Techdirt.

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:36:00 PST

Steve Worona has a great post pointing out how the record labels have a clear cognitive dissonance (the ability to hold two totally conflicting ideas in your head at the same time -- and argue for both of them) when it comes to the question of whether or not an iTunes purchase represents a "sale" or not. He puts forth three examples of such cognitive dissonance in the legal context, with the final one being taken from two recent legal cases involving major record labels: Example 1, the case of the kettle. As summarized by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, “Readers who’ve been to law school may remember the chestnut known as the ‘Case of the Kettle’. A man is charged with borrowing a kettle and breaking it. His reply is that, first, he never borrowed it; second, it was already broken when he borrowed it; third, it was intact when he returned it.” Example 2, the case of the dog. Paraphrasing from a 1978 Wall Street Journal article about well-known Texas defense attorney Richard “Racehorse” Haynes: You say my dog bit you, but I don’t own a dog, and he doesn’t bite, and you kicked him first. Example 3, digital downloads. Two recent court cases hinge on how the sale of an MP3 download compares to the sale of a conventional physical recording, known as a “phonorecord” in Copyright-speak. In one case, the singer Eminem demanded that Universal Music Group calculate his royalties for downloads based on the higher rate for licensed material instead of the lower rate for phonorecord sales. UMG refused, arguing that the sale of an MP3 download was the same as a phonorecord sale. In the second case, EMI filed suit against ReDigi, a company that allows purchasers of MP3 downloads to resell those files under Copyright law’s “first sale” doctrine. EMI argued that the MP3 files were not phonorecords and thus not subject to first sale. What's being discussed here, of course, are two cases that we've covered. The Eminem case involved whether or not an iTunes purchase counted as a "sale" like a CD, where there was a very low royalty rate (probably around 15%), or as a "license" like for a movie, where the royalty rate was more like 50%. Universal argued stringently, and continues to argue in a series of follow-up cases, that an iTunes purchase is just like a CD purchase, and the much lower rates apply. However, in the ReDigi case -- where the company is trying to argue that if an iTunes purchase is just like a sale, then clearly the "first sale doctrine" applies and those files can be resold -- EMI, which is in the process of being acquired by Universal, argues that an iTunes sale is a license, and thus there's no first sale. Worona sums it up beautifully: Putting these two arguments together, we see the music industry imagining transactions where what’s sold is a phonorecord but what’s purchased isn’t. To me this seems like the Schrödinger's Cat of copyright law. According to the record labels, if we're talking about it from the seller's perspective, it's a sale. But the second you flip the equation and look at it from the buyer's perspective, it's a license. The cat is simultaneously dead and alive. Either the major labels are full of it... or they're breaking new ground in quantum physics. I'll assume it's the former, rather than the latter.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story [...]

SOPA Strikedown Aftermath: Old Media Cannot Tell The Narrative Of One Million People

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:33:00 PST

As the political victory from the SOPA strikedown sinks in, reflections over old media's role take its place. We know that old media -- unidirectional media such as TV, newspapers, radio -- barely covered SOPA at all. We also know that this has political reasons, as their owners didn't want to draw attention to the issue. But even at the apex of the fightback, on January 18, old media barely mentioned what was happening. This is very noteworthy in itself. I can't see this in any other light than old media being conceptually unable to tell the narrative of millions of people fighting against a powerful few dozen. It's not just that they chose not to -- it's that their very construction makes it as impossible for them to communicate those events as it would be for a color-blind person to communicate the impressions of a blue-period Picasso. Old media, after all, is built on the premise of large organizations competing for resources; its narrative is dependent on pitting two powerful representatives against each other to portray their respective interests and let them battle it out in public. Old media consists of large corporations that can only portray conflicts between other large organizations. This established old media style, which focuses on the pretense of impartiality, has sometimes been called "he-said, she-said journalism," pronounced with a small but well-deserved hint of disrespect. The copyright monopoly industries had no problems producing a trained, charismatic debater who would probably win in any televised debate against a random person of one of the millions of activists. But in the end, it didn't matter: it was the millions that made the difference and won. To put this in context, how did we see the SOPA debate play out, we who get our news on the net? We don't get our news from one source, but from hundreds, maybe thousands. You could easily model this as the cherry-picking of a typical newspaper -- I read a couple of political blogs, some comics, a couple of current affairs, eight real-time Twitter streams, and so on. The sum of it all could be made to resemble a newspaper on an ordinary day. But there is a crucial difference in the net's cross-communication between information sources. When all of our hundreds of different news sources start to converge around and resonate with each other on one single topic, as happened with SOPA, then all of us sense that immediately. Immediately. Old media is not capable of communicating that sense of powerful resonance. You would not see a message of political urgency instead of your usual comics on the comic page, for instance. But on the net, that happened for us with The Oatmeal and XKCD. Old media, in contrast, have their predetermined length of news clips and page lengths, divided by topics, portraying conflicts as experts talking it out. Half a page for talking about foreign affairs, half a page for tax policy, another page for sports, then the weather. Old media can't resonate with the people when something is important. As it turns out, one expert talking on a small allocated space cannot represent one million concerned people -- a million who are leaderless to begin with, yet very organized and efficient anyway. Therefore, any attempt to frame this event in he-said, she-said journalism just falls flat on its face. For us, there is no such thing as a maximum length of an article. (We use recycled electrons anyway.) When we want to talk more on a subject, there are no frames and boundaries stopping us from doing so. This article, to give one example, could be the typical length of an average blog post. But it's quite a bit longer than the hard limit of an op-ed piece. There are two important things to learn from this: We don't need old media to tell our story to succeed, and we're able to tell the story ourselves. This, if anything, is what should have old media really worried. For not only did old media fail in narrating the story, for political reasons and for capability reasons; they also failed in keeping their aud[...]

