BBC: “Musical copyright terms ‘to stay’”

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.

Wikipedia Explodes in China

From Slashdot:

“The Chinese have recently been allowed to enjoy the Chinese version of Wikipedia now that the ban has been lifted. And the result is an explosion in use after being banned for a year. From the article, “Activity on nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation’s Chinese Wikipedia site has skyrocketed since its release, which Internet users in China first started reporting on Nov. 10. Since then, the number of new users registering to contribute to the site has exceeded 1,200 a day, up from an average of 300 to 400 prior to the unblocking. The number of new articles posted daily has increased 75% from the week before, with the total now surpassing 100,000, according to the foundation.” No one’s sure how long this will be available to the People’s Republic of China but hopefully the government will recognize that at least a significant part of the populace enjoys a Wikipedia community.”

That’s all.

Working with Law at the Ground Level

Somewhat related to my last post (just minutes ago) on developing rule of law in post-conflict situations, I reflect upon a conversation I had after a rugby match between BC Law and Yale:

I was talking with a Yale graduate student in archeology about his work in the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. From my own experiences in East Africa, I always wondered about how people go about and research ancient history in places so unexplored such as East Africa.

He basically confirmed my suspicions and said, “You just go into towns and talk to people and ask about their grandparents.”

And so I believe that in developing reforms such as rule of law (and especially IP-related law in terms of corporate investment) you really need to go in and figure out what’s been going on per a cultural basis–and that needs to happen not by asking theorists or by positing your own assumptions as to how things should be, but rather talking to the people and seeing what their thoughts are first.

In my experience, the thickest barrier between this type of anthropological and humanistic work and the work desired of the “development set” is that you have to get “down and dirty” with the culture. Unfortunately, many of the “development set” find it difficult to sit in a mud hut sitting on seasons of cow shit and work through the culture into understanding what has happened before their Nikes have touched the ground.

But to develop legal systems it takes time to figure out what has happened before–socially, culturally, and psychologically–for modern patterns and practices to take hold.

Virtual Worlds as Examples of Developing Economies

In researching a paper/presentation for my comparative law class, I ran across a journal article that compares development of rule of law in post-conflict situations to those in online, virtual worlds:

Jonathan E. Hendrix, Law Without State: The Collapsed State Challenge to Traditional International Enforcement, 24 Wis. Int’l L. J. 587 (2006).

The article, in part, compares the situation in Somalia to that in virtual worlds. In a largely unmanageable legal system, economies and polity flourish, but are unregulated from a “top-down” sense. The individual actors within the chaotic state set the stage for what rule of law needs to be developed.

Hendrix then posits that this creates a situation where international law can step in and set the foundation for domestic law and policies, in the vacuum of the latter.

I plan to use this to support my hypothesis that rule of law cannot completely supersede the “will of economy”–that rule of law reform in post-conflict situations should be more “thumbs in the dam” than brutally building a brand-new dam. Rule of law reform should fix things that need to be fixed rather than prospectively apply carte blanche “developed” legal systems on top of effectively disparate legal and cultural systems.

A bitter fight brewing: Ethiopia and Starbucks clash over coffee

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?

Google Re-Routing of Tor Requests

This, again, is another technology-related post, tangentially related to the law.

I’m using the Torbutton Firefox plugin to route my brower requests through Vidalia/Privoxy and onto the Tor network. Tor is a technical method of constantly re-routing your web (or other Internet-related) requests through different Tor servers such that each “server step” along the way doesn’t know where the original request came from. (That’s an attempt at a simplification.) Using Tor, you can anonymize your web traffic.

So when I tried to search on Google, I was a bit confused when I was at the Danish Google – google.dk. I tried again, and then I was at the German Google. And then I realized what’s happening. My web request was getting routed from a Danish Tor server, google.com recognized my Danish “origin,” and then served me the Danish home page.

So, if anything but a little bit of a pain, it’s at least proof that my Tor-surfing is working. And my anonymity is somewhat retained.

(I’m working on a paper including a practical guide for Fourth Amendment privacy-protection of electronic communication.  That’s my justification for this post.)

Intel One Step Closer to European Anti-Trust Charges

Intel is currently being investigated by the European Commission on anti-trust charges stemming from alleged pricing pressure put upon retailers.  Microsoft has also faced the wrath of European anti-trust regulators for the past several years over several business practices.  Several European countries have also independently sparred with Apple over the closed format of its iTunes store.  Does this signal increased hostility to dominant US-based high tech companies?

From TechNewsWorld:
European regulatory authorities have taken a step toward bringing allegations that Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is violating antitrust law closer to a resolution — and the company’s probable prosecution.

Officials investigating claims against the chip maker reportedly have presented their evidence to an internal panel of so-called “devil’s advocates,” a step taken before formal legal proceedings are launched.

