USTR requests that interested persons identify those countries that deny adequate and effective protection for intellectual property rights or deny fair and equitable market access to U.S. persons who rely on intellectual property protection.

Written comments should include a description of the problems that the submitter has experienced and the effect of the acts, policies, and practices on U.S. industry.

This week we checked back and discovered the dialogue had decidedly turned one-way: namely from Time Warner Cable to you. The company deleted the few views that were published on cable television programming costs and removed its comment section altogether.

The defendant Wayne Skinner, a former Town Supervisor of the Town of Wawayanda, and his wife, the defendant Karen Skinner (hereinafter together the Skinner defendants), were involved in a number of Town policy disagreements with the plaintiff, David LeBlanc. Wayne Skinner was elected to his position as a Democrat. The plaintiff, a Wawayanda businessman, attended numerous Town Board meetings, voicing his concerns over a variety of issues, including property taxes, and donated money to one of Wayne Skinner's Republican political rivals.

Nonparty Gail Soro was one of Wayne Skinner's colleagues, and a Wawayanda Town Board member. Soro likewise was an elected Democrat. In July 2006, Soro discovered a severed horse head in her swimming pool. It was never determined who was responsible for the incident. Nonetheless, as could be expected after any incident with such cinematic bravado, public comment ensued. Of relevance here were a number of blog entries posted on a web site allegedly dedicated to community issues and local government, and a number of comments on the local newspaper's web site. These blog entries and comments accused the plaintiff of being responsible for the horse head incident.

While the discovery of any deliberately placed mutilated animal carcass in a family swimming pool would be shocking and noteworthy, the choice of a severed horse head immediately evokes to many the infamous scene from Mario Puzo's novel, "The Godfather," as immortalized in the film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The scene, probably one of the most iconic in cinematic history, has come to exemplify an act of intimidation through violence, a reminder of power, and a warning that a request or "offer" from a Godfather or leader of an organized crime family should not be "refused."

In the amended complaint, the plaintiff alleged that, with the assistance of Hawkins, the Skinner defendants posted several defamatory statements on the Internet regarding the plaintiff. More specifically, the first and second causes of action in the amended verified complaint alleged that Hawkins, at the request and direction of the Skinner defendants, posted two allegedly defamatory statements regarding the plaintiff on August 29, 2007, and October 6, 2007, respectively, on the now-defunct web site www.wawayandafirst.blogspot.com (hereinafter the Wawayandafirst blogspot). In the third cause of action, the plaintiff alleged that the defendants had posted the following comment on October 30, 2007, at www.forums.recordonline.com, a site run by the area newspaper (hereinafter the newspaper site): "We all know who was behind the Horse Head . . . there is only one man around town dumb enough, violent enough and with a vendetta to do that . . . Dave LeBlanc . . . I hope all this negative publicity on him destroys his business." The fourth cause of action alleged that the defendants posted the following comments on the newspaper site on October 30, 2007: "Dave LeBlanc is a terrorist" and "Who was the one who threw the horse head in Gail's pool . . . check it out: . . . wawayandafirstblogspot.com."

1. Calling someone a "terrorist" online isn't defamation.
2. Accusing someone of severing a horse's head and dumping it in a pool, however, could be defamation.

Internet forums are venues where citizens may participate and be heard in free debate involving civic concerns. It may be said that such forums are the newest form of the town meeting. We recognize that, although they are engaging in debate, persons posting to these sites assume aliases that conceal their identities or "blog profiles." Nonetheless, falsity remains a necessary element in a defamation claim and, accordingly, "only statements alleging facts can properly be the subject of a defamation action" (600 W. 115th St. Corp. v Von Gutfeld, 80 NY2d 130, 139, cert denied 508 US 910; see Gross v New York Times Co., 82 NY2d 146, 153). Within this ambit, the Supreme Court correctly determined that the accusation on the newspaper site that the plaintiff was a "terrorist" was not actionable. Such a statement was likely to be perceived as "rhetorical hyperbole, a vigorous epithet" (Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Assn., Inc. v Bresler, 398 US 6, 14; see Milkovich v Lorain Journal Co., 497 US 1; Immuno AG. v Moor—Jankowski, 77 NY2d 235, 254, cert denied 500 US 954). This conclusion is especially apt in the digital age, where it has been commented that readers give less credence to allegedly defamatory Internet communications than they would to statements made in other milieus (see Sandals Resorts Intl., Ltd. v Google, Inc., 86 AD3d 32, 43-44, quoting Jennifer O'Brien, Note, Putting a Face to a [Screen] Name: The First Amendment Implications of Compelling ISPS to Reveal the Identities of Anonymous Internet Speakers in Online Defamation Cases, 70 Fordham L. Rev. 2745 [2002]). Accordingly, we conclude that this statement constitued an expression of opinion, and, as such, is nonactionable.

