A little late but this is really interesting…

So this article on zero paid: http://www.zeropaid.com/news/87426/french-pres-party-caught-infringing-copyright-once-again/ documents the copyright violations of the French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party, the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP). This includes, buying only 50 DVDs and deciding to make about 350 more but edit out the producer, Galaxie Press’s logo and add their own. Basically, the UMP was pirating and not the online sharing with your best friends kind, but the actually copying and distributing of hard goods kind of pirating.

They also have the usual public performance issues by using music that they have either not gotten the copyright for or, were denied the copyright when they asked and the songs ended up as background music for their ads anyway.

Obviously there is not an international judiciary who would try the French government for their mass copyright violations (they settled with all whom rights they infringed), but with the news that Google Books was found in violation French copyright law by digitally copying French copyrighted books, thus French books are not going to be included in the massive Google Book project, it would get interesting if the “clean hands” precedent could be used against the French Government, who has knowingly violated copyright law, but alas no. The UMP on one hand can freely and repeatedly make copyright “mistakes,” but they have a separate, stringent copyright system for everyone else. So, I guess my question is how do we govern governments who violate copyright? Could you imagine a pirating Monarch being told they no longer have internet access? It just seems like a blatant power differential between the government and the people that has yet to be addressed.

Hey guys, didn’t realize I hadn’t posted this up on the blog.  I apologize for the delay here, but here’s my presentation from Tuesday on the new development policy for World of Warcraft AddOns.

Peer to Peer (P2P) technology has caused a great deal of controversy in the copyright realm.  Since its inception in 1999 with Napster Inc., P2P is expanded and altered its form.  The services allow users to download and upload music for free with the slight risk of a copyright lawsuit that could cost them more than their NYU education.

File sharing has been a long debated topic because of the business it takes away from the entertainment industry.  The ways in which listeners obtain music has completely changed and the entertainment industry is taking the negative impact.  Top artists are selling ten times fewer than the artists in 1998 were and several jobs have been lost.

Luckily, there is an extremely beneficial side of P2P file sharing – so not all is lost.  P2P sharing has inspired many creative listeners to remix and recreate the original works they are now able to obtain so easily.  Copyright laws are actually restricting the abilities of P2P file sharing to protect copyright owners.

On one side of the spectrum P2P file sharing technology will signify the demise of creativity and on the other it is out-dated copyright laws that are restricting originality.  Lawrence Lessig states the problem very clearly, “…the network should not become a tool for “stealing” from artist, but neither should the law become a tool to entrench one particular way in which artists (or more accurately, distributors) get paid,” (Lessig Chapter 5).  Mash-up music like Girl Talk and parodies or covers of other previously made work have become an enormous addition to the realm of creativity.  File Sharing is certainly here to stay and future business models have already been discussed.  It’ll be interesting to watch the development and changes with this technology as digital technology continues to flourish.

Sorry this is up so late. . .

Fan made works are labors of love. That’s the argument from any fan website you go to. There will usually be an impassioned plea that the website host and the authors contained within the website are making their works out of love for their media product of choice and have the best intentions. Unfortunately, what they think are just labors of love are actually complex legal issues involving fair use, the First Amendment and the whole idea of remix culture. Fanfiction, fan art, fanmixes and fan created websites are byproducts of a fan culture accelerated by the Internet, and are fascinating case studies about what happens when copyright law clashes with a very real culture.

On November 17th there was an oxford style debate on the topic of whether or not there should be a law ensuring network neutrality. I planned on live blogging this event, but I realized that I actually don’t know what live blogging is, and my computer died before I even got to the event. So, I decided to “live blog” on paper and then record some of the more interesting comments from that panelists here. This post will be a collection of statements and ideas from the panelists in a vaguely chronological order as the event progressed. I warn in advance that not all of the quotes are word for word, my point in this post is just to share some thoughts that some very intelligent people had that night.

» Read more: Net Neutrailty Debate (Not)Live Blog

As we’ve seen over the course of this class, copyright issues can sprout up from almost any source. Network neutrality is no exception. Under a “non-neutral” Internet, Comcast began to block some of its P2P filesharing services (specifically BitTorrent) because they were occupying the majority of its bandwidth space. It is argued that Comcast took these measures because most of the activity on BitTorrent consists of illegal filesharing and violates copyright laws, thus it was justifiable to delay some of this sharing. Additionally, the concluding FCC ruling on this case set the precedent for the ISP’s power in handling future copyright violations.

Here’s a brief overview on net neutrality.  Net neutrality is the standard that all broadband networks should not contain restrictions on sites, content, or platforms.  It essentially limits the networks to simply moving data rather than speeding up, slowing down, or blocking certain web content because of its source. Most major telecommunications groups (or ISPs), however, oppose net neutrality because it would effectively eliminate their power to capitalize on websites through a tiered service model. Advocacy groups, however, believe that net neutrality allows for small business owners, independent political groups, and bloggers to thrive because there is no price of entry for high-quality, high-speed web pages.

