Many, many people think that attribution is a key part of copyright law, but in the US it's really not a part of the law at all (with a few tiny, nearly meaningless exceptions). Attribution issues may come up in situations of plagiarism, but they have little do with copyright infringement, which is infringement with or without attribution. Elsewhere, there are issues of moral rights, but for the most part, the US does not recognize moral rights in copyright. Of course, many have argued that perhaps attribution is more important than much of what is in copyright law, and at times there have been efforts to focus more on the question of attribution over infringement. A recent study has tried to quantify some issues around this idea and put questions about the value of attribution into context. Eric Goldman points our attention to this recent paper by Christopher Sprigman, Christopher Buccafusco and Zachary Burns which is entitled Valuing Attribution and Publication in Intellectual Property.

The paper's authors seek to get a real sense of what the tradeoffs are for content creators -- and they quickly discover that content creators are willing to accept significantly less money in exchange for attribution and publicity. They also discover -- as their own previous studies have shown -- that content creators tend to significantly overvalue their own works. But the key finding is that attribution has tremendous value to content creators -- both amateurs and professionals alike. You can read the full details of the experiments in the study, but the researchers came up with a clever way to effectively get photographers to value a work with the possibility of getting a large cash reward for it vs. the possibility of having the image published with credit in a major publication. Notably, the impact was much stronger with professional photographers, since to them making people aware of their work had much greater value, even if it meant getting paid much less. It was also interesting to see that amateurs valued publication without attribution less than just getting paid, but for professionals, they were willing to get paid less if the image was published somewhere major even without attribution. Not surprisingly, getting published with attribution was the most desirable, and for that the pros were willing to accept the lowest payment.

I know that some copyright maximalists love to bash those of us who point out that there is significant value for content creators in getting their works out there and accessible in ways that people see/hear/experience them -- and this study presents some empirical evidence to support the idea that it's a pretty strong effect. Towards the end, the study digs a bit into the policy questions and suggests that requiring attribution (a la moral rights) as a mandatory part of copyright law actually could be harmful, in that it would take away a key negotiating point over which prices could change drastically. Coupled with the fact that artists have been shown to overvalue their rights, such an attribution right actually makes it more difficult to come to an agreeable price on content, and limits how much content is likely to be sold. Definitely an interesting read overall.

As was somewhat expected, this week Comcast announced its plans to offer Xfinity video on demand via the Xbox 360... which will require customers to subscribe to both Xfinity TV and the broadband service, meaning that this isn't a solution for getting around your cable subscription (of course, because Comcast doesn't want you ditching your cable TV). But what's getting much more attention is the announcement that such streaming video won't count against Comcasts' broadband caps, raising some significant questions concerning whether or not Comcast is following the FCC's open internet rules -- the same rules that were put in place to stop Comcast from degrading certain services in favor of others. Comcast, for it part, insists that the rules don't apply to this VOD service, since it's coming over its private network, rather than the public internet, but it's certainly tiptoeing along a fairly fine line. I think the bigger issue is why the cap exists in the first place. But, in the long run, Comcast is definitely trying to back its way into being able set up "most favored nation" status with certain providers, which really does impinge on the internet's basic end-to-end principles.

Many mind-altering drugs lead to trouble at some point. But what about treatments that help improve memory or intelligence? Forget those energy drinks, serious scientists are working on ways to improve memory and learning skills. Here are just a few examples.

• A protein named the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) seems to be correlated with exercise and improved memory. But exercise is hard, so there'll be plenty of BDNF pills and 'Flowers for Algernon' situations to look forward to. [url]
• Taking drugs like Ritalin and caffeine might provide a temporary boost to mental abilities, but R&D efforts to discover a pill that permanently improves brain function are likely futile. Pharmaceutical companies benefit more from treatments rather than cures, anyway. [url]
• Air Force researchers have figured out a way to reduce training time by 50% -- using mild electrical currents delivered to pilots' heads. The technique uses transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS), and the treated pilots have been reported to say, "I know Kung Fu" in a Keanu-like way. [url]
• To discover more interesting articles on the human mind, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Four years ago, we wrote about claims that News Corp. had hired hackers to break the encryption on DISH Networks' satellite TV smart cards, and to "flood the market" with those cards, thereby increasing "piracy" of DISH's service. News Corp., of course, owned DISH's main competitor, DirecTV. The whole thing seemed really bizarre, and we were skeptical. This kind of thing only makes sense if you actually believe that "piracy" like that directly takes away money from the company whose service is hacked. But, it seems just as likely that flooding the market with hacked smartcards would take away business from both DISH and DirecTV in the cases where it was a true substitute (rather than going to people who would never pay for either anyway). Either way, that case ended with a jury finding News Corp guilty... but of just hacking one smartcard, for which the company was fined a grand total of $49.69... and another $1,000 for "damages." Honestly, I'm not even sure that makes sense, because if it just hacked a single smartcard, it sounds like it may have just been for reverse engineering purposes.