...there is now an impressive body of precedent holding that people don't interpret online name-calling literally. See, e.g., Seldon v. Compass Restaurant, Chaker v. Mateo, Sandals v. Google (cited here), DiMeo v. Max, Finkel v. Dauber and others. I wish this meant that plaintiffs will think twice about suing over online name-calling, but I doubt it.

I’m a big fan of having machines help us with the lower level tasks, freeing up time, resources and brain power for more interesting and complex tasks. Julia [the artificial intelligence system that HuffPo owns] takes that a few steps further and helps us with a lot of other aspects of HuffPost in addition to helping weed out abusive members, including identifying intelligent conversations for promotion, and content that is a mismatch for our advertisers. She has allowed us to do a lot more with a lot less.

We are also of the opinion that any enforcement attempts – at both national and international levels – should ensure and not jeopardize the stability, interoperability and efficiency of the Internet, its technologies and underlying platforms. The Internet – a network of networks – is based on an open and distributed architecture. This model should be preserved and should surpass any enforcement efforts. For the Internet Society preserving the original nature of the Internet is particularly significant, especially when enforcement is targeting domain names and the Domain Name System (DNS) in general. There are significant concerns from using the DNS as a channel for intellectual property enforcement and various contributions have been made on this issue by both the Internet Society and the technical community. It needs to be highlighted that from a security perspective, in particular, DNS filtering is incompatible with an important security technology called Domain Name Security Extensions or DNSSEC. In fact, there is great potential for DNSSEC to be weakened by proposals that seek to filter domain names. This means that DNS filtering proposals could ultimately reduce global Internet security, introduce new vulnerabilities, and put individual users at risk.

Our second recommendation relates to the legal tools that should be in place in any enforcement design. ISOC would like to stress the absolute need for any enforcement provisions to be prescribed according to the rule of law and due process. We believe that combating online infringement of intellectual property is a significant objective. However, it is equally important that this objective is achieved through lawful and legal paths and in accordance with the notion of constitutional proportionality. In this regard, enforcement provisions – both within and outside the context of intellectual property – should respect the fundamental human rights and civil liberties of individuals and, subsequently, those of Internet users. They should not seek to impose unbearable constitutional constraints and should not prohibit users from exercising their constitutional rights of free speech, freedom of association and freedom of expression.

As a general recommendation, we would like to emphasize our belief that all discussions pertaining to the Internet, including those relating to intellectual property - both at a national and international level - should follow open and transparent processes.

The responses to that consultation have now been published -- all 471 of them. That's a surprisingly high number for what was once an arcane area of interest only to a few lawyers, and a measure of just how important the subject has become. On that Web page there's the following slightly unusual statement:

in the course of reviewing the responses received, it became clear that a small number of respondents had advanced criticisms or inappropriately criticised the activities of others in the sector. The Government has now carefully reviewed the submissions to establish any potentially defamatory material and has redacted any inappropriate or defamatory comments.

What makes this censorship of linked information even more striking is that alongside the main consultation document itself (pdf) the UK government also published guidance on providing "open and transparent evidence" (pdf), where we read:

When you draw on other work, a reference, and link to the original work should be included. References to other people’s work should have the relevant web link

This does not augur well for the results of the consultation. It suggests that the UK government is happy to gloss over one of the key failings of the present copyright system -- the UK collection societies -- and is seeking to present a very partial view of the real situation. It also undermines confidence in the whole consultation process: if the UK government has arbitrarily redacted true information that it finds inconvenient once, what's to say it hasn't done so multiple times elsewhere? If people aren't allowed to provide all the evidence what's the point of conducting a consultation in the first place?

