The future of books in the world of digital copyright is something I find to be an interesting topic. Slowly but surely, we are starting to hear about book piracy along side movies and music. The amount of stolen books isn’t even comparable to other forms of media yet, but the moral and ethical side of stealing books is interesting. People tend to defend piracy based on the concept of “shared information is more power.” While I agree with this concept in terms of things like open source software, I tend to see it more as an excuse to steal media more often than less. Sharing Miley Cyrus’ new album isn’t necessarily the equivalent of sharing basic knowledge and tools to educate ourselves. However, a history book is of value to our society, and it is true that copyright maybe be holding it back. While I do believe it is wrong to pirate copyrighted books of a creative nature, I wouldn’t feel morally wrong downloading an educational book, as it is my intent to utilize the knowledge acquired from the book, and hopefully recycle the knowledge back into society. I understand the concern of writers stopping writing if they aren’t awarded copyright, but if a divide between creative and educational books could become a reality, than I believe people wouldn’t be concerned about the decline of writers. After all, writers didn’t stop writing when libraries first came around. But then again, the importance of public (by that I mean free) education isn’t necessarily something on our nations mind…

Today I learned about a really interesting phenomenon happening in France that reminded me of Kickstarter. I’m a little shaky on the details because the website is in French, but here is my understanding of what it is. Apparently this site called My Major Company allows unsigned bands to upload their songs on to their website where the public then has the ability to invest money in the artist. The site refers to the donations as “bets” and pretty much that is what it is. If a band reaches a certain level of success (100,000 Euros), then My Major Company will produce and promote their CD. Now, I’m sure you’re wondering what the incentive is for a person to donate money aside from the obvious, the production of their favorite band’s CD. This is actually the really exciting part. Everyone who owns a share, which is acquired by betting 10 euros, receives a portion of the CD’s net revenue. The share owners are actually considered producers of the CD. How cool is that? The artists themselves receive 20% of the net revenue. And then the share owners, also known as surfer-producers, divvy up 40% of the revenue if it’s between 0 and € 250 000, 30% if it’s € 250 000-€ 500 000, and 20% if it’s over  € 500 000. I think this is a really neat idea that we should adopt here in the States. It kind of ties back to the CwF+RtB=$$$ formula. If anyone is interested, here is the website for My Major Company: www.mymajorcompany.com

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/01/080115-egypt-copyright.html

I came across the article while looking for something interesting to post a blog on.  The title “Can Egypt Copyright the Pyramids?” drew me in .  The article was from Jan. 2008 and most other articles concerning it were around the same date and I could not find anything as to if anything ever came out of it (which I’m assuming nothing ever did).  So here goes:

A new law was proposed by the Egyptian Government that would require anyone making and selling an exact copy of any of its ancient monuments to pay the government royalties.  Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, said this was a move in order to collect fees to be put toward the preservation of Egypt’s precious and historical past.  The royalties would be used to pay for the upkeep of the country’s thousands of pharaonic sites.  The law holds that no exact replica can be made of any of Egypt’s historical sites with exact dimensions.  If someone were to create a souvenir pyramid where the dimensions were a little bit off when scaled down, then that would be fine.  They also plan to seek royalties from those who use images of antiquities commercially in photography, television, and movies, however this would not apply for images used for educational purposes.

They are making this argument on the basis that targeted museums and companies in both China and the United States have “made millions” in the sale of Egyptian historical replicas.  However, El Ashmawi, Egyptian President said that this law would not impose on the Luxor Hotel in Vegas because he views it as free publicity that inspires travelers to want to come see the real pyramids.

Although it was noted in the article about the difficulties of making such a global copyright and finding where the replicas are, at the time of the article, the legislation had been approved by Egypt’s prime minister was put before the Egyptian Parliament.  Criticism from legal experts outside of Egypt, said that such laws violate international copyright conventions and are unlikely to be enforced.

Egypt and the U.S. are both a part of the Berne Convention, an international treaty agreement for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.  The Berne Convention of 1887 agreed that authors published works should enjoy in each of their countries of the Union, the same rights as the law of the country, granted to native authors.  In this case, Egyptian legislation would not fit within U.S. and European laws, meaning they could not be enforced abroad.

