Richard Posner has recently been writing about plagiarism:
"Recent “scandals” involving charges of plagiarism by professors and other writers treat plagiarism as (1) a well-defined concept that (2) is unequivocally deserving of condemnation. It is neither. Take the second point first. The idea that copying another person’s ideas or expression (the form of words in which the idea is encapsulated), without the person’s authorization and without explicit acknowledgment of the copying, is reprehensible is, in general, clearly false. Think of the remarkable series of “plagiarisms” that links Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. Think of James Joyce’s Ulysses and of contemporary parodies, which invariably copy extensively from the original—otherwise the reader or viewer would not recognize the parody as a parody. Most judicial opinions nowadays are written by law clerks but signed by judges, without acknowledgment of the clerks’ authorship. This is a general characteristic of government documents, CEO’s speeches, and books by celebrities.
When unauthorized copying is not disapproved, it isn’t called “plagiarism.” Which means that the word, rather than denoting a definite, well-recognized category of conduct, is a label attached to instances of unauthorized copying of which the society, or some influential group within it, disapproves."
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Sony v Beatallica
Jason Shultz has witnessed what he calls a "fabulous presentation (9MB MP3)on the band's legal run-in with Sony over the composition rights to the Beatles songs they parodied and how Lars Ulrich redeemed himself from the dark days of fighting Napster by defending the band's fair use. "
Elsewhere Denise Howell says listen to Cory: "Cory Doctorow on the Chris Pirillo Show. Required listening for every IP and/or technology lawyer drawing breath. Be prepared to rewind often, laugh, and marvel."
Elsewhere Denise Howell says listen to Cory: "Cory Doctorow on the Chris Pirillo Show. Required listening for every IP and/or technology lawyer drawing breath. Be prepared to rewind often, laugh, and marvel."
Salon pay for play article
I just got a pointer to a fascinating Salon article from March 2001 called Pay for Play on the relationship between record labels and radio stations in the US.
Learning through doing
Michael Madison has been pondering the value of reading and playing as learning methods.
" My take is that the “rules” that we learn via reading are broadly applicable, well beyond the world of literature, and well beyond the world of creating art on our own...
Does playing work at those same broader levels, or does the feedback from playing teach players (merely) the rules of the games themselves? That’s a genuine question, though what little gaming I’ve done over the last 30 years hasn’t taught me too much that I can use outside the world of games. I do, however, have pretty good hand/eye coordination. My students tend to be gamers, not readers, and they tend to have a very difficult time seeing or constructing narratives in the law."
Playing shouldn't be set against reading any more than privacy should be set against security and Michael himself says that "The dichotomy between “reading” and “playing” is a false one." Both have their merits. His thoughts have been triggered by a satirical extract from Steven Johnson's book "Everything is Bad for You", where he wonders what would have been the reaction to books if computer games had pre-dated them.
Update: It seems that Jenny Levine aka the Shifted Librarian has also been thinking about games.
"I’m late to the whole gaming and how it affects libraries thing, but I’m a total convert now and it’s something I’m going to actively track from now on. At first I thought it was just interesting, and while I did like the idea of bringing tweens and teens into the library using gaming as a social carrot, I’m gaining a totally different perspective for the way we can use the characteristics, expectations, and interplay of gaming and gamers in a “tipping point” kind of way.
The latest catalyst for this round of “gaming on my brain” is Moira Gunn’s interview with John Beck for IT Conversations. I’ve listened to the podcast of it twice in the last three days, and a couple of his points really resonate with me."
" My take is that the “rules” that we learn via reading are broadly applicable, well beyond the world of literature, and well beyond the world of creating art on our own...
Does playing work at those same broader levels, or does the feedback from playing teach players (merely) the rules of the games themselves? That’s a genuine question, though what little gaming I’ve done over the last 30 years hasn’t taught me too much that I can use outside the world of games. I do, however, have pretty good hand/eye coordination. My students tend to be gamers, not readers, and they tend to have a very difficult time seeing or constructing narratives in the law."
