This is a story of massive infringement upon infringement. Or it's a story about culture and building awesome things from the building blocks others helped put together. Or both -- which really should say something about copyright laws today. It was nearly nine years ago that EMI went completely off the rails in trying to threaten everyone for The Grey Album -- the first truly popular mashup album. Put together by the producer Danger Mouse, The Grey Album used Jay-Z's vocals from The Black Album and mashed them up with music samples entirely from the Beatles The White Album -- and it actually worked.

Jay-Z has since referred to it as "genius" and expressed how honored he was to see it happen. EMI, which controlled the Beatles' rights, felt differently, sending cease-and-desist letters to tons of sites that had the mp3s. In response, folks on the internet planned Grey Tuesday for February 24th, 2004 -- a day of digital civil disobedience, where lots of sites would distribute the mashup album. EMI, still not understanding what it was dealing with, sent off more cease-and-desist letters to any site that had indicated that it would participate. End result? Even more interest in the whole thing.

Of course, since then, Danger Mouse has gone on to be an in-demand guy in the recording industry (among other things, he's one-half of Gnarls Barkley, who of course had a massive hit with the song "Crazy" a few years ago). EMI later admitted that The Grey Album didn't "harm" them at all, but still defended the decision arguing, pointlessly, "it's not a question of damage, it's a question of rights."

Given all that, one has to wonder what EMI thinks of another top industry guy, recording engineer John Stewart (who's worked with Kanye West, Big Boi and John Legend), who has remastered the audio on The Grey Album, arguing that he could do a better job -- and the early reviews seem to agree. As noted in the Forbes article linked above:

Revisiting The Grey Album with an expert ear gave Stewart the ability to pinpoint its audio flaws, and his professional experience gave him the agency to do something about it. Stewart says he first got the idea to remaster The Grey Album on Wednesday, Nov. 21, but it didn’t really click until that Saturday. On Sunday he set out to improve the album’s audio, tinkering with various faders in ProTools until he achieved the desired effect: “I just kind of put the sonics on steroids,” he says.

He then put the whole thing up on SoundCloud and Mediafire, where it's getting plenty of listens and downloads. But, of course, as Slate points out: this is still an "unauthorized" work. And even though there's almost certainly no "harm," has EMI (now owned by Universal) finally understood that it makes sense to let these things go?

We were just discussing how some anonymous developers had created and released a "pirate edition" of LimeWire, after the company LimeWire was required to no longer offer its software. Now LimeWire has put out an announcement demanding those who put out such an "unauthorized version" cease & desist. It does seem rather ironic that a company whose software was regularly used to access unauthorized works is now "complaining" about unauthorized versions of its own work. Of course, it's likely that the company is well aware of this, but has put out this announcement so that it doesn't get blamed in court for this unauthorized version.

Erik sent over the the news that Dutch model Lara Stone has apparently won damages against French Playboy for publishing what were referred to as "unauthorized" photos of her in their June issue. Tragically, much of the reporting on this doesn't explain what kind of photos we're talking about (from the description, it almost sounded like photos taken while she was unaware). However, in the interest of understanding the legal implications only (of course), I (ahem) found the photos in question (oh so very NSFW). The photos all appear to be professional studio shots, most likely from a single photoshoot. Stone claims that her main complaint was just that "no woman wants photos of them to be published in Playboy without permission." However, I'm wondering how French Playboy got the photos in the first place, and if it wouldn't have a claim against the photographer, if he had claimed the rights to the photos (and produced a signed model release form). Obviously, the photos themselves were initially taken with permission, since it's clearly a professional photoshoot. So, where in the process did the photos become "unauthorized"?

Slashdot points us to the news that Blizzard/Activision have won a default judgment against the person behind Scapegaming, which ran an unauthorized World of Warcraft server for profit. The court ordered the site's owner to pay "$3,053,339 of inappropriate profits, $63,600 of attorney's fees, and $85,478,600 of statutory damages." The low number for attorney's fees is because it was a default judgment (the server owner basically ignored the lawsuit), so there wasn't much lawyering needed. The high number for statutory damages are because statutory damages in copyright law are insane and totally disproportionate to the actual acts.

The case has some similarities with the Blizzard/bnetd case, which still seems problematic to many. In the Slashdot comments, a bunch of folks have been quick to side with Blizzard, since Scapegaming was a for-profit entity, but at least one user notes that it was only via Scapegaming that he became a subscriber for Blizzard's official World of Warcraft servers:

Played on it a long time ago when it was still known as WoWScape. It was the whole reason I actually started playing on retail, me and a good portion of my friends. Blizzard would have lost out on thousands of dollars from me and my friends if it wasn't for them.... I honestly wonder about how much did Scapegaming make blizzard compared to how much it cost them. Wouldn't be surprised if it did them more good than harm.

It's a good point. I've never quite understood why these companies get so upset about unauthorized servers. It's as if they're admitting that they can't offer service quite as good. Most people want to be on the official servers anyway, and as long as they keep improving the game and offering more value, people will keep coming. Let other servers run -- even for profit -- and use it as a way to recruit more people to the official servers. Suing them out of existence seems pointless.

