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      Monday, December 07, 2009

 

According to Michael Geist the Candian recording industry in facing a lawsuit for copyright infringement that could end up costing them billions of dollars.

"Chet Baker was a leading jazz musician in the 1950s, playing trumpet and providing vocals. Baker died in 1988, yet he is about to add a new claim to fame as the lead plaintiff in possibly the largest copyright infringement case in Canadian history. His estate, which still owns the copyright in more than 50 of his works, is part of a massive class-action lawsuit that has been underway for the past year.
The infringer has effectively already admitted owing at least $50 million and the full claim could exceed $60 billion. If the dollars don't shock, the target of the lawsuit undoubtedly will: The defendants in the case are Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada, the four primary members of the Canadian Recording Industry Association...

The class action seeks the option of statutory damages for each infringement. At $20,000 per infringement, potential liability exceeds $60 billion.
These numbers may sound outrageous, yet they are based on the same rules that led the recording industry to claim a single file sharer is liable for millions in damages.
After years of claiming Canadian consumers disrespect copyright, the irony of having the recording industry face a massive lawsuit will not be lost on anyone, least of all the artists still waiting to be paid."

Ray 5:20 PM [ Permalink ] 0 comments [ Links to this post ] Make a New Post

 

A friend of mine in China tells me that this court case involving Microsoft and a dispute over fonts, which I haven't paid a lot of attention to, has been a really big deal over there.  Apparently it's been all over the media, court hearings televised live and watched by millions and Microsoft have not been faring too well in the PR stakes as a result.

"The US software giant must not sell versions of Windows XP, 2003, 2000 or 98 software in the Asian super-economy after a Beijing court ruled the products include Chinese fonts designed by a local company.
The court said Microsoft had violated its licensing agreement with Zhongyi Electronic, which designs character fonts.
Microsoft said it plans to appeal the ruling, adding it "respects intellectual property rights" and uses the intellectual property of third parties "only when we have a legitimate right to do so"."

Said friend also tells me that the average woman on the Bejing omnibus has no concept of the notion of people being able to "own" intellectual property.  They have shared ideas for millenia - that's how the world gets better - copy, refine, re-mix, rework, improve.  It doesn't exactly harmonise then with Microsoft allegedly breaching local intellectual property regulations but she reckons they are being lambasted by the public more for being a global US corporation than for the specifics of their transgressions.  As I said I hadn't paid much attention to it so it was interesting to get a local perspective.

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I'm the lucky beneficiary of some unexpected space in my diary today due to a last minute cancellation of a meeting, so I've finally got around sticking the slides from my WIPO keynote a couple of weeks ago up on Slideshare (embedded below).

Wipo Key Role Of Tutors

View more presentations from rcorrigan.

I said at the time that I discovered some amazingly talented and dedicated people working within WIPO and likewise amongst their tutors from around the world. In the thick of all the complex politics and bureaucracy of the UN, these people have a really deep understanding of the issues and the importance of balance in international IP policy; and it was really interesting to hear, from the inside, of the energy underpinning the development agenda.

I should also thank Altaye Tedla and Caroline Storan at the WIPO academy who were very hospitable and do a tremendous job supporting 26,000 students all round the world.

Amongst the highlights of the workshop for me, in addition to the obvious opportunity to discuss IP policy with some deeply thoughtful and very well informed professionals from all across the globe - spanning the whole spectrum from IP expansionists to IP reductionists -  were Esteban Burrone's talk on evolving developments on the WIPO development agenda and Anotole Krattiger's session on the IP Handbook of Best Practices.

One of the biggest problems faced by the WIPO academy, their tutors and students is the issue of lack of access to educational resources:

• Teaching resources
• Case studies
• Articles
• Books
• Teaching activities
• Region/jurisdiction specific resources/tools
• Library resources
• Online databases
• Primary legal materials

The WIPO academy produces generic courses which are taught globally but then the tutors struggle to get access to resources to be able to tailor the materials to the specific needs of their students across a wide range of jurisdictions for example.  Although they are working hard to find some compromise the WIPO library can't facilitate tutors' access to resources, as we do for our tutors at the Open University, because of copyright law and licensing restrictions, since the tutors and students are resident in so many different areas.

The irony of WIPO's mission to educate people about intellectual property being hindered by the state of copyright law and publishers' licensing restrictions was quite stark.

So it was good to learn, therefore, of a new, rich, open IP resource which I hadn't previously been aware of, the IP Handbook of Best Practices, which was released under a creative commons attribution share alike licence.  It's a terrific piece of work put together by Professor Krattiger with the help of over 200 experts and I'd encourage you to go and explore the website which is really well organised - not just restricted to the handbook but providing links to other publicly available materials such as IP database and search tools too.

