Anti-circumvention laws, which ban the tools used to do things like copy DVDs and jailbreak devices, make no sense. There are plenty of legitimate uses for these tools, so regulating them inevitably squashes legal activity alongside the infringing activity such regulation is supposed to target. Under the DMCA in the America, this problem is ostensibly addressed by the fact that the Librarian of Congress can exempt certain tools and activities from the anti-circumvention provision every three years—but this solution mostly serves to create bizarre double standards, such as the fact that it's perfectly legal to jailbreak an iPhone, but not an iPod. Meanwhile, Canada is on track to create similar restrictions with the impending passage of Bill C-11.

Proponents of these laws (read: the copyright industries) tend to brush off all concerns about legal activity. In their mind, there's only one reason to circumvent copy protections: piracy. Mario Dabek, editor-in-chief of the jailbreaking website Jailbreak Matrix, just released a video that nicely counters this narrow-minded concept by showcasing 100 reasons to jailbreak an iPhone. The video lists a huge variety of tweaks and customizations, both functional and aesthetic, that have nothing to do with copyright infringement and are only possible with a jailbroken phone (with the apparent cumulative effect of making a girl's tank top disappear).

While jailbreaking iPhones and other cellphones is legal in the U.S. thanks to the exemption process, it's easy to see how the same or similar tweaks should be permitted on virtually any device (especially the near-identical iPod touch, for which making any of these changes is still illegal). While there are a couple of ideas featured that flirt with infringement (using the Nintendo emulator would only be legal if you are playing games you own as cartridges) the vast majority of them are things you have should every right to do on a device that you purchased. Jailbreaking is not about piracy—it's about important rights of ownership, property and fair use that are all being curtailed by anti-circumvention laws.

Futuristic-looking jet planes used to inspire all kinds of technology geeks, back when commercial flying was a relatively new venture. Over the years, though, the airline industry has matured quite a bit, and commercial plane designs don't really look that unique anymore. But that doesn't mean engineers aren't coming up with novel plane designs. Here are a few cool new planes that could take to the skies in the not too distant future.

• Supersonic planes have a problem of creating a "sonic boom" when they travel faster than the speed of sound, causing all kinds of headaches for commercial and military operations. A new biplane design with twin wings would have a much reduced sonic boom, as each wing could cancel out the effects of the other (at least in theory & simulations). [url]
• NASA is interested in liquified natural gas (LNG) propulsion for creating super fuel efficient airplanes. Planes fueled by LNG won't be ready for at least three generations of airplane technologies (aka N+3 airliners), so don't expect to see any before 2030. [url]
• The first production aircraft to completely satisfy FAA spin resistance standards will likely improve the safety of non-commercial general aviation. Icon Aircraft's A5 amphibious light sport aircraft is a two-seater plane design that greatly reduces the plane's potential to stall out or go into an uncontrollable spin. [url]
• To discover more cool sites about aviation, check out what's currently flying around StumbleUpon. [url]  

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

As you may recall, the MPAA is among those who have said that Carpathia, the hosting company Megaupload used, must retain the data on its servers -- even though the Justice Department has said it's done with it and Carpathia was free to delete the evidence. Others, of course have also asked for access to their data. And, most importantly, Megaupload itself has asked if it can keep the data. Carpathia wants nothing to do with it, because it's costing the company $9,000 per day to hang onto the servers without doing anything else with them.

However, in response to all of this, the MPAA has again gone to the court to suggest that if Carpathia gave the content to anyone else, that alone would represent copyright infringement:

The sale or transfer of those copies from Carpathia to Megaupload or any other third party would constitute an unauthorized "distribut[ion] ... to the public" under the Copyright Act

That seems like a pretty big legal stretch by the MPAA's typically overreaching lawyers. Depending on who the content was transferred to, it doesn't automatically mean distribution "to the public."

Of course, the continued insane paranoia of the MPAA continues to shine through in this filing as well. It insists that if Megaupload is given back the servers, it will ship them to some other jurisdiction and immediately relaunch the site:

"A sale or transfer of the servers to Megaupload (or any of the defendants) would raise a significant risk that Megaupload will simply ship the servers, hard drives or other equipment -- and all of the infringing content they contain -- to a foreign jurisdiction and relaunch the infringing Megaupload service, which would result in untold further infringements of the MPAA members’ copyrighted works. If so, the renewed criminal enterprise might be beyond any effective legal remedy."