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

"Try to comment on a video today and a window will pop up with the title "Start using your full name on YouTube," which will sign you in with your Google+ account. A YouTube spokesperson told BetaBeat that this option has been offered since June 29 and that users with a Google+ account will see the same thing if they try to upload a video.

If you don't want to use your Google+ account, you can refuse -- but then you're taken to a second prompt, which asks "Are you sure?" Then, like some kind of Internet degenerate, you must explain why you don't want to use your full name."

Now, this may be a tad irritating to anyone who insists on commenting anonymously, but I think if the strategy works to get more people to comment while being accountable then the benefits will outweigh the annoyance. Because if there has been any single great all-encompassing truth about the last decade, it's this: if you're looking for a reason to hate humanity, spend 20 minutes browsing YouTube comments.

Having said that, it's important that YouTube still allow the option to comment anonymously. Without that option, you may lose valuable comments from people with legitimate fear of reprisal if their name is associated with their words, whether that reprisal comes from friends, family, their employers, or the government. But being proactive in encouraging users to comment under their accounts is a good thing, which may very well breed a better commenting community.

The GHOST WRITERS project's aim is to address and identify pertinent questions concerning the digital publishing industry's business models, as well as to draw the lines of new trends for a possible new kind of digital literature, after the web.

The project wants to raise questions like: who do YouTube videos/comments belong to? Where does authorship start and end? To what extent does the e-book format have to be reconsidered with regard to the traditional book form, and what are its most innovative opportunities? How could we act and work on it?

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

The revered French Resistance in action 70 years ago. Today, certainly, these heroes might need to comment and blog anonymously. However, lawyers, shoe store managers, Tulane grad students, accountants, and other country club Charlies haven't earned that privilege.

Absent compelling reasons, nameless blogosphere participants, in our view, are rarely worth anyone's time, thought, or respect--even when they think and say brilliant things... They are second-class citizens. They say third-rate things. Certainly, they have no incentive to exceed below-average...

It doesn't take much thought or courage to lob one in there when you don't sign your name. Our new digital culture permits a certain accepted wimpiness to masquerade as needed "privacy" and personal "style". But it's a ruse. Most of us can do better than that. Don't buy into nameless blogging and commenting (or participation through pseudonyms) unless it's deserved.

As Walter Lippmann once reminded us, "cowardice" is a strong word, and you don't throw it around. We dislike using it. It implies a certain moral superiority of the user (which the writers of this blog would never claim, and do not wish to achieve). It generally furthers no discussions, and justifiably puts people on the defensive. But that word, unfortunately, may fit here.

Check out the anonymous haters, nameless "experts" and scores of prissy pundits and lemmings who won't sign their real name to their rants and indictments. (We don't know how much David Lat is paying editor Elie Mystal these days, but it's not enough. Mystal is a mensch, soldier, hero and lightning rod who is often himself targeted for abuse.)

"you agree that by posting messages, uploading files, inputting data, or engaging in any other form of communication with or through the Website, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, enhance, transmit, distribute, publicly perform, display, or sublicense any such communication in any medium (now in existence or hereinafter developed) and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so."

although Erwin undoubtedly did much of the hard work in crafting the story himself, during the genesis of "Rome, Sweet Rome," some of Reddit's other users made suggestions to his work that may ultimately shape the final story.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to spend time on Reddit. This is not because I think I’m too big for my britches now. The Internet is a chaotic, give-and-take place – and that creates nightmares for a lawyered-up industry based on locked-down IP rights. In a perfect world, I would be in that subreddit every day – but that’s not what’s best for the project. I want this to succeed, and that unfortunately meant going dark for a while. I hope the folks in the RomeSweetRome subreddit see this little mash note. I miss em.

Is it time to start murdering the corrupt yet?

"In modern society, there needs to be some give and take, some ability for parties to air their differences.... Today, those disagreements may take place on various Internet sources. Because the medium has changed, however, does not make statements of this sort any more or less defamatory."

"I am overwhelmed, I don't want to say Mr. or PM what happened in Egypt is sending shockwaves to dictators around the world. No weapon but unity of purpose worth emulating, hey."

It's quite easy to spin what you say in the other direction. Techdirt has indeed seen where the future goes, and it is not towards greater protection and stronger IP laws. Those things are essentially impossible: there is no such thing as effective DRM and no such thing as unpirateable content, and there never will be. Given the nature of what is happening in the world since it became so gloriously interconnected, it is inevitable that information's tendency to be free will overpower its tendency to be expensive.