Of course, in the intervening years, News Corp.'s name has become a lot more closely tied to the word "hacking" thanks to the News of the World scandal where reporters regularly "hacked" into voicemails (and, by "hacked" I really mean used a widely known loophole that makes it easy to listen to many people's voicemails). So with news breaking that News Corp. is again being accused of hacking, a lot of people are thinking about the recent scandals -- but the details suggest that this may have been identical to the DISH/DirecTV story above, but with a UK focus. Basically, News Corp's subsidiary NDS is accused of hacking ITV Digital, a UK competitor to News Corp's Sky TV.

In this case, there are some more details, where it certainly suggests that at least someone at News Corp. was working closely with some hackers to publish the codes necessary to make unauthorized smartcards for ITV. ITV eventually did go out of business, and of course the article linked above quotes an exec there insisting that such "piracy" was "the killer blow for the business, there is no question."

Again, this doesn't make much sense to me. Even if all of these actions were done via News Corp., how does that actually help News Corp? People who got the hacked ITV smartcards weren't going to buy Sky TV services either. The whole thing seems pretty strange, suggesting it was either exaggerated, or whoever at News Corp. decided this was a reasonable strategy didn't even think about how getting more hacked smartcards would likely be a challenge for Sky just as much as it was for ITV.

We've discussed in the past the success of the German Pirate party in getting 9% of the vote in the Berlin state Parliamentary elections, giving them a bunch of seats there. Following that, it was noted that the party actually had a similar 9% support level across Germany. So it shouldn't come as a huge surprise that the party has been able to seat another four officials in another state election, this one in Saarland, where they took 7.4% of the vote, and got four out of the 51 seats (found via Slashdot). I do wonder why Germany's Pirate Party has been so successful, compared to the various Pirate Parties elsewhere.

It's also important to note that the campaign in this case didn't focus on copyright issues (even with ACTA still being a hot topic in Germany). Instead the campaign focused on "transparent government, access to education as a prerequisite, and the right of the people to actively partake in the decision making process." If the Pirate Party is actually going to grow, I think it's important for it to do much more to highlight its position on these kinds of issues, so it's good that this resonated. I've said in the past -- and I know plenty of people disagree with me -- that I think the Pirate Party's name, while good for getting it initial attention, has the potential to limit its effectiveness and appeal in the longterm, in part because I didn't think people would take its other policy issues (which have always been a part of the Party's efforts) seriously. However, if they worked here, that's surprising, but encouraging.

Disparate aspects of the ongoing advance of technology throughout the world are coming together in a very interesting and heartwarming result. As groups continue the attempt to connect everyone in the world by the near-future, we've also seen how social media has been used recently to organize and deploy protests and citizen activism, particularly in the Middle East. But those two stories are converging into a fascinating display of communication between two rival nations in that troubled region.

In case you've been sleeping under a rock these past few months, it turns out the governments of Iran and Israel have some minor quibbles with one another. As a result, there's been much saber-rattling and boot-stomping between the two governments and popular opinion tends to be it's a matter of when, not if, the bullets and bombs begin flying. If one is not nuanced enough to separate out these nation's governments from their people, one might assume the common people in each state are equally rivalrous. This separation is made all the more difficult by the way both nations close off communication with one another, such that an individual in Israel is completely unable to make a simple phone call to an Iranian area code (it's blocked at the government level).

But if you happen to think closing off all communication is silly and counter-productive (like me), you'll be delighted to know that the internet is here to save the day. CNN has the story of one Israeli citizen, Ronny Edry, a graphic designer, who thinks the prospect of pre-emptive war with Iran is absolutely insane, so he developed some simple but striking "posters" and put them up on Facebook.

"My idea was simple, I was trying to reach the other side. There are all these talks about war, Iran is coming to bomb us and we bomb them back, we are sitting and waiting. I wanted to say the simple words that this war is crazy," said Edry.

The images featured pictures of various Israelies, such as Edry himself and his neighbors along with their children, and a message:

Now if you're cynical, or you watch too much cable news, you might be wondering what the big deal is. So an Israeli made some posters and put them on Facebook. So what?

The response, said Edry, was overwhelming. "In a few hours, I had hundreds of shares and thousands of likes and it was like something was happening.