This also seems like a reach. All of the principles are under arrest and facing extradition to the US where they'll face criminal charges. One would imagine they all recognize that it doesn't do their case any good to set the site up again in another jurisdiction.

Back when Google bought YouTube in 2006, one of the side notes on the deal which didn't get that much attention was that right before the deal closed, YouTube gave a bunch of equity to the major record labels, structured more or less as a payoff in exchange for not suing YouTube for a few years. The most beautiful part in all of this for the labels, of course, was that they got a ton of free cash which they never planned to share with artists. Since the deal was done as equity, the labels could insist that it had nothing to do with royalties, and they could keep the whole amount -- and they did. But, of course, if artists expected the labels to protect their interests, they were out of luck.

It seems that some artists are finally bringing this point out. We've covered the many, many lawsuits over the past few years where artists are suing their labels over whether or not iTunes purchases count as a sale (tiny royalty) or a license (big royalty). However, some are also bringing up other wrongs. Eminem's producers, FBT, who were one of the first of these cases, specifically called out the fact that they never received any of the YouTube money.

And, now, Weird Al Yankovic is joining the party. In yet another one of these lawsuits about the difference between a license and a sale, Weird Al also focuses on the missing YouTube payments and points out that his song White & Nerdy was hugely popular on YouTube around the time of the buyout.

This may be a difficult legal argument to win, but if Weird Al (or, rather, his production company Ear Booker Enterprises) can show that Sony Music did the equity deal under that structure specifically to avoid paying out royalties, things could get interesting, especially for other artists whose work was popular on YouTube at the time...

It's not surprising, after Yahoo sued Facebook and Facebook stocked up on a bunch more patents, that Facebook would respond with guns blazing at Yahoo for the lawsuit. As we've been arguing for the better part of a decade, in many cases, patents are basically just nuclear stockpiling, where companies get a ton of patents to hopefully ward off strikes from competitors. But every so often, nuclear war breaks out. It seems like that's the case here.

Facebook hasn't just responded to Yahoo's claims by insisting that they're totally and completely bogus, it's also countersuing over a bunch of its own patents. Most of Facebook's response to Yahoo's claims are basically that it "denies the allegations" made by Yahoo. Sometimes, however, it takes some potshots.

Facebook admits that messaging and privacy are offered as options on certain websites. Facebook denies that “[w]ithout Yahoo!’s achievements, websites such as Facebook would not enjoy repeat visitors or substantial advertising revenue.” Facebook further denies that the functions identified in this paragraph of the Complaint involved any innovation by Yahoo!.

For defenses, it basically brings out every possible argument. It says it didn't infringe. It says the patents are invalid. Those are pretty typical. However, Facebook also points out that Yahoo sat on these patents for ages and did nothing with them, so it argues that the doctrine of laches bars the claims (basically saying you can't wait forever before suing) and similarly that any damages would be limited by the amount of time that Yahoo sat on these patents and did nothing. They're also using Section 287 of the patent law to argue that Yahoo's failure to "mark" their inventions as patented severely limits or bars any damages. Basically, every possible defense shows up.

And then come the counterclaims on 10 specific patents, listed here:

• Patent 7,827,208: Generating a feed of stories personalized for members of a social network
• Patent 7,945,653: Tagging digital media
• Patent 6,288,717: Headline posting algorithm
• Patent 6,216,133: Method for enabling a user to fetch a specific information item from a set of information items, and a system for carrying out such a method
• Patent 6,411,949: Customizing database information for presentation with media selections
• Patent 6,236,978: System and method for dynamic profiling of users in one-to-one applications
• Patent 7,603,331: System and method for dynamic profiling of users in one-to-one applications and for validating user rules.
• Patent 8,103,611: Architectures, systems, apparatus, methods, and computer-readable medium for providing recommendations to users and applications using multidimensional data
• Patent 8,005,896: System for controlled distribution of user profiles over a network
• Patent 8,150,913: System for controlled distribution of user profiles over a network

It's worth noting that only the first two of those patents initially started life with Facebook. The others it picked up along the way. Though, it does appear as though that last patent was issued... today. Overall, these patents look just about as silly as most of the ones that Yahoo used to sue in the first place, but that's the nature of patents these days (especially software patents). Facebook is using what it has to fight back against Yahoo, but the whole thing seems like an incredibly silly waste of time, money and resources for both companies.

