Tom Kintop was the first of a few of you to send in the news that LEGO, makers of the plastic bricks -- and rather well known for its overly aggressive intellectual property enforcement attempts, which often get shot down -- has sued a small non-profit organization in Minneapolis called Project Legos, where the Legos stands for Leadership, Empowerment, Growth, Opportunity, Sustainability. While both are targeted at children, it's hard to see that the two compete in any way in the same "market." It's difficult to see how there's any confusion here, or how it does LEGO any good suing a small charitable organization. They should send over some LEGO bricks and apologize.

Just in time for the holiday season, SteveD alerts us to the news that PPL, Phonographic Performance Limited -- a separate UK licensing group, which collects for performers and producers (unlike PRS, which is for songwriters/record companies) -- is pushing forward with demands for charity shops to pay up for a license on top of the license they already pay PRS. In the past, the UK government exempted charities from having to pay the PPL license, but they've now removed that exemption, and like so many music collections societies, PPL didn't bother to consider how it would look to shake down charity shops, and apparently just drove forward with plans. Nice of them. This is what happens, of course, when you create the statutory ability to shake down anyone who plays music. That right just expands more and more, and the musicians and songwriters never have to actually give people a reason to buy: they just sit back and collect.

With the follow-up to Freakonomics coming out, as part of the plan to promote SuperFreakonomics, the books' authors are auctioning off the very 1st printed copy on eBay for charity. The winner of the auction gets a signed copy of this book, as well as a verification letter and a limited-edition SuperFreak t-shirt. Clearly, the economists behind this offer understand the value of scarce goods, and they've tried to increase that value with a couple extra goodies (as well as a matching donation up to $5,000 from Stephen Dubner). But wouldn't it be more interesting to see additional "reasons to buy" around the content, along with typical "freakonomic" analysis of what works and why? Dubner has already suggested (tongue-in-cheek) that the winner won't suffer from winner's curse, but will there be more practical lessons to be learned from this auction? How would the results of this charity auction be different if it did a Dutch auction (like xkcd did recently)? Auctioning off another copy of the book without the charity aspect would be an interesting test, too. And are there other scarce items that Stephen Dubner or Steven Levitt could offer for their book sales?

Ticketmaster helped build its consumer-unfriendly reputation even more earlier this year, when news emerged that it was collaborating with some musicians and concert promoters to try and push scalpers aside -- and grab their revenues. Scalping's back in the news again this week, but with a slightly different twist: a number of musicians are working with a company called Charity Partners to sell some tickets to their shows at scalper-like prices, then donate the revenues over face value to charity. It's definitely an interesting idea that seeks to do something positive with the excess willingness to pay for certain concert tickets over their face value, rather than let it go to scalpers -- or back into the pockets of the artists and promoters themselves. But will the charity aspect be enough to deflect criticism that this is just another way for musicians to fleece their fans?

We've certainly talked a lot about the various ways that Trent Reznor has been exploring creative new business models that center around connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy, but he's now using the same concepts to try to help save a life. On Wednesday, he announced a program to get people to donate money to help Eric De La Cruz get a heart transplant, whereby people who donate certain amounts to the cause will get to hang out/meet with Reznor and other band members during his ongoing tour involving both Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction (which, by the way, hits Silicon Valley tonight, for those in the area -- though, they're not accepting any more donations for people going to tonight's show). As with the Ghosts I-IV model, there are different "tiers" of support available. In just two days, he's been able to raise nearly half a million dollars, once again showing the power of having a strong community and trying to do something good with it. It will be fascinating to see if there's more that can be done along these lines in the future as well -- turning some of these business models into helping out those in need.

Reader Jonathan points us to a story that's also made the rounds on Boing Boing. Basically a blogger who apparently is somewhat well connected in the comic book/superhero world decided to get a bunch of artists he knew together to create comic character-based artwork to auction on eBay with the proceeds being sent to a children's charity who had helped out his own family at one point. The charity auction was announced, a bunch of artists signed up and created superhero-related artwork, and the auctions began on eBay. At some point, Warner Brothers, who owns the rights to many superhero characters contacted eBay to shut down a few of the auctions. This made the guy pull the rest of the auctions and get a bit nervous about whether or not he broke the law. Oddly, after all of this started getting attention Warner Brothers let one of the auctions proceed, but didn't respond to a question from the guy about letting the others move forward. In fact, in an email, Warner Brothers didn't explain its position at all.

