BC Law IPTF Blog

I don’t think that, statistically speaking, I’m a complete idiot, but I’ve just spent the past 20 minutes trying to figure out how to put some text on a video displaying a Creative Commons license. This post doesn’t criticize the Creative Commons scheme at all, it just says, “I wish they made their web site easier to use for me–and maybe for other newbies.”

First of all, when you click on the easy-to-find “License Your Work” link, you are brought to a license wizard. But the “more info” links are confusing. For example, if you are choosing whether to allow commercial uses of your work, the “more info” is written for a “Noncommercial” license–which allows commercial uses, with the author’s permission. So does “Noncommercial” allow commercial use? I don’t know.

The same for the “Allow modifications of your work.” The default radio button selects “Yes,” but the “more info” link is about “No derivative works”–which is confusing.

OK, so I figure I want an Attribution-Noncommercial license for video. So I get a page that gives me some icons/buttons and some HTML to cut and paste. But how do you cut and paste an icon or HTML into a video? Isn’t there some text I can put on the first or last screen? No. I only have stuff I can put on a web site. But if I’m going to upload this up onto YouTube?

And on YouTube… There’s no clear link telling me about what my rights are when I upload a video to YouTube. As the creator, I have the copyright. But do I give it up to YouTube when I upload it there? They’re pretty clear about what happens if your copyright is violated by someone else uploading to YouTube, but they should be more helpful in letting me know how my rights are protected when I upload my stuff.

At this point, the only thing I definitely know how to do is to put the “(c) 2007″ on my video. I think that I can also put:

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/; or, (b) send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

But I’m not entirely clear about this. I think it should be clearer.

My first major idiot moment of the day is when I leave my keys and lock myself out of my apartment every morning. This morning, that will be the second major idiot moment of my day.

Update: A lot of my questions are answered in the FAQ. But I think that they’re fairly obvious questions, and I shouldn’t have to search so long for it.

Also, I decided to try the CC Publisher application to publish my video - but the link takes me to a 403 Forbidden page. (02/28/07 19:56 EST)

And, just for the record, here’s the video of Yei, South Sudan (with the copyright and the unfortunately illegible (because of resolution issues) CC statement).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6186436.stm :

Sir Cliff Richard appears set to lose a battle to extend the number of years that musicians can receive royalties for their records, the BBC has learned.

He wants copyright to last 95 years, rather than the present 50 years.

But an independent review is to recommend the terms are not extended, a well-placed government source has said.

This outcome would mean the report had “missed a great opportunity” to support the music industry, the chairman of the British Phonographic Industry claimed.

In Ethan Zuckerman’s blog: …My heart’s in Accra » A bitter fight brewing: Ethiopia and Starbucks clash over coffee:

Last year, the Ethiopian government filed trademark applications to protect the names “Sidaro”, “Harar” and “Yirgacheffe” - the hope was to prevent unscrupulous coffee dealers from buying inexpensive beans from other countries and selling them as “Sidaro”, whether or not they emerged from the region.

Unfortunately, the USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office) rejected Ethiopia’s claims to these three names.

* * *

The absurdity of the situation, as I read it, is the need for a very poor nation to protect “intellectual property” they’ve owned for centuries in an expensive foreign market. The coffee situation makes me think of the notorious “turmeric patent“, where Indian scientists and attorneys had to present ancient Sanskrit manuscripts to overturn a US patent that introduced the “novel” use of turmeric for wound healing, a process used for thousands of years in India. The patent was overturned, but it’s a huge barrier for poor countries to have to litigate bogus patents in US court.

More controversy regarding indigenous property rights clashing with Western legal systems.

It’s Starbucks’ right to secure the patent in the U.S.–they applied for it first. Ethan is right that the problem is more with the USPTO than with Starbucks. There should, rather, be a certification system for marking beans from regions as being from those regions–this is being proposed now. This type of system is used already for apples and wines, among other products.