"I think it's really amazing that someone from Iran poked me and said 'Hello, I'm from Iran, I saw your "poster" on Facebook,' " Edry said.

And that's when the posters created by Iranian citizens in return began flooding in. Posters with messages of peace and commonality. I found one particular post on Edry's Facebook page from an Iranian to be particularly heartening:

We share a common history, have been sharing both our great and ancient cultures, languages and poetry together. ... We are so similar, and politicians cannot cut a tie that has been tied thousands of years ago. I am proud to have you as my friends.

I'm not going to go all peace, love and flower power on you, but this is why the internet age is so important. It's also why cutting off communication between nations, or allowing even the first steps of internet censorship to take hold, must be stopped at all costs. It's not just about copyright, or flash mobs, or YouTube videos showing Spaceballs clips. The internet is ultimately about people sharing with one another, whether they're sharing thoughts, images like this, or whatever. It's about commonality. It's about creating a web of bonds through which communication and understanding can flow.

And now, I'm realizing, it's about giving every man and woman the power to do what their blowhard, acrimonious politicians won't do: talk to one another.

Last summer, we praised JK Rowling for finally embracing ebooks, and doing so in a way that made it seem like she really got it. That was when she announced Pottermore, her own website and store that would sell the Harry Potter ebooks directly to fans with no DRM. While the main Pottermore website is still in closed beta, several sources are reporting that the store is now open for business, selling both ebooks and audio books. Over at PaidContent, they have a thorough rundown of the details on how it works.

Unfortunately, when you look at those details, the first thing that leaps out at you is the many small limitations, many of which are caused by Rowling's desire to route around the middlemen. As we've said before, middlemen are not bad, as long as they serve as enablers rather than gatekeepers. Direct-to-fan business models are great, but that doesn't mean creators should ignore the tools that are available to them. Every author need not build their own ebook store, nor every band their own Bandcamp—and of course, for most creators this isn't even an option. But the Pottermore store serves as an example of why even creators like Rowling, who have the resources to build their own platforms for everything, shouldn't necessarily shun the enabler-middlemen at every turn.

For one thing, there was the timeframe. The store was originally supposed to launch last October, but was delayed until now, eight months after the announcement. Prior to this, there were no legal electronic copies of Harry Potter available anywhere—even though pirated copies of each book were available almost immediately. Had Rowling embraced existing ebook stores, she could have released electronic copies alongside physical ones, instead of making her fans wait (and often pirate) in the interval.

Then there are the unnecessary additional barriers to access the books. Downloading from Pottermore requires you to create yet another account with yet another website—a growing source of consumer fatigue online. Rowling has struck deals with major ebook stores to funnel people into her website, meaning if you pull up a Harry Potter title somewhere like the Kindle Store, you are asked to click through and set up a separate Pottermore account, then go through additional steps to link it to your Amazon account. Since many readers do all their ebook shopping this way, and since these stores have always focused on (and found success by) reducing the number of forms and clicks needed to buy a book, this is likely to put off a lot of customers. It also means the books won't be available in the iBook store, since Apple, with their trademark stubbornness, did not agree to a special deal alongside Sony, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Google. So Rowling is giving up the entire market for impulse buys on the most popular mobile devices in the world, and asking her iFans to go through the more tiresome process of downloading local versions and transferring them to their phones and tablets.

And what do the fans get out of all this? Not much, it seems. The main Pottermore website, which promises social features and additional content, still hasn't launched, so readers have no particular reason to want to visit the store—they are simply forced to, after having waited nearly a year for this supposedly innovative and exciting hub for all things Harry Potter. Dedicated users of existing ebook stores face pointless barriers, so rather than opening her market up to people (like me) who have still never read the books but might decide to do so if they crossed the path of their normal ebook-shopping activities, Rowling has limited herself primarily to existing fans who are willing to jump through hoops for an electronic version.

I have no doubt that the Pottermore store will nevertheless sell plenty of ebooks, at least in the beginning, thanks to the massive popularity of Harry Potter and the long-unmet demand for electronic versions. But what, ultimately, was the point of cutting out the middleman here? The only advantage is that Rowling makes a little bit more money from each sale—but not all the money, because despite being a direct-to-fan model, her publisher apparently still gets a cut, and the partner bookstores will be paid affiliate fees. But even if Rowling's portion of the revenues is significantly higher, it's hard to believe that will offset the lost sales from making the books so hard to obtain. Meanwhile, the fans suffer.