Prof. Krattiger is very much the pragmatist, believing whatever the state of affairs in the battle between IP expansionists and reductionists and whatever the prevailing wind on the state of balance in the system, we have to make it work through making deals in the marketplace. If the rules don't suit you, draw up a contract that does and start negotiating hard, is his primary advice - we need to stop worrying about IP regulations and start focussing on IP management.  He advocates a high standard of ethical behaviour and professionalism in licencing neogtiations, particularly important in the agriculture and health sectors he has specialised in for many years.  Ethical stewartship of intellectual property is really important in the management of our knowledge commons.  Presumably the thinking is that with a wide portfolio of working deals in the market then the regulations will follow on.

I couldn't agree more that we need ethical stewartship of IP but I'm not sure there is a lot of evidence for this in the IP marketplace, which tends to be amoral.  I don't necessarily share Prof Krattiger's optimism that the intellectual property landscape will be rebalanced equitably through the market but we did agree on one aspect of the confusion surrounding patents.  Very often in public discussions about patents two things get confused

• access and
  
• incentive to innovate

He believes that if we disentangle the strategies for access to Aids drugs in Africa, for example, from strategies to encourage innovations in the development of further improved Aids treatments, we will make more progress, on access and development of improved drugs, much more quickly.  The system has not prevented the development of treatments - there are AIDs drugs but the problem in poorer countries is the lack of access to these drugs that could help the condition of millions of Aids sufferers.

It is a general feature of public debates on intellectual property that crucial and separate issues get confused in this way, sometimes deliberately to shape the agenda and sometimes through simple confusion.  But as long as the intellectual property regulations themselves continue to hinder access to knowledge in this and other areas, and the debate continues to get framed and disproportionately influenced by commercial institutions and lobbyists with a vested interest in particular outcomes, then the confusion is not going to get cleared up any time soon.

Thanks again to Altaye Tedla, Caroline Storan, Glyn Martin and Mrs Gao Hang for their hospitality and all the work they put into making the workshop such a success; and thanks to all the delegates for making an outsider so welcome (and for all your positive feedback).

Ray 1:12 PM [ Permalink ] 0 comments [ Links to this post ] Make a New Post

      Thursday, December 03, 2009

 

With the exception of one short sentence in the middle this blog post from a member of the band Too Much Joy is just about the politest description of music label accounting disadvantaging artists that I've seen anywhere.

"A word here about that unrecouped balance, for those uninitiated in the complex mechanics of major label accounting. While our royalty statement shows Too Much Joy in the red with Warner Bros. (now by only $395,214.71 after that $62.47 digital windfall), this doesn’t mean Warner “lost” nearly $400,000 on the band. That’s how much they spent on us, and we don’t see any royalty checks until it’s paid back, but it doesn’t get paid back out of the full price of every album sold. It gets paid back out of the band’s share of every album sold, which is roughly 10% of the retail price. So, using round numbers to make the math as easy as possible to understand, let’s say Warner Bros. spent something like $450,000 total on TMJ. If Warner sold 15,000 copies of each of the three TMJ records they released at a wholesale price of $10 each, they would have earned back the $450,000. But if those records were retailing for $15, TMJ would have only paid back $67,500, and our statement would show an unrecouped balance of $382,500.
I do not share this information out of a Steve Albini-esque desire to rail against the major label system (he already wrote the definitive rant, which you can find here if you want even more figures, and enjoy having those figures bracketed with cursing and insults). I’m simply explaining why I’m not embarrassed that I “owe” Warner Bros. almost $400,000. They didn’t make a lot of money off of Too Much Joy. But they didn’t lose any, either. So whenever you hear some label flak claiming 98% of the bands they sign lose money for the company, substitute the phrase  “just don’t earn enough” for the word “lose.”"

Read the whole post however. It's well worth it. Thanks to Glyn Moody for the pointer.

Update: 1709 Copyright blog commentary on this is well worth a read.

Ray 5:03 PM [ Permalink ] 0 comments [ Links to this post ] Make a New Post

      Tuesday, December 01, 2009

 

The UK Ministry of Justice is running a consultation on whether it would be a good idea to abolish the edited version of the electoral roll, in other words the version that the government sells to commercial and other organisations. The consultation document explains the context in its foreword:

"In July 2008, Dr Mark Walport1 and Richard Thomas2 undertook a review of the framework within which personal information is used in the public and private sectors: the Data Sharing Review3. As part of that Review, they recommended that the Government should remove the provision in law which allows for the sale of the Edited Register4 and abolish the Edited Register. As a result of the Review’s findings, the Government committed to consult on the future of the Edited Register.
The Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators have argued that the electoral register should primarily be used for electoral purposes. Dr Mark Walport and Richard Thomas argued in the Data Sharing Review that:
“…selling the edited register is an unsatisfactory way for local authorities to treat personal information. It sends a particularly poor message to the public that personal information collected for something as vital as participation in the democratic process can be sold to ‘anyone for any purpose’. And there is a belief that the sale of the electoral register deters some people from registering at all.”
Any proposal that would change the nature and operation of the Edited Register could have an effect on those organisations that currently use it, as well as the public. This consultation is intended to enable us to build a firmer evidence base about the advantages and disadvantages of the Edited Register and the impact of any changes, and to consider the way forward on the basis of the responses we receive."

