It's no secret that the latest decision by many newspapers to publish records of gun-permit holders after obtaining them via Freedom of Information Act requests is somewhat controversial. Some people are against the practice and think that such information should not be public. Wherever you come down on that side of the debate, however, hopefully you can recognize that since (in most places) the information is officially a public record, no publication or news organization should ever have to apologize for merely requesting the information. And yet, as pointed out by Jim Romenesko, The Cherokee Scout in Murphy N.C., posted an astoundingly groveling apology to its readers last week for the sin of daring to request public records:

NOTE TO READERS

The Cherokee Scout made a tremendous error in judgment this week, and thanks to our readers we learned a tough lesson.

As publisher of your local newspaper, I want to apologize to everyone we unintentionally upset with our public records request for a list of those who have or have applied for a concealed carry permit. We had no idea the the reaction it would cause.

Sheriff Keith Lovin had the best interests of the people of Cherokee County at heart when he denied our request. The Scout would like to offer an apology to him as well.

To that end, Editor Robert Horne spoke with Lovin on Friday morning to tell him we were withdrawing our public records request. He asked for a written copy of request, and Horne dropped it off at his office that morning.

While Horne was on the phone with the sheriff, he also thanked him and his staff for their quick response when some people who saw Facebook posts started making personal threats against him. Horne also requested a sit-down meeting in the near future to iron out any issues between the Scout and the sheriff's office, which Lovin graciously accepted.

I realize many people are upset with Horne, myself and the Scout and we can understand that. We never meant to offend the wonderful people of this fine community nor hurt the reputation of this newspaper. We do a lot of positive work that helps make Cherokee County an even better place to live, and I hope more good work will repair our reputation with readers.

Many of you have asked where Horne is from. He is from a small town in south Georgia — Cairo, Ga., to be exact. It is a rural area much like Murphy, and his roots are helping him better understand this community. [He has been editor of the paper since 2005.]

As for myself, I attended Murphy High School. I was married and baptized here, and three of my children are proud Bulldogs. This county has been important to me for a long time.

I know where this community is coming from, and I hope we can regain your trust. I know it may take a while, but we're going to try. Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

Publisher David Brown

Newspaper publishers are supposed to stand up for their right to ask for public information, not grovel about how it was a mistake to ask for it in the first place. People might not like it, but newspapers aren't supposed to only report on the stories that people like. If that's the case, they're no longer a newspaper, they're a marketing brochure.

While early coins represented the value of the metal they were made of, modern day coins are issued by the government and their value is determined by free market currency exchange rates. Ideally the value of a coin should be higher than the cost of the metals used to make it, but when the price of metals, like copper, increases, pennies can end up being worth more for their metal. For example, the Canadian government has officially stopped distributing pennies because not only do they cost almost 1.6 cents per penny to produce, but most people think pennies are worthless. But are they? Here are a few more interesting coin-related stories.

• Pennies aren't worthless. They're legal tender and carry a value of 1 cent. That's why a Utah man tried to pay a disputed $25 doctor's bill in pennies. After he presented the clinic with almost 14 lbs of pennies and demanded that they count them, he was found guilty of disorderly conduct and fined $140. Hopefully he didn't try to pay the fine in pennies as well. [url]
• Have you ever wondered why there are 100 cents in a dollar? In 1784, Thomas Jefferson suggested that the U.S. dollar should be decimalized, and being the influential guy that he was, he managed to convince the government to follow the suggestions he proposed in his essay, "Notes on the Establishment of a Money Unit, and of a Coinage for the United States." [url]
• Coin collectors can now get their very own platinum-plated "trillion dollar coin" for just $9.95. The coins commemorate the idea that the U.S. Treasury could simply mint a $1 trillion platinum coin to get around the debt ceiling. Apparently, U.S. law allows the Treasury to produce platinum coins in any denomination. [url]
• The Royal Canadian Mint wants to create a secure digital alternative to cash in the form of MintChip. The MintChip smart card chip could be installed in a number of devices, and value would be transferred onto the chip by a MintChip broker, allowing users to securely exchange Canadian dollars both online and offline. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

This probably won't come as a surprise to anyone, but the Supreme Court has completely shot down the ACLU (and some activists and journalists') attempt to invalidate the part of the FISA Amendments Act that "legalized" warrantless wiretapping. As we guessed at the time of the oral hearings, it seemed like it was going to be difficult to convince a majority of the court that the plaintiffs had any standing to complain, since they couldn't show that they had been directly impacted. And, indeed the court ruled 5 to 4 that there was no standing here. So, basically, there is simply no way to challenge the constitutionality of warrantless wiretaps.