Also according to modern day copyright laws in Western Countries, creations and ideas are protected for about 95 years before being released to the public, which would have released the pyramids thousands of years ago.    This kind of law feels so out of place in today’s day and age because if it actually went through, other countries would probably jump on the chance to start charging for monument replicas.   New York could start charging for all those mini Statues of Liberty seen in every tourist store and overseas.  Or would France try to claim that they would have rights to it because they gave it to us?  Egypt could probably enforce similar laws within its own borders for companies importing little replicas, but it seems impossible, and just a little weird, to be trying for such a law globally.  The historical places built on Egyptian soil were made thousands of years before copyright laws were even enacted, and to try to take advantage like this is wrong.  Egypt should just go on charging for tour services on their own land, instead of charging for the distribution of historical replications.   What do you guys think of a law like this?  Is it realistic that they were trying to get more money for preservation?  Could something like this be brought to light later on in the future?  (Obviously it never went through to the degree it was originally proposed)

James Cameron, the award-winning director, has rarely failed to deliver gold with his films. Some of his major films include The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2 Judgment Day (1991), Aliens (1986), and Titanic (1997). Amongst his work, Titanic was the most impressive yet, winning a record holding 11 Oscars and named the highest grossing film of all time. Moreover, great successes in the arts and film are often plagued with accusations of plagiarism and Cameron’s career was no exception. He once lost a lawsuit filed by Harlan Ellison, a writer, for plagiarism involving The Terminator (1997) and now newer prints of the film acknowledge Ellison. Apparently, Ellison had more problems afterwards with people trying to steal his ideas and told the New York Times on May 11, 2009, “If you put your hand in my pocket, you’ll drag back six inches of bloody stump”.

All the while compiling his impressive list of resume and going through some speed bumps, Cameron married one of his producers and two of his actresses, divorced four times then took a 12-year break before releasing his latest work, Avatar in 2009. When Avatar was released in late 2009 with much hype, it did meet and surpass all expectations and replaced the highest grossing film of all time.

The new 3-D technology and the CGI involved rendered the movie into something that had never been, albeit criticisms of a banal and cliché plot. For me, while watching the film, I could not stop thinking that the plot was so close to the story of Pocahontas. As a matter of fact, some criticisms have accused Cameron of plagiarism again, this time from Japanese Director Hayao Miyazaki’s works. In response to these claims, Cameron admitted that he was a big fan of Miyazaki and he pays homage to Miyazaki’s works in Avatar. However, the Japanese fans and bloggers do not seem to be very pleased with this at all!

Lately, I realized that I have been spending quite a bit of time on Youtube.com; learning some guitar techniques, watching how-to videos for makeup, and subscribing to couple of Youtube.com comedian’s channel. Instead of downloading music, movie, or TV show files, I search them on Youtube.com, and simply play them. For movies and TV shows, I find the ones that have been parted into five to six parts and watch them online (and surprisingly, for really old black and white films, Youtube.com has many clips that are in good quality). In this sense, I think that digital files can be long lasting, and easily accessible to many people, leading to the idea of “open access”.

As discussed in many articles that were read for our class, I learned that the “open access” system has many pros then the possible cons it may have. Especially, “The Meaning of Open” on the official Google Blog was very convincing. The article emphasized that open access will lead to open information. The words they used, such as value, transparency, and control were almost impressive since I could hardly be critical about their points. However, I finally doubted when they wrote, “bigger is better”. It is true that more information can lead us to more correct ones, but I think that as the information pool gets enormous and too open, it also can be “too easy for others to control” (“Future of the Internet”, pg 2).

Before taking our class I never even thought of the term “open access”. But after learning about it, I knew that I was already familiar with the term since I was always exposed to it. Today, many of us are online constantly and consistently, and when we are online we expect to see no boundaries or limits to the information we can get. Internet is convenient, fast, and accurate in many ways but now I think it is time to ask what we should do regarding the open access system of the Internet, to make the future of the Internet brighter. I think we should all try hard to find the most effective way to keep the balance between openness and regularity.

I hope this is not such a naïve question. Why is Google so pro “Open Access” system and is also trying to convince all of us that Internet should be more open?

Have we talked about Nina Paley in class? (I know JP blogged about her last month!) And was anyone able to catch the screening of her film “Sita Sings the Blues” and the Q&A at 80 Lafayette last week?

I wasn’t able to attend, but according to the 80 Laf blog, Nina talked with residents about her experiences making “Sita Sings the Blues”  and the issus she has with copyright laws. She was also joined by Karl Fogel of QuestionCopyright.org.

Since I was unable to attend the program, here is some background I dug up:

After pouring three years of her life into making the film, and having great success with audiences at festival screenings, she now can’t distribute it, because of music licensing issues: the film uses songs recorded in the late 1920’s by singer Annette Hanshaw, and although the recordings are out of copyright, the compositions themselves are still restricted. That means if you want to make a film using these songs from the 1920s, you have to pay money — a lot of money (around $50,000.00).

It’s a classic example of how today’s copyright system suppresses art, effectively forcing artists to make creative choices based on licensing concerns rather than on their artistic vision.

The music in Sita Sings The Blues is integral to the film: entire animation sequences were done around particular songs. As Nina says in the interview, incorporating those particular recordings was part of her inspiration. To tell her — as many people did — to simply use different music would have been like telling her not to do the film at all. And that’s part of her point: artists “internalize the permission culture”, which in turn affects the kinds of art they make.