Always A Gatekeeper: RIAA Backs .music Proposal... If It's Only Limited To 'Accredited' Musicians

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:31:11 PST

For years there have been a few efforts underway to try to create a .music top level domain. While I'm not totally convinced such a TLD really is needed, it's been interesting to watch the RIAA's allergic reaction to the general idea. About a year ago, we wrote about how the RIAA was complaining that any such TLD might (gasp!) be used to infringe, and arguing that ICANN shouldn't allow it unless it was completely locked down. Apparently, the RIAA has now found the plan it likes, siding with a company called Far Further on its bid to run .music, and going against the company that has fought the hardest for .music... a company called dotMusic. If you want to understand why the RIAA is now endorsing Far Further's proposal, it's pretty simple:

Its .music would be restricted, along the same lines as gTLDs such a .pro, to card-carrying members of what the company calls "accredited Global Music Community Members".

"It's not open to everyone," Styll said. "You'd have to join an organization."

Amateur bands would have to be members of an accredited songwriters association to get a .music address, for example.

In other words, it goes against the reality we know today, which is that new technologies are allowing anyone to become a musician. Instead, it's based on the obsolete notion that only those in a special club are "really" musicians. What you end up with is exactly what the RIAA wants: a system where it gets to "accredit" musicians. In other words, a system where gatekeepers still matter. Of course, what they don't realize is that if .music uses such a system, it almost immediately becomes irrelevant, and sets itself up as an exclusionary club in an era when such things aren't necessary any more.

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Park Ranger Tases Guy Walking Dogs Without A Leash

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:25:11 PST

In the latest example of questionable taser use, a man walking his two dogs off-leash at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area was tased in the back by a park ranger, who was apparently trying to make an example of him. The problem was that the guy, Gary Hesterberg, was walking the dogs at Rancho Corral de Tierra, which used to be an off-leash walking area until it was just recently incorporated into the National Park. When the park ranger confronted Hesterberg and asked for his identification, for reasons unknown, Hesterberg gave her a fake name, and then tried repeatedly to leave. Finally, when he started to walk away, the ranger shot him in the back... because she was trying to "educate residents of the rule." Then, he was arrested "on suspicion of failing to obey a lawful order, having dogs off-leash and knowingly providing false information."

It seems that the use of a taser in this situation was excessive and unwarranted. The guy wasn't threatening the ranger in any way, and even if he had lied about his name (not that lying should be a reason to tase someone), the ranger wouldn't have known that at the time, since Hesterberg only gave his real name to the authorities after he got tased. Did the ranger accomplish her goal of "educating" visitors of the park rules? Yes, if educating means "scaring into submission." As Eric Cartman would say, "Respect my authoritah!"

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If The RIAA Wants To Talk About Misinformation Campaigns, Let's Start With The RIAA's Misinformation Campaign