Well, this is a fun twist. We just wrote about the story of now-world-famous drunk guy Robert Wilkinson, his poor Freddy Mercury impersonation, and the resulting takedown and reinstatement of the video by EMI. Now a commenter points us to the fact that the video has been taken down again a different version of the video has also been taken down, thanks to a copyright claim by... Robert Wilkinson:

The claim is, of course, bogus. Wilkinson doesn't have rights over anything in the video: he didn't film it, and the song belongs to EMI. It's likely that he just wanted to stem the tide of this embarrassing video, and knew that he could do so in a few steps with YouTube's takedown tool. Whether or not he believes he does have some copyright stake here is unclear, but hopefully he knows better than to pursue things further, because he could end up facing liability for copyfraud. Unfortunately, this is how notice-and-takedown systems work: free speech can be easily censored, at least temporarily, by anyone for any reason.

Copyright does not exist to save people from embarrassment, nor does it even apply in this case—but in the ownership culture of intellectual property, the average person seems to think they have some innate right to control every use of their image or even any reference to their existence. It's not like this will make a difference anyway: plenty of people have surely made copies of the video by now, and it'll be back soon enough (possibly with autotune, or synced to My Little Ponies clips). Sorry Robert Wilkinson: there's no escape from reality.

The Ray Charles Foundation is now suing seven of his children for $3.5 million -- basically asking for their inheritance back -- after the children sought to terminate the copyrights on his songs and regain control over them. There's a bit of a backstory here. Apparently, before he died, Charles gathered a bunch of his children, and told them that he was leaving each of them $500,000 (and enough to cover the taxes on the money) if they signed agreements stating that was all they would get, and that they would not seek to get anything else from his estate. However, recently a bunch of the children have begun the process of terminating the copyright assignments over Charles' songs, and the Foundation is arguing this is a breach of that agreement.

Now, my first thought upon reading the CNN article above is that this doesn't make much sense. We've been discussing copyright termination rights for a while, and one clear aspect of them is that you cannot contractually give up your termination rights. I would think that a contract that provided something that you lose if you exercise your termination rights would not be enforceable for that reason. If you haven't been following the details of the termination rights issue, under the 1976 copyright act, original creators can "terminate" the assignment of their copyright and basically reclaim it from whoever has it at the 35 year mark. Thus, musicians who signed record deals in 1978 (when the Act first came into effect) can start reclaiming their rights next year.

However, the details found in the actual lawsuit (pdf and embedded below) are a bit more complicated. First of all, as we've discussed at length, if the artist is considered to have done work under a "work for hire" agreement (and the terms of what counts for work for hire are very specific and go way beyond just saying it's work for hire), then termination rights do not apply. In this case, the Ray Charles Foundation is actually arguing that Ray Charles' agreement with Atlantic Records was a "work for hire" situation. This is a little strange. Normally, we see the record labels arguing that it was work for hire, but the artist or their heirs arguing it was not. In this case, however, since the Foundation is completely cut off from the heirs, it seems to be arguing in favor or a work for hire arrangement. Also, the reason why the 1976 Act's termination rights apply to works from before 1978 is a bit complicated, but it has to do with a new agreement that Charles made concerning his works in 1980.

If you find this all a bit confusing, you're not the only one. The Foundation notes that Charles' children aren't even sure which works can be terminated, and because of multiple copyright registration dates, they've been filing for termination on the same work multiple times:

The situation of the Ray Charles song "Mary Ann," is illustrative: Defendants have served a purported termination for a supposed January 23, 1955, transfer (supposedly to take effect on April 1, 2012), another purported termination for a supposed May 2, 1963, transfer (supposedly to take effect on May 3, 2019), and, because "Mary Ann" is an Assigned Composition under the 1980 Agreement, a third termination for a supposed transfer contained in this September 23, 1980, agreement (supposedly to take effect on November 15, 2015). Even if some of the terminations were deemed valid, it is still extremely difficult, if not impossible to determine when the copyright of the Assigned Compositions will change hands.

Of course, I'm not so sure that's a reasonable excuse for ignoring termination rights altogether. Just because the labels and Charles may have had piss poor record keeping, people should just throw their hands up in the air and ignore termination rights?

Reading through this lawsuit really highlights just what a complete and total mess copyright law is, and how it's such a complicated mess due to the way it's been adjusted and changed over the years, that the system is really quite hopelessly broken. A situation like the one described above with multiple termination notices on the same song is just illustrative of the problem. Furthermore, while I'm not a fan of the concept of termination rights in general, this case could get interesting for being one (of many) testing challenges over whether or not artist agreements from decades ago were really "work for hire" situations -- and this is a case where the label isn't actually involved (right now). That makes it one worth watching.

