27 Feb 2010
The Future Won’t Be Free

Ah, yes, we took the digital acid. Anything free is by definition bad, so much so that using free software could get you declared an enemy of the state. (Sign me up for that!)

These folks seem to think that we shouldn't have a right to read, that history should be locked down and doled out, and that knowledge must be controlled. They long for the Middle Ages, before the printing press, when human knowledge was their exclusive province, and those questioning their authority could be inquired after.

Pardon my Anglo-Saxon, but fuck them ... information not only wants to be free, it will be. And there's no power in heaven or on earth that can stop it now. The future will be free, one way or another.

In the long run, the first decade of the Web could come to be seen as a momentary aberration—an echo of '60s free culture when we all took the bad, digital acid. So, media companies, on behalf of all misdirected Internet visionaries, I'm sorry. We like you—we really do—and we don't want a world without you. If you can hold on until we all have new kinds of screens, and new sets of expectations, you'll be fine. You'll be different, but fine. Just, please, don't take my word for it this time. Ask around.

(link) [Newsweek]

11:20 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

01 Feb 2010
For the Love of Culture

When law becomes an impediment to history, it's time for it to get out of the way.

Her project faced two challenges, one obvious, one not. The obvious challenge was technical: gathering fifty years of film and restoring it digitally. The non-obvious challenge was legal: clearing the rights to move this creative work onto this new platform for distribution.

(link) [The New Republic]

19:40 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

23 Dec 2009
Hacker cracks Kindle's copyright

The only surprise: it took so long.

An Israeli hacker has found a way to transfer the books on Amazon's e-book reader to any other device.

(link) [BBC News]

19:39 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

01 Dec 2009
Intellectual Property

As I understand it, I am being paid only for my work in arranging the words; my property is that arrangement. The thoughts in this book, on the contrary, are not mine. They came freely to me, and I give them freely away. I have no "intellectual property," and I think that all claimants to such property are thieves.

— Wendell Berry (Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays)

21:16 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

22 Nov 2009
Patent Issued For Podcasting

You've gotta wonder if our patent examiners have been living under rocks or in holes for the past decade. How could anyone using a computer be so completely unaware of podcasting and RSS as to think it a "novel innovation" deserving of patent protection?

The EFF is reaching out for help after a company called Volomedia got the Patent Office to grant them exclusive rights to 'a method for providing episodic media' that could threaten the community of podcasters and millions of podcast listeners.

(link) [Slashdot]

18:53 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

13 Nov 2009
MS patent looks just like Unix command

I'm shocked, shocked I say, to discover that M$ would try to pull such a stunt.

Microsoft has won a patent that covers functionality closely resembling security features that have been at the heart of Unix for more than two decades and recently been folded into the Linux and Mac operating systems.

(link) [The Register]

19:40 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

04 Nov 2009
Secret Copyright Treaty Leaks. It's Bad. Very Bad.

Bad? This is worse than "bad" - this takes "bad" to a whole new lower level.

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked.

(link) [BoingBoing]

20:09 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

23 Oct 2009
Apple Seeks Patent On Operating System Advertising

The future is here, brought to you by ...

If anybody actually implements this, it will insure that Linux on the desktop gains unstoppable traction.

On April 18, 2008, Apple Computer applied for a patent relating to an 'invention' that allows for showing advertisements within an operating system.

(link) [Slashdot]

17:14 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

08 Sep 2009
Microsoft's Silverlight swallows off-line DRM pill

Does this mean it'll play for sure?

The next version of Microsoft's Silverlight will cozy up to media giants with out-of-browser digital rights management (DRM).

(link) [The Register]

21:18 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

07 Sep 2009
The Copyright Black Hole

This is the best description yet of the morass we made for ourselves with "intellectual property" law.

James Boyle, professor at Duke Law School, has a piece in the Financial Times in which he argues that a 'copyright black hole is swallowing our culture.' He explains some of the issues surrounding Google Books, and makes the point that these issues wouldn't exist if we had a sane copyright law. Relatedly, in recent statements to the still-skeptical European Commission, Google has defended their book database by saying that it helps to make the internet democratic. Others have noted that the database could negatively affect some researchers for whom a book's subject matter isn't always why they read it.