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 07:08:11 PST

We already walked through the ridiculousness of RIAA boss Cary Sherman claiming that the reason SOPA/PIPA were defeated was because of a "misinformation" campaign on the part of some tech companies. Tons of folks who have followed the RIAA for years probably broke out in open laughter when we saw this statement from Sherman: Misinformation may be a dirty trick, but it works. Because, if anyone knows that "misinformation works," it's Cary Sherman, who is famous for his ability to run vast misinformation campaigns to get bills passed. Thankfully, Ernest Falcon, over at Public Knowledge decided that if Sherman wanted to open the door to discussing "misinformation campaigns" concerning SOPA/PIPA, we might as well focus on the biggest one of all: the claims by the MPAA and RIAA that DNS blocking was no big deal: During the legislative hearing on SOPA, House Homeland Security Subcommittee Chairman on Cybersecurity Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) questioned MPAA Exec. Vice President Michael O’Leary about the cybersecurity problem.  In response he received the standard misinformation campaign line of there was no cybersecurity problem and that this type of activity “occurred all the time.”  To bolster their misinformation campaign, the content lobby worked hard to manufacture the “truth” by highlighting the work of the very small number of individuals (a grand total of three) who wrote “technical rebuttals.”  These were not so much rebuttals as they were well orchestrated advocacy pieces that ignored the engineering and distorted the studies they utilized in order to dupe Members of Congress to believe the legitimate concerns were in fact unsupported. Part of the RIAA and MPAA misinformation campaign centered on the argument that DNS filtering and secure networks (DNSSEC) could both exist in the same network.  This was despite the fact that top experts in the field provided an extensive explanation why that would not be technologically possible (a couple of these individuals actually saved the Internet in the past).  In the end, when Comcast (a SOPA supporter) announced they had to shut down anything that filters DNS traffic when they activated DNSSEC and the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator stated that the bills “pose a real risk to cybersecurity,” the jig was up. Lastly, claiming that censorship concerns in regards to DNS filtering were misplaced completely ignores the fact that SOPA and PIPA moved America closer to censorship oriented regimes.  If these bills were enacted into law, American broadband providers would have been required to install the same filtering technology used in China, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Armenia, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Burma (Myanmar), Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.  This reality triggered the outpouring of opposition from the international human rights community who fight censorship overseas every day and point to the United States as the model.  Summing up the well informed reasoning behind their opposition, Julian Sanchez with the Cato Institute points out that enacting SOPA and PIPA would mean the “only difference between the Unites States and China is what's on the blacklist.”  Part of the RIAA's favorite tactics is to pull out all the dirty tricks in the book... and any time people call them on it, to accuse the other side of using the dirty tricks that were really being used by the RIAA. It's a classic DC-insider move, but in this day and age, where the internet can route around lies, it's going to backfire, as it did here. All you have to do is look at the comments on the original Sherman NY Times piece, where upwards of 90% of the comments call Sherman out for his ridiculous claims. Sherman has the old playbook, the one where those who knew the truth couldn't speak back. If he had paid attention at all to what happened in [...]

Big News: Germany Says It Won't Sign ACTA [Update: ... Yet]

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:30:04 PST

Okay, things just got serious over ACTA. In our post on Latvia bailing on signing ACTA, we noted that in joining with Poland and the Czech Republic, these were still much smaller European states, and unlikely to have too much of an impact. But... now comes the really surprising news that Germany has decided that it won't sign. Germany, of course, is the largest EU economy. Details are sparse, but even though the country had earlier agreed that it would sign it, the Foreign Office has apparently revoked that decision and will not sign the agreement... We'll update more later as more details come in. However, this is big news and could really stop ACTA. Update: Another source on this suggests that Germany is saying that it is putting its plan to sign on hold, but may sign later. It had intended to sign soon, but is now going to wait until the EU Parliament decides how it wants to go. So they haven't dropped ACTA entirely, but this definitely shows that the protests are worrying politicians.

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Newspaper Boss Says Newspapers Need More Money... Because New Media Steals & May 'Destroy Civil Society'

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:06:11 PST

Via Mathew Ingram, we learn of Alan Crosbie, the chair of Thomas Crosbie Holdings, a large Irish media conglomerate, which apparently believes all of this online claptrap could be on its way to destroying civil society -- which is apparently why we need to fund more newspapers. Or something. Honestly, the guy barely seems to be making any sense at all. He says that old media property likes newspapers, radio and television are important and should get funded because they "produce good information." But that new media "sometimes give credibility to news that maybe should not have credibility." It would appear that Crosbie is, well, confusing the medium for the message. There are plenty of newspapers, radio and television news efforts that equally (if not more so) give credibility to news that should not have credibility. That, alone, has nothing to do with the medium in question. And yet, to Crosbie, new media could be the end of civil society: There is a tsunami of information coming from new media, some of which has the "capacity to destroy civil society and cause unimaginable suffering." Again, what does this have to do with new media vs. old media? The details come out later. Apparently, he just thinks that new media "steals" from old media, and thus old media can't afford to produce their good news any more: "The fact is that, to generate good information carries a cost. It requires money. Unless you steal it like most new media companies do. "And, if you bring that argument to its logical conclusion all you'll get on their news sites is a blank screen, because they eventually will have no one left to steal from." We've been hearing these arguments for years, and yet, somehow, it seems like more news than ever before is being produced. And rather than "stealing" from old media, plenty of new media sources are adding value to those sources (value that the old media folks could provide if they just stopped blaming new media). Either way, comments like these are the sort of comments that should make any board of directors immediately question what out of touch luddite they have in charge of their media properties...Permalink | Comments | Email This Story [...]