Of course, there is a separate issue that hasn't been brought up yet, but I wonder if it will make an appearance at some point. In his book The Public Domain, James Boyle tracks down the true history of Ray Charles' classic song "I Got a Woman". What he discovers is that, contrary to what has been said before, the song was actually a copy of a song by the Bailey Gospel Singers called "I've Got a Savior" (whereas the common wisdom is that Charles was actually copying a public domain song "Jesus Is All The World To Me"). As Boyle discovered, "I've Got a Savior" is much much closer to "I Got a Woman". And that's at least somewhat problematic, since "I Got a Woman" came out just three or four years after "I've Got a Savior" (which itself borrowed heavily from other works). So, once could make an argument that "I Got a Woman" (which is one of the songs being disputed here) may have some fairly shallow copyrights on just the changes from that other song.

Of course, perhaps the larger point in all of this is that almost all of the songs being fought over should be going into the public domain about now. "I Got A Woman", for example, received its copyright on December 20th, 1954 -- at which point it would have been given a 28 year grant, renewable for another 28 years. As such it should have gone into the public domain in 2010. There are a bunch of other songs on the list that received their original copyright in 1955 and 1956 -- all of which should be going into the public domain right now, but are not. Perhaps that's the real issue that we should be focusing on: how the public has been completely robbed of these works, violating the promise made to the public in exchange for granting Charles and Atlantic Records that original copyright.

There's been quite a bit of chatter lately about some research by Professor Paul Heald from the University of Illinois. Heald recently delivered a seminar on the stagnating effects of extended copyright terms in the U.S., and blogger Eric Crampton immediately called attention to one data-set about books that is particularly telling (found through Slate) which illustrates what The Atlantic has dubbed "The Missing 20th Century". It's the number of titles available from Amazon as new editions (as opposed to used copies) graphed by the decade of original publication:

The source of that massive fall-off at the midpoint is seemingly simple: all books published in the U.S. in 1922 or earlier are in the public domain. What's immediately apparent from this graph is the fact that copyright is limiting the public's access to older works—but why and how, exactly? The answer lies in the reality of what a copyright is really worth, commercially, and how long it retains that value—and it sheds light on another problem with copyright law.

To better understand this, we can look to some earlier study from William Patry in his book Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars. For works created between 1923 and 1963, creators or publishers had to register to receive copyright protection for 28 years, and could then renew for another 28. Patry looked at data from 1958/59, and saw that in every medium except film, the majority of creators didn't bother to renew their copyright registrations:

If an author or publisher didn't renew the copyright on a book, it means they didn't think they could make any more money with it. The monopoly of copyright had lost its value—so much so that it was worth less than the time it takes to submit a form. But, as Heald's graph shows us, that doesn't mean the work itself has lost value, because lots of publishers clearly want to publish pre-1923 public domain books. This is something most copyright supporters ignore: entering the public domain can actually renew the value of art, and can (and does) stimulate the economy by allowing others to exploit additional commercial value from a work beyond what was possible under copyright. The commercial usefulness of a monopoly on a book has a shorter shelf-life than the monopoly actually granted by copyright law. Based on Patry's findings, that shelf life is somewhere under 28 years, otherwise more people would have renewed their registration—but copyright lasts much longer than 28 years. Thus you get the giant gulf on Heald's chart: in between the pre-1923 public domain books and the books that are new enough to still be actively sold, there are several decades of titles that are no longer worth anything to their rightsholders, but can't be offered by anyone else because they are still effectively under copyright.

Yes, just effectively—not actually. As you may have noticed, there seems to be a contradiction here: if the majority of copyright registrations went un-renewed, then the majority of books published between 1923 and 1963 have lapsed into the public domain alongside the books from 1922 and earlier, so the drop-off in Heald's chart should be much, much smaller. This is not a conflict in the data, it's a symptom another massive and entirely separate problem with copyright law which I discussed in a recent post: the difficulty of determining a work's status.

