I had not linked to Wendy Seltzer’s blog yet.
She posted on her visit and presentation at ILaw, which was part of a very nice panel on copyrights, culture and peer-to-peer. Click through for more.
She also links to the guy who trademarked « freedom of expression« .
And I wish all the presenters would be so kind and post their slides.
Il y a quelque chose d’intéressant dans la façon dont la société aborde la nudité.
On se souvient des projets de photos de foules nues qui explorent cette dimension.
Il y a aussi ce projet qui aborde directement la question.
Bref, ma réflexion personnelle est causée par une amie qui apprécie la chose et me fait continuellement découvrir des sites ma foi forts jolis.
Pas mal plus sain que Porn Star Academie. Quoique nos producteurs de reality-shows devraient peut-etre regarder ce qui se fait aux US côté produits dérivés.
(liens pouvant faire sourciller certains lecteurs)
The chickens are dead. Get over it.
Larry Lessig
Well that’s it. It was definitely worth the trip. Thanks to everyone, presenters and participants.
I feel like I’m trying to drink from a fire hose. I’m hearing the conference and I’m trying to keep up with all the reports.
David Hornik has his account on VentureBlog.
John Palfrey has notes about the last two days.
Frank Fields is still at it, with a mention of last night.
Donna Wentworth is still the official blogging reference, and she has nice notes on Copyfight by James Grimmelmann on yesterday’s session.
I’m not blogging much, but I’m enjoying the show.
Jim Flowers is writing about the conference too (the usual suspects are still hammering away).
Lisa Rein is videotaping everything (watch for a lot of me as Lessig sits on my desk when the footage is made available), and so are the ILaw people.
It’s really worth being here because the show is excellent, but with all the notes from the bloggers, I can’t help to wonder if a motivated individual could not get most the the instructional value of the conference through those reports without actually bothering to register to come here.
I guess it’s an old question that was assessed by everyone who puts courseware online.
I was surprised to hear so many comments on the font Larry Lessig uses for his PowerPoint slides. It’s a typewriter-style font with a worn or jagged look to it.
It’s the P22 typewriter font. It’s free for personal use.
Morning session: my first Hydra experience with Aaron Swartz.
Donna Wentworth has another write up.
So does Frank Fields, along with a sneak peek at a walk with Lessig.
Let’s see the blogging machines in action.
Donna all set and ready on the new Berkman blog starting here.
J.D. Lassica will probably join in, since wireless is working.
A few other bloggers in the room. I’ll point to them as they blog.
I’ll stop now and listen to Lessig.
I’m missing the Montréal Jazz Fest. To make up for it, I treated myself to a little show on campus here: Frank Morgan and The Eddie Marshall Trio.
Nice way to spend a Sunday evening after being up for 21 hours.
And another way to say the trip was pleasantly uneventful and I’m doing fine.
Now onto the serious stuff.
How Not To Be A Summer Law Clerk points to this New Yorker article about guys who obviously loose touch with reality when they get a summer job in a big law firm.
They don’t talk about the best of those stories: « Because I didn’t fuck her, I fucked myself« , the Tucker Max story.
Greplaw m’apprends, que Jean-Michel Tremblay à l’Université du Québec à Chicoutimi rend disponible les « Classiques des Sciences Sociales« , une collection de textes qui sont passés dans le domaine public au Canada.
Le problème c’est que les PUF n’aiment pas du tout qu’il publie des textes pour lesquels le droit d’auteur est périmé ici (vie + 50 ans) mais pas en France (vie + 70 ans).
Une sorte d’Eldred local en somme… Ça pourrait devenir très intéressant.
La nouvelle de Greplaw est attribuée à un blog qui ne fait pourtant pas directement référence à l’affaire.
The History of Copyright: A Critical Overview With Source Texts in Five Languages. The website for this upcoming book has images and transcriptions of the Statute of Anne and some material on Donaldson v. Beckett.
A nice complement to Siva Vaidhyanathan’s Copyright and Copywrongs.
If you haven’t heard about the Eldred act, a.k.a. Public Domain Enhancement Act, it’s a proposition, championed by Larry Lessig, that would offer a 50 year copyright term, renewable for a nominal fee. It was recently introduced as a bill to the US congress.
Coverage by Donna Wentworth, Joi Ito and many more. There is also a petition and a nice article on First Monday that I mentioned before.
What I don’t fully understand is why the right owners don’t jump on the idea. The fees for renewal seem like they would be, for the foreseeable future, cheaper than the lobbying and litigation required to secure yet another extension of the basic copyright term. So in effect, it’s a perpetual copyright for all (even moderately) successful right owners, giving them at the same time a larger public domain pool to borrow from.
I am also puzzled (and maybe someone addressed this already) as how this fits in with Berne, that requires no registration formalities to get the full effect from copyrights. Or is it no formalities for the minimal life + 50 term of Berne?
The Eldred FAQ mentions this and I wonder what would happen if a longer term than life + 50 (which might not even be shorter than the publication + 50 term proposed in the Eldred Act in the case of posthumous works) was mandated by another treaty.
If we consider the raw deal, given the current US term of 95 years for work for hire, it would give 45 years less to the basic term. It would also add only 5 years to the current term for 1$ and at the burden of registration (exclusively for taxation purposes according to the Eldred web site). However, after that the ball keeps rolling and each renewal brings economies of scale. A more realistic deal that the Founder’s Copyright proposition.
It is also « better » than the current system in that it allows for perpetual ownership, although it is weird to talk about perpetuity when the current system has been in place for about 300 years, which could be viewed as 3 generations of works given the current terms…
It’s a very pragmatic solution. And I think it might even work very smoothly in practice. The obvious drawback being the identification of works needing registration. It might not always be obvious to sort out ownership in cases where there is a conflict during registration (we’d see people fighting to pay a tax…) or when there is an unclear title on a work. It also requires the identification of individual works prior to a infringement claim, which might not be obvious in some contexts.
Given the outcome of the Eldred case and the general trend in over protecting right owners against the perceived threat of piracy, this approach could be a better solution than following through with an effort to keep closer to what I consider the spirit of copyright: a situation under which all authors and works would be equally treated and no registration (or taxation) of works would bear any influence on the actual rights of those authors.
Therefore I’m not sure I like the Eldred proposition.
I’m not sold to the idea, but I do think it is an interesting and thought provoking proposition, and I don’t understand why the MPAA/RIAA et cie is not lobbying with Lessig for this. Would a 95 years initial term + 50 be an acceptable solution for them? Or do they feel the burden of sorting out ownership for registration in any context would be too much in any case? Do they fell they’ll see more profits coming from numerous incremental augmentations of the copyright term? Does this plan clash with the hope that copyright has no term, will eventually be considered like a property title and become a permanent and transmissible right?