We've seen this before, with individual authors like Paulo Coelho and David Pogue, who both found that as more people were able to get unauthorized copies of their ebooks, their sales actually increased. So, this shouldn't come as a surprise, but some new research looking at the impact on sales of unauthorized files getting out found a "significant jump in sales" (found via Michael Scott):

Brian O'Leary discussed his firm's research on the effect on sales when a title finds its way into an unsanctioned online market. The findings -- a significant jump in sales -- have surprised many in the business.

To be fair, he does go on to say this doesn't mean just "don't worry about" unauthorized access. Instead, he says it's important to figure out what kind of unauthorized access helps sales and what kind hurts -- and that still needs to be studied. But, the early results certainly suggest that the stuff that helps quite often outweighs the stuff that hurts (sometimes by quite a bit).

There's an unintentionally hilarious article over at Reuters claiming that TV execs are positively perplexed over the fact that many fans of the TV show Lost are purposely ignoring a leaked new episode of the show, preferring to wait until its aired on TV. Of course, the article doesn't actually quote any confused TV execs. Instead, it quotes one TV exec at ABC who does seem to understand why fans don't want to watch it until it airs on TV.

But, of course, that doesn't play into the media narrative that fans are greedy downloaders who will just get anything as fast as possible when put online. So, instead, the report has to make it out like it's a "surprise." Perhaps only to those who haven't bothered paying attention to what fans actually want. This, by the way, was why there are better ways to respond to movie/TV show leaks than breaking out the lawyers.

Playmobil makes plastic toy people figures. You'd probably recognize them if you saw them. I know I had a bunch as a kid. Anyway, according to the company, you can violate its intellectual property by playing with them (and then photographing the results) in an unauthorized manner. No, seriously. Ramon Casha alerts us to the news of a series of lawsuits in Malta against people for trying to sell the plastic people figures set up in an unauthorized manner. Now, there is a separate issue here. Apparently, Playmobil has at least some of these plastic people assembled in Malta, and part of the issue was people somehow getting access to stolen bags of Playmobil people parts and selling them. In that case, it's fine to charge people with theft, if there's evidence that they stole.

However, the lawsuits seem to target the people who took these toys and set them up in an "unauthorized" manner (such as depicting violent scenes) and charge them with intellectual property infringement. That seems a lot more difficult to accept. Assuming that the figures had been purchased legally, and then the owner created these same scenes and tried to sell them on eBay, would Playmobil still have a case? How can the company presume to tell people how they can or cannot set up the toys in their possession?

Richard 23 writes "07th Expansion is a dojin (amateur/hobbyist) software company in Japan that wrote and distributed the popular mystery/horror visual novel Higurashi naku no koro ni (When the Cicadas Cry) that went on to be a popular anime (originally fansubbed and eventually licensed and distributed). They have since released a new game, Umineko naku no koro ni (When the Seagulls Cry) which is currently being fan translated. The author of the game, Ryuukishi07, heard about it and contacted the unofficial group to personally give them a thumbs up.

Ryuukishi07 has also been contracted to work on scenarios for one of the big visual novel software houses: Key/VisualArt's, so he could have been a real jerk about it. But I think he recognizes that getting his work more exposure does everybody more good in the long run. It certainly didn't hurt his chances to land a professional gig with Key."

Always nice to see someone excited about free fan promotion, rather than freaking out about it. From his (translated) letter:

I did not think that our "Umineko no Naku Koro ni" would be played even by all of you in foreign countries, and I am very surprised.

Also, I am deeply moved by the passion which drove you to translate a tale that long into English.

Thank you for loving "Umineko no Naku Koro ni" so much!

If by your English translation patch, English-speaking people can also enjoy this work, it would make me very pleased.

I believe I will warmly watch over your actions hereafter.
And I would appreciate it if you would continue to enjoy "Umineko no Naku Koro ni".

Great to see someone appreciate the work of fans and their ability to help spread and promote the work, rather than freak out and threaten to sue.

Given the entertainment industry's obsession with claiming (often in a misleading way) that unauthorized use of copyrighted content hurts all the "everyday" people in the industry rather than the big stars, you would hope that people in the entertainment industry capital of the world, Los Angeles, would be concerned about the problem -- but it appears that many are not. A new study suggests that one in four Los Angelinos bought, copied or downloaded an unauthorized product. Now, that includes things like counterfeit handbags as well as downloading music. However, it's a self-reported study, so it wouldn't be crazy to suggest that these results are much lower than reality, as many people probably wouldn't admit to downloading when asked point-blank. No matter what the number is, Justin Levine uses this study to kick off an interesting discussion comparing such actions to breaking the speed limit. His point is that most people have a general sense of fairness. If they're breaking the speed limit, it's often because they actually think the speed limit is too slow. If speed limits were raised, some people would still speed, but it would be a smaller amount. Alternatively, if the speed limits were lowered, more people would likely break the speed limit. If you swap that analogy back to downloading, Levine notes that it seems like this study is only going to be used by officials as a reason to "crack down," or effectively "lower the speed limit." In other words, trying to crack down on the problem is only likely to make it worse -- which is pretty much exactly what we've seen over the past decade.