Doesn't that seem like a serious constitutional problem? The government can pass laws that it can spy on people in private, and there's no way to then challenge that law. Oh, and if you happen to discover (by accident!) that you've been spied upon the government can just claim sovereign immunity, and that's it. Case closed.

The full ruling is pretty depressing. The court basically says any harm is "speculative," and thus there can't be any standing at all.

We decline to abandon our usual reluctance to endorse standing theories that rest on speculation about the decisions of independent actors.

That's from the majority ruling, written by Justice Alito, and signed by Justices Roberts, Thomas, Scalia and Kennedy. Dissenting were Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan. The majority also rejected the idea that merely having to take precautions not to be spied upon without warrants represents a real harm that gives standing:

If the law were otherwise, an enterprising plaintiff would be able to secure a lower standard for Article III standing simply by making an expenditure based on a nonparanoid fear.

Perhaps a legitimate concern, but it still seems somewhat ridiculous that there is no actual way to test the constitutionality of a law that clearly has 4th Amendment consequences.

The dissent pointed out that it's crazy to suggest that the fact that this will be used on the plaintiffs was "speculative," and clearly worried about the implications of such a ruling and what it means for the government's ability to pass these kinds of laws without real judicial review.

The upshot is that (1) similarity of content, (2) strong motives, (3) prior behavior, and (4) capacity all point to a very strong likelihood that the Government will intercept at least some of the plaintiffs’ communications, including some that the 2008 amendment, §1881a, but not the pre-2008 Act, authorizes the Government to intercept. At the same time, nothing suggests the presence of some special factor here that might support a contrary conclusion. The Government does not deny that it has both the motive and the capacity to listen to communications of the kind described by plaintiffs. Nor does it describe any system for avoiding the interception of an electronic communication that happens to include a party who is an American lawyer, journalist, or human rights worker. One can, of course, always imagine some special circumstance that negates a virtual likelihood, no matter how strong. But the same is true about most, if not all, ordinary inferences about future events. Perhaps, despite pouring rain, the streets will remain dry (due to the presence of a special chemical). But ordinarily a party that seeks to defeat a strong natural inference must bear the burden of showing that some such special circumstance exists. And no one has suggested any such special circumstance here.

Consequently, we need only assume that the Government is doing its job (to find out about, and combat, terrorism) in order to conclude that there is a high probability that the Government will intercept at least some electronic communication to which at least some of the plaintiffs are parties. The majority is wrong when it describes the harm threatened plaintiffs as “speculative.”

They go on to point to a series of other cases where standing was granted based on "probable" injury. It also notes a bunch of scenarios that seem ridiculous, but which are logically implied by this ruling. And, indeed, the standard the Supreme Court ruling makes here is a very high bar that is going to deny standing in many cases, and often allow the government to act with impunity in cases where oversight is needed. This is very unfortunate. And, of course, it's unlikely that Congress will do its job and step in to fix this.

For many, many years there have been disputes between cable TV providers and the TV companies over what channels the cable (and satellite) guys need to provide. The TV companies often "bundle" smaller channels that don't get many viewers along with the popular "must have" channels. Part of their argument is that this allows those smaller channels to exist in the first place, as they'd be economically nonviable without the subsidy from the super popular channels. Of course, the cable/satellite providers (and many consumers) argue that this is waste, pure and simple, and it means higher bills. It appears that Cablevision is finally trying to do something about this, and has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Viacom for forcing it to carry the channels it doesn't like, specifically channels like Palladia, MTV Hits and VH1 Classic. Cablevision has to carry those if it wants the channels that people actually watch, like MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.