On the whole, the legal issue is a bit murky (and it doesn't sound like anyone's making any legal threats here, so this probably won't go any further). The artwork may very well have infringed (though there are reasonable arguments for why it was not infringing as well). However, once again, this does seem like a situation where lawyers jumped ahead of what actually made sense from a business or PR standpoint. A smart company would have seen this going on and would have figured out a way to embrace it and come out of it looking like a good guy -- perhaps sponsoring the charity auction in some manner or another. But in shutting down the auctions, Warner Brothers comes off as a big legal bully who doesn't want to help kids with cancer. One more reason why legal solutions should always be looked at as a last line of defense, rather than an automatic solution.

We've already seen the entertainment industry put together propaganda curriculums for kids about "intellectual property" that are so tilted and one-sided that the kids roll their eyes and challenge many of the statements. But that's not stopping the industry. Now it's funding a children's charity to push out the same propaganda to kids, warning the kids about how awful file sharing is, and how dangerous it is. Who knew that charities could be funded to promote the obsolete business model of a dying industry? Somehow I doubt that the charity's discussion will delve into things like "fair use," collaboration, sharing, the promotional aspects of content and artists who embrace file sharing to good results. I wonder why...

An artist named Nadia Plesner recently put together a project to try to raise money for the victims of genocide in Darfur. As part of the campaign, she created a t-shirt with a drawn image of a Darfur victim "pimped" out to look like Paris Hilton -- that is, carrying a designer handbag and a small dressed up dog. The entire profits from the t-shirts are going to help the victims. The handbag drawn in the image is not specifically a Louis Vuitton bag, but the design firm seems to have gone ballistic, claiming all sorts of intellectual property rights it simply does not possess. First, it sent a (admittedly friendly) cease-and-desist, which Plesner wrote about on the site, while responding and telling the company that she would not take down the t-shirt or the image. In response, LV went from friendly to nasty. It sued, demanding $7,500 for each day she keeps selling the product, $7,500 for each day she displays its original cease-and-desist letter and (my favorite) $7,500 for each day she mentions the name "Louis Vuitton" on her website.

While, there may be some difference due to the specifics of trademark law in Europe, it's hard to see how this is not overreaching. This is an entirely non-commercial venture. All of the profits are given to charity. The design has some differences from the Louis Vuitton bag, and hardly seems likely to specifically damage the Louis Vuitton brand (the lawsuit will take care of that). The t-shirts are clearly not competing with Louis Vuitton and there's little reason to have anyone think that Louis Vuitton somehow "endorsed" this effort. Furthermore, posting the cease-and-desist or even mentioning the name Louis Vuitton simply should not be infringing activities. I don't know if Europe has the equivalent of the "moron in a hurry" trademark test, but LV gets the "moron in a hurry" award for the week.

About a decade ago, the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP) made news for idiotically threatening the Girl Scouts for singing songs around campfires without paying licensing fees. The resulting publicity forced ASCAP to back down, but gave the group a huge black eye for being copyright bullies. This story coincided with a growing interest in copyright issues, and many credit the story with generating initial interest from many into copyright policy issues. You would think that this story would have made its way across the pond to the UK and its Performing Rights Society (PRS), the UK equivalent of ASCAP. Apparently not. PRS, who was last seen around here badgering a chain of auto mechanics for having its mechanics listen to music so loudly that customers can hear (but without paying for a performance license), is apparently now demanding royalties from a charity that happens to have children singing carols at a Christmas concert. Apparently PRS first visited the charity to threaten them over a similar issue to the auto mechanics. The building has a tea room, and workers in the kitchen apparently had the radio on too loud, leading to a demand for performance royalties from the PRS. That resulted in further discussions about what other music occurs on the premises, and the PRS's demand for a license for the caroling. This all seems quite similar to the Girl Scout campfire fiasco, with the added wonders of a Scrooge-like Christmas twist. Either way, it's yet another example of a dying industry trying to greedily squeeze ever last penny out of every possible place before it dies for good.