NewsTrust - Copyright - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

Piracy problems? US copyright industries show terrific health

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Ars Technica - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - A major report from the largest copyright owners shows that they are earning record foreign profits, beat the US economy handily during the recent recession, and pay better than most industries. That's why we need draconian new laws to help them out.

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Congress Introduces Another Awful Anti-Piracy Law - Because the DMCA and Protect IP Weren't Obnoxious Enough

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

dslreports.com - Oct. 28 (Opinion) -

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Analysis: New US anti-piracy bill will kill the Internet

Tue, 31 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

tgdaily.com - May. 31 (Opinion) -

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Page Sharing Service Bo.lt Lets You Copy, Edit And Share Almost Any Webpage

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Alexia Tsotsis - Apr. 21 (Review) - With $5 million in funding from Benchmark Capital, webpage sharing service Bo.lt launches today after about a year in private beta. Like a “Bit.ly on steroids,” the service lets you paste any URL into its copy engine or bookmarklet, creating a duplicate of the page on its servers. Once copied, Bo.lt lets you quickly edit the page itself. You can change the text, edit and delete images and text and change links — either through the Bo.lt visual editor or its HTML editor.Page Sharing Service Bo.lt Lets You Copy, Edit And Share Almost Any Webpage

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Blaming Piracy, Music Industry Says It's Lost a Third of Its Value Over Past 7 Years

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

ReadWriteWeb - By Audrey Watters - Jan. 20 (Opinion) - It's a familiar refrain from the music industry: sales are down and piracy is to blame. That's the gist of the the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry's (IFPI) annual Digial Music Report, which points to a slowdown in the growth of digital music sales. While digital music revenue has grown 1000% over the past seven years, the entire music industry has lost a third of its value over that same time period. And while digital music seems to represent both the best hopes and the worst fears of the industry, even its growth is slowing.

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Latest leaked draft of secret copyright treaty: US trying to cram DRM rules down the world's throats

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Boing Boing - By Cory Doctorow - Sep. 06 (Opinion) - Michael Geist writes in with the latest news on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the secret, closed-door copyright treaty that will bring US-style copyright rules (and worse) to the whole world. Particularly disturbing is the growing support for "three-strikes" copyright rules that would disconnect whole families from the Internet if one member of the household was accused (without proof) of copyright infringement.

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The Digital Economy Bill against the digital economy

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Mike Butcher - Apr. 08 (Opinion) - ... the UK Labour governement, together with the Conservative arty, forced through the controversial Digital Economy Bill. The Bill now gets a ‘third reading’ in the House of Lords, which means it is almost certain to become law. The government did a deal with the Conservative leadership, which got a number of provisions it didn’t like removed. In other words, it was, to use an old British phrase, a “stitch up.”

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Media Matters with Bob McChesney

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

will.illinois.edu - By Bob McChesney, Patricia Aufderheide - Mar. 07 (Opinion) - Patricia Aufderheide is a professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C. She is the author of, among others, Documentary: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2007), The Daily Planet (University of Minnesota Press, 2000), and of Communications Policy in the Public Interest (Guilford Press, 1999). Dr. Aufderheide says this about her work, "My area of expertise is copyright and fair use, and the way in which not knowing your rights can cripple your creativity, and understanding them can improve freedom of speech as well as quality of work." Call and speak with Dr. Aufderheide and Bob on Sunday.

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NYT Co.’s top lawyer doubts that aggregation is a copyright issue

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Nieman Journalism Labs - By Zachary M. Seward - Jul. 22 (Editorial) - a major case of that sort could begin to clarify the increasingly muddled issues of copyright on the Internet. For instance, how do you apply a 91-year-old legal doctrine known as “hot news” to a website that never heard of news that isn’t sizzling?