We've praised creators (especially Louis CK) for going the direct-to-fan route before, but that doesn't mean that creators should do everything themselves and ignore the tools that are available to them. Even with her immense resources, Rowling has created a platform that offers an inferior experience to that of the middlemen she worked to eliminate. When good middlemen are used properly by smart creators, everybody wins—when they are ignored merely for the sake of independence, without thought given to the actual benefits, everybody loses.

Despite the MPAA's insistence that it wants to "talk" to Silicon Valley, it still seems to think that just means getting together with Google's lobbyists in Washington DC. Thankfully, the MPAA doesn't really represent the full movie industry, and plenty of young filmmakers realize that the tech industry isn't the enemy and has been providing tons of great tools and services that up-coming filmmakers rely on every day. Some of them are realizing that perhaps the real fight is between the legacy gatekeepers and the up-and-comers... and as such, the up-and-comers should have a much closer relationship with the tech industry.

Gina Hall is a young Hollywood filmmaker who reached out to me and some others in Silicon Valley to begin this discussion, recognizing that perhaps the MPAA's claims don't match up with her best interests:

I feel like the solutions proposed from Hollywood establishment just might be in favor of the status quo rather than helping up-and-comers. Call it a hunch. So while industry bosses are distracted with their fight to sustain the old business model, I figured it might be a good time to start a series of conversations between the tech sector and young Hollywood to make some sense of the seismic shift happening in the industry.

There are a few quotes from me in that article, in which she notes that it really does seem like the tech industry is coming up with all the cool stuff that actually helps young filmmakers today -- from tools (like cheaper cameras) to services (like YouTube) to ways to monetize (like Kickstarter). Old Hollywood? Not so much:

Masnick's M.O. is disruptive innovation -- or as he describes it "how we get cool stuff." Creating cool stuff -- honestly, isn't that what most of us get in the business to do? The problem is, Hollywood isn't responsible for creating enough cool stuff these days (especially locally) to keep us all employed. A lot of the cool stuff is now coming from the tech sector with Hollywood standing idly by. In conversations with those employed with the studios, production companies and agencies around town, I've heard projects worked on self-described as "lame," "derivative," or the backhanded compliment: "Meh, at least it'll make money."

I'm looking forward to her continuing series, showing that the tech industry and young Hollywood are very much in alignment. The only real problem is with the legacy players in the business who are just looking to keep making money the way they used to, without actually changing with the market.

We've talked a bit about some more intriguing uses of drone technology lately, including personal individual surveillance as well as for building floating ad hoc networks. But I don't think I've ever seen as much attention given to the potential disruptive nature of drone technology as the story that's been bouncing around the internet the past few days concerning the miraculous concept of the TacoCopter.

Yes, the TacoCopter, one of those ideas that once you hear about it, it sticks with you. It's pretty straightforward. You order (and pay for) a taco via a smartphone app, indicating your location, and a short while later, a drone hums into view and drops a taco at your feet. The folks behind it are targeting San Francisco first (of course), with an expansion plan that includes "TacoLobster" "LobsterCopter" on the east coast. While some have insisted it's a joke, the folks behind it insist that it's real... except for the fact that it isn't really real. It's not a joke, it's just not quite feasible. Or legal. The legal part is the the one that's getting the most attention. As the founders explained to Jason Gilbert at the Huffington Post, you can't actually use drones for commercial purposes these days:

"Current U.S. FAA regulations prevent ... using UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, like drones] for commercial purposes at the moment," Simpson said over Gchat. "Honestly I think it's not totally unreasonable to regulate something as potentially dangerous as having flying robots slinging tacos over people's heads ... [O]n the other hand, it's a little bit ironic that that's the case in a country where you can be killed by drone with no judicial review."

Of course, that's not the only problem. There's also... well, everything else. Which turns out to be a pretty long list.

Simpson told HuffPost that because of the FAA's regulations -- as well as other minor problems, like navigating the treacherous terrain of an urban environment, keeping the food warm, finding a city map precise enough to avoid crashes 100 percent of the time, avoiding birds, balconies and telephone wires, delivering food to people indoors, delivering food to the right person, dealing with greedy humans who would just steal the Tacocopter as soon as it got to them, etc.

Not surprisingly, the team behind it isn't actively working on the project right now, though they still seem to insist they're serious about doing it for real at some point in the future.

That said, it's not hard to realize that most of these problems can and will be solved at some point in the future, and such a commercial use of drones could actually create quite disruptive business models in a lot of sectors. Obviously, just delivering tacos isn't that big of a deal, but once you begin to realize that these things can deliver almost anything (within reasonable weight limits) then it starts to open up a huge world of interesting possibilities. For that reason, it wouldn't surprise me to see that the regulations that now limit such uses of drone technology will almost certainly remain in effect much longer than the technological limitations remain a hurdle. Those who are disrupted by such uses will continue to insist that such things are dangerous, rather than learning to adapt and embrace the technology.