Playing shouldn't be set against reading any more than privacy should be set against security and Michael himself says that "The dichotomy between “reading” and “playing” is a false one." Both have their merits. His thoughts have been triggered by a satirical extract from Steven Johnson's book "Everything is Bad for You", where he wonders what would have been the reaction to books if computer games had pre-dated them.
Update: It seems that Jenny Levine aka the Shifted Librarian has also been thinking about games.
"I’m late to the whole gaming and how it affects libraries thing, but I’m a total convert now and it’s something I’m going to actively track from now on. At first I thought it was just interesting, and while I did like the idea of bringing tweens and teens into the library using gaming as a social carrot, I’m gaining a totally different perspective for the way we can use the characteristics, expectations, and interplay of gaming and gamers in a “tipping point” kind of way.
The latest catalyst for this round of “gaming on my brain” is Moira Gunn’s interview with John Beck for IT Conversations. I’ve listened to the podcast of it twice in the last three days, and a couple of his points really resonate with me."
Israeli says filtering spam illegal
An Israeli man sued by Microsoft for allegedly breaching US anti-spam laws has hit back claiming that Microsoft software in filtering his emails, engages in illegal interception.
Thanks to Michael Geist for the link.
Thanks to Michael Geist for the link.
French court ban drm
From Findlaw, "A French court has ordered DVD vendors to pull copies of the David Lynch film "Mulholland Drive" off store shelves in France as part of an unprecedented ruling against copy protection techniques."
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Recommended 9/11 Commission Report
Ed Felten is recommending reading the The 9/11 Commission Report, which he says "was much better than I expected -- much better, really, than a government commission report has any right to be."
As someone who got a copy which I haven't read yet, this gives me a small incentive to do so.
As someone who got a copy which I haven't read yet, this gives me a small incentive to do so.
UK music lovers fed up with drm
Whadaya know! The BBC are reporting that "UK music lovers are getting frustrated with restrictions placed on digital music tracks once they buy them from online stores, says PC Pro magazine."
Powell lobbies against US choice for UN
Colin Powell is apparently quietly lobbying to block the appointment of President Bush's choice of John Bolton as UN Ambassador.
DRM and the DMCA
Derek Slater has some interesting comments on DRM and DMCA. He reckons DRM critics (like me I guess) are misdirecting their criticism.
"So I don't mean this to be exhaustive - I'm more interested in framing the issue. First, again and again, people in this arena end up discussing banning DRM when the issue is the DMCA. Take the digital music interoperability hearing. Few are seriously suggesting that we ban certain DRM and mandate interoperability. Those who worry about the social welfare decreasing effects of the iPod-iTMS tie see the DMCA, rightly, as the culprit. The usefulness of the DMCA, not DRM, is what we should be questioning.
Second, along with the costs in terms of fair use, innovation, et. al resulting from DRM and the DMCA, we have to take seriously the benefits the DMCA might provide in terms of enabling certain business models and certain consumer choices. To do so, we have to focus more on whether structuring copyright around this "right of access" is really what we want - if we're, for instance, going to view fair use through the lens of market failure."
DRM will eventually become obsolete because people with get fed up with it but we should recognise the importance of interoperability and the potential for big players to distort and lock in market structures, which it will be difficult to dismantle once in place. On his question about building copyright on a "right of access" foundation, that is something I am opposed to. Why? Because people should not be allowed to stake an exclusive permanent property claim to an idea by constructing a digital fence around it. Thomas Jefferson puts it infinitely better than I ever could:
"It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
"So I don't mean this to be exhaustive - I'm more interested in framing the issue. First, again and again, people in this arena end up discussing banning DRM when the issue is the DMCA. Take the digital music interoperability hearing. Few are seriously suggesting that we ban certain DRM and mandate interoperability. Those who worry about the social welfare decreasing effects of the iPod-iTMS tie see the DMCA, rightly, as the culprit. The usefulness of the DMCA, not DRM, is what we should be questioning.