In late 2007, Comcast users began to notice that some of their BitTorrent files were not successfully going through and would come back with the return address of the other computer. This type of ISP regulation violates the fundamentals of net neutrality. However, Charlie Douglas, a spokesman for Comcast, denied the allegations. One Associated Press reporter decided to take matters into his own hands. He attempted to download the King James Bible through Comcast cable modems using BitTorrent. (One reason he picked the Bible was that it was NOT protected by copyright.) In 2/3 attempts, the transfer was blocked, and the third transfer began after a 10-minute delay. He then conducted the test on three different Internet connections and concluded that Comcast was intentionally slowing and blocking BitTorrent files.

Amy Banse, the President of Comcast’s Interactive Division responded that the report was an exaggeration. She claimed that because such a small percentage of Comcast subscribers were using such a large percentage of the bandwidth, it was acceptable to manage that small percentage of people accordingly.

The FCC, however, did not agree with Banse. They ruled that Comcast had violated the FCC’s principle and that its actions were not consistent with “reasonable network management.” This decision truly defined the reasonable network management standard for the first time. Because Comcast specifically blocked BitTorrent (and not other highbandwidth applications), the FCC ruled that it was not reasonable network management. The Commission also said that ISPs may only block transmissions of illegal content or transmissions that violate current copyright laws. This is the importance of this case in terms of copyright. It created the precedent for the management of copyrighted works under all ISPs.

http://www.slideshare.net/eac406/net-neutrality2

…and because I need one more blog post.

Recently, lobbyists and diplomats have been putting the pressure on Canada to adopt a copyright law more in line with American copyright laws, despite the fact that there’s not really a good reason why they should and most Canadians oppose it. In latest news, lobbyists told a Canadian Parliamentary gathering that if they change their copyright laws, the US will relax the “Buy American” provision. Not only are these two issues not related at all, but as I mentioned before, there’s no solid evidence showing why it would be necessary for Canada to change their copyright law to mimic ours. On the other hand, the “Buy American” provision is a major issue in Canada, as it is shutting them out of a lot of business that they otherwise could have had. When lobbyist Scotty Greenwood, who spoke at the gathering, was asked how this solution makes any sense, she responded that it would be better for Canada. Solid answer, Scotty. I think that on the whole it’s a pretty egotistical demand, especially when (as this course has taught us) our copyright system is far from perfect.

Source

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit advocacy and legal organization that acts as a guardian of civil liberties, notably free speech, privacy, government transparency, and innovation, in the networked world. Though technologies such as the Internet and the iPod only entered most individuals’ daily routines around the birth of the new millennium, it was almost two decades ago when the lawyers, policy analysts, and technologists of the EFF foresaw the likelihood that millions of people around the globe would eventually interact in the digital landscape. They predicted that advocacy would be needed, as EFF legal director and general counsel Cindy Cohn explains, “to make sure that people’s Constitutional rights make it intact in cyberspace” and define the gray area between the law and technology practices. The founders of the EFF, Mitch Kapor, former president of Lotus Development Corporation, John Perry Barlow, Wyoming cattle rancher and lyricist for the Grateful Dead, and John Gilmore, an early employee of Sun Microsystems, met as participants in the virtual community Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, or The WELL.

In July of 1990, the U.S. Secret Service conducted a series of raids to track the distribution of a document illegally copied from a BellSouth computer, which detailed how the 911 emergency telephone system was configured. The Secret Service was worried that “hackers” would use the lines set aside for emergencies only and the lines would become overloaded, leaving people in desperate need of help unable to reach a 911 dispatcher. Steve Jackson Games, a small games book publisher in Texas, was one of the alleged recipients of the classified documents; the Secret Service executed a warrant against the innocent Jackson and took all electronic equipment and copies of an upcoming game book from Steve Jackson Games premises, causing Jackson to miss an upcoming book deadline and lose substantive revenue. No charges were ever filed against Jackson, but when the company’s computers were returned, employees discovered that all their personal e-mails had been individually assessed and deleted. No civil liberties organization would touch the case, and the press had no sympathy for hackers. Indeed, the incident emerged in an age of political paranoia after the arrest of the infamous Kevin Mitnick, who served federal time after causing more than $4 million in damage when he disrupted phone company operations. Hackers were now seen as serious criminals, not just mischievous teenagers but true villains. As Barlow writes in “Crime and Puzzlement,” this image of the hacker easily caught on, because he is so much smarter than the rest of us, knows a complex world where everyone else is lost, and understands how to profit from new technologies we can’t even conceptualize. When the EFF’s founders learned about the injustice done to Steven Jackson games, who lost about $125,000 due to the Secret Service’s actions, they were outraged and decided to form an organization dedicated to the protection of civil liberties in the realm of new technology. They simultaneously announced the formation of the EFF and their representation of Steve Jackson Games and several of the company’s employees in a lawsuit they were bringing against the United States Secret Service, a case which led to a court holding that electronic communication merits the same First Amendment protection as telephone conversations.