Also from the executive summary:

"The Edited Register came into existence in 2002 when the Government introduced Regulations to establish a new framework governing access to and the supply and sale of electoral registers. This followed the recommendation made by the Final Report of the Working Party on Electoral Procedures5 (“The Howarth Report”) and the judgment made in a court case (Robertson6) brought by an elector concerned about the use of his electoral data for commercial purposes. Prior to 2002, the full electoral register could be made available for a variety of purposes. Any company, organisation or person could buy a copy.
As a result of the Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 20027 (subsequently referred to as “the 2002 (Amendment) Regulations”) there are now two versions of the electoral register: a full version, and an edited version of the full register. The latter is known as the Edited Register and shows only the names and addresses of those on the full register who have not ‘opted out’ of inclusion in the edited version.
Unlike the full electoral register, the supply and use of which is strictly regulated in law, the Edited Register is available for sale to anyone for any purpose. Members of the public may choose to have their details omitted from the Edited Register by ‘opting out’ by ticking the box included for the purpose on the form used for the annual canvass, which is sent to each household on a yearly basis to determine the names of those to be included on the electoral register. Once produced, the Edited Register is used by a number of groups like charities and businesses for a variety of purposes including, but not limited to, compiling mailing lists."

So the consultation is being set up in response to criticisms about the sale of electoral roll details but interestingly, amongst the options in the questionaire the government is using, option 3 considers widening the commerical access to the details on the full register:

"Question 6. From the list below, which options are your most and least preferred? Please give reasons.

Options abolishing the Edited Register

Option 1: Abolish the Edited Register as soon as practicable.

Option 2: Set a timescale or ‘trigger point’ for abolition of the Edited Register.

Option 3: Abolish the Edited Register as soon as practicable, but extend access to the Full Register for other purposes to be decided in light of the consultation.

Options retaining the Edited Register

Option 4: Retain the Edited Register, but impose restrictions in legislation on who can purchase it and for what purposes.

Option 5: Replace the current ‘opt out’ provision with an ‘opt in’.

Option 6: Improve guidance for the public about the Edited Register."

I tick the opt out box on the form every year, so would be firmly opposed to extending access to the full register, i.e. option 3 above.

Ray 5:52 PM [ Permalink ] 0 comments [ Links to this post ] Make a New Post

 

Professor Lilian Edwards was in fine form in the Guardian yesterday pointing out how the government's digital economies bill is aimed, amongst other things, at banning public wi-fi networks.

"A lot of people have talked to me over the last week about Wi-Fi (open and closed, i.e. password-protected) and the Digital Economy bill. The more I try to find answers, the more ludicrous it becomes. For instance, last week it turned out that a pub owner was allegedly fined £8,000 because someone downloaded copyright material over their open Wi-Fi system. Would that get worse or better if the Digital Economy bill passes in its present form?
To illustrate, I'm going to pick my favourite example of a potentially worried wireless network provider: my mum.
She doesn't understand or like the internet, refuses to even think about securing her Wi-Fi network. What is her legal status? What will she say if/when she receives warnings under the Digital Economy bill because someone has used her open Wi-Fi to download infringing files?"

Highly recommended. It's a natural deduction from the argument that someone running an open wi-fi network cannot be expected to know who might be using that network illicitly, that the way to deal with this is to ban open wi-fi networks. This, however, as Lilian so eloquently illustrates, leads to further unintended consequences. And so we have the bad Net policy domino effect, where 3 strikes leads to banning public wi-fi leads to... and all because Peter Mandelson doesn't understand the Internet.

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Michael Geist notes that the EU analysis of US ACTA proposals has leaked.

"The European Commission analysis of ACTA's Internet chapter has leaked, indicating that the U.S. is seeking to push laws that extend beyond the WIPO Internet treaties and beyond current European Union law (the EC posted the existence of the document last week but refused to make it publicly available).  The document contains detailed comments on the U.S. proposal, confirming the U.S. desire to promote a three-strikes and you're out policy, a Global DMCA, harmonized contributory copyright infringement rules, and the establishment of an international notice-and-takedown policy."

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