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Free Market Myth

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Boston Review - By Dean Baker - Feb. 19 (Opinion) - The extraordinary financial collapse of recent months has been commonly described as a testament to the failure of deregulation. The events are indeed testament to a failure—a failure of public policy. Blaming deregulation is misleading. In general, political debates over regulation have been wrongly cast as disputes over the extent of regulation, with conservatives assumed to prefer less regulation, while liberals prefer more. In fact conservatives do not necessarily desire less regulation, nor do liberals necessarily desire more. Conservatives support regulatory structures that cause income to flow upward, while liberals support regulatory structures that promote equality. “Less” regulation does not imply greater inequality, nor is the reverse true.

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AP wants $2.50 a word to excerpt its stories now?

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:35:06 -0700

Hot Air - By Allahpundit - Jun. 17 (Opinion) - And you thought their PR on this subject couldn't get any worse. Must be nice to have an exemption from the same federal fair use statute every other content provider in America is governed by.

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Developing the New "Capitalists' Man"

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Dean Baker - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - For example, in some of the rapidly deflating bubble markets, many homeowners are in situations where they owe $400,000 or $500,000 on a home that today is worth $100,000 less than the amount of their mortgage. In this situation, homeowners can effectively save $100,000 if they stop paying the mortgage and let the bank foreclose on the house. . . . As a committed capitalist, we might expect Mr. Paulson to applaud people taking initiative and acting to improve their plight. Instead, he is insisting that these homeowners should ignore their self-interest and act in the interest of the banks.

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WGA - Why We Fight

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 09:47:55 -0800

Our Family Blog - Nov. 07 (Advocacy) - Here is a video explaining in simple terms why the Writers Guild is going on strike.

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Golan v. Gonzales-- How The First Amendment Limits Copyright Law

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 18:43:20 -0700

Balkinization - By Jack Balkin - Sep. 05 (Opinion) - The Tenth Circuit has handed down a very important copyright case, Golan v. Gonzales, which holds that section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act-- which implements the Berne Convention on copyrights-- may violate the First Amendment because it takes some materials out of the public domain and makes them copyrighted.

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Google Library, The Lawsuits, and Is Charkin Barking Up the Right Tree?

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:09:43 -0700

Oxford University Press Blog - By Evan Schnittman - Jun. 19 (Opinion) - Google interpreted copyright law in a search engine friendly manner and decided that the act of digitizing books found in libraries, indexing that content, and then displaying only the smallest "snippet" of that content (250 characters), was no different than what they do spidering the internet and displaying snippet results. This is where the world of the internet and book publishing collide culturally - Charkin sees this as theft, Google sees it as how they operate on the internet - indexing content in order to make it discoverable without having to ask permission. However, this is not the most disturbing aspect of the GL program. Had Charkin taken the laptop and given it to a third party - he would have been closer to what is going on with GL.

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Calling Michael Moore's Socialist Bluff

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 07:37:13 -0700

Say Anything - By Rob - Jun. 18 (Opinion) - Since Moore says he doesn't mind his movie being shared on the internet (something I really doubt is his true feeling on the subject), and since I'm a firm believer in the idea that one of the best ways to beat a stupid idea is to give the people pushing that idea as much room as necessary to beat themselves, here's Moore's entire movie posted for your enjoyment. Amusement. Consternation. Whatever.

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MP3 Intellectual Property Restrictions and Digital Audio Innovation

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 10:47:18 -0800

Balkinization - By Laura DeNardis - Mar. 07 (Opinion) - Digital standards continue to emerge as the 21st century's antitrust concern. A San Diego federal district court recently ordered Microsoft Corporation to pay $1.52 billion to Alcatel-Lucent for infringement of two MP3-related patents. MP3 (short for MPEG Audio Layer 3) is a formatting standard for structuring and compressing digital audio. Microsoft originally licensed MP3 for $16 million from Germany-based Fraunfhofer Institute, a co-developer of the MP3 format along with AT&T Bell Labs. Bell Labs was spun off in 1996 as part of Lucent, which merged with Alcatel to become Alcatel-Lucent.