As all sorts of creators, from musicians to authors to filmmakers, have been discovering for decades, being scooped up by one of the entertainment industry's big-business gatekeepers isn't always the career-changing windfall that popular romantic notions believe it to be. Whether through crafty accounting, creative interference or a total lack of support, doing business with big labels, distributors and publishers often fails to deliver the financial and career benefits that creators expect. Once upon a time there was very little they could do, but with the direct-to-fan communication potential of the internet, we're seeing more and more artists publicly turn on their supposed partners and implore their fans to route around them. Recently we covered the indie band Streetlight Manifesto, who encouraged fans to either buy the music directly from the band or just pirate it, so long as they don't give their money to Victory Records. Now, via Twitter, @cephyn points us to a similar story in a blog post from indie filmmaker Jordan John Michael Thomas, asking fans to please pirate his movie Corpse Run. Thomas explains how, after success on the festival circuit, he came head to head with the unfortunate realities of getting a film distributed the Hollywood way:

The first thing we had to do was get a Rep for our film, this Rep would then try to sell it to different distributors and take a small fee. We had many offers for Representation and ended up going with the most prominent one that had the lowest fees. They took a retainer fee to pay for their expenses. – of course this retainer would never be returned.

They did find us a few different distributors and we ended up going with the one that they reccomended the most. This was exciting, as our film was about to get released, we would soon see it on netflicks, on some cable stations and in video stores!

We didn’t get any money up front, which is the general practice in the indi world – I know you hear about these million dollar deals, but they are by far and away the exception to the rule, as Cicero would say, “You can’t hear the prayers of the dead on the ocean’s floor.” So we had a backend deal, a completely fair backend that I was happy with.

And then what happened? Our film was shelved. We had no recourse, it just sat on the shelf doing nothing, sitting there for years! In fact, They still have it for two more. Recently it has been released on Amazon as a print on demand title. And that is it. Well I don’t think my distributors should make any money for doing nothing.

So I am asking you, begging you, please steal my movie.

Entertainment industry gatekeepers have long profited from the cultural myth that once an artist has their blessing (a record contract, a distribution rep, a publishing deal) then they're on the fast-track to success and possibly stardom. That's never been true for any but the tiniest minority of creators, and now that the rest have the tools to expose the reality of these deals, gatekeepers are rapidly losing their status. Some will default to criticizing Thomas for encouraging people to break the law, and he is, but that is missing the broader lesson: contrary to the claims of groups like the RIAA and MPAA, entertainment gatekeepers are not all about protecting and benefiting artists. Their vilification by the creators they exploit is long overdue, and as it gains momentum, the myth of artists "making it" by hitting the "big time" is going to be swept away for good. And make no mistake: that myth is at the core of what sustains their dwindling relevance.

Yet again, we're left scratching our heads at the basic failure of recording industry lobbyists to think about the consequences of their actions. The latest is that Promusicae, the Spanish recording industry lobbying group that is associated with the IFPI (which, itself is associated with the RIAA) has sued Spanish professor Enrique Dans for daring to state, in his opinion, that Promusicae violated Spanish antitrust laws. The blog post in question (Google translation) is actually mostly about the legal troubles of SGAE, the Spanish collection society which was accused of being involved in a massive criminal fraud operation. In the post, he also mentioned Promusicae and how it set up a system that he believes violated antitrust laws in effectively limiting access to radio airtime to members of Promusicae.

In response, Promusicae sued him for "violating their honor," demanding either 20,000 or 50,000 euros. Professor Dans explains the details on his own site (Google translation).

It seems pretty clear that this is nothing more than a SLAPP-style lawsuit -- with the recording industry lobbyists suing Dans to shut him up and to create chilling effects to silence other critics. It's a shameful way of dealing with critics, and, as Rick Falkvinge notes in his story (the first link up top), even if Dans is legally in the right, a court battle is very costly. Again as Falkvinge notes, perhaps it's time for the EU to start setting up anti-SLAPP laws to avoid these kinds of lawsuits as well.