Second, along with the costs in terms of fair use, innovation, et. al resulting from DRM and the DMCA, we have to take seriously the benefits the DMCA might provide in terms of enabling certain business models and certain consumer choices. To do so, we have to focus more on whether structuring copyright around this "right of access" is really what we want - if we're, for instance, going to view fair use through the lens of market failure."
DRM will eventually become obsolete because people with get fed up with it but we should recognise the importance of interoperability and the potential for big players to distort and lock in market structures, which it will be difficult to dismantle once in place. On his question about building copyright on a "right of access" foundation, that is something I am opposed to. Why? Because people should not be allowed to stake an exclusive permanent property claim to an idea by constructing a digital fence around it. Thomas Jefferson puts it infinitely better than I ever could:
"It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
Policy laundering
A collection of civil liberties campaign groups have set up the Policy Laundering Project. From the website:
"The United States and to a lesser extent the European Union are trying to force international institutions as well as less powerful nations to adopt a wide variety of bad policies as part of the so-called “war on terror.” Often this includes trying to push unpopular and regressive policies that the U.S., the EU and its 25 member states cannot get imposed domestically through international organizations as a “back door” means of adoption.
In short, security officials across many nations are increasingly “going global” – not only striking cooperative agreements with each other but also working together to escape domestic legal and political controls by working through international organizations. It is vital that civil liberties organizations, privacy offiicials, and others with an interest in overseeing law enforcement learn to similarly operate at a global level lest officials succed in pushing through out-of-balance security policies that do not reflect other important values such as privacy and fairness.
This Website is intended to serve as a central clearinghouse of information and advocacy materials to help citizens, governments, and civil society groups to monitor international bodies and combat the strategy of policy laundering."
Thanks to Spyblog for the link.
"The United States and to a lesser extent the European Union are trying to force international institutions as well as less powerful nations to adopt a wide variety of bad policies as part of the so-called “war on terror.” Often this includes trying to push unpopular and regressive policies that the U.S., the EU and its 25 member states cannot get imposed domestically through international organizations as a “back door” means of adoption.
In short, security officials across many nations are increasingly “going global” – not only striking cooperative agreements with each other but also working together to escape domestic legal and political controls by working through international organizations. It is vital that civil liberties organizations, privacy offiicials, and others with an interest in overseeing law enforcement learn to similarly operate at a global level lest officials succed in pushing through out-of-balance security policies that do not reflect other important values such as privacy and fairness.
This Website is intended to serve as a central clearinghouse of information and advocacy materials to help citizens, governments, and civil society groups to monitor international bodies and combat the strategy of policy laundering."
Thanks to Spyblog for the link.
Mozcc
Mozcc is a nice add-on to Firefox for creative commons aware websurfers. It installs very quickly and puts a cc logo in the Firefox status bar. Then for suitably tagged webpages offered under a creative commons licence, symbols appear in the status bar showing which licence the page is offered under. Click on the symbol and you get the details of the licence.
My colleague, Tony Hirst, alerted me to Mozcc by telling me that our internet law course does not have the appropriate tags to recognise and make use of it!
Paul Miller of the Common Information Environment clearly approves of this kind of utility.
My colleague, Tony Hirst, alerted me to Mozcc by telling me that our internet law course does not have the appropriate tags to recognise and make use of it!
Paul Miller of the Common Information Environment clearly approves of this kind of utility.
Karlheinz and Kees
I had the pleasure of meeting Karlheinz Brandenburg and Kees Schouhamer Immink at the IEEE International Consumer Electronics Symposium held in Reading last year, two unsung pioneers of the digital entertainment revolution. I've just discovered that the BBC have done a short guide to one of Karlheinz's big contributions - the invention of the MP3 standard.
"However, behind the huge business headlines and ringing cash registers remains a story that has remained mostly untold; the story of a man whose combined knowledge of maths, sound and electronics brought the whole thing about - but, amazingly, for no personal profit.
It is also a tale of how a small scale German government project to explore how music could be fed down a phone line later helped create an Internet music standard which has all the hallmarks of becoming a postfix to stand alongside audio CDs and PAL televisions."
