Copyright Blog Entries

If you haven’t read about it, the New York Times reported yesterday that: Microsoft May Build a Copyright Cop Into Every Zune. Essentially, the large content provider would withhold their content from a distributor unless the distributor put in effective measures to prevent against piracy. We’re not talking about DRM here, we’re talking about filtering software, whether it resides on the playback device like a Zune or iPod, or in the software on a syncing computer that stores the consumers’ library of music and movies like the Zune or iTunes software. This software would troll your library checking for content that was somehow infringing or unauthorized. It may even be spyware that could report back to someone about the contents of your media library.

Today, PK asked a federal court in Arizona to accept our “friend of the court” arguments in MDY v. Blizzard, a case pitting distasteful gaming behavior against an unsavory over-assertion of copyrights.

The basic details behind the story are here.

MDY, Inc. makes a program called Glider that plays World of Warcraft automatically. Players using Glider can gain experience points in WoW while not at their computers. This causes a number of gameplay issues for Blizzard, the makers of WoW. It also violates their Terms of Use (“TOU”), which are incorporated into their End User License Agreement (“EULA”).

So Blizzard sues MDY. Ok. For copyright infringement. Less Ok. Here’s why.

Two orphan works bills were introduced to begin to bring balance back to copyright law—to help find owners and encourage new and creative uses of unexploited copyrighted works. Both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have introduced orphan works legislation (S. 2913, the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008, H.R. 5889: The Orphan Works Act of 2008), rooted in the same language based on the previous Smith Bill, which was based on the Copyright Office’s recommendation. It’s been a long time coming and from working with staff, I know they’re very happy to have the bills finally introduced. Reps. Howard Berman (D-CA),Howard Coble (R-NC), John Conyers (D-MI), Lamar Smith (R-TX), (Chairman and Ranking Members of House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property and Full Judiciary Committee Chairman and Ranking Member respectively) and Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and their incredible staff members are to be congratulated for working to address concerns of both the user and owner communities.

Yesterday, the FCC took a field trip to the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. There it heard from two panels of experts and policy shapers on the issue of network management and more broadly net neutrality. If you didn’t see it, or listen to the FCC’s stream of it, thankfully, it’s been video recorded and put on the web…

Panel I: Network Management and Consumer Expectations

Professor Lessig presented one of his illustrative keynotes at the start, and apparently he recorded the live audio and dubbed it to the video later:

NOTE: My original blog post on this topic stated that the Tennessee state legislature was on the verge of passing SB 3974, a copyright industry-supported higher ed filtering bill. As discussed below, SB 3974 has been replaced with a different (and weaker) version. I regret the error.

Mark Simon wrote in Animation World Magazine last week about orphan works. I presume it was meant to be an in depth analysis of current orphan works legislation, but unfortunately he does himself and his readers a disservice because the article was factually shallow and didn’t accurately portray anything ever offered up by this or previous Congresses. I was ready to post all the problems with it, but Meredith L. Patterson over at Radio Free Meredith did all the work for me—it’s worth a read, so go read it first and then come back. Go ahead, I’ll be waiting.

Here at the Public Knowledge blog, it is often our duty to act as the bearer of bad news. When big content, the telecom industry and government agencies overlook the needs of consumers, technology users and content creators, it’s our job to sound the alarm. Today, however, we’ve got a refreshing breath of fresh air for you: a real-life story of a few Davids going up against a Silicon Valley Goliath and walking away victorious.

Just two weeks ago, Adobe launched its long-awaited Photoshop Express service: a web-based application that allows users to access some of the most popular features in the company’s Adobe Photoshop software for free. Many in the blogosphere applauded this move, as it allows a wide-range of users to perform simple image-editing tasks without having to shell out $800 or more for a hard copy of Adobe Photoshop. As a few eagle-eyed blog commenters would discover, however, a free lunch is still worthy of scrutiny, even in the post-Google era.

Outside of comic books, it is exceedingly rare to see a villain receive literal and poetic justice at the hands of its own creation. So when I read that Time Warner must now share the copyright for Superman with the heirs of Superman co-creator Jerome Siegel, I couldn’t help but give a healthy chuckle. The cause of action flows directly from a provision of the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998, which Time Warner (along with other studios) pushed through Congress with all their lobbying might. Granted Time Warner never supported this provision, which was a sop to folks and their heirs who sold copyrights when they thought they were only giving away 23 years plus a 23 year renewal, but TW regarded that as an acceptable risk for the billions upon billions of dollars it gained from yet another windfall in copyright land.

OK. Hopefully you all realized that S. 4108, the APRIL Act of 2008, was a joke. After all, there were a few excesses in there that would indicate how ludicrous the bill is.

Sam Gustin of Portfolio.com reports that Warner Music group has given recording industry veteran (and friend of PK) Jim Griffin a three-year contract to develop a plan that would allow consumers to have access to all the online music they want for a monthly fee that would be bundled into their internet service bill.

Griffin has been urging the industry for years to move in this direction, arguing that suing customers and attacking technological innovation were dead ends that would not lead to any additional sales or fans. Why not try a fee of this type and get something for music shared online, as opposed to the nothing that they receive now? Griffin was right then, and he is right now. But the industry, faced with precipitously dropping CD sales and download sales that while robust, will never make up the difference, is finally listening.