What’s New:
- Action Alert: Save Orphan Works!
- Two Bills Lead Net Neutrality Push
- The New Clearwire: How Open Will America’s First WiMAX Network Be?
- Blizzard Entertainment: The Company Who Cried Copyright Infringement
- Nominations Now Open For the 2008 IP3 Awards
Action Alert: Save Orphan Works!
Last week, Public Knowledge sent out an Action Alert, drawing attention to two new bills that would allow for greater use of so-called “orphan works” — books, music, photos, movies or other works whose owners can’t be found. Why are these bills important? Because there are literally millions of works in existence that are currently under copyright protection but for which the copyright owner cannot be found. And if you use a copyrighted work without permission, you could be on the hook for statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work, so orphans often go unused. In the days since the introduction of the two bills, a lot of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) has been spread by opponents of orphan works legislation. Public Knowledge Director of Policy and New Media, Alex Curtis, has decided to take on these opponents in a series of “FUD Reports”. Be sure to check out Alex’s posts and don’t forget to contact your representatives, via our Action Alert site, to tell them to support orphan works legislation.
To learn more about orphan works, check out Alex’s FUD Reports (Part 1 | Part 2) and don’t forget to write your representatives via our Action Alert site and join our Facebook cause.
Two Bills Lead Net Neutrality Push
Last week, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr., (D-MI) and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduced new legislation in the House that would help ensure a free and open Internet by signing the core principles of Network Neutrality into law. The bill, H.R. 5994, the “Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2008,” would serve to complement an existing bill, the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008,” which was introduced by House Telecom Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Chip Pickering (R-MS) in February. The Conyers-Lofgren bill would subject Net Neutrality violations to the possibility of an antitrust suit - a subject area over which the Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction. The Markey bill, by contrast, takes its authority from the Communications Act, which happens to be under the jurisdiction of the Energy and Commerce Committee. “These bills are not mutually exclusive,” Public Knowledge Communications Director Art Brodsky notes.
To take a closer look at the two bills, see this blog post and listen to this audio stream of a May 6 hearing on the Markey bill (Windows Media Player required)
The New Clearwire: How Open Will America’s First WiMAX Network Be?
Last week, Sprint announced that it would spin-off its XOHM WiMAX division in order to form a joint-venture with Clearwire. The new company, which will trade under the Clearwire name, has also received a cash infusion of $3.2 billion from Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House Networks. While many in the industry rightfully heralded the announcement as a big step forward for WiMAX and next-generation wireless technologies as a whole, the creation of “the new Clearwire” raises a number of questions for proponents of open broadband networks. While Google’s involvement in the JV is encouraging and gives us some idea of how open and neutral the network will be (the company has preemptively addressed some of these concerns in a blog post), a few questions still remain with regard to the terms under which the service will be offered and what constitutes “competitively-neutral network management”. Additionally, some have also expressed unease with the exclusive nature of Google’s deal with Clearwire. However, despite these concerns, University of Michigan Law School Visiting Professor and Public Knowledge blogger Susan Crawford writes that she is “cautiously optimistic” with regard to the forthcoming service.
For more on the new Clearwire, read this blog post by Susan Crawford (cross-posted on the Susan Crawford Blog)
Blizzard Entertainment: The Company Who Cried Copyright Infringement
Last week, Public Knowledge filed an amicus brief with a federal court in Arizona, asking the court to accept our “friend of the court” arguments in MDY v. Blizzard, a case that pits the maker of an automated World of Warcraft (WoW) application against Blizzard Entertainment, the maker of the game itself. The program in question, MDY Inc.’s Glider, automates the process of playing WoW, allowing players to accumulate valuable gold and experience points while away from their computers. While it goes without saying that this program is problematic for both the WoW community and Blizzard, what’s even more troubling is the manner in which Blizzard has gone about fighting it. Rather than approaching Glider as a contract violation, Blizzard has sued MDY for copyright infringement, asserting that any user who runs Glider while playing WoW is infringing on Blizzard’s copyrights. When a user plays WoW on his or her computer, that user must load WoW code into the local machine’s RAM (as is the case with virtually any application). By using Glider, Blizzard argues, the user is violating the license that Blizzard grants for loading this code and therefore, is in violation of Blizzard’s copyrights. This is, of course, questionable reasoning at best and as Sherwin Siy notes on the Public Knowledge blog, “There’s a big legal difference between what happens when you breach a contract and when you infringe copyright.” Luckily, gamers aren’t giving Blizzard a free pass on this one: Sherwin’s comments were cited by respected tech news site Ars Technica and that story hit the front page of popular social news site Digg, with over 1500 votes.
For more on this story, check out our amicus brief (PDF link), Sherwin’s blog post and this Ars Technica story.
Nominations Now Open For the 2008 IP3 Awards
It’s that time of year again: time to nominate individuals for our annual IP3 awards. As you may know, each year, Public Knowledge selects three individuals to receive the IP3 Award. These winners are people who have advanced the public interest in each of the three “IPs:” Intellectual Property, Internet Protocol, and Information Policy. Previous IP3 winners have included everyone from Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu (a member of our distinguished panel of judges this year) and Virginia Congressman Rick Boucher to the band OK Go and Gnarls Barkley member DJ Danger Mouse. Be sure to nominate your picks by June 1st and look our for list of winners in October.
To submit a nomination for the IP3 Awards, email your picks to IP3nominees@publicknowledge.org or check out this blog post.