Kees invented CDs (amongst many other things). So well done BBC for recognising Professor Brandenburg's contribution but it could do with updating and let's see a similar tribute to Kees Schouhamer Immink.
"However, behind the huge business headlines and ringing cash registers remains a story that has remained mostly untold; the story of a man whose combined knowledge of maths, sound and electronics brought the whole thing about - but, amazingly, for no personal profit.
It is also a tale of how a small scale German government project to explore how music could be fed down a phone line later helped create an Internet music standard which has all the hallmarks of becoming a postfix to stand alongside audio CDs and PAL televisions."
Kees invented CDs (amongst many other things). So well done BBC for recognising Professor Brandenburg's contribution but it could do with updating and let's see a similar tribute to Kees Schouhamer Immink.
Marxist-Lessigism
Dan Hunter wrote a great piece in Legal Affairs last April about the student "Free Culture" movement being started by the Swarthmore students, who had got into a legal dispute with voting machine manufacturer Diebold Systems. It's hard to believe they've been going for a year already and they now have 10 branches (or chapters) around the US.
Solum on future of copyright
Lawrence Solum has done an extensive review of Larry Lessig's book Free Culture. From the Abstract:
"Sometimes technological change is so profound that it rocks the foundations of an entire body of law. Peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing systems - Napster, Gnutella, KaZaA, Grokster, and Freenet3 - are mere symptoms of a set of technological innovations that have set in motion an ongoing process of fundamental changes in the nature of copyright law. The video tape recorder begat the Sony substantial noninfringing use defense. The digital cassette recorder begat the Audio Home Recording Act. The internet begat the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Napster begat Napster. We see the law morph right in front of our eyes, but its ultimate form is still obscure. As a consequence, the future of copyright is up for grabs. We live in a magical, exhilarating, and frightening time: Many alternative copyfutures shimmer on the horizon, sometimes coming into sharper focus and sometimes fading away.
In this heady atmosphere, the idea slingers are at work. Richard Posner and William Landes have proposed indefinitely renewable copyrights. Neil Netanel, William Fisher, and others propose to legalize P2P filesharing...
No copywarrior is more prominent and influential than Larry Lessig...
This essay examines the ideas in Free Culture in the context of current controversies over the future of copyright."
"Sometimes technological change is so profound that it rocks the foundations of an entire body of law. Peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing systems - Napster, Gnutella, KaZaA, Grokster, and Freenet3 - are mere symptoms of a set of technological innovations that have set in motion an ongoing process of fundamental changes in the nature of copyright law. The video tape recorder begat the Sony substantial noninfringing use defense. The digital cassette recorder begat the Audio Home Recording Act. The internet begat the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Napster begat Napster. We see the law morph right in front of our eyes, but its ultimate form is still obscure. As a consequence, the future of copyright is up for grabs. We live in a magical, exhilarating, and frightening time: Many alternative copyfutures shimmer on the horizon, sometimes coming into sharper focus and sometimes fading away.
In this heady atmosphere, the idea slingers are at work. Richard Posner and William Landes have proposed indefinitely renewable copyrights. Neil Netanel, William Fisher, and others propose to legalize P2P filesharing...
No copywarrior is more prominent and influential than Larry Lessig...
This essay examines the ideas in Free Culture in the context of current controversies over the future of copyright."
US v EU on civil liberties
A journalist in Forbes magazine thinks the "EU has funny ideas about human rights...
...news stories from assorted Old World democracies make a persuasive case that they badly need a First Amendment over there. Not impeded by one, governments engage in a degree of speech suppression unimaginable in the U.S."
Hmmm I'm a big fan of the first amendment in many ways and I also happen to agree that you can drive a coach and horses through the get-out clauses for government (eg in the UK) in human rights legislation, but pots, kettles and black come to mind here, given the systematic dismantling of the US Bill of Rights that has been going on in recent years, as well as the history of the abuse of rights of certain groups in the US...