The fact is, the majority of 1923-63 books are indeed in the public domain because they weren't renewed, but there's only one way to know this for sure: checking the records held by the Copyright Office. None of the records from that period have been digitized yet, so the only way to check them is by actually going to Washington and visiting the physical card catalogue, or paying a researcher to do it for you. Obviously this added effort and expense drastically limits the appeal of these suddenly-not-so-public domain works—and as the numbers from Amazon demonstrate, it's having a very real effect. Publishers are clearly eager to offer public domain titles, but are only comfortable doing so when the lack of copyright is guaranteed. All those later works are effectively removed from the public domain, preventing economic activity and making them hard for people to obtain.

Now, of course, neither registration nor renewal is required: everyone is granted a copyright on everything they create, lasting until long after their death, despite clear evidence that the value of a commercial monopoly almost always expires in a fraction of that time. Sometime in the future, someone is going to reprise Heald's graph, and that gulf of forgotten works that benefit nobody is going to be a whole lot bigger.

You may have heard the story in the last few days about the really drunk guy, Robert Wilkinson, who was arrested and put in a police car up in Canada, and responded by breaking into song with a complete rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody. If you haven't seen it yet, you're one of just a few people:
So what happened? You guessed it. EMI, in its ultimate ridiculousness, issued a takedown for violating its publishing copyright. The immediate outcry actually made EMI back down, with the company saying:

"It seems like a mistake has been made."

That's a fun way of indirectly saying "hey, we made a mistake." Suggesting "a mistake has been made" leaves open the possibility that someone else made that mistake. But, in this day and age where the major labels are so quick to shut down anything that doesn't involve them first getting a huge check, perhaps the "mistake" is with the way the law works.

A bunch of folks have been pointing to Vanity Fair's writeup on the fight for the future of the internet. It talks about a bunch of things, but I think the best summary of the article comes not at the beginning, but a little ways in, where author Michael Joseph Glass writes:

One way to think about the War for the Internet is to cast it as a polar conflict: Order versus Disorder, Control versus Chaos. The forces of Order want to superimpose existing, pre-digital power structures and their associated notions of privacy, intellectual property, security, and sovereignty onto the Internet. The forces of Disorder want to abandon those rickety old structures and let the will of the crowd create a new global culture, maybe even new kinds of virtual "countries." At their most extreme, the forces of Disorder want an Internet with no rules at all.

A conflict with two sides is a picture we're used to--and although in this case it's simplistic, it's a way to get a handle on what the stakes are. But the story of the War for the Internet, as it's usually told, leaves out the characters who have the best chance to resolve the conflict in a reasonable way. Think of these people as the forces of Organized Chaos. They are more farsighted than the forces of Order and Disorder. They tend to know more about the Internet as both a technical and social artifact. And they are pragmatists. They are like a Resistance group that hopes to influence the battle and to shape a fitful peace. The Resistance includes people such as Vint Cerf, who helped design the Internet in the first place; Jeff Moss, a hacker of immense powers who has been trying to get Order and Disorder to talk to each other; Joshua Corman, a cyber-security analyst who spends his off-hours keeping tabs on the activities of hackers operating under the name of Anonymous; and Dan Kaminsky, one of the world's top experts on the Internet's central feature, the Domain Name System.

This is an interesting, and somewhat different way of positioning many of the battles that we normally talk about. I think that some of the descriptions in the article are overly simplistic (to downright misleading), but the framing is still interesting. I cringe a little at the use of "chaos" as being the opposite of control here, because I think chaos (and disorder) have negative connotations. Furthermore, when you set it up that way, you are effectively suggesting that order or control on the internet is possible. I don't think that those pushing back against the folks described in the article as seeking "order" are necessarily in favor of "disorder." It's more that they recognize the impossibility of controlling a system that is effectively uncontrollable, and that each attempt to do so has significant (sometimes intended, but frequently unintended) consequences.

The people described in the article as seeking "Organized Chaos" are realists not because they compromise the principles of one side with the other, but because they recognize how the system has to function, and worry when those who don't understand it seek to tinker with what they clearly do not grasp.

The article centers on the upcoming attempt by certain countries to shift significant internet oversight to the ITU, in part to help countries like Russia, China, Brazil, India and Iran who seek greater control over the internet. This is going to become a bigger and bigger issue as the year goes on, but it is definitely part of a larger debate over what happens to the internet going forward. The article also discusses the SOPA/PIPA fight, and how politicians around the world are learning not to just mess with the internet blindly.

