A meta-disclaimer…

[via Boing Boing]

Copy-paste post, as I really don’t have time to edit anything this morning. Afternoon. Damn. You get the point.

Great quote from Patricia Benson, an attorney for the movie studios suing 321 Studios, who make DVD copying software that can be used to make personal backups:

« It’s like somebody selling a digital crowbar. »

As Ed Felten notes, « …the crowbar analogy pretty much speaks for itself. Ms. Benson would doubtless be shocked to learn that an outfit calling itself ‘Ace Hardware’ is selling crowbars openly, right here in sleepy Princeton, New Jersey. »

In other words, general-purpose technology can be used for general purposes — good and ill. Hollywood’s increasingly shrill and nonsensical demands that technologists only make gear that can be used for good are comparable to insisting that crowbar companies design crowbars that can only be used to jemmy open doors whose owners have lost their keys, and go limp when inserted into the jambs of all other doors.

Link

[via Aaron Swartz and Boing Boing]

Ken Hertz’s 2002 ACLU Bill of Rights Award speech: What’s wrong with the war on ‘Net piracy?
Here‘s a copy of the acceptance speech given by entertainment industry attorney Ken Hertz (of the firm Goldring, Hertz, Lichtenstein and Haft, LLP) at last week’s ACLU Bill of Rights Award dinner. ACLU press release about the award is here.

There are a couple good quote from someone who is usually acting out the expected rights’ owners policies. A very recommended read.

[…] Treating the symptoms and ignoring the underlying problem can allow the problem to fester — and worsen.[…]

How do the War on Crime, the War on Drugs, the War on Terrorism and my personal War on Obesity, relate to the entertainment industry’s War on Internet Piracy?
Our point is that treating the symptoms without addressing the problem will only worsen the problem and generate more daunting symptoms.
[…]

He does support blanket compulsory licensing, which as far as I know would give a very similar regulatory framework to the one we have in Canada with the tariff on blank audio media to compensate for private copying. Yet it seems that even here, record companies are just too eager to brush off that fact and label file sharing of musical works as a crime.

[via Boing Boing]

DMCA Harms and CSS as an Access Control Device: regarding an eventual exemption to the DMCA for CSS, the wonderful and lovable companion to DeCSS

[via LawMeme]

Everyone and their dog is blogging about Creative Commons. A (primarly, for the time being) build-your-licence website sponsored by a whole bunch of interesting people. I really like the slogan, « legal code »

In a way, it reminds me of P3P, as it is a way to standardize contract terms. P3P aimed to allow people to act on standardized terms for the management of personal info. This does it for copyrightable content, without the automation and integration dreamed of by P3P. Most people have a fairly good idea of the rights granted by the GPL. Now well have different, if less concisely named, nuances of standard licenses.

Under what license is the content of this site provided? I worry more about my use of other people’s content that other people’s use of my stuff. No jokes about the value/originality/creativity of said stuff please. I would lean towards the Attribution-ShareAlike License.

I wonder what license are the licenses released under. Can I modify them slightly? Translate them? I’m sure the answer is on the website but I couldn’t find it. Given the recent fuss over the copyright on court papers, it’s a valid question.

Monsieur le Ministre,
La Commission d’acès à l’information du Québec a entrepris une étude concernant le projet de loi sur l’accès légal au Canada, plus précisément axée sous l’angle de la protection des renseignements personnels.

En voici la lettre introductive. Le rapport est ici. Il y a aussi le communiqué de presse pour gens pressés.

Ah oui, pour ceux qui en douteraient, ce n’est pas très positif. Il semble que certaines dispositions découleraient d’obligations auxquels nous nous sommes engagés par traités, la Convention sur la cybercriminalité (utilisation de cyber, -1) du conseil de l’Europe. J’imagine que si ce n’est pas harmonisable avec la tentaculaire Directive Européenne sur la vie privée, ca se serait su, non? Alors qui a fait du zèle?

OTTAWA, December 13, 2002 — Minister of Canadian Heritage Sheila Copps and Industry Minister Allan Rock today announced the passage of Bill C-11, an Act to amend the Copyright Act. This Bill is the first in a series of initiatives to update Canada’s copyright legislation.