As articulated in the EFF manifesto, “Across the Electronic Frontier,” the founders believe longevity is vital to their creation, for they feel policymakers will remain relatively ignorant of computers and their uses well into the future and will likely relinquish much of their authority to “corporate technocrats whose jobs do not include general social responsibility.” They predicted that the resulting power struggle between institutional control and individual liberty would be long and difficult for those who don’t live on the new frontier to understand. Barlow notes the strange phenomena of potential suspects explaining to law enforcement their alleged perpetrations. Thus, EFF’s organizational goals went beyond legal advocacy to ensure that the Constitution would apply to digital media; the EFF also aimed to educate law enforcement and policy makers of civil liberties issues in telecommunications police by re-packaging the central problems into more digestible, entertaining forms through metaphors, as well as to increase public usage of new technologies.

Today, the EFF boasts 85,000 members and navigates threats from both the government and industry. The EFF has critiqued Apple for attempting to punish those who jailbreak an iPod or iPhone to use alternative software to download apps, as well as exposed the National Security Administration for warrantless surveillance and the creation of content dragnets, in which the entirety of some individuals’ cell phone and text message communication is diverted to the government and placed in databases. They’ve denounced Universal Records for issuing a take-down notice to a mother who posted a video of her adorable toddler dancing to a Prince song on YouTube and also expressed concern that immigration officials can search a laptop computer when it crosses the border without reasonable suspicion, even calling on private companies to translate or break an encryption which protects data on these machines.

The EFF is now extremely worried about data retention and believes that responsible third parties to only hold on to personal information for limited periods of time. Google, for example, provides great services for free, such as Google documents, photos and calendar, in order to be able to watch you and sell your data to companies. This access to your private information allows them to generate a mini-profile of you and can be sold to third parties so that they are better able to target their ads to your interests. Despite the fact that Google seems highly responsible and benevolent right now, as EFF lawyer Kevin Bankson has warned, there is no way to know who will control the search engine giant ten years from now.

The voices of the EFF and the individuals who make up the organization, including Pam Samuelson, Brad Templeton, John Gilmore, and Brewster Kahle, clearly are leading the movement for copyright reform and clarification, as illustrated by the role these individuals have played in our class discussions and individual presentations. I strongly believe that the work of the EFF is highly laudable and absolutely necessary for the protection of our civil rights. However, there seems to be an inherent tension in two of the core platforms that the EFF holds as an organization that, if called out, may threaten their legitimacy as an organization– how can they promote the freedom of information in the digital landscape while cautioning of the risks to privacy that all these new technologies pose? This dichotomy can been seen in the EFF’s commentary; for example, they have been quite harsh on the revamped privacy provisions that Facebook announced yesterday, but they seem to be trusting of companies like Big Champagne, which the EFF posited in their new business model for the music industry as a company that secures user anonymity while keeping track of P2P file-sharing. As an increasing amount of information flows across the Web, an individual’s privacy becomes inherently more susceptible to exposure to a third party or to government sources. Surveillance technology, such as RFID chips in clothing, GPS tracking in cells phones, and biometric identification, surely sound like 1984 nightmares, but they will eventually save lives, solve crimes, and make our lives tremendously easier. In many cases, the benefits of surveillance will outweigh the privacy threats. Moreover, as David Brin, a scientist and author of “The Transparent Society” explains, trying to stop surveillance with legislation will only drive the surveillance into secrecy, at levels beyond our perception where we will not be able to supervise, study, or discuss it. He feels that aiming to seal personal data behind firewalls and other means of encryption is virtually futile, as no program or machine will every be infallible.  Perhaps, as Brin argues, the EFF would be better off if, instead of pushing for applications of the Fourth Amendment that will ultimately be difficult to enforce, they demand ways to look back at the Big Brothers of society, whoever he may be, and hold his prying eyes accountable for whatever data he collects.

ASCAP’s digital strategy is, surprise surprise, one big mess. Despite the prevalence of P2P and services like iTunes, the world of online music licensing is one big mess. At the heart of this mess are the major record companies, music publishers, and collection societies. My topic looks at how just one of these collection societies (ASCAP) is handling the online platform.