2009-12-16: she eventually did pay them off, and then released the film under a free license. You can buy a DVD, or download it online

(http://questioncopyright.org/nina_paley_sita_interview)

Nina is now the artist in residence at Question Copyright, as her experience making “Sita Sings the Blues” has made her, well, question copyright.  Here’s her views on copyright as related to her film:

You don’t need my permission to copy, share, publish, archive, show, sell, broadcast, or remix Sita Sings the Blues. Conventional wisdom urges me to demand payment for every use of the film, but then how would people without money get to see it? How widely would the film be disseminated if it were limited by permission and fees? Control offers a false sense of security. The only real security I have is trusting you, trusting culture, and trusting freedom.

And here’s some info about Question Copyright:

Our mission is to educate the public about the history of copyright, and to promote methods of distribution that do not depend on restricting people from making copies.

Copyright was originally designed to regulate and subsidize distribution, not creation. It was never designed to provide an economic basis for creativity, and largely doesn’t even now. Today, the Internet has fundamentally changed the economics of distribution; copyright is now far more of a hindrance than a help at connecting creators with their audiences. (http://questioncopyright.org/faq)

Here are some relevant links:

http://blog.ninapaley.com/

http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/

http://questioncopyright.org/

http://80laf.wordpress.com/tag/nina-paley/

So…what does everyone think?

In class we’ve discussed course packs/copied educational materials  and how it relates to fair use, so I thought this article about a proposed copyright fee for students in Canada would be of interest.

Access Copyright, a copyright licensing agency, has proposed the Access Copyright Post-Secondary Educational Institution Tariff. Basically, each student would have to pay a $45 dollar fee and would cover “all manner of copying by students and teachers, whether digital or print, video or audio, online or offline, coursepacks or class handouts, in the library or at home, in the classroom or e-learning”.

This proposal has not been well-received. Instead, many believe that Canada should change their fair dealings doctrine to mimic our fair use guidelines – at least when it comes to educational uses. However, we know from prior discussion that course packs are not necessarily protected by fair use in the US, either.

This would certainly be less expensive than the “copyright compliant” course packs NYU offers, which can cost up to $100 per course pack. Would you rather pay a modest fee to ensure your use is not infringing or count on falling back on fair use?

Check out the link for more info. It gets heated!http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business/copyright+will+students+more+learning+materials/2904884/story.html

*pops popcorn*  This is better than a L&O marathon during sweeps, man.

Viacom has “leaked” court documents that claim Google both profited from various forms of direct copyright infringement and threatened to break the corporate kneecaps of Viacom executives by coercing Viacom to accept licensing agreements for their content to be hosted on YouTube based on Google’s terms.

Problem: The so-called “damning” statements were made by Google executives before YouTube was acquired by Google in 2006.  After the acquisition was finalized, Google implemented the tools to identify and discourage copyright infringement.  Viacom is standing next to Google saying,”But…but…but…we told them to do that. That was our idea.”

Lest we forget: Viacom attempted to (unsuccessfully, of course) acquire YouTube before Google.

*Scopes “The Situation” and throws a sour grape in the direction of her (M)TV*

So, I found this post a few weeks ago and have had it open in my browser waiting to be exampled on this here blog.  It’s Copyright and Wrong: Why the Rules of Copyright Need to Return to Their Roots in The Economist.  I found it to be a well-articulated general argument in support of copyright reform and a nod to the 300th anniversary of the Statute of Anne, which was the Parliamentary precursor (1709) to our U.S. Copyright Law. The Economist is a London-based newspaper know to slant on the liberal side of politics and supportive of globalization, open markets, and human rights issues.  Half of their circulation is in the U.S.

Okay, and?  If you look a little closer, The Economist does not give bylines. According to the About Us page, byline credit is given in very rare instances where a guest journalist or editorial is considered. Otherwise:

It is written anonymously, because it is a paper whose collective voice and personality matter more than the identities of individual journalists.

Funny, that.  So, it’s a little Wikipedian in that tone and voice thing, I suppose. (Liberal…except for when it comes to creative work for hire and any kind of claim, whatsoever, to even the attribution of creative and intellectual property….*blink*)

Now, I noticed the “Reprints and Permissions” link on the top right corner of the page.  I figured I go on a little quest and see how far I got.  The answer is “not very.”  I went to get a quote on how much it should be costing me to legally reproduce their article for, oh, I don’t know, a blog or something, as a student.  After about the 5th screen of registration, which included a boatload of personal information, my A.D.D. kicked in and I feared that I would have to put my furry babies up as copyright collateral. I bailed.

So, I figured I’d just hork it.  They’re liberal, after all.