[Quote:]

Intellectual property laws which were designed to protect inventors are actually stifling innovation, according to a leading US law academic.

[..]

“I discovered a paradox in the free market and it is this: usually private ownership creates wealth, but too much ownership has the opposite effect - it creates gridlock,” he said. “When too many owners control a single resource – it can be a patent, a copyright, land – when too many people control a single resource, co-operation breaks down and wealth disappears. Everybody ends up losing.”

Heller has expanded on his theory in a just-published book, The Gridlock Economy – how too much ownership wrecks markets, stops innovation and costs lives.

He uses the example of someone who has come up with a new medicine and is trying to get it to market. To do that they must use systems, processes and tests which are owned by other people.

“Imagine a drug developer walking into an auditorium and seeing 50 or 100 or several hundred patent owners, each with their essential patent on their lap, and the drug developer knows that unless he’s able to negotiate successfully with every single one of those patent owners, his drug can’t come to market,” said Heller.

[Quote:]

Comcast has confirmed that all residential customers will be subject to a 250 gigabyte per month data limit starting October 1.

“This is the same system we have in place today,” Comcast wrote in an amendment to its acceptable use policy. “The only difference is that we will now provide a limit by which a customer may be contacted.”

The cable provider insisted that 250 GB is “an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis.”

Actually, no, it isn’t an “extremely large amount of data”. It’s about one HD movie per day, and that makes this simply an attempt to cut off services like iTunes and Amazon Unbox, which are increasingly competing with Comcast in the “making content available” business.

[Quote:]

The FBI has arrested a 27-year-old American blogger for leaking some unreleased Guns N’ Roses tunes to the internet.

According to The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times, the Feds cuffed Culver City, California’s Kevin Cogill on Wednesday morning, two months after his web site Antiquiet served up nine tunes from “Chinese Democracy” - an album Axl Rose and various other people have been dawdling over for more than a decade.

[..]

Clearly, an online “Chinese Democracy” leak poses a serious threat to Guns N’ Roses and its label, Geffen Records. If web surfers actually hear the unreleased album, the mix n’ match band can no longer maintain the illusion that it isn’t complete shite. ®

FBI and Geffen Records to be applauded for their attempts to contain this tripe, hopefully they will now realize the danger and burn the master tapes too.

[Quote:]

Most of the big movie studios and many online movie retailers are preparing to to launch a new initiative tentatively called Open Market, first proposed last year by Sony Pictures, we’ve learned. All of the major studios besides those associated with Walt Disney are already on board and will be part of the announcements made next month.

At this point I stopped reading, looked at the name, and guessed that they wanted to close the market to anything but their own scheme. It turns out to be a correct guess:

Open Market is a set of policy decisions and a software and services framework that will allow interoperability of various formats and DRM schemes that are currently splintering the market. That splintering locks users into a single store and format, and is putting a stranglehold on widespread adoption of movie sales online. Multiple sources have indicated that the studios are putting their weight behind the initiative to avoid the fate of the music industry and as a last ditch effort to stop or slow non-DRM movie sales.

A key part of Open Market will be a neutral third party to manage device registrations and movie purchases/rentals to ensure interoperability. This “domain” provider will manage services that let users register devices (PCs, televisions, mobile devices, etc.). Any movie purchased from any service provider can then be watched on a registered device.

So unless you “register” your computer, TV, phone or DVD player with them, you won’t be able to use them?

Yeah, people will really like that and stop using torrents right away.

Also, take a look at the slides in the PDF: “iTunes is best example of the problem”… let me translate for you: “the iTunes business model works, but we‘re not making any money, Apple is. We hate that.”

[Quote:]

By choosing Joe Biden as their vice presidential candidate, the Democrats have selected a politician with a mixed record on technology who has spent most of his Senate career allied with the FBI and copyright holders, who ranks toward the bottom of CNET’s Technology Voters’ Guide, and whose anti-privacy legislation was actually responsible for the creation of PGP.