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Microsoft vs. Google: Waging War In-House Style

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 09:41:26 -0800

The Wired GC - Mar. 06 (Opinion) - Microsoft takes up the banner of copyright today against Google. It's lead warrior is none other than one of its in-house lawyers, Associate General Counsel Thomas Rubin. The New York Times reports that Mr. Rubin will give a speech today to the Association of American Publishers, and draw a bead on arch-nemesis Google:

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Steve Jobs' iTunes dance

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 13:16:58 -0800

Salon - By Cory Doctorow - Feb. 23 (Opinion) - In early February, Apple CEO Steve Jobs published an extraordinary memo about the music industry, iTunes and DRM (digital rights management), the technology used to lock iTunes Store music to Apple's iPod and iTunes Player. In the memo, Jobs said that "DRMs haven't worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy," and offered to embrace a DRM-free music-sales environment "in a heartbeat," if only the big four music companies would let him. I doubt Jobs' sincerity. I suspect he likes DRM because it creates an anti-competitive lock-in to Apple. I think he's trying to shift blame for the much-criticized DRM to the music industry, whose executives are twirling their mustaches and declaring DRM to be the only way forward for their industry.

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A Belgian Court Waffles on the Web

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:02:21 -0800

Balkinization - By Jack M. Balkin - Feb. 14 (Opinion) - A Belgian court has ruled that Google violated copyright laws by linking to Belgian newspapers on Google News without their permission. The decision is very unwise; it exemplifies the remarkable inability of courts and lawyers to understand how copyright law must be interpreted to deal with search engines, which provide what an essential service in the digital age. The result of the Belgian decision, for example, is that Google News will no longer link to the particular French language newspapers that complained. That means that people will no longer be directed to their sites, will not read their content and will not see their advertisements. In short, by demanding that Google take down the links, the newspapers seem to be cutting off their nose to spite their face. They are deliberately and willfully interfering with a service that drives readers to them.

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9th Circuit rejects constitutional challenge to copyright laws in Kahle v. Gonzales

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 17:37:31 -0800

Public Knowledge - By Christopher Sprigman - Jan. 23 (Opinion) - Some sad news to report: the 9th Circuit has rejected constitutional challenges to the copyright laws in Kahle v. Gonzales. The opinion is here. Sad, yes, but also positively maddening, for reasons I will explain shortly. First, a bit of background: Plaintiffs in this case -- the Internet Archive and its Chairman, Brewster Kahle, and the Prelinger Film Archive and its President, Richard Prelinger -- filed suit seeking a declaratory judgment that Congress violated the Constitution when it removed our traditional system of formalities from the copyright law. Formalities? Let me explain ... From the first U.S. copyright statute in 1790 until the Copyright Act of 1976, the U.S. had an "opt-in" copyright system that limited copyright protection to those who took affirmative steps to claim it -- by, for example, registering their copyright, marking copies of their work with copyright notice, and renewing their copyright after a relatively short initial period of protection.

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Dems to the Net: Go to hell

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 19:37:41 -0800

lessig blog - By Lawrence Lessig - Dec. 24 (Opinion) - "Radical" changes in Washington always have this Charlie Brown/Lucy-like character (remember Lucy holding the football?): it doesn't take long before you realize how little really ever changes in DC. The latest example is the Dems and IP issues as they affect the Net. Message to the Net from the newly Democratic House? Go to hell. As everyone knows, one issue critical to those who are making the Net interesting (for politics at least) is IP reform. Not "reform" in the sense of the last decade (e.g., Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, DMCA, NET Act, etc.), but real reform designed to make IP laws work sensibly in the digital age. Real reform -- not the piddly full-employment-act-for-lawyers reform proposed by the Copyright Office for "orphan works," or the puny reform suggested for digital libraries. Instead, reform that tries to fit the legitimate objectives of copyright -- to assure that artists have the incentives they need to create great new work -- into the contours of digital technology.

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