I definitely want to write another post about this when I have some more time on my hands cause I think it really touches on the “commerce” part of the class. But in the meantime I wanted to bring one thing up before class.

In the EFF article, the proposal is this: “the music industry forms several “collecting societies,” which then offer file-sharing music fans the opportunity to “get legit” in exchange for a reasonable regular payment, say a total of $5-10 per month.” Just wanted to run a quick poll of the class to see how many of you do this? Be honest.

I would.

 Despite the downturn in the economy and the increase of free media related content – the media industry is remaining steady!  According to the NPD Group, already existing services and other newer kinds of subscription services (Netflix, etc.) are growing – here are their findings:

• overall monthly per-capita entertainment-content subscription spending rose to $115, an increase of 7% from a year ago
• As of August 2009, 81% of U.S. households subscribed to a pay TV service with a similar percentage of households (76%) paying for internet subscriptions.
• 17% percent subscribed to an online music service or satellite radio
• 14% subscribed to online gaming subscription services

Here are some more results: “In an expanded analysis of U.S. search enquires by ComScore for the past 2 months, Google Sites led the search market with 13.5 billion search queries, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.7 billion queries and Microsoft Sites with 1.5 billion searches. Bing experienced the largest growth rate of the top ten expanded search properties with an 8% increase in query volume to more than 1.2 billion searches. Facebook’s search volume dropped precipitously to just 331 million

 searched in Oct.”

So, now can all of those companies trying to sue youtube be quiet?  Subscription spending rose 7% – it doesn’t matter if I can watch a crappy version of Gossip Girl online with a “buffering” message every 3 minutes, I’d rather record it and watch it at my convenience.  I doubt I’m the only one who believes services like DVR and Tivo have positively impacted the television industry on the consumer front.  If DVR and Tivo did not exist I’d probably have my computer hooked up to my television screen and deal with the crappy version – I simply do not have time to work my life around TV shows (I know, how depressing).

Also, Lily Allen, you can relax because people are still paying for music in some form (satellite/online radio) now all you have to do is fight the law that lets radio get away with not paying the recording artist (thats not the consumers fault!).

As much as the new digital age has dramatically increased the amount of copyright infringement and therefore profit, it appears the content industry is slowly picking themselves up by taking some new approaches.

Verizon has become the latest ISP to agree to send out copyright notices on behalf of the recording, TV, and film industries. While other companies such as AT&T, Comcast, and Cox already engage in the practice, Verizon has typically stood aside rather than enter into the realm of copyright infringement policing. With the announcement that it would begin sending out notices, Verizon issued this statement: “We recognize the importance of copyright and the need to enforce those copyrights…without that enforcement, intellectual property won’t be generated at all. At the same time, it’s important for our customers to be assured that they won’t have their privacy rights trampled.” The notices do not include any sort of threat of legal action or punishment, such as termination of service as Cox has threatened chronic infringers in the past. It simply states that the user is accused of inappropriate sharing or behavior, notifying them that they are involved in illegal activity, asking them to delete any illegal content, and pointing them toward legal content as an alternative.

As the RIAA announced that it would no longer be suing individual file sharers, and broadcast networks and film companies have begun to move some of their copyrighted material online in ad sponsored and controlled forms, it seems that these big companies are coming to terms with the fact that the internet means an end to their old business models, but they are still grappling with how to remain in control and maintain their profits. The enlisting of ISPs to do the leg work of monitoring and notifying internet users who are still bypassing the legal content in favor of illegal file sharing and downloading seems to be an attempt to regain control without being the evil accusers. The bigger question is why Verizon has all of a sudden become so willing to participate. A CNET article notes that the high level of piracy is “allegedly clogging their pipes,” which would be a straightforward reason. The article also points out that broadband companies are looking for increased access to premium content and are hoping to benefit from better relationships with the media outlets.

To me, the notices themselves seem highly unlikely to have a huge impact on illegal users, as they do not indicate action toward any sort of penalty. Perhaps knowing that one’s actions and illegal activities are being tracked is enough to scare some infringers, but to me the notices seem more like the first step toward a more severe crackdown. Other countries have already become much more severe in their treatment of infringing users, with policies such as the 3 strike rule that was passed as law in France, and it seems U.S. companies are trying to take a less intrusive step to begin to head in the same direction.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/genes/

When I was perusing wired.com today seeing if anything interesting was happening in the digital world, I stumbled upon this compelling store that I have linked above. For those too lazy to go to the website, I’ll briefly give a rundown of the story: the ACLU has been given the OK to sue one of the largest human genome researchers for their patents on around 1/5 of the human genes on the grounds that owning the right to such information is in violation of the first amendment.

Not only do I entirely agree with the judge who ruled it was appropriate to allow the ALCU to sue, but I think this story pertains directly to what we have recently been discussing in class.

How do we expect to ever advance ourselves if only a select few have access to some of the most important information in the world? Who is to say that these people working for this research company are the most able to utilize the information they patented? It is very likely that given the opportunity, other scientists could have used the genes owned to have made astronomical advances in science. Who knows cancer could have been cured by now.