If charges are levied, the competition commissioner will issue a statement of objections to the company. Intel’s European antitrust woes began several years ago in Germany, with allegations that retailers were being pressured into stocking only PCs that were equipped with Intel chips. Complaints also surfaced over Intel’s manufacturer rebate program.

Navigating the Rebate Issue

Surprisingly, rebates can be a gray area in anticompetition law, even in the United States, commented Tyler Baker, a partner with Fenwick & West in Silicon Valley.

“I don’t know all of the details about the rebate systems Intel uses, but I can tell you it is a very much unresolved question in this country,” he told the E-Commerce Times.

Many U.S. courts are hesitant to find that rebates are illegal, because they are a form of price competition — which antitrust laws encourage, he explained.

However, pricing can subtly morph into a de facto exclusive dealer’s arrangement when companies are required to buy large quantities of product to qualify for a manufacturer’s rebate.

“Some courts have found that rebates can be set up or structured to be more than just price competition,” Baker said.
Following Microsoft

Intel may be poised to head down the same path in Europe that Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has been on for the last several years. Microsoft’s antitrust legal problems extend into many different areas, Baker noted, so the analogy is not a perfect one. It is, however, close enough.

“Intel is a very dominant company, and dominant companies are sometimes judged by different standards. That is true both [in the U.S.] and in Europe,” he pointed out.

Intel might find, as Microsoft did, that business practices are not judged in isolation. While it might be unclear whether one activity could be considered an antitrust violation, the combination of several ambiguous business practices can add up to antitrust concerns in the eyes of regulators.

Whether charges will be filed is still uncertain, and it is too early to extrapolate any lessons from the latest events, Baker noted.

“If the EC brings a case, then other companies will have to pay greater attention, of course, to these issues,” he said.

On the other hand, the European Commission may decide not to press charges. After all, the panel of devil’s advocates was established precisely to ensure that poorly investigated cases do not enter the legal system. “That will also send a message,” Baker said.

Slashdot | Google Denies Data In Brazil Orkut Case

Slashdot | Google Denies Data In Brazil Orkut Case

The AP reports that Google filed a motion in response to a Brazilian judge’s deadline to turn over information on users of the company’s social networking service Orkut. An earlier AP story gives the background: ‘On Aug. 22, Federal Judge Jose Marcos Lunardelli gave Google’s Brazilian affiliate until Sept. 28 to release information needed to identify individuals accused of using Orkut to spread child pornography and engage in hate speech against blacks, Jews and homosexuals. Google claims that its Brazilian affiliate cannot provide the information because all the data about Orkut users is stored outside Brazil at the company’s U.S.-based headquarters. Google maintains that it is open to requests for information from foreign governments as long as the requests comply with U.S. laws and that they are issued within the country where the information is stored.’” Eight million Brazilians, about a quarter of the country’s Internet-using population, are members of Orkut.

Furthermore, from the Napa Valley Register Online:

Risking daily fines of $23,000, Google argued, among other things, that the federal civil court did not have the proper jurisdiction. . . . Google has said it is open to data requests from foreign governments as long as they comply with U.S. laws and are issued within the country in which the information is stored. Federal Judge Jose Marcos Lunardelli rejected that reasoning on Aug. 22, saying “all the photographs and messages being investigated were published by Brazilians, through Internet connection in national territory.” . . . At issue is whether information stored on computers in the United States should be subject to Brazilian or U.S. law.

Another example of Google following its mission, “Do no evil.” The “Do no evil” mission is justified as a good business policy more than an ethical mandate.  But isn’t privacy in the name of justice enough of a justification? Unfortunately not. It just takes good lawyering to obfuscate what many U.S. citizens think are their rights.

Aborigines win Australian land claim

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.

One (or Five) Watt LED Light Bulbs

EcoGeek – One Watt Light Bulbs!

LEDison lamps are being used to replace 10 to 60w incandescent bulbs in commercial applications (like shopping malls). The LED lamps have ten times the service life of the incandescents they replace, and use only 1 watt! An even greater cost savings is realized when the annual maintenance costs of replacing incandescent bulbs is considered.

People all over are starting to learn how inefficient your standard incandescent lightbulb is. The first major move had been to compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFL)–where, for example, a 15 W bulb can replace your standard 40 W bulb. (They claim they replace 60 W bulbs, but, honestly, they’re just not as bright.) Now, with LEDs, perhaps we can replace those 60 W bulbs with 5 W bulbs–saving electricity because they use less, but also creating less waste since these CFL and LED bulbs last longer. (Right now the 5 W bulbs only match “up to” 30 W incandescents.)

The downside is that CFLs and LEDs contain mercury and other trace heavy metals, respectively, and there may be other industrial byproducts. Perhaps this will be offset by improved design and also by the fact that since they last longer, we won’t have to consume as much.

On a side-note, in Uganda, I saw mostly CFL lightbulbs in use. The light quality isn’t as good as incandescents, again, but it’s great that they’re beating the developing world by starting with more efficient lighting.