Evan Noynaert's Favorite Techdirt Posts of the Week
from the favorites-favorites-and-more-favorites dept
This week's favorites post comes from Evan Noynaert, Assistant Professor at Missouri Western State University.
This was a great week to be posting my favorites because it started off with Nina Paley's When Copyright And Contracts Can Get In The Way Of Art. That was a wonderful piece on several levels. First, of course, is the marvelous art work. It is under a free license, so I expect to see at least bits and pieces of the art work showing up in a variety of media. The discussion of her relationship with the museum was also interesting. It was a perfect illustration of the principle that "managers like to manage." In many cases, like this one, they tend to over manage. Someone decided that proper management required a contract. The contract they produced was silly because it included an absurd non-compete clause and completely ignored the first use rights that should have been important to the museum. One of the commenters followed up with a criticism that the problems were caused by lack of a contract, but what the situation really showed was that a signed contract is meaningless if it is poorly drawn up.
Krishna the Cowherd Prince
Then later in the week we were treated to more of Nina's work when Mike wrote about her Kickstarter Project. I was amused when Mike said that he wanted several copies to hand out. That sounds a lot like handing out religious tracts, and, I guess for some of us, bringing some sanity to the IP system does amount to a religious mission.
One thing has changed since I started reading Techdirt years ago. It seemed like most articles back then were about what is wrong with the IP system. At every turn, it seemed like the IP holders were expanding their rights at the expense of the public interest. Things are different now as we see more and more common sense being introduced into IP issues and various judges and even legislatures realizing that the public interest is not always best served by extending trademark, copyright, and patent protection at every opportunity. Yes, we still have bad things like the PROTECT IP Act proposal hanging over our heads, but there is a lot of good news.
At the risk of being a Pollyana, I would like to highlight some of the positive events this week. We saw good news from Europe, where one European court found that Freedom of expression about Darfur is more important than Louis Vuitton's trademark. We also saw the European Court of Human Rights say that newspapers don't need to pre-inform celebrities of coverage. In Ireland, it looks like they are at least considering stronger support for fair use. In the US, we saw Koch Brothers Can't Abuse Trademark & Hacking Laws To Sue Satirical Critics. The Koch case seems like a pretty straightforward freedom of speech issue, but I am not sure the ruling would have been the same a few years ago. We also saw Patent Hawk's wings get clipped with a ruling that his editable toolbar patent is invalid. On the more academic side, we saw an important statement about The Anachronism Of Today's Patent And Copyright Laws. And we had a group of legal scholars stand up and explain why ACTA requires congressional approval. In the business arena, we saw Google follow Amazon's lead and just say "NO" to RIAA demands for licenses for their cloud music locker. Now I would like to see Google create a music home page that has links to sites and musicians that provide free and Community Commons music that can be easily transferred to your music locker. Google could probably make a fair amount of money by providing searches that included both paid and unpaid advertisements. It would be interesting to see how long it takes for RIAA companies to start buying those advertisements and giving away promotional music.
Finally, one issue that Mike raised this week was in the article about Google's internal collision course of Chrome versus Android. I agree that there does not seem to be much coordination going on between Android and Chrome at the moment, and that it is a huge burden for any company to maintain two different operating systems. However, this is Google, and Google has proven to be extremely flexible in the past. They have a corporate culture of trying lots of different things and learning from their failures as well as their successes. I would not describe Chrome and Android as being on a collision course. I think it would be more accurate to say that they are on parallel courses. For example, Google TV didn't work out well under Chrome, so they are going to try Android on the next iteration. I'm not sure that the real problems of Google TV have much to do with the operating system, but the situation does illustrate potential advantages of having two different operating systems in place. Eventually the two will probably merge, or, if the Chrome laptops are not successful, perhaps Chrome will just Wave and fade away. I think that even if the Chrome OS is a failure, it isn't an indictment of Google but rather an example of how Google is willing to take chances, accept some failures, and move on.
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This is typically the kind of situation that happens when lawyers are allowed to become too influential in the board room. Too many companies base decisions on what their lawyers tell them rather than applying actual business logic. Sometimes a business should listen to its lawyers, but keep in mind that they tend to see the world in terms of extremes. Just because you CAN shut something down does not mean you SHOULD shut that thing down.
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The backlash is more likely to "cast aside" copyright than almost anything else they could do. On second thought, perhaps we should be encouraging the trade groups.
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One problem with Skydrive, Dropbox, Evernote and similar services is that the video can be deleted from them if someone gets access to your phone.
The other problem is that most of those services don't upload until after you stop recording. If your phone gets smashed or turned off the recording is not transferred or may be lost entirely. Uploading the live stream protects against that.
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One problem with Skydrive, Dropbox, Evernote and similar services is that the video can be deleted from them if someone gets access to your phone.
The other problem is that most of those services don't upload until after you stop recording. If your phone gets smashed or turned off the recording is not transferred or may be lost entirely. Uploading the live stream protects against that.
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It is called Police Tape and put out by the ACLU of New Jersey.
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I am going out on a limb here to raise some defense for the Florida DOT. I still think red light cameras should be abolished, but there may be some other factors in timing.
I used to be a Transportation planner. There are legitimate reasons for reducing timings on yellow lights in very heavily congested areas. Under some circumstances increasing timing by half a second can cause gridlock and other congestion problems. Reducing timing can sometimes resolve traffic problems. The average commuter stuck in a traffic jam is going to be frustrated and maybe complain to elected officials. The person who avoids an accident because of the increased timing is not even aware their life may have been saved and thus says nothing.