Oddly, we can't show you the full lawsuit, because it's been filed under seal. You see that sometimes when it involves contractual disputes, since the terms in the contract are secret. However, it's rather unfortunate that they couldn't file the document with the secret stuff redacted. At this time, we just have Cablevision's side of the story via their press announcement. The key argument is that this is an illegal "tying" arrangement. Of course, just last year we had a ruling in a similar lawsuit, in which cable customers filed a similar suit, which flopped in court.

Cablevision may have a difficult time making this claim succeed as well. As Viacom quickly pointed out in response, the bundling is not "forced." Pay TV companies can choose individual channels without other channels, it's just that the price is higher. So, they argue, the bundling actually leads to discounts. Whether or not anyone actually believes that claim may become a key question in the lawsuit. If I had to do an initial handicapping, though, I'd guess that Viacom wins this one, even if Cablevision can make Viacom (and others) sweat for a bit. In the long run, however, this is still about fighting the last battle. The idea of TV channels is an increasingly obsolete concept. This fight is over the way video content was distributed. Not the way it will be distributed in the future.

Back in 2009, we warned people that the President's mega-hyped "broadband plan" really just looked like a massive gift to large incumbent providers, who were about to get an influx of taxpayer money, which would translate into next to nothing in terms of actual broadband deployments. Indeed, we've seen an awful lot of waste happening under the program, which is finally starting to come to light. Recently, the NY Times profiled widespread waste in the program, suggesting that hundreds of millions of dollars are either being wasted or are part of various boondoggles to squeeze cash out of governments:

Nationally, $594 million in spending has been temporarily or permanently halted, 14 percent of the overall program, and the Commerce Department's inspector general has raised questions about the program's ability to adequately monitor spending of the more than 230 grants.

Perhaps nowhere are the details more apparent than in West Virginia. Ars Technica summarizes a recent report that is incredibly damning. The smoking gun? A $20,000 router installed in a one-room library the size of an ordinary trailer. But that's hardly the worst of it. At least that $20,000 router is being used (even if it's under-utilized).

Part of the reason for buying that router, rather than a cheapo one that would have sufficed, was that it would enable other services, including things like VoIP. The state bought 77 of them. Turns out that 75 are just sitting around collecting dust. And none of them can use the VoIP system they need.

Ironically, the routers can't even be used for VoIP in some key cases. The state police already have a VoIP-based phone system, but the new 3945 series routers did not come with "the appropriate Cisco VoIP modules" to work with the system. The state now has to spend another $84,768 to purchase those modules; without them, the state police can't use the routers, only two of which are actually installed and operating. (For those keeping score at home, this means that 75 $20,000 routers are depreciating in a state police warehouse somewhere in West Virginia.)

There's a lot of finger-pointing going on, but when it comes down to it, this is not at all surprising. Throwing billions of dollars into the broadband space with little reasoning or oversight always leads to questionable behavior. So why do we keep doing it? Are there ways the government could spend on infrastructure and have it be powerful. Sure, but the Broadband Plan clearly was not it. And we're only learning about the abuse and waste now, after the money's been spent.

A couple weeks ago, we wrote about some growing concern that, due to the US Copyright Office's pressure, the Justice Department was seriously considering filing a brief in an important case about fair use. The fear was that the Copyright Office's simplistic argument would carry over to the DOJ, and that could have a massive negative impact on the basic concept of fair use.

Thankfully, the story got a fair bit of attention, and we heard that a lot of people spoke out and more feedback than expected showed up on the DOJ's doorstep, including from some folks in Congress, who were concerned about the possibility of hurting fair use in the educational setting. The end result? The DOJ has chosen not to weigh in after all. While it may seem like not such a big deal to get a government agency to not do something, from a variety of sources, it appears that the Copyright Office and the DOJ were very, very serious about filing something. It's not yet clear if the public speaking out led to the change of heart, but either way, it's good to see the administration back down. Having the federal government argue against fair use and in favor of (mostly foreign) big publishers was just never a good idea, and thankfully they realized that in time.