But, more to the point, all this really does is call much more attention to Dans' original blog post from July, and the accusations he made about Promusicae. In what world does an industry lobbyist think that it's a smart move to call attention to a respected professor's blog post that describes some of their questionable behavior? A normal, thinking, individual would either respond directly to the charges with a detailed explanation for why it's wrong, or just let it go away. Suing only makes it worse in almost every way. Not only does it call worldwide attention to this blog post and the claims against Promusicae, but it also will likely make more people look more closely at Promusicae and what it's done... all the while showing off Promusicae lobbyists for the obnoxious bullies that they are. It's really quite incredible. As Falkvinge notes:

Perhaps what amazes me most is that the public backlash to this kind of behavior is as predictable as a grandfather clock. How can the copyright monopoly lobby’s lawyers live in so completely disconnected an ivory tower, that they thought it was a good idea to file lawsuit against a reputable professor for claiming they’re a monopoly, using monopolistic practices – when this fact is not only well-established to the point of being in dictionaries, but even legislated? What kind of survivability would such a parasitic misantropic business have in the wild, if it were not protected by obsolete laws?

Of course, I guess they're thinking that the resulting chilling effects scaring away others from commenting might be worth any backlash. Or they're so focused on protecting "their honor" that they never bothered to think at all. I am curious, of course, how "honorable" it is to sue a respected professor for expressing his opinion? How can you sue someone for violating your honor when you have no honor at all?

Slashdot points us to a sad story from blogger Dana Nieder, providing yet more evidence of how patent monopolies can hold back innovation and do very real damage to people's lives in the process—and how people are interested in progress, not patents. As Dana says in her post, she understandably doesn't give a damn about legal details when something as important as her daughter's ability to communicate is at stake:

My daughter, Maya, will turn four in May and she can’t speak. The only word that she can consistently say with 100% clarity is “done”—which, while helpful, isn’t really enough to functionally communicate. When Maya was two and a half we introduced her to the iPad, and we’ve danced with AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) ever since. We experimented with a few communication apps, but nothing was a perfect fit. After an extensive search for the perfect app, we found it: Speak for Yourself. Simple and brilliant, we saw that it had the potential to serve Maya into adulthood, but was also simple enough for her to start using immediately.

And she liked it. And it worked. And I started to have little flashes of the future, in which she could rapidly tap out phrases and ideas and tell me more and more of the secret thoughts that fill her head—the ones that I’m hungry to hear and she’s dying to share but her uncooperative mouth just can’t get out.

My kid is learning how to “talk.” It’s breathtaking.

But now Speak for Yourself in under fire, and from a surprising (to an AAC outsider) or not-so-surprising (to an AAC insider) source. They’re being sued by Semantic Compaction Systems and Prentke Romich Company, big names in the AAC world. SCS and PRC allege that Speak for Yourself is infringing on their patents. I’m going to be honest: I don’t know about patents and infringement, and I’m not going to get into debates about the legal merits of the case, because that’s a conversation in which I would quickly drown.

Dana explains that her defense of the app isn't arbitrary. Before discovering Speak For Yourself, she explored dedicated speech devices from the big AAC companies, including Prentke Romich. None of their options were suited to her daughter, and they all carried hefty price tags—as in $7,000+ hefty. She began asking around to see if PRC or any of the other big companies were planning on releasing an iPad app, and learned that although many customers were clamoring for one, the companies had no intention of meeting their demands. They didn't want an affordable option out there reducing sales of their expensive systems.

Whenever the incumbents of any industry are ignoring the demands of their customers, you can bet that someone else is paying attention. In this case, it was speech-language pathologists Heidi LoStracco and Renee Collender, the pair behind Speak For Yourself. The app's website explains how it came about:

Mrs. LoStracco and Mrs. Collender began to see a shift in the field when the iPad was released. Mrs. Collender says, "Districts and parents were buying an iPad with an 'AAC' app on it and saying, 'Make this work.' We would try to reprogram the applications with the language that the children needed, but it took forever and it was never really 'right.'" Heidi and Renee say that it got to the point that someone was asking them about iPad applications for AAC every day, and they decided that they needed a better answer. Heidi says, "We would tell them, there's not really an effective AAC app out there yet, but when there, is, we'll be the first to tell you about it.” Then we started thinking that we could create something that followed motor learning principles and gave individuals access to the language they needed to communicate effectively, and that's when we designed Speak for Yourself." Renee says, "We've always believed that communication is a basic human right, and the only AAC pre-requisite skill that a nonverbal person needs is a pulse."

Dana points out that PRC's mission statement begins "We Believe Everyone Deserves A Voice" and that their refusal to create an affordable iPad app, and now their attempts to crush a competitor who did, clearly runs counter to that mission. For her, that's basically where the discussion ends: a company is trying to take away the only thing that has been able to give her daughter a voice, and she couldn't care less whether or not they have the legal right to do so.