Information like this cannot be locked up. I do not always agree with some of the tenets discussed in this class, particularly in relation to sharing music and movies, but I believe this case is very clear. Information like this is for saving lives not making money.

NYTimes.com: "A cellphone shop in Accra, Ghana, which carries and repairs a variety of handsets."

http://www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/expertsurveys/2008survey/default.xhtml

What will the Internet look like in 2020 and how will it have affected society?  That was the topic of the third generation in a series of surveys administered to technology experts and social analysts by the joint effort of the Pew Internet Project and Elon Univerisity.  The 2008 survey included “578 leading Internet activists, builders, and commentators and 618 additional stakeholders (1,196 respondents)” and posed a series of predictions to the respondents, asking whether they would strongly agree or disagree and if they had any comments to add.

As I came across this survey while doing my senior research project, the scenario I found most interesting was the prediction below relating to social tolerance. Over 50% of respondents in both categories strongly disagreed with the vision, believing that the Internet will either leave social tolerance unchanged, or affect it for the worse.  Having reviewed some of the content in Clay Shirkey’s book, Here Comes Everybody (video here), I have to disagree with the prediction and I think viewers of Shirkey’s argument will probably agree, given the information he presents.

More relevant to this class, however, were the projections about IP law and Copyright and growth in the use of mobile devices that connect to the Internet.  Through my courses in Metropolitan Studies, one interesting fact that’s stuck with me is that people in very poor communities will often find ways to buy mobile phones for commercial use, pooling what little resources they have to gain access to the vast economic potential of the cell phone.  This leads to bizzarely counter-intuative situations where companies like Nokia conduct market research in slums like Dharavi in Mumbai (NYTimes).

Cell phones are becoming more common and more essential for the impoverished as they allow, for example, a farmer to check current market prices for his goods and negotiate a deal or help “a mother in Uganda who needs to carry a child with malaria three hours to visit the nearest doctor but who would like to know first whether that doctor is even in town.”  The respondents of the Pew Internet study overwhelmingly agreed that “The mobile phone [will be] the primary connection tool for most people in the world….[the moblie phone will be] the primary Internet connection and the only one for a majority of the people across the world, providing information in a portable, well-connected form at a relatively low price.”  Clearly, cell phones are already breaking into the markets of even the lowest economic classes and there is every reason to believe their popularity and prevalence will grow.

While, initially, usage of the phone by the poor will follow economic imperatives, how will this change in access to and usage of the Internet affect society and culture globally?  How will Copyright law interact with future cultural creations and exchanges as our locales of social networking experience an influx of people that may have only met a few people outside of their neighborhood, let alone city or country?

Ida Sim, Physician Scientist from Open Access Videos on Vimeo.

There has been some news recently about the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2009(http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/111_SN_1373.html), which would “deliver online public access to the published results of research funded through eleven U.S. agencies and departments, requiring that peer-reviewed journal articles stemming from publicly funded research be made available in an online repository no later than six months after publication.” (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091111/0152276888.shtml) This act was recently supported by 41 Nobel Prize winning scientists who sent a letter to congress that can be found here: http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/supporters/scientists/nobelists_2009.shtml.

If research is funded by taxpayer dollars, it seems to make sense under the notion of the “public good” to allow all who are interested to be able to read this research without the barrier of expensive journals. To make publicly funded research public, makes sense, because the party line that pharmaceutical companies use, that they need patents to protect their research property so that they can have temporary monopolies to earn a profit on there discoveries and thus conduct more research is nullified, since they will get money for more research from the government, which most of them do anyway. Why should the public have to pay taxes to fund research, buy journals if they want access to that research, and then pay an inflated price for a drug or invention that gives the research company profits without repaying the public? Where is the public good? Yes, the drug or invention is a public good but the cost to the public is exorbitant. Especially when the company who earned the profit again gets public funding to conduct more research.  

If you excuse my rant above (it irks me that people seem to not care that life saving drugs are no different then a house or car or other property), the point of this post is to highlight some alternatives to the patent process. I agree with the reform allowing a limited time where the research can be solely in journals or other private places. The bill states 6 months. However, twenty years, as patent law stands now, is a long time to control research or drugs that are needed for the public good. However, one problem I foresee is that private funders of research may be discouraged from co-funding research with the government. Maybe there could be a scheme in place that allowed the current system of monopoly rights until the funders have recouped their investment plus a certain % decided by congress. Then the research would fall into the public domain. That would still motivate companies and entrepreneurs to fund research and contribute to the public good.

A second problem is research that is not conducted with any government funds.  I feel there needs to be a review board on patents that can save lives or are needful in a crisis. Such a board may institute a similar policy as I hypothesized above, letting the patent remain private until the cost plus a certain amount of profit is achieved, or maybe the government could purchase such patents under eminent domain, which if a patent is property, it should be legal? 

