In response to the post “Internet2: My Space is Your Space?” I looked up the RIAA. What I found is an article that reveals the “unknown” means by which the RIAA is persecuting downloaders, or at least one of them. “Judge Says Music Sharing Doesn’t Necessarily Equal Infringement”, which comes from Wired, covers Judge Neil V. Wake’s unusual opinion in the case of Atlantic vs. Pamela and Jeffery Howell. I think the title kind of makes what is so unique about this case pretty obvious. Judge Wake felt that music sharing wasn’t necessarily infringement because of the way the RIAA found proof that the Howells were providing illegal access to music: they committed the infringement themselves. MediaSentry, at the behest of the RIAA, “download[ed] 12 copyrighted songs from the Howell’s Kazaa account at two in the morning on January 30, 2006.” Though this proved that the Howells had the potential to provide illegal access to these songs, Judge Wake ultimately believed that there was no proof that, other than by MediaSentry, the material had been downloaded. Essentially what MediaSentry did is like an employee at a grocery store slipping unpaid food into a person’s bag and then accusing him or her of shoplifting. I also find this to be underhanded because, under normal albeit illegal circumstances, both the downloader and the uploader would be held accountable. In a scenario like this, only one party is “guilty” and it is because of the company’s own nefarious actions to prove that the person is guilty. A set up like this makes one wonder how much of the whole situation of illegal downloading is arranged? It’s probably a little too much of a paranoid assumption but then again, if each downloaded song is sue-able for $1000, whereas if it is bought legally it costs $1, the financial gain maybe worth providing easy access to the material.

As a side note, this article was written April 30, 2008, so it’s nothing new but pretty fascinating.  

Here is the link: http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2008/04/judge-says-musi/

The controversial online Peer 2 Peer programs have continually been debated, defended, and criticized by its creators, users and “victims”. I can understand how the public sharing of music and movie files for free is problematic, but where is the line drawn between public and private spheres. Internet2 is a file sharing program that was designed to aid top universities in researching the “next generation” of Internet. This program is private, only allowing access to university members, including students and faculty. However, there has been numerous amounts of music and movie file sharing amongst quite a few top universities, including NYU and Columbia University. Using unknown sources, the Recording Industry Association of America was alerted of the “illegal” file sharing, and took judicial action, placing lawsuits against many college students who “abused” the RIAA’s property. The question remains, does the RIAA really have the authority to deem file sharing in a private sphere, copyright infringement? In my opinion, the answer is no! The way I see it, as a student, I use other forms of compiled documents and media sources, such as Pro Quest that exclusively allows me, as a registered student, to use such resources at my discretion for academic and other reasons of my choice. These acquired resources serve their purpose, and are not then redistributed to “outsiders”, or are they. The fact is that I could access these documents, print them out, and illegally distribute them to as many people as possible. What the RIAA is fighting 18-23 year old students for is an issue that can not be resolved through lawsuits, but instead one that is increasingly occurring throughout the web by many users. Another part of the RIAA’s complaint is that this private network allows for faster downloads, almost half the speed, of traditional illegal or legal downloads of files. This argument is weak because many college students and Internet users alike are constantly downloading free files regardless of time lengths. Instead of monitoring and attacking academic programs such as Internet2, the RIAA, along with the MPAA, and other entertainment creators need to adapt to the changing digital world that is constantly evolving at immense speeds.

Last Friday, I had the chance to listen to Eben Moglen talking about law in times of Web 2.0. While his presentation was very technical at times, he raised some interesting points I have previously been thinking about. He addressed Facebook and how intertwined we are with social media these days. Facebook collects an abundance of information about it’s users, just like credit card companies can profile their customers by finding patterns in their purchases. Now, while this point might seem unrelated to copyright at this point, I still think our personal copyright, also referred to as privacy is infringed upon. Do I want some mid twenty Ivy school grad in California to know that I think certain girls that my facebook profile saves as “Friends” are attractive, because I watch their pictures at times? Do I want someone else to read my mind?