All in all a good read, but one that definitely underplays some of the significance of what's really happening, and (unfortunately) pitches it as a battle where either side has an equal chance of succeeding. That's not true. The fight is really more between those who understand the internet, and those who don't. The "pragmatists" listed in the article are really just those patient enough to try to drag those who don't get the internet far enough into the future that they don't muck things up too badly.

The Supreme Court continues to chip away at whatever is left of the 4th Amendment. A ruling on Monday (with a close 5 to 4 vote) decided that jails can strip search those enrolled for pretty much any offense. However, the reasoning behind this was very suspect. In this case, it was a man who was mistakenly arrested (there was an erroneous warrant out for a fine which he had already paid).

The majority opinion, by Justice Kennedy, basically argues (1) that jails are really dangerous, so we have to search everyone and (2) that some bad people might be arrested for other things, and a strip search might find them out. Neither argument makes much sense when you think about it. As Amy Davidson writes at the New Yorker link above, if jails are so dangerous, why are we sending so many people there? Shouldn't we be working on that part? And as for the other part:

He mentions that one of the 9/11 hijackers got a speeding ticket, though not how strip-searching him might have stopped the attacks, or how many millions of speeders you need to sort through to find a terrorist. Never mind, Kennedy writes: “People detained for minor offenses can turn out to be the most devious and dangerous criminals.”

And thus, let's strip search everyone!

A new bill has passed through the Arizona state legislature that would allow for broad censorship of the internet. As with many such bills, this one is weakly "disguised" as an attempt to deal with online "bullying" and "stalking." However, as with many such attempts to outlaw "being a jerk" online, this one goes way, way too far. It says that it's unlawful to "annoy or offend" someone online, for example. The bill is so bad that even Media Coalition -- a group backed by the MPAA and the RIAA -- is arguing against it.

The specifics of the bill take an existing law meant to stop harassing phone calls and applies it broadly to the internet. As Media Coalition points out, the bill:

... takes a law meant to address irritating phone calls and applies it to communication on web sites, blogs, listserves and other Internet communication. H.B. 2549 is not limited to a one to one conversation between two specific people. The communication does not need to be repetitive or even unwanted. There is no requirement that the recipient or subject of the speech actually feel offended, annoyed or scared. Nor does the legislation make clear that the communication must be intended to offend or annoy the reader, the subject or even any specific person.

As Eugene Volokh notes in his own discussion of the bill, a telephone is a one-to-one device. The internet is many-to-many, and it makes for a very different situation when you're talking about content designed to annoy or offend:

Telephones are basically one-to-one devices, so a phone call that uses profane language to offend is likely meant only to offend the one recipient, rather than to persuade or inform anyone; but computers used to post Facebook messages or send Twitter messages or post blog items can offend some listeners while persuading and informing others.

So, under the statute, posting a comment to a newspaper article — or a blog — saying that the article or post author is “fucking out of line” would be a crime: It’s said with intent to offend, it uses an electronic or digital device, and it uses what likely will be seen as profane language (see, e.g., City of Columbia Falls v. Bennett (Mont. 1991)). Likewise if a blog poster were to post the same in response to a commenter’s comment. Likewise if someone posts something in response to an e-mail on an e-mail-based discussion list, or in a chatroom, or wherever else. (Note that if “profane” is read to mean not vulgarly insulting, but instead religiously offensive, see City of Bellevue v. Lorang (Wash. 2000), then the statute would be unconstitutional as well.)

The same would be true if someone posts something lewd in one of these places in order to annoy or offend someone, for instance if he posts a comment on a police-run public discussion page that says something like “the chief of police can suck my dick,” to borrow subject matter from a prior Arizona telephone harassment case. And note that, given that case, the speech need not even be about one of the recipients, so long as it’s intended to annoy or offend one of the recipients.

It still amazes me that politicians think that these are good ideas. They're grandstanding against "cyberbullying", of course, but if they're going to pass laws that have a major impact on the internet, can't they at least talk to someone who understands this stuff first?

New York City officials are apparently all excited about a guaranteed $3.6 million "risk free to taxpayers" after signing a deal with a Virginia company to offer .nyc domains. This is one of those things that sounds good until you think it through, and then you realize it's effectively a hidden business tax. NYC gets to promote it as a way for more companies in NYC to have domains, and to identify themselves as NYC-based companies. But for companies already based there, they now need to buy up these domains they don't want or need, just to keep others from buying them up.

To businesses, which only need one website address, new domain names are often a tax they must pay to protect their brand. It’s as if someone printed an alternate copy of the White Pages and asked companies to buy a listing before it was sold to someone else.