It dismisses the compulsory license option that was proposed by certain groups for internet retransmission.

[Via BNA ILN]

It seems that France is keeping on track with the adoption of a tariff similar to the canadian tariff 22 regarding blank digital media. They also tax hard disk in Tivo-like devices.
I think those tariffs are generally a good thing since they provide some form of compensation for usage of copyrighted works.

It’s not quite compulsory licensing, it’s a bit of a stretch to raise a tariff to compensate uses of works that are most of the time allowed under the law and it is quite unfair to put a tariff on CD-R when I know most of my use these days goes to back-ups of my own data. Yet, it seems like an acceptable compromise on both sides of the issue. Now, the shocking thing is the amount of the tariff. In Canada, it amounts to a 50% tax on media (0.21$ per data CD)…

[via BMCK E-Law]

I always wondered what would happen if there was a way to deliver information directly to our brain, bypassing those pesky human analog senses. After all, they are nothing but piracy tools.

Group to discuss « Analog Hole » may be formed
At Wednesday’s CPTWG meeting, attendees heard reports from proponents of the formation of a new CPTWG sub-group, to be called…

[via Consensus at Lawyerpoint]

I guess this situation is indeed a public performance. But since headphones are prohibited while driving, this is pretty much a sentence to ackward silences in finnish taxis:

Finland’s Supreme Court has ruled taxi drivers must pay royalty fees if they play music in their car while a customer is in the backseat.

[Via Ananova’s quirkies]

Law Meme has coverage of an decision that will be reviewed by the Supreme court of the US.

Why do I really care? The decision is about builing codes. Ok, I don’t care, but Fleecy might! The decision is about web publication. Bonus points, but not really that much of a big deal for me (or for the court I think). It deals with copyrights on public texts, law and judicial decisions. Getting closer, and Pseudo will most certainly be interested

The deal for me is that it shows a different aspect of the practice of law making using private norms than the ones I focus on in my thesis. It is also reminiscent of the W3C and ITU patent policies problems.

Anyways, hopefully this is a good test case to get a sound policy conscious copyright decision from the US Supreme Court.

Cla pointed me to this LawMeme article about AOL’s view on the bathroom break during commercials. I remember reading about the article in the spring, but I didn’t blog and I forgot about it.

Quite a gem. LawMeme suggest 10 new copyright infringements, including changing radio stations when a commercial comes on or arriving late to the movies and missing the previews.

Among the list of people outraged by our good government’s plan to keep a database on the travel information of any citizen for 6 years, we can add retired Supreme Court Justice Laforest, who was on the Supreme Court bench when I was in law school, and Roger Tassé, attorney general of Canada from 1977 to 1985. They base their opinion largely on the Charter, which is indeed an instrument both are quite familiar with (note: understatement of the year).

A press release by the Privacy Commissioner introduces the letters to the Minister of National Revenue. Will this be a nonwhistanding solution? Can the federal even use that clause? Has it ever been used by the parliament or is it a provincial government only prerogative?

But remember, it could be worse.

I just have a thing for DRM, did you notice?

InfoWorld reports on DRM at Comdex, and, last July (yes, those Audible downloads have a way of backing up on me…) Seth Godin penned this cogent Memo To: Media Monopolists for Fast Company: « You can whine, lobby, sue, and then cripple your product so that it can’t be copied. Or, maybe, just maybe, you can stop thinking like a monopolist long enough to find new business models, new markets, and new strategic plans. »

[via Bag and Baggage]

bIPlog has a blurb on retailers using the DMCA to stop Fatwallet from offering price comparisons using data from their websites. Since Fatwallet understandably don’t feel like fighting the cease and desist and becoming yet another test case, chalk one up for the ever more likeable DMCA (and trigger happy lawyers).

In other news, Lessig is right in the Eldred case. This is from judge Posner, a « darling of the conservative movement », which makes this statement stand out. Who cares when wacko left-leaning hippies say it, right? Anyways, I’ll be happier when the supreme court agrees. In the meantime, bIPlog has a discussion.