It's hard not to sympathize with her position, even though the lawsuit and the patent in question, #5,920,303, both appear to be solid. As Dana's story gains traction, we can only hope that it will increase social pressure on PRC and possibly shame them into allowing Speak For Yourself to survive by offering them an affordable license, or at least releasing their own iPad app at a similar price point—but as we've seen with pharmaceutical companies, the holders of life-saving and life-changing patents often don't seem too bothered about withholding them no matter what it does to their public image.

Ultimately, this is more evidence that in today's world of rapid innovation, tech monopolies are increasingly untenable. Big companies that have dominated niche markets for years—and have long since paid off their R&D costs by charging monopoly rates—are being disrupted by nimbler competitors. As we've seen with media and software piracy, this happens whether or not the competitors are "legitimate" under intellectual property law. Can there be any doubt that, if Speak For Yourself is shut down and the app eliminated, Dana will seek out a way to keep it running on her daughter's iPad? Since her story is running on Slashdot, she's already received comments with advice on how to do so, and suggestions that she contact Speak For Yourself and convince them to release their source code on github. At the moment, it looks like she just plans on turning off all connectivity on the iPad so that it will no longer sync and the app will remain even if it is removed from the iTunes store. Can anyone blame her? The simple fact is that markets always eventually find a way to meet demands—and if companies (especially those in industries that seriously affect people's lives) use their intellectual property to block powerful market forces, that control will eventually be wrested from them, one way or another.

It appears that AOL isn't going down the Yahoo patent trolling path directly, but it is looking to sell off its patent portfolio -- meaning they may end up in the hands of trolls anyway. You can understand why AOL is doing this. It's been struggling to find its footing for quite some time now, and patents are selling for crazy amounts these days. So they get sold... and abused to sue others. It's the sad reality of the patent system these days. While it's nice to see that AOL isn't doing a full Yahoo, the selling of a patent portfolio to the highest bidder can be just as bad in the long run.

I have to admit that I'm still at a loss over people freaking out over Pinterest. It's pretty much a non-issue, but it refuses to go away. I think I've finally figured out what's going on, however. Some copyright extremists are using Pinterest to try to whip people into a frenzy about nothing, such that they can use that against other sites later as well -- and, once they got going, Pinterest became a "proxy" for all other internet services and (by extension) computing itself.

Last Friday, for example, Pinterest updated its terms of service to clarify the parts where some people were very confused and freaking out. While they certainly didn't go to the lengths that Tumblr went to to make its terms of service "human" readable, the updates do clarify things. The key change, for example, was removing the word "sell" from the list of things that you grant a license to Pinterest over, as the company notes it never intended to sell anyone's content. I can pretty much guarantee how this happened. The lawyers who drafted the terms pulled the boilerplate list of rights you grant, and "sell" is always on that list. As we noted in the Tumblr TOS post, it's really just to give the company legal protection in case it sells something that has a tidbit of something someone uploaded. It's not that hard to come up with a scenario where that might happen. But overly paranoid folks turned this into some nefarious plan by Pinterest to get people to violate copyrights so it could sell the results.

But, as mentioned above, this isn't calming down the maximlaist extremists. The folks over at the "Artists' Bill of Rights" (which is not what it sounds like -- it's a front for copyright extremists, paying almost no attention to how artists actually create) are still very upset about Pinterest's terms of service and are interpreting everything in the most nefarious of ways.

The philosophy of their site is still to encourage members to copy content from other people or organisations' websites to the Pinterest website, then place the entire legal responsibility on their members for such copying.

Why? Because the PInterest business model has to start making money at some point. How can it do this? By monetising the content belonging to other people copied to it's website, possibly via advertising or affilliate programs, or in some other way. It may not be monetising that content overtly at present, but it must do so at some stage because it is gobbling up a lot of investors money to keep it afloat. As soon as it starts monetising the content the cat will be out of the bag and legal actions will commence. They are still in a period of grace - but for how long?

Horror of horrors. Pinterest is a service provider who would like to make money at same point -- just as the copyright maximalist artists would like to make money. Why is it evil when a service provider does it, but not when an artist does it? And, the fact is that Pinterest doesn't make any money at all if it's not useful. So, as you can expect, the folks at the Artist Bill of Rights want to guarantee Pinterest is not at all useful. For example, they attack the fact that Pinterest is now pointing people to ChillingEffects claiming that it's a site that is all about "protect[ing] the economic interests of the tech business model". Say what?! A site that highlights how copyright law is abused to stifle free speech and creativity is about protecting free speech and creativity. Anyone aiming to protects artists' rights should celebrate Chilling Effects.