Last week, we wrote about how the Hollywood-backed Swedish anti-piracy organization, "Rights Alliance," was threatening the Swedish Pirate Party with criminal charges for hosting The Pirate Bay. It didn't stop there, however, also going after some of the connectivity firms further up the chain, moving beyond mere secondary liability (TPB) and tertiary liability (the Pirate Party) to a ridiculous and astounding quaternary liability for a company providing connectivity to the Swedish Pirate Party, which hosted a part of The Pirate Bay, which is used by some individuals to infringe on copyright. Still, getting involved in any such legal fight is difficult, so The Pirate Bay and the Swedish Pirate Party have moved The Pirate Bay's connectivity yet again, such that it is hosted by the Spanish Pirate Party and the Norwegian Pirate Party. Spain and Norway are two countries that have resisted attempts to censor sites like The Pirate Bay.

However, even if the Swedish Pirate Party is no longer hosting the site, it is clear that it is not happy about this turn of events, and suggests it is planning legal action for "unlawful coercion" against the Rights Alliance:

"The Pirate Party has a board meeting in a few days. I will recommend the board to file a police report against the Rights Alliance for unlawful coercion," Troberg says. "It is important to determine precisely how forgiving the system is to those who try to abuse the judicial system to silence others."

Given how law enforcement has treated The Pirate Party so far in Sweden, it seems unlikely that much would come from such an action, but that just highlights a big part of the problem.

In the meantime, this continues to show the ridiculous whac-a-mole nature of the entertainment industry's war on TPB. The site isn't actually "hosted" by these other Pirate Parties, but rather it is widely distributed. However, there does need to be a few key places where it connects clearly, so that people can find it. And that, it appears, is the role that these Pirate Parties will take on. And, while that's happening, it would appear that some other Pirate Parties around the globe are gearing up to be able to take on similar duties, should it be needed.

All this for one ancient site that hasn't changed or innovated much in years. It's kind of incredible. Peter Sunde, The Pirate Bay's former spokesperson has insisted, for years, that The Pirate Bay should be dead already, not because of Hollywood's continued attempts to take it down, but because other sites should have innovated far beyond what TPB has offered. Of course, I'd argue that Hollywood itself has had multiple opportunities to do that innovation, but instead has focused on attacking TPB and trying to cut off what consumers want, rather than figuring out ways to help provide the public what they want. It's been a decade long case study in exactly how not to deal with disruptive innovation. And this story shows no signs of changing any time soon.

We've long been big fans of the work that Carl Malamud has done, helping to make public information actually available. Among his many, many, projects is one important one in which he buys up (often expensive) publications of standards that are built into federal requirements, and makes them public. If you're wondering why he should have to buy publications to access standards that are federal requirements, you've quickly understood the big problem. About a year ago, On The Media actually did a fantastic segment about this particular project of Malamud's.

Of course, sooner or later, you knew someone was going to flip out, and apparently it's the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors of the world. Malamud's organization purchased the federally-mandated 1985 standard on air-duct leakage and posted it online as a part of this project. But the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors National Association (SMACNA) claimed that the document violated its copyright and demanded it be taken offline, both by an initial DMCA notice (via Attributor) and then via threat of a lawsuit directly from a lawyer representing SMACNA. Malamud's Public.Resource.Org, with help from the EFF, have filed for declaratory judgment that posting such information does not infringe on SMACNA's copyright.

In the filing, the case is made that since these standards are incorporated into federal regulations, they have the force of law, and thus cannot and must not be held in secret.

Technical manuals like the 1985 manual at issue in this case, explicitly adopted by federal regulation, have the force of law and impose affirmative obligations on citizens. As much as landmark health care acts or Supreme Court civil rights decisions, these technical requirements—for building, electrical, plumbing, transportation—touch the lives of Americans every day. Business owners, workers, and consumers need to know these directives in order to operate their businesses lawfully, to avoid penalties, and to determine whether neighbors, contractors, or competitors are in compliance.