But can you trademark a name of a place? Could I trademark the name “France?” Have, for example, Native American tribes been able to protect use of their tribal names from being owned by products? The Crazy Horse malt liquor suit was settled. The case of some Native Americans suing the Washington Redskins for their trademark of their disparaging name is still alive. Pro-Football, Inc. v. Harjo, 415 F.3d 44, 46 (C.A.D.C. 2005).

Are we forced to extra-judicial resorts in resolving these types of issues? Everyone seems to be pushing for settlement and policy issues. Should the courts step in and take a stand?

Now that Google has acquired YouTube, Warner–amongst others–is re-routing their copyright violation claims up the ladder to Google. A Reuters article speculates that many others will follow, especially now that Google has deeper-pockets.

This particular case is interesting because Google now owns a 5% stake in Warner’s AOL.

Yesterday, Oct. 3, was the Day Against DRM (see Defective by Design’s Ten things to do on the Day Against DRM as well as their primer on DRM).

DreamHost Blog » iTunes Music Store

What is it?

It’s a new service (during the beta only open to DreamHost Customers) that allows you to sell your own digital files, a la iTMS.. but with a few key differences:

# No DRM is allowed.. period!
# Once you upload your file to sell, you pay a tiny one-time storage fee, and we serve it FOREVER at a nice, permanent, URL.
# Anybody who buys a file somebody offers via Files Forever get an online backup of it included.. that is, they may re-download the file as many times as they want, FOREVER!
# Any file you buy from Files Forever you can also “loan” to your friends via the service! They are then allowed to download the file as much as they want until you ask for it “back.” (This is awesome, trust me.)
# We handle all the payment processing / shopping cart stuff, and take just 5% 50c for credit card fees. (We combine purchases to minimize these costs too.)
# You can even offer an “affiliate cut” for people who re-sell your files!

Dreamhost is releasing this in protest of iTunes continued use of DRM (Digital Rights Management) restrictions on its multimedia files. This product is a mixture of file-sharing/sending services and a way of selling that content. So while it’s not its own iTunes store, it is the backend for anyone else to set up their own iTunes-like store.

On Tuesday, September 26, the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness held a hearing entitled “The Internet and the College Campus: How the Entertainment Industry and Higher Education are Working to Combat Illegal Piracy”.

Congress has yet to regulate educational networks, but has considered measures that would require universities to actively monitor their networks to limit the sharing of copyrighted materials. As the holders of copyrighted materials continue to see sales eroded by online piracy, it appears that increased pressure will be put upon federal legislators to force educational institutions to limit access by students to P2P sharing of copyrighted works over their networks. This may not be as uncomfortable for universities as it may seem, as P2P sharing eats up network bandwith, and may put schools in tricky positions should one of their users be sued.

A full webcast of the Subcommitte hearing is available here.
For a summary of the meeting and further discussion please see Congress Looks At P2P in Academia at arstechnica.

Peer-to-Peer Developer Sues Record Companies - Yahoo! News

Lime Wire now charges the record companies with colluding to create a monopoly over the digital distribution of copyrighted music. The record companies “have engaged in these unfair business practices for the specific purpose of eliminating sources of decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing and acquiring a monopoly over digital distribution of commercially valuable copyrighted music and movie content,” the lawsuit reads.

The alleged unfair business practices include collusion among the record companies to price their licensing rates such that independent music sellers can’t afford to stay in business, Lime Wire said.

* * *

Lime Wire also charges the record companies with trying to extend their monopoly by forcing music distributors to work only with their affiliated filtering system supplier. Lime Wire says it developed a filtering application to prevent illegal downloading and encourage legal content purchasing. But the record companies refused to give the developer access to the metadata that uniquely identifies each song in order for the filtering system to work, Lime Wire claims.

Instead, Lime Wire alleges the record companies encouraged Lime Wire to use their preferred supplier for a P-to-P filtering system, iMesh. While Lime Wire concedes that iMesh is not owned by the record companies, it alleges the supplier is controlled by the record companies. A top executive at iMesh is a former leader of the Recording Industry Association of America and iMesh is the only RIAA-sanctioned business of its kind in the U.S., according to Lime Wire.

