Pirate Bay and the Sausage Factory
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.
Incorporating ideas from Corry Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, Matt Mason, Richard Stallman and others, my paper Pirate Bay and the Sausage Factory is now published online at Scribd.
admin Miscellaneous copyright, law, p2p, social media
This from The Local, the Swedish English language newspaper:
A lawyer representing one of the men convicted in the Pirate Bay trial has called for a retrial after reports that the judge was a member of the same copyright protection organisations as several of the main entertainment industry representatives.
The judge in the Pirate Bay case, Tomas Norström, has been a member of several of the same copyright protection organisations as several of the main entertainment industry representatives, Sveriges Radio’s P3 news programme reports.
I think we may have a problem. Full story here.
admin Miscellaneous law, piracy
Pirate Bay was found guilty in Sweden. It’s all over the web, with
Corry Doctorow’s post on Boing Boing a good place to start:
A more interesting question is whether The Pirate Bay will disappear now. After the illegal seizure of its servers in 2006, The Pirate Bay supposedly adopted a distributed architecture with failover servers in other jurisdictions that were unlikely to cooperate with EU orders. If The Pirate Bay shuts down, it’s certain that something else will spring up in its wake, of course — just as The Pirate Bay appeared in the wake of the closure of other, more “moderate” services.
The Guardian has a cool timeline and story here. Guess we’ll just have to wait for the appeal.
admin Miscellaneous law, piracy
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.
His book The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind is a must read. He posts the book online, for free PDF download, purchase, and for reading in HTML. Chapter 8 is entitled “A Creative Commons”:
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.
admin Miscellaneous copyright, law, public domain
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.
PDF of paper here.
Temp. link for Easter weekend.
admin Miscellaneous copyright, law
Press release from the EFF outlining proposed modifications to US sentencing guidelines for individuals hiding their identity online:
Under current rules, a criminal defendant can get additional time added to a prison sentence if he used “sophisticated means” to commit the offense. In its testimony before the commission, EFF will argue that sentencing courts should not assume that using proxies — technologies that can anonymize users or mask their location — is a mark of sophistication. In fact, proxies are widely employed by corporate IT departments and public libraries and, like many computer applications, can be used with little or no knowledge on the part of the user.
Press release with link to full testimony.
admin Miscellaneous law, privacy
This article by Michael Blankenship explores issues of copyright in virtual worlds and the potential for government regulation within those worlds. From the abstract:
Second Life has attracted millions of users and dollars. It has created a new economy. A new breed of business people are conversing and exchange dollars over software code. Second Life is just one example where people in the “real world” are finding new ways to interact with one another. Yet, these interactions are not all positive. Cases of copyright and trademark infringement have appeared within the game. There has been more than one major lawsuit that unfortunately settled. The virtual world law is still unsettled and Congress and the courts must act. Like the Securities and Exchange Commission regulates the stock market in the real world, Congress may need to find a solution for those infringements that will cost businesses millions of dollars.
Link to article on JDSupra.com here.
admin Miscellaneous copyright, law, virtual reality