The crux of the argument is that as the standard is incorporated into law, it is no longer infringing to make that work available, as one cannot comply with the law without having that information. No matter what happens in the end, this should make for an interesting case to follow.

If you've followed this site for any length of time, you've heard many opinions on file sharing from many different people. While there are many who have taken a pragmatic or even receptive approach to file sharing (and seen a bunch of "freeloaders" cough up a whole lot of cash), there are many more who only see the downside of copyright infringement.

What you rarely, if ever, see is a top level executive of a major player in the content industry state, on the record, that not only is piracy a good thing, but it may also be a necessary thing. Here's Mandar Thakur, COO of Times Music, India, commenting on the internet's upheaval of the recording industry.

I may get lynched for saying this – but I have always believed that internet piracy was actually, in some ways, a good thing to happen to the industry. If not for that, the music industry would never have pulled its act together and embraced innovation and realised changing consumer behaviour and digital distribution. The challenges the music content industry faces are too vast to lay down here but the most significant one is the fact that the very core of the industry and its business dynamics have been shaken deep due to the consumer’s changed consumption habits and habitat, and its value proposition changed forever. It’s almost akin to consumers not wanting to pay to consume Coke/Pepsi anymore. In that sense it is as good as creating a brand new entertainment industry, creating brand new value and brand new revenue models at the same time as preserving the existing value/revenue base.

Now, before someone writes off Time Music as the equivalent of a boutique label run by three guys out of their stepdad's garage, let's take a look at the facts. Time Music, India is a division of the Times Group, the "largest mass media company in India," with annual revenue exceeding $1.5 billion and the employer of 11,000 Indians.

Much of what Thakur stated has been documented here over the years. Piracy may be a problem, but it's also a sign of disruption and an indicator of underserved markets. The problem with the American recording industry is that it spent much more time worrying (and attacking) the first item on the list while ignoring the other two. From what he's stated, Thakur is apparently uninterested in wasting much more time and money trying to eliminate file sharing. This should allow Time Music Inc. to devote those resources towards making money, rather than plugging leaks.

That he would come out and state this plainly probably won't win him any friends in the IMI (Indian Music Industry), the Indian version of the RIAA. Late last year, IMI filed a petition in support of India's IT Rules, pushing to be granted the right to take down content within 36 hours, without having to serve notice to the content creator or uploader.

Thakur may also begin irritating those even higher up on the food chain. IMI is part of International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), best known around these parts for serving up an annual report on piracy that's riddled with factual errors and filled to the brim with pleas for various governments to save it from having to make forward progress.

Not only does Thakur view file sharing as a side effect of industry stasis, he also seems to have a good grip on what consumers actually want -- and how the rollout of better and speedier connections will continue this disruption (and its attendant opportunities).

Faster access at affordable prices has always created a massive boost for consumption. At one point it was content that was king, then the portable device became the centre of the digital universe and now it’s the war of the OSes. The underlying factor across all these spurring growth (or preventing growth) has always been access and in this particular case it’s the global LTE and LTE Advanced roll- outs that will accelerate growth, especially in large countries such as India, Indonesia and China. This [growth of access] will be nothing short of an internet revolution, due to the wide-scale consumption it will create as common people’s daily habits change.

This is also refreshing. Rather than viewing across-the-board increases in bandwidth as nothing but a more efficient conduit for infringement (see also: the MPAA's comments on Google's fiber rollout), he sees it for what it is: an new, rapidly expanding market.

It's great to see such clear thinking from someone inside the industry. IMI and IFPI may not be happy with a pirate-loving COO heading a major music outlet, but it appears he's in place to catch a new market on the upswing, an uncommon experience for those in his position.

For years, we've seen that the entertainment industry honestly seems to think that it has the right to veto and kill off any new technology that doesn't fit into its own business model plans. Of course, they've had some support in this from copyright maximalists, like former head of the Copyright Office, Ralph Oman, who recently declared that all new technologies that impact content should be presumed illegal until Congress decides otherwise. Can you imagine what sort of innovation we'd have in the consumer electronics space if we had to wait for Congress' approval for each new device? Especially given the power to lobby against such approvals?