(link) [Slashdot]

14:43 /Copywrongs | 1 comment | permanent link

29 Jul 2009
Company Awarded Patent for Podcasting

Ridiculous.

VoloMedia announced today that it has been awarded what it called the 'patent for podcasting.' According to the press announcement, patent number 7,568,213, titled "Method for Providing Episodic Media," covers: "...the fundamental mechanisms of podcasting, including providing consumer subscription to a show, automatically downloading media to a computer, prioritizing downloads, providing users with status indication, deleting episodes, and synchronizing episodes to a portable media device."

(link) [Slashdot]

20:02 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

19 Jul 2009
We Were Smarter About Copyright Law 100 Years Ago

We were smarter about a lot of things in 1909 ...

James Boyle has a blog post comparing the recording industry's arguments in 1909 to those of 2009, with some lovely Google book links to the originals. Favorite quote: "Many and numerous classes of public benefactors continue ceaselessly to pour forth their flood of useful ideas, adding to the common stock of knowledge. No one regards it as immoral or unethical to use these ideas and their authors do not suffer themselves to be paraded by sordid interests before legislative committees uttering bombastic speeches about their rights and representing themselves as the objects of 'theft' and 'piracy.'" Industry flaks were more impressive 100 years ago. In that debate the recording industry was the upstart, battling the entrenched power of the publishers of musical scores. Also check out the cameo appearance by John Philip Sousa, comparing sound recordings to slavery. Ironically, among the subjects mentioned as clearly not the subject of property rights were business methods and seed varieties." Boyle concludes: "...one looks back at these transcripts and compares them to today's hearings — with vacuous rantings from celebrities and the bloviation of bad economics and worse legal theory from one industry representative after another — it is hard not to feel a sense of nostalgia. In 1900, it appears, we were better at understanding that copyright was a law that regulated technology, a law with constitutional restraints, that property rights were not absolute and that the public would not automatically be served by extending rights out to infinity."

(link) [Slashdot]

07:43 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

17 Jul 2009
Amazon Pulls Purchased E-Book Copies of 1984 and Animal Farm

Amazon must have been acquired by the Ministry of Truth ...

In a story just dripping with irony, Amazon Kindle owners awoke this morning to discover that 1984 and Animal Farm had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for, and thought they owned. Apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by George Orwell from people's Kindles and credited their accounts for the price. Amazon customer service may or may not have responded to queries by stating, "We've always been at war with Eastasia."

(link) [Slashdot]

21:09 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

13 Jul 2009
Judge Invalidates Software Patent, Citing Bilski

Given this decision, and with the Supremes set to review Bilski, patent law is going to really interesting this year, indeed.

US District Court Judge Andrew Gilford (Central District of California) granted a summary judgment motion in DealerTrack v. Huber et al., finding DealerTrack's patent (US 7,181,427) — for an automated credit application processing system — invalid due to the recent In re Bilski court decision that requires a patent to either involve 'transformation' or 'a specific machine.' According to Judge Gilford's ruling, DealerTrack 'appears to concede that the claims of the '427 Patent do not meet the "transformation" prong of the Bilski test.' He then applied the 'specific machine' test and noted that, post-Bilski the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences has ruled several times that 'claims reciting the use of general purpose processors or computers do not satisfy the [Bilski] test.' Judge Gilford analyzes the claims of the '427 patent, notes that they state that the 'machine' involved could be a 'dumb terminal' and a 'personal computer,' and then concludes: 'None of the claims of the '427 Patent require the use of a "particular machine," and the patent is thus invalid under Bilski.' DealerTrack apparently plans to appeal the ruling. Interesting times ahead.

(link) [Slashdot]

06:34 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

01 Jul 2009
Song wars

Hope you like talk radio, 'cause if this goes into effect, that's all we'll have in the US.

US musicians battle to get radio royalties

(link) [BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition]

06:10 /Copywrongs | 1 comment | permanent link

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