[..]

After taking over the Foreign Relations committee, Biden became been a staunch ally of Hollywood and the recording industry in their efforts to expand copyright law. He sponsored a bill in 2002 that would have make it a federal felony to trick certain types of devices into playing unauthorized music or executing unapproved computer programs. Biden’s bill was backed by content companies including News Corp. but eventually died after Verizon, Microsoft, Apple, eBay, and Yahoo lobbied against it.

A few months later, Biden signed a letter that urged the Justice Department “to prosecute individuals who intentionally allow mass copying from their computer over peer-to-peer networks.” Critics of this approach said that the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, and not taxpayers, should pay for their own lawsuits.

Last year, Biden sponsored an RIAA-backed bill called the Perform Act aimed at restricting Americans’ ability to record and play back individual songs from satellite and Internet radio services. (The RIAA sued XM Satellite Radio over precisely this point.)

All of which meant that nobody in Washington was surprised when Biden was one of only four U.S. senators invited to a champagne reception in celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hosted by the MPAA’s Jack Valenti, the RIAA, and the Business Software Alliance.

[Quote:]

The UK’s Performing Right Society has won a court case over its Dutch equivalent, Buma, preventing the issuing of a Europe-wide licence for online rights.

On 19 July 2008, Buma announced that it had issued such a licence to US online music provider Beatport and claimed that it was for worldwide repertoire, including that controlled by PRS. In 2006 Buma had issued a similar license to American online company eMusic.

However, Buma wasn’t authorised to include PRS repertoire in any multi-territory licence, anywhere outside the Netherlands. PRS sought an urgent injunction to prevent Buma from continuing to breach the contract.

Good. Let them sue each other into oblivion.

[Quote:]

BUMA bepleitte voor de rechtbank dat de oude afspraken over gebiedsbeperking tussen verschillende rechtenorganisaties, onderdeel van de Contract of Reciprocal Representation (CRR) uit 1973, niet van toepassing is op licenties voor online muziekgebruik. Het CRR zou voor online muziekgebruik een ‘betekenisloos en zinledig’ contract zijn. Online muziekgebruik is immers per definitie grensoverschrijdend, betoogde BUMA, en dat was in 1973 niet voorzien.

Wacht - wacht, deze weet ik! Even kijken of het me lukt…

De muziek-downloader bepleitte voor de rechtbank dat de oude afspraken over vermenigvuldigen, onderdeel van de Auteurswet uit 1912, niet van toepassing is op licenties voor online muziekgebruik. De auteurswet zou voor online muziekgebruik een ‘betekenisloos en zinledig’ contract zijn. Online muziekgebruik is immers per definitie grensoverschrijdend, betoogde de muziek-downloader, en dat was in 1912 niet voorzien.

Wat denk je, zou dat werken?

[Quote:]

The issue of copyright is a hot one in the UK right now and the government isn’t scared of getting involved. It has been putting huge amounts of pressure on ISPs to take action against alleged music file-sharers, so imagine, if you will, the beautiful crimson color Prime Minister Brown’s face will turn today when he is declared a pirate too.

Amongst other things, Anthony from antbag.com makes WordPress themes - he gives them away for free but if someone wants to donate, they can. His work is released under Creative Commons 3.0 license, which means that if someone wants to use a theme ‘as is’ or modified in some way, they are required to credit him. A link in the footer of every theme he creates points back to Anthony’s site - this is the minimum attribution he expects, which is pretty damn reasonable.

So imagine Anthony’s surprise when he discovered that his NetWorker theme for WordPress had been used by the British government without honoring the Creative Commons license. The theme has been heavily modified, including the removal of all links back to his site, but Anthony has been able to verify from the source files that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s own website is in fact built on NetWorker.

It is clear that Brown’s site indeed uses the Anthony’s theme - violating the Creative Commons license. Not only was the link to the the original removed, Brown’s site should have also made their version available under a similar license - share alike.