Frankly, I don’t. And I don’t think anybody else wants to. But how many users are aware of how open they are to be spied on? Did you ever wonder, why the advertisements on the right hand site of facebook seem to be tailored to your profile       ( and I should add, that I don’t want to meet cute girls in my city online, nor do I need a free Ipad or am bored in New York City)? Who protects personal copyright, if we aren’t doing so ourselves?

While Mr. Moglen’s statement that  ” Mr Zuckerberg richly deserves bankruptcy might” be slightly humorous and slightly a little to far fetched, I fully agree with his statement, that ” It would be easier if people would know what privacy is”. Now, I am not afraid of a total “Big Brother” control scenario happening any time soon, although there are a lot of surveillance cameras around.

However, as being interested in my own privacy, I think it is important to be aware of how often companies collect data about the population and how they try to stimulate consumption more and more. Especially eduacted young people like (some) college students, should watch those activities just as carefully, as Facebook watches and analyzes it’s users, since I am almost sure, that the data collected by Facebook, generally doesn’t serve “the progress of science and the useful arts”.

What do you as an educated, young person think about your personal copyright?

So I am almost never in the library, but I sat there reading a book that was in course reserve and overheard an interesting discussion that was going on every few minutes amongst their student employees. They kept telling the employees that course reserve is no longer going to except course packs that are not made through the school or XanEdu, the company hired by the bookstore to develop the course packs you must purchase through the bookstore.

Throughout my education at the school, I’ve had to do both, buy course packs though the school, and ones through a copy center, usually the one on Laguardia. Usually, when I purchased from the copy center, it cost me about $10-$15 and the ones through the school cost me about a shocking $100. So obviously, I preferred to purchase through the copy center, and any possibility that I’d have to purchase more from the bookstore, notorious for quite a markup on photocopies, was disheartening.

So what’s the difference? Among the few listed on the bookstore website, it’s stated that XanEdu guarantees “100% copyright compliant” and claims that “every item in a coursepack must have use-permission granted before the coursepack can be sold”. So what can be an explanation for the high price is “the cost of royalty payments varies with the content because each copyright holder determines the amount charged”. But this leads me to ask, if the school pays money to subscribe to databases and have a huge library, and this is included in our tuition, why should we pay twice for this information in this format if we are already granted permission to it, especially if the product is being developed through the school?

Course reserve, which provides material to students who wish to not purchase some class books, made this decision because they could not guarantee the copyright on the material in the coursepacks not made through the bookstore. Whatever the case, it is more money that potential comes out of our pocket and goes to the school. Instead of boycotting these rouge coursepacks not made by the school, why doesn’t the school try to solve the monetary problem and not use copyright as an excuse to make more money for the university. That’s just my opinion/rant, what’s yours?

http://www.bookstores.nyu.edu/faculty.services/course.packs.html

In elementary school, my younger sister and I would make lists of all the CDs we wanted and would save our money to go and buy them. It’s no surprise that when I discovered burning CDs, I went crazy. Shortly thereafter, I discovered Napster and Limewire, and continued to use Limewire up until February 2009, when I got an email from NYU (which I was going to past here, but it’s far too long) stating that they caught me on my ResNet connected computer, and threatened to suspend my ResNet connection until I resolved the matter. This was followed by the original report from the RIAA, which is also too long to copy and paste here.

John Tehranian summed it up beautifully in Infringement Nation when he wrote, “Copyright maximalists, such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry of America (RIAA) have bemoaned the Internet’s potential to transform any teenager with a computer into a grand larcenist” (538). Breaking the law was obviously not my incentive when I took these songs—I was just doing what everyone else was doing, and (as my luck would have it) got caught (though fortunately, I’m not Jammie Thomas-Rasset (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_v._Thomas)).

I do understand why artists wouldn’t want their music out in the open for everyone to have access too, because making (and selling) music is how they make a living. This is why in 2000, heavy metal band Metallica filed a lawsuit against Napster, alleging that they violated three different areas of the law: copyright infringements, unlawful use of digital audio interface device, and the Racketeering Influenced & Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) (http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2000/04/35670).