This isn’t the first time the music industry actively conspired in anti-competitive behavior. Music distributors were charged with price-fixing, and I know I received a check as part of a settlement of the class action lawsuit for having bought CDs at one point.

Here, Lime Wire is throwing a punch back at the record companies, scrapping together a tenuous argument, into the volley of lawsuits back and forth.

One of the most potent areas for innovation has always been interoperability with existing inventions. As a small example, in the ‘80s some enterprising entrepreneur came up with a cup holder which could fit next to the driver’s seat in most cars.

Theoretically, such an invention benefits everyone. Consumers get an improved product: a car with a cupholder. The entrepreneur exploits a previously unoccupied market niche – creating new value. And, the owners of the existing technology, in this case, the car manufacturers, sell more cars because their product has been enhanced.

The owner of the already existing technology, however, is not always welcoming of interoperable products. Sometimes a manufacturer bundles a proprietary technology with a previously existing technology in order to control not one but two markets. In such a case, the manufacturer is not very happy when an enterprising inventor creates an interoperable technology – and jumps in on his or her game.

Let me give a famous example. In Lexmark Intern. v. Static Control Components, Lexmark, a computer printer manufacturer, designed its printers so that only Lexmark’s printer cartridges could be used with its printers. 387 F.3d 522 (6th Cir. 2004). Then, Lexmark sold the printer cartridges for high prices. In order to use a Lexmark printer, the consumer had to pay for one of Lexmark’s high-priced printer cartridges. In this way, Lexmark leveraged control of the printer market into control of the printer cartridge market.

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Aborigines win Australian land claim - Yahoo! News

OK, so here’s another one of my posting that seems to have *nothing* to do with IP or technology and law… But I know that Australia has a history of entertaining claims about indigenous rights–the ones off the top of my head being about copyright and indigenous art and patents and indigenous medicines.

In the Federal court decision, the Noongar people were given a limited land title claim to the city of Perth, the capital of the Western Australia state. It grants native title to lands not usurped by freehold or leashold titles. At issue are the national parks and reserves and what rights this land title claim gives over these areas.

Part of the case hinges on whether the Noongar people had maintained their culture and customs since European settlement in 1829. Since this was decided, this may also provide them–and other similarly situation indigenous peoples–the grounding to make other claims over indigenous rights.

Perhaps such a claim may help with copyright battles over indigenous art–symbols and styles–or with claims over indigenous plants or medicinal traditions. Regardless, it shows the court’s willingness to accept that indigenous cultures have title over things they possessed centuries before European settling.

The Bartlett Diaries has a run-down on the many biases in reporting on this issue.

BennetonTalk provides a more sympathetic interpretation of the aboriginal plight.

From ArsTechnica: Poll: Americans don’t want net neutrality (or maybe they don’t know what it is)

A nationwide survey of 800 registered voters is being touted by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation because it purports to show that Americans are not interested in net neutrality legislation. Calling proposed net neutrality “onerous,” the Committee’s press materials say that the poll makes it clear that Americans prefer “video choice” over such regulations.

The poll also found that many Americans have no idea what net neutrality is, or why they should care . . .

Maybe we just need another term to describe the concept. (I find the term “network neutrality” confusing. Perhaps something more loaded like “egalitarian networks” or “anti-entertainment bandwidth throttling” or “need-blind allocation” or “usage-tiered pricing.” Or “lobster pricing.”)

In the survey, the question was posed as a battle between network neutrality–ISPs can’t sell faster (or slower) bandwidth on a scaled pricing scale–and increased TV and video choice. A non-neutral network could, for example, charge YouTube’s streaming video more for their bandwidth, and favor the ISPs cable network partner in allocating bandwidth to the TV set. It’s like paying more per pound for the larger lobster at the lobster pound.

It’ll be exciting to see more decisions being made in Congress by people who don’t even try to understand, like what happened with the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act.

Update: ValleyWag comments on this in a less-formal manner: Feature: Congress says “fuck you” to Net Neutrality with blatant pro-big-business push poll.