Given that, when you see companies and creators attacking their fans, throwing temper-tantrums or reducing the value of their product with DRM and removed features, one thing is abundantly clear: they are digging their own graves. Much more frightening is when the government is complicit in this, because it erodes respect for the rule of law and teaches entire generations that those in power are clueless about the realities of technology.

And so a blog like Techdirt highlights these things, because it is the right of every consumer to criticize commercial entities, and because it is the duty of any informed citizen to criticize the government when it violates people's guaranteed rights.

The problem is this: copyright is not an inalienable right. Free speech is. Where the two conflict, free speech must win out.

If you're not an American, your confusion is understandable. If you are, then your confusion is unforgivable.

As I noted yesterday over on my blog Legally Sociable, this makes no sense. It is the profit from selling/renting sheet music composed by long-dead composers like Beethoven at above-market prices that allows the G. Schirmer company "to bring out more composers’ work"? Insofar as this even makes sense, they can only mean one of two things:

1. Traditional music publishers can only continue to publish public domain scores if they can continue to sell it at monopoly prices (e.g., $30-50 for "[a] set of parts for a mainstream string quartet", according to the NYTimes article).

Analysis: Good riddance. IMSLP will publish it for free. Deadweight loss triange: gone.

2. Traditional music publishers can only afford to take a bath on contemporary composers if it can subsidize them with profits from public domain scores of dead composers.

Analysis: Whatever this is, it's not a business argument. There are plenty of reasons to support new composers (and musicians generally) that have nothing to do with business, of course. One may think that the arts are intrinsically valuable, or may want to give back/pay it forward, or may simply want the prestige of having one's name connected rising talent as a "patron". All fair enough. But there's no business reason for a traditional music publisher to subsidize new talent with monopoly money. Why should it do that? It would make much more money if it simply sold the old public domain stuff and told new composers to take a hike. (Unless, of course, it does make money off the new composers....)

Just because a music publisher may have used some of its profits to support the arts doesn't mean that they should be able to assert legal rights they don't have to public domain musical scores just because the Internet is threatening their traditional business model. The arts can be supported much more directly and efficiently. There's no need to expand copyright law to allow a revenue stream to continue flowing into the publisher's pockets that a trickle may eventually find its way into the tip jar of the up-and-coming composer.

To the uninformed, basic economics in action can appear indistinguishable from magic.

In the beginning, people (apparently) created stuff without copyright, and the corporate firmament was dark and without form.

And then came a lawyer who said "LET THERE BE COPYRIGHT". and there was copyright. And he saw it wasn't good (but it could make a large amount of cash).

And he said "let there be a division between the heavens (where all the men in suits could live) and the earth (where all the criminals...sorry customers..could stay) and the peaceful universe was torn in two....

Now the question that the filthy dirty 'criminals' (for thusly had they been labelled by those on high) asked was "well if it takes incentive to copyright stuff, how was anyone incentivized to sit there and create a copyright law in the first place?". And the Lawyers were exceedingly angry saying "question not your master, for he is always right, and yeah verily are compulsory licenses great, woe unto he that uses p2p". and the lawyer did smite the questioner with lawsuits of fire and brimstone forever and ever, amen

Mike

I shall give the appearance of having neither read nor understood anything you have ever written despite feeling the need to comment on almost everything you have ever written.

To do so, I will first need to say you have taken a stance you have never taken.

Why are you in favour of child molestation
or
Why do you support piracy
or
Why do you insist every business follow exactly the same business model

I will now castigate you for taking these positions that you have never taken.

When you cite evidence I will dismiss the citing of evidence as being pointless.

When you describe the general thrust of an argument I will complain that you are not citing specific evidence.

I am eternal
I am ever present
I am troll.
and

I do not possess the capacity to feel shame.

Freetards are destroying us all

Ah, I see. Dan Snyder objects to the to squigly lines drawing devil horns and a goatee (by cracky) on his image because they're anti-Semetic. Dan Snyder, you see, is against images and depictions of racist and culturally insensitive nature.

Hey, fuckhead. You own an NFL football team based in the nation's capital called the REDSKINS! Are you kidding me? It's an insensitive term with a stereotypical logo of an American Indian, the gall of which is only supplanted by the fact that the team is located in the home city of the governing body that raped and pillaged their people? Who the hell are you crappin'?