I'm reminded of this thanks to News Corp. (via Fox) filing for a new injunction against Dish Networks for the latest version of its DVR, the Dish Hopper with Sling. Now, you may recall that Fox already tried to get an injunction against Dish's Hopper with Sling and lost pretty badly (even as it pretended that it had won). Fox is appealing that decision, but also filed a new request for an injunction against the updated device, claiming that the key new feature, Hopper Transfers, goes beyond anything else and (once again), must be stopped.

This is the same old story over and over again. The last century plus of copyright law has been driven by the entertainment industry flipping out time and time again over new innovations that they don't think should be allowed. The 1909 Copyright Act was driven, in large part, by the introduction of the evil player piano, leading many to insist that this would kill the demand for live music and put musicians out of work.

Around that time, there was also the invention of the gramophone, or, as John Philip Sousa called it, "that infernal machine." He famously claimed, "these talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country," and that "we will not have a vocal cord left," because evolution will deem them not necessary due to "talking machines."

Then along came radio, and it too, was destined to wipe out the industry, with ASCAP demanding that any song that was to be played on the radio first needed to (a) get permission from the rights holder and (b) have the DJ state clearly before each song that it was being played "by special permission" from the rightsholder. When people started mocking that phrase (and someone even wrote a song about it), ASCAP stated that the permission line had to be spoken by DJs with "no facetious trifling."

Moving on, along came cable TV to add some competition to the TV market. And what happened? Lawsuits of course. "It would be difficult to imagine a more flagrant violation of the Copyright Act," we were told.

And you may have heard what happened when the original VCR was invented. Why the MPAA's Jack Valenti had a thing or two to say about that:

I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

Cassette recorder? "Home taping is killing music."

DVR? Must be illegal. According to the head of Turner Broadcasting: "People who watch TV without commercials are stealing from the entertainment producers."

How about the first real MP3 player, the Diamond Rio? Lawsuit filed in which it was stated that allowing the device, "will injure not only the record companies and artists whose work will be pirated, but also the music publishers, musicians, background singers, songwriters and others whose existence is dependent on revenue earned by record sales."

YouTube? Viacom's lawsuit is still ongoing, but Viacom insisted that, if allowed, YouTube would "severely impair, if not completely destroy, the value of many copyrighted creations."

And lets not even get into all of the technologies that the entertainment industry has been shutting down over the past few years. Zediva? Dead. ivi? Gone. Aereo? Still here, but fighting. Veoh? Dead (even though it won its lawsuit). MP3Tunes? Bankrupt due to lawsuit (even though it won too). There are many more as well.

See a pattern yet? This pattern repeats over and over and over and over again. The entertainment industry, aided by the Copyright Office, seems to think that there's some sort of role it has to play in giving the yay or nay vote to any new technological innovation that concerns content consumption. And, of course, the vote is always "nay." In the long run, that always turns out to be the wrong vote. So why do we constantly allow the entertainment industry to get away with this nonsense? This filing from Fox is merely the latest in a very long line of these kinds of actions, and it should be immensely troubling to those who recognize that the best way for the entertainment industry itself to thrive in the modern world is to embrace these new services, which increase value to consumers and make them more interested in watching/listening to the content being produced.

You would think that, after a century of these examples, those in the entertainment industry might finally realize that looking for the opportunities in these innovations is a more productive strategy than trying to kill every new technology. Apparently, however, the industry is still run by people who have no sense of history, other than the history of always ratcheting up copyright enforcement.

As Techdirt noted last year, France has a regrettable habit of dreaming up really bad ideas when it comes to the Internet, most famously with the three-strikes scheme, now known there by the name of the body the oversees it -- Hadopi. Guillaume Champeau points us to a piece in the French newspaper Libération, which contains yet more appalling possibilities (original in French).