I have had a number of courses in public policy. Generally it is a very bad idea to have fines go to the entity that is responsible for enforcement. The entire enforcement mechanism gets warped by the drive for revenue. I remember a case study in one of my classes that allowed a drug enforcement strike force keep vehicles seized in drug busts and sell the cars at auction. Drug enforcement almost immediately switched from busting street corner dealers to dealers who worked out of cars. Over time enforcement efforts shifted to wealthier neighborhoods which were likely to have more valuable cars. Dealers adapted by driving junker cars that didn't have much resale value. This resulted in police letting the dealers go so they could focus on picking up the buyers driving SUV's and luxury cars.
Missouri considered and rejected a law that said revenue from photo-enforcement went to school districts. That would have been a step in the right direction.
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I have an app on my phone that will upload live video or audio to an ACLU server. The recording can't be deleted once uploaded. Fortunately I have never had an opportunity to test it to see how well it works.
It would be great if this type of service were more widely used. I also find it sad that I feel a need for this type of service.
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He is also the only one who is allowed to touch the sales terminal. One theory is that he is running a lot of orders through them as part of the laundering operation. The theory is he doesn't want the staff to use the pos because they might see evidence of the fake orders.
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One theory making the rounds yesterday was that Samy, the husband, is actually using the restaurant as the front for a money laundering operation. Frankly it seems like an awkward way to do that, but on the otherhand it is hard to understand how a place like this could stay in business for 6 years if there wasn't some angle we are not seeing. At first I thought that Samy would have forbidden the show if something illegal was going on. But if you watch the show you will see that trophy-wife Amy gets anything she wants and she wanted Ramsey. Samy comes across in the show as a Preda attorney who thinks he can get away with anything because he is smart; maybe he thought no one would notice.
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Still not quite right.
They want to be able to shoot and not worry about getting sued by the person they wrongfully shot.
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Regulations that only serve to protect existing businesses always come back to haunt the industry they were intended to protect. Part of the motivating force behind Telsa's business model was a desire to stay out of the dealership quagmire that exists in most states. It will be interesting to see if Telsa teams up with other players at the national level to get federal action to overturn the antiquated state laws en masse. The same laws that kept dealerships protected have in many cases limited them from growing into the internet market. They could be in a lot of trouble if they suddenly have to compete.
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They have to file now. There is a good chance that in the near future at least one of the investigations will suspend their licenses or limit their ability to file copyright suits in bulk. There is also the possibility that the courts will start enforcing rules that would make it more expensive to abuse the system.
These guys are living in a dangerous area. They probably feel that going for broke immediately is their best option.
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They have to file now. There is a good chance that in the near future at least one of the investigations will suspend their licenses or limit their ability to file copyright suits in bulk. There is also the possibility that the courts will start enforcing rules that would make it more expensive to abuse the system.
These guys are living in a dangerous area. They probably feel that going for broke immediately is their best option.
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When Adler said the agreement is "one sided" he meant that publishers didn't get 100% of what the wanted. That is what they are used to getting and now consider getting everything they ask for a divine right.
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I don't know what Judge Wright thinks about IP law. On the other hand I am certain that he is no fan of attorneys who lie to the court, present false evidence, and generally abuse the legal system.
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The MPAA doesn't want to put popcorn industry out of business. They just want all of the profits from when people eat popcorn while watching movies. And since you really can't tell which popcorn is being while watching movies the only logical solution is to give the MPAA all of the profits from the popcorn industry. Besides, some of those people eating popcorn while not watching movies are probably drug users with the munchies; taking the money associated with illegal drugs is a service that the MPAA is willing to provide. But if the popcorn industry isn't profitable, don't blame the MPAA. It's the pirates' fault.
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We really need copyfraud protections with real penalties. Anyone who tries to use copyright, trademark, or patent claims that are prima facie invalid should be required to pay the resulting legal fees.
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You left out one more thing that DRM does:
(3) Costs real money.
DRM is the modern equivalent of snake oil. It costs a lot of money, does not live up to its claims, and may actually damage the health of your digital products.
The costs of come in two forms. Right up front, IP companies pay big bucks to the DRM/SnakeOil companies for licenses. Then there can be enormous ongoing costs that are hidden in categories such as technical support. One of my former students works in tech support management for a large gaming company. He said that over half of the tech support calls involve DRM-related issues. He also said that DRM considerations also prevent them from building a lot of useful diagnostics into their games, and it can be a lot harder to fix problems because many very simple fixes like re-installing or upgrading an old .dll file would bork the DRM.
Re: CD Sales Are Down Because Technology Changed
Yeah, but it is a lot easier to blame pirates than it is to admit that your business model is flawed or that you totally missed the boat on changes in technology. If you are a studio exec you have to have some excuse to feed the shareholders. Pirates are an easy target, even if they aren't the real problem.
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If by value you mean "how much is this going to increase profits for movie studios and the recording industry?" The answer is zero. The industry finally realized that it was not getting a positive roi on the money it put into lawsuits. The current industry strategy is to push off the monetary costs to others. In the case of 6 strikes the ISP's and the accused are paying for most of the cost. The ISP's agreed to this only after getting heavy pressure from the White House.