No political system can guarantee respect for civil rights. Only the constant vigilance and commitment of the people can do that.
...news stories from assorted Old World democracies make a persuasive case that they badly need a First Amendment over there. Not impeded by one, governments engage in a degree of speech suppression unimaginable in the U.S."
Hmmm I'm a big fan of the first amendment in many ways and I also happen to agree that you can drive a coach and horses through the get-out clauses for government (eg in the UK) in human rights legislation, but pots, kettles and black come to mind here, given the systematic dismantling of the US Bill of Rights that has been going on in recent years, as well as the history of the abuse of rights of certain groups in the US...
No political system can guarantee respect for civil rights. Only the constant vigilance and commitment of the people can do that.
Becta promote open source for schools
Are Becta about to get something right by reporting on a study of 15 schools that they could save money by moving to open source?
Monday, April 25, 2005
Thatcher sues BBC
With further thanks to Michael Geist for this link, it seems that former UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, has decided to sue the BBC for using her phrase "treachery with a smile on its face" rather too frequently when advertising Thatcher week last year. Rather ironic that the BBC should get sued for advertising.
Senator wants to ban free weather data
Senator Rick Santorum has apparently introduced a bill that would ban the National Weather Service from providing free weather data. (Thanks to Michael Geist for the link).
What an idiotic idea and another example of evidence free law-making proposals so criticised by James Boyle. James actually uses the weather service as an example in the latter example of how the US are currently getting things right:
"Take weather data. The United States makes complete weather data available to anyone at the cost of reproduction. If the superb government websites and data feeds aren’t enough, for the price of a box of blank DVD’s you can have the entire history of weather records across the continental US. European countries, by contrast, typically claim government copyright over weather data and often require the payment of substantial fees. Which approach is better? If I had to suggest one article on this subject it would be the magisterial study by Peter Weiss called “Borders in Cyberspace,” published by the National Academies of Science. Weiss suggests that the US approach generates far more social wealth. True, the information is initially provided for free, but a thriving private weather industry has sprung up which takes the publicly funded data as its raw material and then adds value to it. The US weather risk management industry, for example, is ten times bigger than the European one, employing more people, producing more valuable products, generating more social wealth. Another study estimates that Europe invests €9.5bn in weather data and gets approximately €68bn back in economic value - in everything from more efficient farming and construction decisions, to better holiday planning - a 7-fold multiplier. The United States, by contrast invests twice as much - €19bn - but gets back a return of €750bn, a 39-fold multiplier. Other studies suggest similar patterns in areas ranging from geo-spatial data to traffic patterns and agriculture. “Free” information flow is better at priming the pump of economic activity."
What an idiotic idea and another example of evidence free law-making proposals so criticised by James Boyle. James actually uses the weather service as an example in the latter example of how the US are currently getting things right:
"Take weather data. The United States makes complete weather data available to anyone at the cost of reproduction. If the superb government websites and data feeds aren’t enough, for the price of a box of blank DVD’s you can have the entire history of weather records across the continental US. European countries, by contrast, typically claim government copyright over weather data and often require the payment of substantial fees. Which approach is better? If I had to suggest one article on this subject it would be the magisterial study by Peter Weiss called “Borders in Cyberspace,” published by the National Academies of Science. Weiss suggests that the US approach generates far more social wealth. True, the information is initially provided for free, but a thriving private weather industry has sprung up which takes the publicly funded data as its raw material and then adds value to it. The US weather risk management industry, for example, is ten times bigger than the European one, employing more people, producing more valuable products, generating more social wealth. Another study estimates that Europe invests €9.5bn in weather data and gets approximately €68bn back in economic value - in everything from more efficient farming and construction decisions, to better holiday planning - a 7-fold multiplier. The United States, by contrast invests twice as much - €19bn - but gets back a return of €750bn, a 39-fold multiplier. Other studies suggest similar patterns in areas ranging from geo-spatial data to traffic patterns and agriculture. “Free” information flow is better at priming the pump of economic activity."
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