But, of course, there is also the bright side to free downloading. Radiohead’s latest album, In Rainbows, was first released on October 10th, 2007, as a download available for order from www.inrainbows.com. At this site, customers could pay whatever price they saw fit for a digital download of the album. The standard CD release would not be available until the last week of 2007.

Radiohead clearly promotes downloading music as well—but what band wouldn’t be if it captured the number one spot on the Billboard 200 because of free downloading? In July 2000, three months prior to the release of Kid A, MP3 tracks of the entire album were available on Napster. Because of Napster, millions of Radiohead fans had possession of Kid A by the time the CD hit stores, even though they didn’t pay a cent for it. As a result, the band, which had never hit the US top 20 before, found the number one spot in Kid A’s debut week. Considering the experimental record had no radio airplay or big time marketing, this success was proof of the promotional powers of file trading and free downloading (http://www.greenplastic.com/band/).

It is true that “we are in the midst of a “‘Participation Age’ of remix culture, blogs, podcasts, wikis, and peer-to-peer file-sharing”” (540), and this certainly has to be taken into account in terms of the law. As it turns out, though, this is way easier said than done!

After yesterday’s class, I cannot stop having an internal argument about the Walt Disney Corporation. While I would not consider myself a “Disney Freak”, I would definitely coin the term “Disney Enthusiast” for myself. I believe that Disney does off programming (be it television, radio, theatrical, of cinematic) of good educational value. The ideas, aesthetics, and vision are, I believe, all in good intention. The idea that all programming does have the key theme to “be a good person” does instill a lot of faith in my mind about the human race. However, I cannot help but wonder about the paradox of the reputation the corporation has about being “money hungry”.

After reading the J.K. Rowling case vs. Lexion, I couldn’t help but be offended for the avid fan, as a whole, not just of the  Harry Potter franchise.  I hope someday, that my work will inspire others to create. I mean, isn’t that the point of art? To use inspirations from the past to bring light to the present? Why shouldn’t someone be able to take Mickey Mouse and incorporate him into a picture without copyright? But, I believe strongly that credit should be given where credit is deserved, but for something so iconic, such as anything being produced by the Walt Disney Corporation, is bound to inspire to inspire millions of artists of any medium.

Now, I’m not saying Disney shouldn’t benefit from the brilliant ideas and creations of Walt. I just wonder where the line is drawn between inspiring young people with the magic and then ruining their dreams. I can only imagine what it would be like to have something of inspiration deplete your want to create. It’s a stretch, I know.

I realize that I am rambling, but I cannot help but wonder, am I the only struggling to find the happy medium in copyright law? I really do understand that we have copyright in order to protect art and to inspire the creation of new art, but it seems like at some point, it crosses beyond the original intent into greed. And that, is where my moral dilemma sets in.

The inspiration for this little journal rant, http://www.thestreet.com/story/10062900/3/disney-wins-in-copyright-case.html

(also posted on Delicious)

For those of you who like podcasts, Doug Lichtman from UCLA does an excellent one called IP Colloquium, and last year he did an episode on the Harry Potter case we’re reading. It’s a good assembly of perspectives because he has a guest representing each side of the case and he has his own view of how the case should have come out.

Just a quick comment about the readings for today.  I found the following passage from Tehranian’s Infringement Nation to be especially significant for my understanding of the aggregates of power and accessibility via copyright laws on the cultural hegemony.

Thus, the contours of our intellectual property regime privilege certain individuals and groups over others and intricately affect notions of belonging, political and social organization, expressive rights, and semiotic structures. In short, copyright laws lie at the heart of “struggles over discursive power—the right to create, and control, cultural meanings.”

[Madhavi Sunder, Intellectual Property and Identity Politics: Playing with Fire, 4 J. GENDER RACE & JUST. 69, 70 (2000).]