Do The Differences Between Software Piracy And Media Piracy Matter?

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:01:11 PST

Danah Boyd (or danah boyd as she prefers to be called) is widely recognized as an authority on privacy, identity and social networks. A couple of weeks ago, in the context of the fight against SOPA, she wrote a blog post where she made an interesting distinction between different kinds of piracy: There are many different aspects of piracy, but for simplicity sake, I want to focus on two aspects that feed into bills like SOPA and PROTECT IP: piracy as a competitive issue vs. piracy as a cultural issue. This can often be split as software piracy vs. media piracy, but not always. She then gives a concrete example: Imagine that you are an appliance manufacturer in the United States. You make things like toasters. You are required to abide by American laws. You must pay your employees at least a minimum wage; you must follow American safety regulations. All of this raises the overhead of your production process. In addition, you must also do things like purchase your software legally. Your designers use some CAD software, which they pay for. Your accountants use accounting software, which they pay for. Sure, you’ve cut some costs by using “free” software but, by and large, you pay a decent amount of money to software companies to use the systems that they built. You really want to get your toasters into Wal-Mart, but time and time again, you find yourself undercut by competitors in foreign countries where the safety laws are more lax, the minimum wage laws are nonexistent, and where companies aren’t punished for stealing software. Are you grouchy? Of course you are. Needless to say, you see this as an unfair competition issue. There aren’t legal ways of bending the market to create fair competition. You can’t innovate your way out of this dilemma and so you want Congress to step in and make sure that you can compete fairly. Well, AutoCAD, the leading CAD software, costs a few thousand dollars; the price of accounting programs for businesses varies greatly, depending on the size of the company. But the overall cost of specialized software for the toaster company needn't be more than a few tens of thousands of dollars (using open source operating systems and office suites helps minimize generic software costs.) Since you're hoping to get your toasters into Wal-Mart, out of necessity you have high-volume production runs (if you don't, then you're a boutique toaster company, and you can charge premium prices.) That means the extra cost due to software licensing per toaster will be a few cents. Moreover, as that first paragraph quoted above makes clear, the key factor of the "unfair" competition is the radically different cost of manufacturing in countries where wages are lower, and health and environmental standards are less rigorous and hence less costly to implement. These will make far more difference to the costs than the possible use of pirated software, especially at Wal-Mart scales. As a result, the logic behind the opening claim of this paragraph in the post seems dubious: Combating software piracy in the supply chain is a reasonable request and part of what makes bills like PROTECT IP messy is that there’s a kernel of this issue in these bills. Bills like this are also meant to go after counterfeit products. Most folks really want to know what’s in baby formula or what’s in the medicines they purchase. Unfortunately, though, these aspects of piracy quickly gets muddled with cultural facets of piracy, particularly once the media industries have gotten involved. The second part is absolutely spot-on, though: people rightly want to know that the medicines and foodstuffs they buy are safe. That means there is a genuine case for legislation that helps protect consumers against such health and safety dangers. But that's about combating counterfeits, not fighting digital[...]

Congress Actually Helping The Internet, Rather Than Mucking It Up?

Thu, 9 Feb 2012 22:43:06 PST

We're so used to Congress trying to muck up the internet, that it's rare we hear about cases where they're actually looking to make things better. While the idea has been floating around for a little while, (and the actual bill was introduced back in December when we were focused on the whole SOPA/PIPA debate), the Startup Act is starting to get some attention, with co-sponsors Senators Jerry Moran and Mark Warner taking to the WSJ to explain why the Startup Act is important. The basic idea behind the bill is to remove some of the regulatory hassles of starting and building a new company. As we've pointed out repeatedly, studies have shown that pretty much all of the net job growth in the US comes from startups, and a bill like the Startup Act should help make it easier for startups to get going. To be honest, the bill could be even stronger in a bunch of places, but as a starting point, it's definitely nice to see. The focus is on making it easier for startups to be startups by doing the following: It will make permanent a capital gains tax exemption on the sale of certain kinds of small business stock that is held for at least five years. In other words, it will encourage long-term investment in startups, which is just the kind of investing we should be encouraging (rather than quick flip type investing, which is more about gambling on changes, rather than investing in economic growth). It decreases corporate taxes on new businesses during their first three years of profitability -- again making it easier for young companies to grow and to reinvest their own profits in jobs and growth. While it doesn't do away with crippling government regulations for small businesses, it does require a cost-benefit analysis of the economic impact of many of those regulations on startups. It implements a simplified form of the startup/founders visa -- which is about helping non-Americans start companies and create jobs in the US. We've talked about the startup visa in the past and why it's a good idea. No matter how you feel about other immigration issues, this one is pretty clearly about having immigrants create jobs in the US (rather than elsewhere). There are a few other things in the bill, but overall the key point is to basically get overbearing regulations out of the way. These are regulations that bog down many startups (or prevent them from getting started at all), and really put a drain on the key part of the economy that is contributing to both job growth and economic growth. It's rare to see Congress trying to do something that helps the internet, rather than mucks it up, so we should certainly highlight when such efforts are being pushed forward. I have a few quibbles around the edges on pieces of the bill, and really think it should go further in other areas, but on the whole it's a really good start.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story [...]