ASCAP, American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, was founded in 1914. It was born namely in response to the radio boom of the early 20th century. Songwriters saw radio as an opportunity to finally receive the financial benefits they deserved, grouped together, and formed this collection society known as ASCAP. Its stated purpose was (is) to assure that music creators were compensated for the public performance of their works. As such, it started collecting royalties. In the 1930’s they had a complete monopoly over the radio industry and jacked up royalty rates by %400. The broadcasters were, well, pissed. A group of broadcasters got together and started their own collection agency known as Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI).

In short, ASCAP collects money from music users: Establishments, TV, Radio, Hotels, Cable, Stadiums, Airlines, and Internet. It then distributes it to writers and publishers after keeping some (I think somewhere around 10%) for overhead expenses. It collects royalties from Network television as a percentage of their gross revenue (2-4%). It collects from Cable TV roughly .375% of gross revenue. It collects 1.615% of radio stations total net revenue. Lastly it collects royalties from establishments based on a formula that takes into account sq footage, music use, dancing, cover…etc.

To keep you from falling asleep (if you haven’t already) I will skip a written portion of Downloading vs. Streaming (it gets technical). Just know that ASCAP technically is justified in claiming that such practices constitute public performances. The DPRSRA of 1995 sets the standards.

ASCAP currently has an agreement with iTunes. It gets a percentage of each sale. However, it has been putting pressure on iTunes to start paying a performance free for the 30-second samples. Currently Apple is only retaining a fraction of the $.99 sale. The rest pays for Performance Licenses, Reproduction Licenses from Publishers, and Reproduction Licenses from Record Labels.

In 2007, ASCAP sued Yahoo, AOL, and RealPlayer, claiming that it owed ASCAP something of $100 million in performance fees! The applicants have a myriad of music services that attract millions of listeners daily. Basically, ASCAP determined the fee by looking at each company’s total domestic revenue, finding what percent was attributable to music revenue, and then multiplied that number by 3.0%. The applicants on the other hand wanted to narrow the music usage into 5 specific categories, or buckets: on-demand audio, Internet radio, Music video, General Entertainment audio visual, and non-entertainment audio visual. Their fee proposal was $6.7 million. The court reprimanded both proposals and claimed that ASCAP’s 3.0% was arbitrary. They used ASCAP’s valuation method based on that of Network TV, as each network (ABC, NBC, CBS) has similar entertainment and revenue structure to that of Yahoo/AOL/Realplayer. It determined that 2.5% was a better percentage. The takeaway point of this ruling is that NO ONE has any idea how to quantify Internet music. We have three different entities coming up with three different methods, and still no one is happy.

A similar court case occurred with ASCAP and Youtube a year later. In this case, ASCAP wanted to use the same formula it did with Yahoo on Youtube. It determined that Google owed ASCAP $12 million for all music streamed between 2005 and 2008 and $7 million for 2009. Youtube determined that it owed only $79,000. The court decided that Google pay 1.6 million to ASCAP. Again, everyone has a different idea of how to calculate the fee.

Youtube is a host of online video content. However, recently ASCAP went after Jason Calacanis for embedding youtube clips onto his website, Mahalo.com. This caused a lot of alarm for people. It was the first sign of ASCAP going after the ‘little guys,’ those who embed content (personal blogs). However, in their collection letter, ASCAP stated “”ASCAP does not offer licenses to — or require licenses from — those who simply make their personal blogs available on purely non-commercial Web sites. Mahalo.com is a larger venture than simply a personal blog, and therefore ASCAP is engaged in discussions with Calacanis concerning the use of ASCAP members’ music on the site.” The question of whether ASCAP will continue down the Internet food chain remains at the heart of their digital strategy.

There are a lot of issues going on here. First there is the issue of public performance and what constitutes a performance and public performance respectively. The DPRSRA of 1995 does justify ASCAP’s claims. If we are to follow the logic that a radio broadcast is a public performance (which it is), then why should we not label Internet radio a public performance. Similarly, Network TV is a public performance, so why should Internet television not be public as well. As for the streaming and downloading of clips, I think the performance aspects needs to be examined from a more practical standpoint rather than technical. Further, I think ASCAP is doing a lot of double dipping. They are trying to hack on two fees for the same action, as is the case in the streaming example (performance for duplicating the song and a performance for listening to it of the speakers). They also double dip with cable television and films, collecting fees on two fronts. (watch out George Castanza). I think that this all ties into Greg’s discussion about business models. I personally like the EFF’s proposal to create additional collecting societies and have users pay a “P2P tax.” I think this is really the way to go here because then it would keep ASCAP away from the Internet and be easier for everyone. However despite how much we may have bombarded ASCAP this semester, it is doing a good service overall (although their distribution methodology is another issue all together).

There’s A LOT of stuff here, and I definitely only skimmed the surface of the issue. I’d love to hear your thoughts and feel free to ask any questions. Hope you enjoyed it.