[Quote:]

Viacom is sending bogus copyright ownership claims and illegal posting notices to independent filmmakers posting their own movies on YouTube. These films contain not one iota of Viacom content. Take, for instance, this lovely short animation, “Juxtaposer,” made by Joanna Davidovich for her senior project. It’s completely her original creation. She has copyrighted it and says that she “only entered into distribution agreements that were nonexclusive.” Yet, the media corporation saw fit to have YouTube tell Joanna, “Viacom has claimed some or all audio and visual content in your video.”

Joanna is, of course, disputing the claim.

The video is still up, but now Viacom gets access to her video statistics. The worst part is the fear Joanna has that something she slaved and sweat over could be taken away from her. “I’m just a scared that my little film will be lost in the shadow of the hulking monolith…,” she wrote on her blog. Also on her blog is a comment by another filmmaker indicating Joanna isn’t the only filmmaker Viacom has fraudulently targeted in this manner.

[Quote:]

“While the ACTA itself is not public, the US Trade Representative has at least released the ACTA comments. While many of them are to be expected, such as the RIAA & co. wanting copyright filters, one item on the BSA’s wish list really stands out: ‘In a number of European countries one of the biggest impediments to efforts by rights holder to enforce their IP rights on the Internet is the overbroad interpretation of privacy laws by some European authorities.’ They want ACTA to ‘fix’ that by neutering the privacy laws. Given the BSA’s other questionable activities, it couldn’t hurt to tell their member companies what you think of their participation. After all, organizations like the BSA exist in part to shield their members from bad PR.”

[Quote:]

Companies that take an iron fist approach to fighting software piracy are generally best served by not lifting a pirate group’s code themselves to fix their own product.

Ubisoft, the French video game developer and publisher, was recently caught with its pants down, releasing a pirated hack as an official fix.

The EU Commission will be meeting shortly (possibly as soon as Wednesday) and formally accepting DG Internal Market’s proposal to extend the term of Copyright in sound recordings. Once accepted the legislative initiative will proceed through the Council of Ministers and EU parliament. As you would expect the Open Rights Group and EFF are hard at work lobbying against this and they would like your help. Please follow the link and sign the petition.

The EU is doing this despite their own findings, the findings of the UK government’s independent analysis and advice of Europe’s leading intellectual research centres.

[Quote:]

An appeals court in Germany has ruled that the owners of a network are not responsible for the copyright infringement of their users. The decision overturns a previous judgment that held an open WiFi network owner liable for damages, even if the infringer is a stranger making use of the network.

[..]

The district court that heard the case ruled in favor of the plaintiff, saying that since the defendant couldn’t prove which third-parties (if any) were guilty of copyright infringement on his network, he was responsible. Unsurprisingly, the defendant appealed the case, and the Frankfurt court of appeals ruled in his favor. The court said that the “abstract risk of abuse” of the defendant’s connection is not enough to require him by law to lock it down. There was also no concrete evidence of copyright infringement on the defendant’s part, therefore he should not be held liable for damages, the judge said.

Time to remove the encryption from your WiFi access…

[Quote:]

I bought a Dell laptop months ago with the intention of using it as a command center both at home and on the road. I wanted something powerful enough to run all the image and video editing software that I would need to keep Ripten rocking day and night. I hit the ground running, and everything seemed to be working great, until I decided to record some on-screen video.

[..]

What? Stereo Mix? Where the fuck is my stereo mix? I only see two options, Mic and Line-in. Perplexed, I refocused my efforts on Google and began to search for the missing third option.

It was not long before I encountered multiple threads started by equally frustrated and confused consumers suffering from the same misfortune. Oddly enough they were all Dell owners with the same SigmaTel brand audio card that I had.

As I dug deeper into the various threads, I soon discovered that the issue had nothing to do with the hardware itself, and everything to do with the restrictions placed on it by the PC manufacturers.

