Ubiquitous high-speed Internet, combined with data compression technologies and digital file formats, has resulted in a media-sharing free-for-all; circumventing the media container (vinyl, tape, CD and DVD) and becoming deeply ingrained in our culture. Mayhem ensued: The entertainment business sued. The latest in a series of legal irons is now being applied to Pirate Bay. The Media Industrialists (as I will call the American Trans-national Media Conglomerates in this paper) would have us believe that the Pirate Bay trial is about protecting copyright and intellectual property. The real issues are around the rights of digital citizens in the face of legal measures designed to correct failing business practices while restricting fair use.
As part of their The Download Decade series, the Globe & Mail is asking readers to help craft a new copyright bill for Canada. As background:
In June of 2008, the last time Ottawa attempted to introduce copyright reform, many Canadians spoke out against legislation that they felt didn’t do an adequate job of balancing the rights of consumers with the rights of content producers. In the end, the proposed legislation, Bill C-61, died as an election was called. Still, nearly 90,000 people joined the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group — a clear sign that this issue resonates with Canadians.
But signing your name to a Facebook group is one thing. Getting active in copyright reform is something else entirely. So today we’re asking Globe and Mail readers to offer their thoughts on copyright. We would like to craft a new copyright bill.
Join in on the discussion or just read about it here.
This is from the year 2000 and worth revisiting. Salon magazine published a transcript of Courtney’s speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference, given in New York:
Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist’s work without any intention of paying for it. I’m not talking about Napster-type software.
I’m talking about major label recording contracts.
I want to start with a story about rock bands and record companies, and do some recording-contract math:
This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my “funny” math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I’m positive it’s better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.
What happens to that million dollars?
They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager.
That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there’s $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person.
James Boyle is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School and founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Professor Boyle was one of the original Board Members of Creative Commons, which works to facilitate the free availability of art, scholarship, and cultural materials by developing innovative, machine-readable licenses that individuals and institutions can attach to their work.
If you go to the familiar Google search page and click the intimidating link marked “advanced search,” you come to a page that gives you more fine-grained control over the framing of your query. Nestled among the choices that allow you to pick your desired language, or exclude raunchy content, is an option that says “usage rights.” Click “free to use or share” and then search for “physics textbook” and you can download a 1,200-page physics textbook, copy it, or even print it out and hand it to your students. Search for “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” and you will find Cory Doctorow’s fabulous science fiction novel, online, in full, for free.
This from Prof. Michael Scott: (twitter-CopyrightLaw):
A working paper coauthored by noted copyright law scholar Prof. Pamela Samuelson of the University of California Law School, and Research Fellow Tara Wheatland, discusses, in depth, various issues regarding statutory damages under the Copyright Act.
Cory Doctorow’s post on gaurdian.co.uk views Amazon’s Kindle 2 text-to-speech feature is not so much violating authors’ copyright but rather basic consumer rights. On the subject of text to speech:
But ultimately, the legality of the feature is irrelevant – as is the nonsensical discussion about whether the Kindle’s text-to-speech is (or will someday be) as good as a commercial, human-generated audiobook (the answers being, “No,” and “The day that artificial intelligence gives us perfect Kindle readings, we’ll have bigger fish to fry than audiobook rights”).
The reason it’s irrelevant is that Amazon wants to get licenses from members of the Authors Guild in order to sell their books in the Kindle store.
And when Amazon goes to those members, they can simply say, “No, I won’t let you sell my books because the Kindle has a text-to-speech capability and I don’t like it.” No need to go into bizarre, long-winded speculations about whether copyright law requires Amazon to build copyright enforcement into its devices, or whether Jeff Bezos’s crack team of AI wizards at Amazon are about to unleash an army of superintelligent artificial voice-actors, sandwiched within the Kindle’s slender chassis.
Here is a question for all you legal scholars out there. Is a tweet copyrightable ? Is a tweet copyrighted by default when its published ? Can there possibly be a fair use exception for something that is only 140 characters or less ?
I got to thinking about this when I tweeted about an NBA game. I tweeted to the people who follow me. While I never asked that they not distribute it to other tweeters, i did not give anyone permission to republish my tweets in a commercial newspaper, magazine or website.
So when an ESPN.com or any other outlet republishes a tweet, have they violated copyright law ?
Is twittering the process of publishing in 140 characters or less, or is it a private communications to those that follow you ? Even if you dont block outsiders from seeing it ?
You could also extend this to Facebook. Do you own your status update ? Is it a private communications between you and friends, or is a published work ? If a newspaper or website wants to publish your status update, do they need permission first ?
Detailed look at copyright and copyleft (creative commons) licensing by Sharee L. Broussard
This review begins with an examination of the ways that existing copyright laws and practices compare with the Creative Commons Legal Code. It then explains how this idea of copyleft works, how it began, and why its proponents encourage its widespread use to satisfy the disconnect existing between current intellectual property laws and common Internet practices. The essay concludes with a discussion of the pros and cons of the system.
Nina Paley calls herself “America’s Best-Loved Unknown Cartoonist” and it worth a visit to her site just to see her head explode. She’s a copyright activitist, and as she says,
Now that I’m a full-time free culture activist, some have expressed the concern,“You don’t think there should be any copyright at all! You want to take away my right to protect my intellectual property!”
Let me assure you this is not true.
I completely support your right to copy-restrict your works. The more you copyright (restrict access to) your work, the more wide-open the field is for free culture like Sita Sings the Blues. Open-licensed work has a tremendous competitive advantage over copy-restricted work. So by all means, please “protect” your “property.”
As part of their 
— a clear sign that this issue resonates with Canadians.
Detailed look at copyright and copyleft (creative commons) licensing by