How about some Irish immigrant owning a football team called the New York Porchmonkeys (I'm just bringing it back)? Or that Saratoga Slants? Maybe the Talahassee Towelheads? Portland Pollocks? Ooooh, the Memphis Micks (that one is close to my heart)?

Way to be a hypocritical polesmoker there, D-bag....

If your government shuts down the internet, shut down your government.

That quote highlights another thing worth noting here: we now live in and age where it's technologically trivial to have the entire library of congress in your room, and yet thanks to copyright, none of us do.

I wonder how much music sales went up during this period.

I know sometimes when I'm alone in my apartment I like to turn the lights down low, maybe light some incense and just think about the proper way to treat intellectual property in relation to content creation and distribution in the interconnected age of today.

Billions of children are born with ears every year. What are doctors doing to make sure these ears are not being used to listen to illegal music?

RIAA would love to work the medical professionals to stop music piracy at its source, the human ear. We strongly urge you to take these concerns seriously... we prefer a practical solution to these issues, and hope to avoid the need to escalate the issue further.

Here's my rebuttal letter. I encourage all innovative companies to read and if they agree, to sign this letter!

We run companies large and small that represent diverse aspects of America’s intellectual property community. While our employees live in different regions of the country, and work to produce a variety of goods and services, they have several important things in common – they work hard, they are committed to quality and innovation and they welcome competition. However, allowing a small group of companies to prevent fair competition in the marketplace cannot be tolerated. Supporting draconian intellectual property laws and punishing consumers for freedom of choice diminishes the market’s ability to freely innovate and build upon past successes and failures, and cannot be tolerated. In order to protect our free enterprise system, and the standard of living it has contributed to our nation, it is critical that we multiply our efforts to encourage development of new marketplaces, identify and break down the barriers created from unsustainable business models, and provide even greater freedom to consumers for what we create and produce.

Thus, we are appalled by the effort and energy behind Operation in Our Sites. The actions dictated on November 29, 2010 once again demonstrated that, just as in the physical world, defendants and courts are presented with indefensible arguments and poor evidence to distinguish between legitimate innovative businesses and archaic and failed enterprises that abuse the law and profit from denying the ingenuity of others. We believe that the online marketplace is the rightful domain of consumers and our task as creators is to respect their voice – and urge you to stop acts against the kinds of domains that you have targeted without due process nor respect for property rights and the rule of law. Fortunately, there are many options available for sites to continue to provide creative business ideas, and we believe that your efforts will drive consumers further away from failed online ventures and services that have worked hard to remain in business -- without fostering customer support.

We encourage you to work with your colleagues in the Administration and the Congress toward defeat of the principles central to S. 3804 – the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act. The legislation crafted by Senators Leahy and Hatch was unanimously approved by the uninformed Senate Judiciary Committee and roundly condemned by numerous organizations and media outlets, and will undoubtedly be reintroduced this congress. The proposal continues to pervert law enforcement techniques at the heart of “Operation In Our Sites” and attempts to ensure that private corporations can force the government to stifle competition and fair use without judicial oversight and without fairness under the law. The legislation will ensure that targeted sites will evade U.S. jurisdiction by creating a new class of registrar and domain name system unimpeded by governmental interference, regardless of source. In addition, the Leahy-Hatch proposal provides yet another level of protection for entrenched U.S. rights holders by establishing the legal framework necessary to protect failed business models of domestic sites and starving legitimate and creative businesses of the right to compete and thrive in a fair and level marketplace that all consumers can access. The dangerously imbalanced measure would allow American law enforcement officials and U.S. courts to create an island of stifled innovation and propel thriving businesses away from the Internet within the U.S. market while further smothering consumer choice and innovation so as to allow select businesses to reap diminishing financial gain for themselves.

We hope that you will cease dedicating any resources to Operation in Our Sites and reconsider support for the rule of law and for due process, and work toward legislation for a free, balanced and open marketplace, by the consumer, and for the consumer.

Why is Techdirt irresponsibly reporting on this?

What if some harm comes to the library or worse its staff due this report?

For Shame. For Shame.

Oh, it's not a joke. Just think of the gravity of the situation.

Maybe the politician thinks he's the center of the universe?