The article concerns Pierre Lescure and his team, who have been charged by the French government with coming up with ways to help the world of culture in France adapt to the Internet economy. One idea, kindly suggested by the French recording industry, is to replace Hadopi's court procedures for those accused of unauthorized file sharing with an automatic fine of 140 euros after three strikes. That is, from being guilty until proven innocent, as now, under the proposed scheme those accused would simply be found guilty without any further discussion. And then there's this:

In parallel, no de-penalization for non-commercial sharing, but a desire to "increase the value" of free licences of the Creative Commons kind. The Lescure team believes that letting works circulate freely (as they do now...) would hinder the development of legal offers, particularly VOD [Video On Demand].

Yes, apparently the way to "increase the value" is to no longer allow Creative Commons content to "circulate freely" because it might compete with other business models. Lescure has now taken to Twitter (kudos that at least he's on Twitter) to state that what was reported bears "almost no relation to what we are preparing." But he doesn't explain what exactly they are planning, nor does he deny that their plans involve Creative Commons licenses.

We shall have to wait to see what he has in mind. But it would be hard to find a better symbol of the French establishment's attitude to the Internet and its extraordinary new possibilities than trying to make people pay for works that could be shared freely (because their creators want that), on the grounds that it might hinder a service that turns the Net into television.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

It's early in the week, but it seems like there have been a whole bunch of stories already about copyright being used (and abused) to take down content. The latest victim, tragically, is the blog that was Real Calvin and Hobbes by Michael Den Beste, in which he would take scenes from the classic comic strip Calvin and Hobbes and place them in "real photographs." Like many people of my generation, I grew up completely addicted to Calvin & Hobbes. I bought all the books, and even now, decades later, I keep The Complete Calvin & Hobbes on my night table, and I enjoy reading it with my son. While I know that Watterson always fought back against attempts to license out the work, it still seems fairly ridiculous that his publisher, Andrews McMeel Universal, has told Den Beste that he needs to take down the works because they are infringing, in their view. For what it's worth, this (at least) was not a legal nastygram, but rather a response to Den Beste himself asking if what he was doing was okay. John Glynn at Andrews McMeel Universal was at least somewhat friendly about it, but told him the images needed to go:

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your inquiry.

I'm sorry to say that it is our view that what you're doing is in violation of the copyright of Calvin & Hobbes. This is no reflection on the artistic merit of what you've done and certainly not a personal condemnation of the pieces you've created.

We're protective of the copyright for a variety of reasons, most importantly it is the express and unwavering wish of the creator that any use of Calvin and Hobbes was limited to work he'd created and in very specific formats.

Because that is the case, we would politely request that you take down the works you've created that contain any Calvin and Hobbes images.

You look to be an outstanding artist and we wish you the best in your future endeavors.

Sincerely,

John Glynn
Universal Uclick

Andrews McMeel Universal

Of course, it's not just the copyright holder who gets to determine copyright infringement. It seems like Den Beste should have a fairly reasonable fair use argument. The images are quite transformative. He's only using a portion of the works. He's certainly not taking away any value from the original works (he's probably adding to it). And, while he did put up a "donate" button on the site, this is hardly a big for-profit venture (he claims he made about $85).

The problem, of course, is that fighting for fair use means being willing to spend on a lawyer and go to court. And that's just not worth it for someone doing something fun.

The real issue here, however, is that there is no reason why John Glynn and Andrews McMeel Universal needed to go down this path. Hell, we even have a near perfect parallel example that shows why this is a really dumb move. Five years ago, we wrote about a similar blog concerning Garfield minus Garfield, in which someone else posted Garfield comics with the comic's namesake deleted from every scene. In that case, everyone was actually cool with it. The creator of the comic talked about how awesome it was, and eventually Garfield's publisher, Ballantine Books, worked out a simple agreement to even allow the creator of Garfield Minus Garfield to publish his own book of the strips.

Instead, in this case, a site that was energizing fans about the original comic, and was clearly made lovingly by a huge fan of the original, gets shut down. While there are still some of the images floating around the internet, we're now all worse off for not having these images widely available, and assured that Dan Beste won't be creating any more for the world. That's what we mean when we talk about copyright killing off culture and being used to stomp out creation, rather than encourage it.