While reading Lessig’s conclusion on how patent law directly affects treatment of AIDS in Africa, it made me think of something I heard a few years back. In Spring of 2005, Brazil sent shock waves through the intellectual property world by threatening to start ignoring patents, especially with regards to pharmaceuticals. Earlier that year, they had already irritated higher ups at microsoft by supporting a computer literacy program for middle class families using open source software, but this drug issue took the cake for radical approaches to patent law. It made sense to Brazil that pharmaceutical companies should not be able to make billions upon billions by monopolizing drugs that are a. easy to produce, and b. in need. Developing nations which need money to tackle larger problems like infrastructure and poverty, which Lessig points out are more important factors in disease proliferation, cannot waste funds on licensing fees for drugs easy to duplicate. This is why the World IP Organization encourages to a certain extent, rights needed for sustainable development. I believe that Brazil tried to take advantage of this earlier by trying to declare AIDS a national emergency in oder legally get around producing generic drugs.

The counter argument of the pharmaceutical companies is of coarse, if their drugs were easily copied it would take away from their profit  to a point where they could not  fund research for new drugs. (In my eyes this is pretty weak) Its interesting though to think of the political implications going against intellectual property could cause, trade embargoes etc. Although Brazil never completely acted on their threats, they did get a lot of people ticked off. So the question remains, should or  how much protection do developing nations deserve from patents?

I was looking at photos of my friend’s little sister’s birthday party and I saw that she had a Hello Kitty cake– that is, Hello Kitty’s head was the cake, frosted in white and topped with a pink bow. I assume they bought it. Now, I’m no cake expert but I am a fan of TLC’s Ace of Cakes and being in this class, I’m starting to think there’s an infringement with everything, including sweet treats like this.

Any licensed character is exactly that: licensed. Just like any other copyrighted works, creating a character out of cake is no different. What about all those Spongebob, Dora the Explorer, and Barbie cakes out there? Wilton, a baking industry, sells licensed character pans that are official Disney and Nickelodeon, etc products, so it’s very easy to make a cake with a kid’s favorite cartoon. But Wilton explicitly marks on their pans that these are for home use, stating “these ‘mold making items’ are strictly prohibited for any type of commercial use since the licensor has neither the method to control the quality of the reproduction of the character nor the ability to earn royalties on sales of the ‘finished’ product.” I’m pretty sure Ace of Cakes is handling the legal situations properly when they created It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

This is like selling a licensed character full body costume but only allowing consumers to use it for private settings. You can have it but you don’t really own it. Profiting off the cakes with Elmo’s face is an infringement on copyright laws, so basically, there probably are local bakeries and bakers selling illegal children’s cakes.

I suppose this is fairly obvious, but I never thought of cakes infringing copyrights–only because it disappears quickly and they’re scrumptious baked goodnesses. But I have seen several cakes back home in Texas, where people explain they bought it (and unfortunately, I don’t think that the Spongebob I saw looked that tasty) but I’m sure there was no official permission granted. It’s strange because it’s just another sculpture, a work of edible art, just made out of icing and fondant.

It’s the same as arguing the difference between the private and public audience when you play the radio. It couldn’t really be under fair use because you’re claiming the character is the exact licensed one. But you can buy the TV show character as a figurine and put it on top of the cake, and there’s no infringement because you’re not deriving any works.  Ultimately, then, this is about money.

Although, I suppose you could eat the evidence, and they’ll never know.

Alexander McQueen on the left, Steve Madden on the right

I came upon this link about Alexander McQueen, who is suing Steve Madden for copying one of his shoes, after sending a cease and desist letter in September that was met with refusal from Steve Madden to stop producing and selling the bootie. The Steve Madden shoe is almost an exact copy of Alexander McQueen’s, minus the zipper pull with the Alexander McQueen trademark. This immediately reminded me of the Nina Ricci/Twilight apple-shaped perfume bottle conflict that we talked about earlier this year, except for one huge difference: fashion can’t be copyrighted.

Not that it hasn’t been tried, as demonstrated by the Design Piracy Prohibition Act, which is a pending bill that was proposed in 2006 that would give copyright protection to fashion designs for three years. Currently, only laws against counterfeit goods protect clothes, and even then it only applies to some designs where a trademark is used (think Fucci bags sold on Canal…). During a hearing for the bill on July 27th, 2006, there was disagreement amongst both legal experts and people from the fashion industry as to whether or not this bill is necessary and as of today, it is still pending. Interestingly though, the US is the only western nation that doesn’t protect fashion designs. Those who don’t support the bill argue that copyrighting fashion would hurt the little guy who wouldn’t be able to challenge larger clothing corporations, should they be accused of copyrighting, as well as hurt fabric and sewing stores as a result of less people selling their clothing.

The issue of fashion not being copyrightable came up briefly in one of our readings and I know Caroline touched on this a little in her blog post about the Forever21 shirt, but I was wondering, what does everyone else think about this? How does the creativity that is involved in fashion differ from that in other arts that are currently protected under copyright law, especially when you look at the dispute over the perfume bottles? I’m kind of stuck in the middle with this issue (damn you Wikipedia, with your neutral point of view!), as I feel like both sides present valid points, but maybe someone can convince me one way or the other…