Latvia Joins Countries Putting The Brakes On ACTA Approval

Thu, 9 Feb 2012 19:43:06 PST

Following the news that Poland and the Czech Republic have put the brakes on ACTA ratification, we can now add Latvia to the bunch:

The Economy Minister Daniels Pavluts has decided to block the ratification of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which has caused wide protests in the society.

On Wednesday, February 8, the Minister announced that he made the decision taking into account the mood of various groups of the society, as well as worries of several experts about the possibility of ACTA implementation in Latvia.

He thinks that it is already too late for a proactive and timely explanation of what ACTA really means. So now there is no rush with its ratification in the Parliament. “First we need a constructive and reasoned dialogue and a discussion with all the interested parties,” he says.

Of course, Poland, the Czech Republic and Latvia are "smaller" players in the EU, and there are disputes over whether or not having some countries decide not to ratify kills the whole process. Basically, there are different interpretations of how things work under the Lisbon Treaty, with some saying that even if some countries don't ratify, the EU could still ratify and issue a directive forcing the various member states to "harmonize." So it's good to see these countries putting the brakes on what was going to be a pure "check the boxes" approval process -- but ACTA is still very likely to move forward overall.

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DailyDirt: It's Time To Open Up Access To Academic Journals

Thu, 9 Feb 2012 17:00:00 PST

It's kind of ridiculous when researchers actually have to pay to read journal articles about their own research online, but that's how academic publishing works. Even worse, the costs of access are obscenely high, limiting the readership to mostly people with access to libraries that can afford to pay the high subscription fees for journals. However, academics are starting to push back, and the good news is that there are at least a few efforts underway to create open-access online journals. Here are a few interesting links on the subject. Did you know that in order to get access to the Arts and Sciences journal collection at an academic search engine company, like JSTOR, university libraries pay a one-time fee of $45,000, and then an annual fee of $8,500 to maintain that access? With tools like Google Scholar available, academic search engines just seem unnecessary. [url] A new open-access, online-only journal for biomedical and life science research will be launched this summer. Plus, the journal promises a faster turnaround time for the peer review process, which typically takes several months. [url] A website called "The Cost of Knowledge" has been set up so that researchers can take a stand against scientific and medical publishing company Elsevier's business practices. Elsevier also supports SOPA/PIPA and the Research Works Act, which aims to limit the free exchange of information. [url] To discover more interesting education-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]   By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story [...]

The Web Is Saved: East Texas Jury Says Eolas Patents Are Invalid

Thu, 9 Feb 2012 15:50:33 PST

Okay, that happened much faster than I expected. Just a few hours ago, we wrote about Tim Berners-Lee telling an East Texas jury just how insane patent troll Eolas' patents were, along with their claims that all sorts of core web technologies were covered by their patents. We thought it might take some time before anything really happened in that case, but the jury took just a short while before completely invalidating Eolas' patents. Damn! Apparently the jury recognized that when the inventor of the web talks about how obvious a technology was at the time, he probably knows what he's talking about.

I wonder just how silly the long list of companies who "settled" with Eolas before the trial started feel right now.

Of course, all of that settlement money means that Eolas still has a big bank account. That means it'll appeal this ruling, and the case may still go on for a few years. But it's going to have to clear a big hurdle, and in the meantime it won't be able to sue anyone else using these patents. Score one for obviousness and a jury that recognized a patent troll trying to put up an innovation toll booth to try to demand loads of cash it didn't deserve.