The other complaint? That Pinterest isn't "pro-active" in monitoring the site for infringement:

We will continue to complain that Pinterest are NOT being pro-active in ensuring that copyright infringements are minimised.

And it's that line that highlights the reality. The folks hating on Pinterest aren't really worried about the law. Pinterest already goes well above and beyond what the law says they have to do. What they're complaining about is that the world isn't the way they want it to be. They're complaining that the world doesn't magically block copying. In other words, they're luddites who can't fathom why a world in which computers actually work is a good thing, and prefer to go back to a past where there were no computers. Computers copy. It's what they do. Tons of services have popped up over the years to let people do useful stuff, but much of that stuff only works because computers make copies. Making collections of photos -- all with links back to the original content, which has already been shown to drive significant traffic -- seems like it should be a good thing. Unless you hate computers and the fact that they copy.

The anger here isn't about Pinterest. It's about computers. They'd have as much luck telling the tide which way to go.

While the global boycott of Elsevier by academics continues to gain momentum and signatures – at the time of writing, the number is approaching 9000 – there's an open access storm in a teacup brewing in the UK.

The main grant-giving body in the UK, Research Councils UK (RCUK), spends around $4.8 billion each year supporting research across all fields. Since that money comes from the British taxpayer, the RCUK adopted an open access policy some years back:

As the public bodies charged with investing tax payers money in science and research, the Research Councils take very seriously their responsibilities in making the outputs from this research publicly available -- not just to other researchers, but also to potential users in business, Government and the public sector, and also to the public.

That open access policy was fairly lax, and so it is proposing to tighten up the publishing requirements for research that it funds, as an article in the Times Higher Education (THE) explains:

The policy, which RCUK hopes to adopt by the summer, stipulates that the final version of papers produced with funding from any of the science research councils must be made freely available online within six months of publication.

Sounds pretty reasonable, you might think -- after all, this still allows commercial publishers six months' exclusivity for work that the public paid for. Indeed, many open access advocates would say that it is too generous, since the public really has a right to see the work it funded as soon as it is published.

And yet some people aren't happy about the RCUK's plans:

the Publishers Association, which represents UK publishing companies, criticised the proposals and said it had not been consulted.

Well, here's an amazing coincidence: I am a UK taxpayer, and therefore contribute directly to the funding of all this research, and yet strangely the RCUK didn't consult me either. Maybe it thought I could just read the short consultation document it has now released (pdf) and offer my thoughts based on that, along with everyone else.

Which, of course, the Publishers Association is also welcome to do. Apparently, though, it thinks it is entitled to preferential treatment here, largely on the basis that its members have been allowed to profit from restricting access to publicly-funded research in the past, and therefore have a right to dictate terms of its release in the future:

"No evidence or impact assessment is offered for the effect of six-month embargoes on the large majority of articles published [in] subscription [journals].

But why should it make such an assessment? What the RCUK is talking about is possibly reducing slightly the huge profits publishers have been making from restricting access to public-funded research. It's not depriving publishers of what is rightfully theirs, it's giving back to the public what should never have been taken away in the first place.

This is why the whole open access debate -- both in the UK and US -- is surreal: publishers are trying to argue that they have a right to windfall profits from work done by publicly-funded researchers. Of course the publishers always insist that they do make a contribution -- in fact, the Publishers Association makes precisely that claim in the article quoted above, along with a few others:

"[The policy] takes no account of the role of publishers in scholarly communication, makes no reference to sustainability or the management of peer review, offers no practical policy for funding [author-pays] open access while dictating firm and onerous requirements for mandatory deposit on short embargoes."

But scholarly publishers do practically nothing. Academics carry out the research, and write it up -- zero cost to publishers. They then submit the paper to a journal's editor, who sends the paper out to referees for review. Generally, the editor and referees are academics who carry out all this work for nothing, simply because it is an accepted thing to do in their culture. Once the paper is accepted, the publishers might, at most, edit and format it before sticking it up on a Web site -- none of which is an onerous task demanding subscriptions running to thousands of dollars a year.

Of course, that makes the reference to the "sustainability or the management of peer review" rather rich, to say the least: publishers have little to do with either -- academics handle it for nothing. And as for "funding [author-pays] open access", well, guess what? If institutions don't have to pay high subscription fees, they can afford to cover the open access ones. Indeed, as Techdirt pointed out last year, the profits alone from academic publishing would be enough to fund open access to every research paper in every field.

So the question once more is not: How will we pay for open access? But rather: Why on earth are we still paying publishers for so much less than what we could have for a lower price with immediate open access?

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