Techdirt has been writing for a while about China's policy of providing incentives to file patents -- regardless of whether those patents have any worth. That's led to a naïve celebration of the large numbers now being granted, as if more patents corresponded to more innovation.

Until now, this problem of junk patents has been confined to China, and the companies that operate there. But last year China went even further with its subsidy system, offering to pay the fees for filing overseas, presumably to encourage Chinese companies to build up patent portfolios in foreign markets that can be used for defensive or even offensive purposes. We're now beginning to see the effects of this further distortion to the patent system, as Australian businesses struggle with the flood of new patents there. The Patentology blog explains:

A Chinese government scheme providing financial incentives for small and medium sized enterprises, public institutions or scientific research institutions appears to be resulting in abuse of the Australian patent system, and the 'dumping' of numerous low-quality innovation patents on the Australian Register.

These 'junk' patents are not being examined or certified. They therefore represent no more than potential enforceable rights. Even so, they generate costs to companies operating legitimately in Australia, which may need to obtain advice on the likely scope and validity of these patents in order to avoid possible infringement. In extreme cases, the existence of junk patents could result in an Australian business choosing not to take the risk of bringing a new product to market, even though the Chinese owner of a patent is not itself offering any products or services in this country.

This is a perfect example of how granting more patents actively harms innovation. Thanks to China's incentive scheme, which encourages patent quantity rather than quality, Australian businesses must now spend more time searching through them all to see if they are likely to affect their own products, deciding if they are a threat, and what to do about it. All that costs money that could have been spent on real innovation, developing new products. Thanks to the patent system, and China's new incentives, that money will now go to the lawyers.

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Being in the public arena is not for the thin-skinned. Or, at least, that used to be the case, right up until the internet made it possible for thousands to give instant (usually negative) feedback on public figures' statements, actions, sudden weight gain, etc. True, older, thicker-skinned public figures had it much easier "back in the day," but today's political aspirant should know that a.) their life is an open (face)book and b.) the angriest people talk (type) the LOUDEST.

However, rather than develop thicker skin, some politicians have instead made efforts to keep all the bad people away from the paper vellum they call skin. Some try to shield themselves (and the children!) with vague anti-cyberbullying laws. Others push for "real name" requirements. And some (well, maybe just this one), just tell the offending entity that it's no longer part of the conversation, no matter how ridiculous this "arrangement" actually is.

Christopher Hawtree is a very unusual politician because he dislikes being quoted. The Green councillor, who has just been selected to fight for a parliamentary seat, has told a reporter for his local paper, the Brighton Argus, to stop approaching him after meetings.

So, a local politician who deals with local issues would rather not answer questions from the local paper. One of the correspondents for the offending paper logically asked (via Twitter), "Isn't that his job?"

Why doesn't Hawtree want to talk to his district's paper of record?

Hawtree tweeted in response: "I have a great dislike of the Argus readers' comments and so prefer to appear in other papers."

That normally wouldn't be a problem, but Brighton & Hove's only paper is the Argus. Hawtree apparently would like to be the sort of public figure that can coast through several successful terms, untroubled by his local paper and mouthy constituents. But if that's truly the sort of person he wishes to be, he needs to drop the "public figure" part of it.

Not only will he not respond to the paper's inquiries, but he's actively steering anyone who will listen towards an alternative "paper of record."

So, given that the city of Brighton & Hove is served by only one title, what "other papers" does he prefer? The New York Times, evidently, because he urges his followers to sign up for a subscription.

I'm not sure how much longer Hawtree's planning to "serve" his community, but I would think his constituents will be trimming a few months or years off that total. It's pretty tough to remain a community leader when you've implied that many in the community are "dreadful" and "hateful." Topping it off by cutting the press out of the loop makes Hawtree look like the sort of person who'd be better off returning to the private sector and becoming a hermit, rather than attempting to bypass all that "unpleasant" communication the real world's known for.