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Rep. Doyle Introduces Bill To Provide Public Access To Publicly Funded Research

Thu, 9 Feb 2012 15:05:00 PST

We were quite disappointed last month to see that Rep. Darrell Issa -- who has done lots of excellent work to encourage more open access to government information -- was sponsoring a bill that would close off open access to government funded research. This is an important issue that we've been following for years. Government funded research means that taxpayer money funded that research... and yet because of ridiculous policies by gatekeeper journals, the public has almost no access to that information. The whole situation is ridiculous. The journals get free labor: they never pay for articles (and, in some fields, academics actually have to pay the journal to get published), they never pay for the peer review. So they get free content and free editing. Then, as part of getting published, they require the researchers to give the journal their copyrights and usually bar them from using that same research elsewhere. Finally, they then sell these journal subscriptions at insane rates: often tens of thousands of dollars a year for a subscription. Only large university libraries and research institutions will pay those fees. It's a huge scam and it's why a ton of academics are boycotting publishing giant Elsevier, (infamous for its fake journal division). The issue in these bills is that there has been a movement to require any research that is federally funded (taxpayer funded) to be placed in an open access repository one year after it was published. The National Institute of Health (NIH) who funds billions in research every year, has had this policy going for a few years (though journals have even tried nasty tricks, like requiring academics to pay them to "deposit" their own papers into these open repositories). This kind of rule makes plenty of sense: we're talking about publicly funded research after all. It should be open to the public. Giving the journals a one-year headstart on publishing the papers seems like more than enough for them to make money (again, from the "free" content they get). Except... the journals hate this because they want their lifetime-plus monopoly on this information (which, I'll emphasize once again that they do not pay for). So they've been pushing various bills that would outlaw such open access requirements. And, somehow, they got Darrell Issa to back the latest version of this bill. Thankfully, however, Rep. Mike Doyle -- who has a long history of being really good on copyright issues -- has introduced a counter bill to Issa's bill (pdf) called the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2012. It really is the mirror image of the Issa bill. the Federal Government funds basic and applied research with the expectation that new ideas and discoveries that result from the research, if shared and effectively disseminated, will advance science and improve the lives and welfare of people of the United States and around the world; and the Internet makes it possible for this information to be promptly available to every scientist, physician, educator, and citizen at home, in school, or in a library. The bill would require that all federal agencies establish policies that encourage open and free access to federally funded research. One hopes that Rep. Issa will rethink his position on his bill, and recognize that Doyle's bill is much more aligned with Issa's stated goal (and long-shown commitment) to more open access to government information.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story [...]

Canadian Muslim Who Sends Text Urging His Employees To 'Blow Away' The Competition Arrested As A 'Terror' Suspect

Thu, 9 Feb 2012 13:59:52 PST

Boing Boing points us to the crazy story of Saad Allami, a sales manager in Quebec -- who is Muslim -- who sent a text message to some colleagues heading to New York for a trade show, in which he encouraged them to "blow away" the competition. He (quite reasonably) says that he was trying to "pump up" his staff. However, apparently Canadian law enforcement thought differently and arrested him, detained him for a day, searched his house and repeatedly told his wife he was a terrorist. I recognize that law enforcement wants to be careful, but at some point, doesn't someone run these kinds of things through a "common sense" filter?

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Major Label-Owned Vevo Caught Publicly Streaming NFL Game Off Of 'Rogue Site'

Thu, 9 Feb 2012 12:55:00 PST

Where's ICE when you need them? For a while now, ICE has been making the case that sites that merely link to streaming content -- especially sports content -- are the most evil kinds of criminals around. It's why they're trying to extradite Richard O'Dwyer from the UK to have him face criminal charges. It's why they recently arrested Yonjo Quiroa, who will soon be tried on criminal charges as well. Both ran sites that linked to streams of TV content, including sports content. So clearly, this is serious, criminal business. In fact, if you believe the propaganda from the RIAA, these sites contribute to gangland violence and terrorism. But, of course, when those major label guys want to set up an illegal public performance of an NFL game, where do they turn? You guessed it! One of those rogue sites. Jason Kincaid over at TechCrunch has the rather insane story of how Vevo, the music video streaming company created by Universal Music and owned by Universal Music and Sony Music, had a booth set up at Sundance a few weeks back, where they, quite clearly, live-streamed an NFL playoff game. Yeah. In their "lounge," they had computers showing the game, apparently sourced from ESPN America -- which isn't available in the US. And the stream came from TuTele.tv, which appears to be quite similar to many of the sites that have been seized and shut down. In fact, it sounds pretty similar to Rojadirecta, which is currently fighting the US Justice Department in court. And the folks from these major record labels used this source to live stream the football game throughout their lounge area at Sundance. width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/EhJjlkpyiec?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen> It gets even more ridiculous when you remember that Congress has been trying to pass bills that would make such streaming a felony in and of itself. Senator Amy Klobuchar's streaming felony bill, S.978 -- the one that would potentially put Justin Bieber at risk -- as well as SOPA, both had provisions that made public performance of infringing content a potential felony. Those were mainly supposed to be directed at sites that allow streaming, but I think people would find it hard to argue that what happened in that bar was not a "public performance." Of course, what this shows is that these issues are never as black and white as the RIAA would have you believe. And, just like many others, when the industry doesn't give them a convenient way to do what they want, even the RIAA's strongest supporters stoop to making use of rogue sites to potentially do "criminal acts." I eagerly await ICE moving in to arrest Vevo execs for this blatant criminal activity.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story [...]