In this case, a New York City company like Bloomberg would have to buy Bloomberg.nyc or face having to buy it back at a higher price. Other iconic New York City brands will likely watch nervously to see what becomes names like of “gossipgirl.nyc” or “magnoliabakery.nyc”

The company behind this is asking people to pre-register "for free," but (tellingly) does not share how much the .nyc domains will actually cost once registration opens for real. So while NYC officials can pretend that they've "found" money here, the reality is that they're creating a totally wasteful business tax and a true nuisance for NYC businesses.

The German series "Tatort" ("Crime Scene") has been running since 1970, and remains one of the most popular programs on German television. Given this venerable position, it's perhaps not completely surprising that its scriptwriters -- 51 of them -- have written an open letter complaining about the supposedly negative attitudes of some groups to copyright (German original). But what is noteworthy is the tone and content of the letter.

It's addressed to "Dear Greens, dear Pirates, dear Left-wingers, dear Net community" -- as if these share a common position on copyright reform, which indicates just how little the authors of the letter understand their respective policies. The letter itself is framed in terms of what the scriptwriters term "life lies".

The main "life lie" concerns the idea that the term of copyright needs to be shortened to make it fit for the digital age, where huge numbers of people are creators as well as consumers:

Not only does the author suffer expropriation through a reduction in the copyright term and is thus dramatically worse off, no, this proposal doesn't even change the situation of the supposedly innocent end-user one bit: your illegal downloads or streams concern mostly the absolutely latest films, music, books, photos and designs -- and not works that are, say, 20, 40 or 60 years old. A shortening of the copyright term would change nothing for this problem, and would be purely symbolic: look, we have taken something away from the authors....

This shows an extraordinary lack of understanding on the part of the Tatort scriptwriters. Nobody is suggesting that reducing the term of copyright will "solve" the problem of unauthorized downloads: it addresses a completely different question to do with the re-use of copyright materials, something the signatories of the letter seem unable to grasp.

But more remarkable is the sense of entitlement -- the idea that authors have a right to a copyright term that for practical purposes is typically in excess of one hundred years (life plus 70 years in most jurisdictions.) They call any reduction of copyright "expropriation", and seem blissfully unaware that this necessarily implies that the repeated extension of copyright from the original 14 years of the 1710 Statute of Anne was a similar "expropriation" of the public domain.

The point here is that there is no reason why the term of copyright should only increase, or why it should not be reduced back to its original levels, or even beyond -- it's for society to decide how long the state-backed monopoly ought to be, and how much incentive is needed to encourage creativity. The scriptwriters' view, as laid bare in this open letter, reveals an indifference to the public's thoughts that borders on contempt.

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

When Kim Dotcom was granted bail, we noted that it was rather silly that the conditions of bail included a ban on internet access. It appears that pretty much everyone involved in the case has actually agreed, and the terms of bail have been adjusted to allow all of the Megaupload defendants to have internet access. The US didn't even object to this request (which surprises me, actually).

What the US did object to, however, was Dotcom's request to be able to go to a nearby recording studio to complete an album he is supposedly working on. The US seems to question whether this album really exists as well as its likelihood of commercial success. However, the judge notes:

This Court cannot speculate on the success or otherwise of Mr Dotcom’s venture. The numerous varieties of modern musical genres suggest that there are probably unimagined audiences available, and modern legitimate digital distribution systems are changing the face of the music market. I could venture to suggest that notoriety alone could well be a marketing angle for Mr Dotcom’s venture.

In the end, he does allow Dotcom to go to the studio, but with specific requirements, including having to notify officials when he's going there, and only staying for four hours at a time. He has to alert officials when he arrives, at the 2 hour mark, and 5 minutes before he leaves -- and he's supposed to do so with a photo of himself on a smartphone (if he has a smartphone).

The US also objected to allowing the four defendants to meet in person, saying that by allowing them internet access, they could just Skype each other. However, the court agreed with the defendants that Skyping is not the same as actually meeting in person and is allowing that as well (again, in a limited fashion). The court notes that the "flight risk" that the US keeps worrying about appears to be exaggerated, though it's still keeping pretty strict limits on Dotcom and the others, and may revisit the rules in the future.

Of course, I'm still wondering why internet access was banned in the first place. It seems like such an overaggressive ban on something that's so central to the ways in which everyone communicates these days.