, etc., even though doing so is clearly copyright infringement. The norm in the physical world is just the opposite; copying is not accepted. Laws tend to follow norms, so I wonder if we’ll see a change for copying photos/artwork the same way we have seen the accepted norm of search engine caching websites (basically copying the entire copyrighted contents of sites) become the law.WSJ: Who’s Your Daddy?
Bridget Dooling and I have an article in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal. It’s the Rule of Law column and, not surprisingly, it’s on orphan works. Here’s a bit:Fiddling with copyright terms and registration, however, would require not only the abrogation of several international intellectual property treaties, but also the political will in Congress to stand up to movie and publishing lobbies. Luckily, a much simpler solution is possible, and an orphan works component can be snapped into the existing copyright system. Congress can create an affirmative defense — along the lines of fair use — for those who copy a work after trying unsuccessfully to locate the copyright owner.
D.C. Statehood: Popular as Dirt
A Washington Post poll finds that by a margin of 58% to 22% Americans do not want to grant statehood to the District of Columbia. The problem, it seems to me, is the emphasis on statehood instead of representation. The question asked was, “Do you favor or oppose making Washington, D.C., a separate state?” If the question had been, “Do you favor or oppose citizens of Washington, D.C., having representation in Congress?” the results might have been different. As I’ve argued before, there are other ways to achieve representation without statehood. My favorite is to limit the District of Columbia to the Mall (and include the Capitol, the Supreme Court, and the White House), and give everything else back to Maryland. I’m not sure they’d want us, though.So What’s With All These Legal Bloggers, Anyway?
“The reason blogs are popular among lawyers, writes [Cameron] Stracher, is that ‘few professions combine as much creative talent with so much mind-numbing work.’”Patry on the copyleft crowd
Here’s a fair use scholar after my own heart. Speaking about NYU’s upcoming fair use symposium: “I learn from testing my own understanding, a testing that rarely occurs within a group of like-minded dynamic activists whipping themselves up into a self-congratulatory frenzy of group wisdom and celebrity status. As Wynton Marsalis said, ‘the humble improve.’ Others don’t. … Many, many mistakes were made in every single one of the various term extension court challenges, arising, I think, not only from abject inexperience with the litigation process, but also from a false visionary environment in which apparently no one could see the fatally flawed approaches being advocated because everyone was a true believer. I would hate to see the very real problems confronting fair use go the way of term extension, and that’s why I fear that the NYU event may be more harmful than helpful.”Obituary of the week: Madeleine P. Cosman
“Ms. Cosman also leaves behind a vast library of illuminated manuscripts and a large collection of handguns.” I was lucky enough to spend some time with her and she was a wonderful lady.Libertarian DMCA brouhaha
Patrick Ross has an acerbic response to Tim Lee’s excellent paper on the anti-circumvention aspects of the DMCA. Ross can’t help but take some low blows, but I’ll let Tim defend himself–I can’t wait. One curious thing is that Ross never mention’s Tim’s name; he repeatedly refers to Tim only as “the author.” What’s up with that?CIO maps ownership of net’s backbone
“So what can we conclude by looking at this? For starters, while AT&T and Verizon are clearly the two biggest owners at the core (they dwarf Qwest, the other remaining baby bell), they don’t own anywhere near enough for us to be worried about a monopoly. Also, the cable companies really own very little of the core, which isn’t much of a surprise since they are primarily focused on the last mile. Nonetheless, it is startling to see.”
“Red is Verizon; blue AT&T; yellow Qwest; green is major backbone players like Level 3 and Sprint Nextel; black is the entire cable industry put together; and gray is everyone else, from small telecommunications companies to large international players who only have a small presence in the U.S. If you click on the map it will take you to much bigger version complete with labels that tell you the address of many of the routers.” Here’s the original article.
Images of orphans
On their blog, the Stock Artist Alliance continues to post disingenuous entries that suggest that it is impossible to locate the copyright owner of an image found online. They surf the web and grab a few images, then they post them on their site (not the originals, mind you, but a composite image that you can’t use to track back using filename or file size data — they’ve done this here and here), and then they dare anyone to find where they came from. In yesterday’s post they write,We searched the internet and found these eight images from a variety of sources. It was easy enough to find them, but would not be easy to find some of them again. None had file names that were helpful, and none had any metadata at all. So if you cannot locate the source after doing your own “diligent search,” should you feel free to use them anyway?
First, the SAA never reveals where it got the photos. If I found a photo on a website and I wanted to use it and the filename wasn’t helpful and there was no metadata, I would not throw my hands up in the air. I would quite simply contact the owner of the website where I found the picture. This person might be the copyright owner or at least will be able to tell me where they got the picture providing me my first lead in a reasonable search. The SAA seems to ignore that one can take the context of the picture into consideration; uncredited photos are not simply flying around cyberspace.
Context means a lot. For example, without saying which photo and which specific site, the SAA explains that one of their sample photos comes from a U.S. government site and seems to imply that the government owns the copyright. Knowing that context is helpful because U.S. government works are in the public domain by law and anyone is free to copy them.
Second, the fact that works are uncredited is a problem. However, one the causes of that problem is that authors/owners today feel free to release those works without attribution knowing that they will retain their full rights and that they will be able to pop out, sue, and collect heavy damages from an unsuspecting user who couldn’t find them to ask for permission. So, in many cases, authors/owners don’t bother putting attribution on their works. An orphan works law would help remedy this by giving author/owners an incentive to mark their works and to make sure they stay marked.