Tim Berners-Lee In Court To Try To Prevent Patent Troll Eolas From Patenting Key Web Concepts

Thu, 9 Feb 2012 11:58:07 PST

Remember Eolas? We've written about this infamous patent troll many times, mostly focusing on its big patent fight with Microsoft over the idea of browser plugins -- a case it eventually settled. In 2009, however, Eolas came back and basically sued the web, claiming that all sorts of very basic web technologies were, in fact, infringing on a brand new, ridiculously broad patent (built on the earlier patent), 7,599,985. However, that case has finally gone to trial, and Wired has sent Joe Mullin -- hands down the best reporter on all things concerning patents -- to cover the case. His initial report is worth reading. Unfortunately, he notes that many of the companies Eolas sued chose to settle, helping to fund Eolas' ability to take this to court. Eight companies remain fighting. Eolas is asking for $600 million from these companies -- including over $300 million from Google and Yahoo. As he had done nearly a decade ago, web inventor Tim Berners-Lee was called to explain to the court that Eolas' claims are ridiculous and the patents should be tossed out due to tremendous amounts of prior art. Berners-Lee also pointed out that these patents "could be a serious threat to the future of the web." He didn't mince words, noting that all of this stuff was widely known in the community of technologists working on these issues well before Eolas ever came along. Last summer there was tremendous attention paid to the problem of patents within the tech space, but much of that furor died down after the patent reform bill became law -- even though it addressed almost none of the actual complaints about how the patent system hinders innovation. Once fall came, a lot of focus shifted back to copyright issues around SOPA. But people should be very, very worried about the outcome of this case, because if it goes badly, it could lead to a massive tollbooth on internet innovation.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story [...]

Open Offer To Chris Dodd & Cary Sherman: Meet The Internet Online And In The Open

Thu, 9 Feb 2012 10:49:24 PST

We've covered how the RIAA's Cary Sherman and the MPAA's Chris Dodd have both taken the strategy of first slamming everyone who took part in the internet protests against SOPA/PIPA as somehow being misinformed corporate pawns... but then concluding by expressing a desire to "meet" to discuss solutions. The problem, of course, is that both of them still think that it was Google that killed SOPA/PIPA, and so their idea of a "meeting" is to get Google into a back room and to "negotiate a deal." But, as many people have been pointing out, that isn't going to cut it. So let's make a clear offer to Chris Dodd, Cary Sherman and the rest of the corporate supporters of SOPA/PIPA: You want to meet? Let's meet. But let the meeting be open and public. Let's have it outside of DC. Pick a place. Let it involve representatives from public interest, civil service, consumer rights, human rights groups, as well as internet communities such as Reddit and Wikipedia. Let it involve the actual companies you seek to regulate as well, from the tech industry (meaning not just Google, but also the startups these bills would have hit the hardest), and the actual technologists who understand the impact of what you seek to do. And then let's stream the whole thing online, and have it with a system that lets everyone, including those watching the stream, contribute comments and questions. Is this of interest? Over the past few weeks I've spoken to numerous people representing a variety of different groups, and they've all expressed interest in such a meeting. So how about you? You asked for a meeting. The community is happy to meet. But we want it to be open and transparent. And we want real internet users to be able to take part. So, let's see if you're serious.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story [...]

Beware Of Those Who Claim They're 'Saving The Culture Business' When They're Really Protecting Those Who Strip Artists Of Rights