It appears that Dell, and several other computer manufacturers such as Gateway and Pac Bell, were pressured by the RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) into disabling the stereo mix functionality. If true, I find it disturbing that at no time did any of the aforementioned manufacturers see it fit to explain the restrictions they were imposing on our hardware.

One forum poster explained that he contacted Dell seeking a solution for his stereo mix woes, and they offered him one — for a $99 fee. So that we are all clear, the evidence points to Dell appeasing the RIAA by disabling hardware, only to have their customer service reps turn around and offer a solution to their consumers that reverses the alteration they made in the first place at a premium price. Sure as fuck sounds fishy to me.

[Quote:]

After three years of pursuing a home health aide in Brooklyn who has never even used a computer, the RIAA has announced it’s ready to throw in the towel. Only thing; it wants the dismissal to be ‘without prejudice’ so it won’t be liable for attorney’s fees. The courts have been saying that where a copyright plaintiff gives up, the defendant is presumptively entitled to an attorney’s fee award. So, Ms. Lindor says ‘no way.’ She wants the dismissal to be ‘with prejudice,’ and she wants her attorney’s fees.

[Quote:]

A new bill, The Orphan Works Act of 2008, is currently making its way through congress, and it threatens to take away copyright protection from unregistered works. This includes virtually all open source software.

Essentially, the bill (as I understand it — and I’m not a lawyer) will modify copyright law such that if the owner of a work can not be found by “reasonable search”, anyone can use the work for whatever they want, regardless of the author’s intentions, or the license the work was released under.

This means companies could ignore the GPL, or any other open source license, simply by claiming they couldn’t find the author. If a copyright holder decides to sue, the infringing party just has to show proof that they performed a “reasonable search”.

[Quote:]

Could Europe be drafting a new law to disconnect suspected filesharers from the internet? MEPs have already signalled their condemnation of this approach. But last-minute amendments to telecommunications legislation could bring the so-called “3 strikes” approach in by the backdoor. If you want your MEP to stick to their guns on 3 strikes, write to them today to voice your concerns.

They know it’s wrong - why else via a backdoor?

You can find details of your MEPs here. Suggestions for topics to raise in your letters are here and analysis and commented amendments with other resources about the Telecoms Package are also available.

[Quote:]

An appeal from three European NGOs - La Quadrature du Net, netzpolitik.org and EDRi-member Open Rights Group - reveal some disturbing MEPs amendments to the draft directives to reform the EU framework on electronic communications (telecom package).

The review of the telecom package was merely focusing on telecom-related issues (except for discussions on the ePrivacy directive, which is the subject of another EDRi-gram article in the current issue), but some of the 800 amendments on the 5 directives that form the current package might go further than just establishing the rules for a functioning electronic communications market and could endanger the principle of the neutrality of the Internet.

Some amendments will transform the ISPs from technical intermediaries that have no obligation to prior surveillance of contents into law enforcers. Therefore they might be asked to block their users from lawful activities in the interests of their security or to work with content producers and rights-holders’ organizations, including sending intimidating messages, with no judicial approval. The amendment meant to support Intellectual Property Rights owners could open the door to censorship and might mean in practice the loss on privacy on the Internet.

[Quote:]

Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users’ names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Viacom wants the data to prove that infringing material is more popular than user-created videos, which could be used to increase Google’s liability if it is found guilty of contributory infringement.

[..]

The order also requires Google to turn over copies of all videos that it has taken down for any reason.

So, if google has taken down a video from some non-viacom entity, for any reason, viacom gets a copy, in violation of the original owners’ copyrights?

[Quote:]

Apple sells Mac OS X just as it retails music: it markets both products toward premium buyers at reasonable prices rather than attempting to force thieves to pay for a product they only want to steal. Microsoft failed in the music business with Windows Media because it tried to do just the opposite: force everyone to pay through the nose for expiring subscription music by using egregious DRM. Microsoft couldn’t force the thieves to stop stealing, and premium customers weren’t interested in being treated like thieves.