Penguin donkey
twentytwentyone: “First designed in 1939 to hold penguin books, the penguin donkey has become a classic piece of design. The central section is great for holding books and magazines, and it also holds up to 80 paperback books. This model is made from natural birch.” Only £451. I like how they’re not trying to fool you by saying it’s £449.
Shoplifting Bush aide spoke at my comencement
Earlier this week I had heard the news that a Bush domestic policy adviser who has been charged with shoplifting, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. This morning I clicked on a link to read a story about the guy, Claude Allen, and when I saw his picture he looked very familiar to me. It turns out he was the guy who gave the commencement address at my law school graduation. His speech was rambling and not very good. He brought up his religion, which didn’t sit well with some folks. One student refused to shake his hand when he went up to get his diploma and Allen told him that he had to. I hope this year alma mater, which I love, looks beyond the administration for a speaker.On-Demand political ads
Hotline On Call has an interesting piece on how political advertising may soon hit your TiVo or DVR. “Since DVR advertising isn’t bound by the same constraints as TV or radio, campaigns can run spots of up to 60 minutes and let viewers decide which messages they’ll watch. Comcast has even established a clearly recognized ‘Election 2006′ link, uniformly positioned in all 22 available markets.” Hat tip Political Wire.Who died and made him king of the jungle?
Hilarious. From the WSJ: “Should tigers, ducks, and whales be allowed to cash in on the use of their likenesses by, say, Exxon, Aflac, and Pacific Life? The Economist reports that a Canadian filmmaker named Gregory Colbert thinks so, and is in the process of setting up an organization he’s calling the Animal Copyright Foundation. Starting next year, the foundation hopes to ‘collect one percent of a media buy, including print, broadcast and internet, that uses animals.’ Colbert plans to then donate 99% of the money to conservation projects.”Functionalfate.org
This is the site of Jen Thiel, who is working on the “first extensive monograph and a museum exhibition about the monobloc plastic chair, the most successful and most unloved piece of furniture of our culture.” The pictures on the site are great, showing the monoblock in every situation imaginable in every part of the world. It’s amazing how ubiquitous these things are, and it’s even more amazing that if you really look at them, they’re not that ugly.
Google wins a court battle
In this article about today’s decision in Parker v. Google, C-NET quotes the court thus: “When an ISP automatically and temporarily stores data without human intervention so that the system can operate and transmit data to its users, the necessary element of volition (willful intent to infringe) is missing.” But that bit in parentheses (not brackets, I note) was added by C-NET and is very misleading. Willful infringement is a whole other animal. What the court did here is give credence to the idea that copyright infringement includes a volitional element; that is, that a human must make a conscious decision to carry out the copying. Willfulness, on the other hand, means that the copying was not only volitional, but that the copier knew what he was doing was wrong and did it anyway. Willful infringement carries stiffer penalties than plain old infringement, and can even be criminal.Patry: “The direct infringement holding in Parker may be a very welcome harbinger that courts are becoming more realistic about the way the Internet works and moving, finally, away from the misreading of ‘copy’ perpetuated by MAI v. Peak.” That would be welcome news indeed. I wonder how this could be applied to the Google Print case? There is no more volition in deciding to digitize and archive the entire collection of University of Michigan’s library than there is in deciding to archive USENET, especially if the book scanning is all done automatically. Google reportedly uses a top-secret proprietary automatic book-scanning machine for the process.
UPDATE: I wrote to the C-NET reporter and she changed the quote to the way it is in the court order. Nice to know they care.
Mid-Modern on Fox’s “24″: Interview with set decorator Cloudia Rebar
One more reason why I love this show. This season several of the sets have great modern designs. President Charles Logan’s home is totally mid-century, and the apartment of short-lived baddy Jacob Rossler had a very minimalist 60s decor.
PTO rejects Damon Wayans application to trademark the “N” word
He wants to use it as the name for his new clothing line. “And it turns out that Wayans’s idea isn’t all that original. The files at the patent and trademark office are littered with the remains of ‘dead’ applications seeking exclusive rights to one or another version of the N-word.” It doesn’t look like he’s going to get it either Quoth the Trademark Act:No trademark by which the goods of the applicant may be distinguished from the goods of others shall be refused registration on the principal register on account of its nature unless it (a) Consists of or comprises immoral, deceptive, or scandalous matter; or matter which may disparage or falsely suggest a connection with persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt, or disrepute … .
But this doesn’t mean he can’t use it. He just won’t be able to enjoy some special legal benefits of registration.
Obituary of the week: Robert C. Baker, inventor of the chicken nugget
“McDonald’s is often given credit for inventing chicken nuggets in 1979, but the groundwork was laid by Dr. Baker’s contributions in the 1960’s in developing ways to bind chicken meat together and make the coating stick to the reconstituted meat.”Hop on My Bandwidth
Fellow Tech Liberation contributor and Brainwash colleague Tim Lee has an op-ed in the NYT today on Wi-Fi piggybacking. Congrats to him! He writes: “Perhaps the biggest problem is that many people leave their networks open from ignorance. … More user education is needed. A big part of that job falls to the companies that make wireless networking devices.” I thought I’d read somewhere that standard contracts for broadband service make you promise to keep your wireless network closed, although that’s hardly an enforceable clause. But if they care, maybe they’re the ones that should invest in education. They’re also the best situated to show you how to protect your network when they install the service.-
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This is the personal site of Jerry Brito, a lawyer and writer in Washington, D.C. He’s an academic researcher and the creator of Unclutterer and several other blogs. More »
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