Thu, 9 Feb 2012 09:47:24 PST

We've talked a few times about the ridiculously unsupported and unsupportable claim by Robert Levine that the "tech industry" (by which he means "Google") is somehow destroying culture by "free riding" on content. There are so many things wrong with this argument that it would take an entire book to debunk them one by one. But, as we've recently shown, the culture business isn't dying at all -- instead, it's been growing quite nicely over the past decade. So what's going on? Lateef Mtima, from the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice at Howard University does a nice job dismantling Levine's argument by showing that what Levine is arguing isn't about "saving the cultural busness," it's about saving a few giant media conglomerates who used to be the gatekeepers to culture (often at the expense of artists -- especially minority artists), and pretending that without those companies, there wouldn't be much culture. As Mtima notes, this is, ultimately, an incredibly elitist position: Culture is not something reserved to an elite. No particular business or set of businesses and no particular business model should be protected from the winds of innovation and change in the name of preserving culture. A people’s culture is just that -- the people’s culture.... And this is really a key point. The few companies that Levine is looking to save are not the deciders and arbiters of culture, no matter how much Levine wants them to be. In fact, they're often the companies who are really cheapening culture themselves and stripping the rights from the artists themselves, signing them to ridiculously one-sided contracts that are almost criminal in how they strip artists of their own rights and toss them out on the street for the profit of a few business fat cats. Initially Levine presents his book on the pending doom of American culture as an appeal really done on behalf of the financial interests of artists, writers, and musicians. (One might be forgiven for skepticism and for asking where was/is Levine on the issue of IP corporate establishment exploitation of African American and other marginalized artists who have been pillaged by those entities for more than a century.) Of course “protecting struggling artists” is only the cover story. Levine actually knows what many other Americans realize–that most artists are trapped in contractual peonage with their corporate distributers and that they often retain no property interests capable of being ravaged by third-party pirates. It really is quite a disgusting, paternalistic, almost antebellum argument: that these poor artists need some big conglomerate to come "rescue them," take control of their rights, in order to produce "the culture business." The reality is quite different of course. What's happening every day out here, in the real world, is that new companies -- often from the "tech industry" that Levine insists is killing off his heroes at the major labels and studios -- are providing the tools for amazing new cultural works to be produced, distributed, promoted, shared and monetized. Witness the great success of companies like Kickstarter, and the fact that they're doing it without typical Hollywood smarminess. But the real cultural elitism from Levine shows through in his disdain for the kinds of amazing culture produced all the time outside of the circles of the gatekeepers. Levine utterly ignores creative and impactful and socially desirable user-generated material such as the insertion into a picture of Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Isla[...]

If The Internet Is Treated Just Like The Offline World, We'd Never Have Ridiculous Laws Like SOPA/PIPA

Thu, 9 Feb 2012 08:43:24 PST

One of the key talking points from the SOPA/PIPA supporters was this ridiculous claim that the internet shouldn't be "lawless." That was a laughable line, considering just how many laws have been passed already that directly impact the internet -- including many copyright laws specifically. For example the DMCA, the No Electronic Theft Act and the PRO-IP bills all directly were about regulating the internet concerning copyright laws. So to pretend that the internet is "lawless" is just ridiculous. A close second was to compare the internet to "the real world" (ignoring that the internet is pretty damn real), and to say that obviously we'd be fine with laws like SOPA in that "real world." Thankfully, the good folks over at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal debunk that and other claims concerning online laws matching up with offline laws: (image) The simple fact is that the online world and offline worlds are not identical. Insisting that that these kinds of crazy laws are needed online because the same thing is done offline is simply preposterous.

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Ex-FTC Officials Remind Current FTC Officials That They're Supposed To Protect Consumers, Not Competitors

Thu, 9 Feb 2012 07:22:24 PST

Two former FTC chairs, James Miller and Daniel Oliver, have written an opinion piece chiding the current FTC for its antitrust investigation into Google. As we've noted in the past, politicians seem to be going after Google simply because it's a convenient target that's big, and not because of any clear harm for consumers. Some Google competitors don't like Google very much, but that's no reason to call out the antitrust guns: Antitrust is for consumer welfare, not competitor welfare. In the Reagan years, we were always suspicious of whining competitors. We were suspicious because our view of antitrust law, shaped by Robert Bork and other scholars, was, and still is, that antitrust law should maximize the welfare of consumers, not of competitors. Has anyone heard consumers complaining about Google? We have not, probably because consumers are under no pressure to use Google. They do so because they get what they want from Google, and they get it for free. Furthermore, they point out just how quickly things change in the online world: When Google was started in 1998, Yahoo was the dominant search engine -- by far. Today Yahoo struggles to survive. Only a few years ago, Microsoft seemed a giant, standing astride the digital world. Today its business model is threatened, the competitive marketplace shifting under its feet from licensed software to cloud-based computing. Last year's hot IPOs -- Yelp, LinkedIn, and Groupon -- didn't even exist five years ago. I would have no problem with the FTC going after Google if there were significant evidence of consumer harm, but no one seems to be able to show that there is any. At all. They just show that Google is big. But, big companies online seem to have a way of fading quickly... mainly by missing the next big thing. Already, we've seen Google struggle (multiple times) to compete with Facebook on social networking, which is taking over a bigger and bigger part of online life (and shielding much of that content from Google). So, once again, we have to ask why there's such a focus on investigating Google these days, other than because some competitors don't like competing.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story [...]

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