Techdirt. Stories filed under "universities"

Obama Administration Decides Not To Fight Against Fair Use For Public Universities

Mike Masnick — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:29:00 PST

A couple weeks ago, we wrote about some growing concern that, due to the US Copyright Office's pressure, the Justice Department was seriously considering filing a brief in an important case about fair use. The fear was that the Copyright Office's simplistic argument would carry over to the DOJ, and that could have a massive negative impact on the basic concept of fair use.

Thankfully, the story got a fair bit of attention, and we heard that a lot of people spoke out and more feedback than expected showed up on the DOJ's doorstep, including from some folks in Congress, who were concerned about the possibility of hurting fair use in the educational setting. The end result? The DOJ has chosen not to weigh in after all. While it may seem like not such a big deal to get a government agency to not do something, from a variety of sources, it appears that the Copyright Office and the DOJ were very, very serious about filing something. It's not yet clear if the public speaking out led to the change of heart, but either way, it's good to see the administration back down. Having the federal government argue against fair use and in favor of (mostly foreign) big publishers was just never a good idea, and thankfully they realized that in time.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Obama Administration Considers Joining Publishers In Fight To Stamp Out Fair Use At Universities

Mike Masnick — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:55:40 PST

Okay, this is really quite unfortunate. In 2011, we wrote about an important copyright case involving three publishers suing Georgia State University for daring to have "e-reserves" that allow professors to make certain works available to students electronically via the university library. Nancy Sims, copyright librarian for the University of Minnesota, wrote a guest post summarizing the case for us as follows:

The publisher-plaintiffs are suing over the way instructors (and possibly others on campus) share course readings like academic articles and excerpts from academic books. They are objecting both to readings posted on course websites (i.e., uploaded by instructors and accessible only to students registered for a course) and readings shared via "e-reserves" (i.e., shared online through university libraries, usually also with access restricted to students registered for the course). The publishers claim that sharing copies of readings with students is not usually a fair use, that faculty can't really be trusted to make their own calls about what is or is not fair use, and that permissions fees should be paid for most of these uses.

Thankfully, last year, we wrote about how the district court issued an astounding 350-page ruling that basically said that most of these electronic reserves were clearly fair use. We had some issues with the way the judge went about the analysis -- often coming up with random and arbitrary standards for the amount of a work that could be used while remaining fair use, but, on the whole, it was good to see the judge support fair use relatively strongly (and, in some cases, to not even get to a fair use analysis by saying that the use was allowed as "de minimis" copying).

Of course, no matter what happened, the other side was going to appeal. We're getting closer to the appeals court hearing the case, but something interesting popped up last week. In a somewhat surprising move, the Justice Department jumped in and asked the court for some more time for the filing of amicus briefs from concerned third parties, because it was considering weighing in on the case. The Justice Department? Why should it be interested in a dispute concerning whether or not public university libraries are engaged in fair use by making works available to students?

In digging into this, we've heard from a few sources that it's actually the US Copyright Office that has asked the DOJ to weigh in on the side of the publishers and against the interests of public univerisities and students. Yes, the same Copyright Office that just promoted a former RIAA VP to second in command. I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

Let's be clear: it is flat out ridiculous that the Obama Administration may be supporting the publishers here. Two out of the three publishers are foreign publishing giants, and it would be supporting them against a public university library tasked with helping to educate students. The entire purpose of copyright law is supposed to be to promote the progress of learning. The copyright clause in the Constitution used "science" but back in that era "learning" and "science" were effectively synonymous. The very first Copyright Act in the US was actually titled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning." Current copyright law is explicit that fair use covers this sort of situation:

the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

And yet... these publishers, along with the US Copyright Office and (perhaps) the DOJ, would like to ignore all of this, and reject fair use in such public learning centers? It is ridiculous. Oh, and did we mention that the lawsuit by these publishers is really being funded by the Copyright Clearance Center (who, shockingly, would be in charge of collecting fees for such uses...) and the American Publishers' Association? If the Obama Administration wanted to appear any more in the pocket of "Big Copyright" and against the public interest when it comes to learning and education, I'm not sure of any better position to take.

This is just a year after the SOPA fight, and it appears that the Copyright Office, led by Maria Pallante, who was a massive supporter of SOPA, has not learned the lesson of that debacle. It would be a travesty if the Justice Department listened to such an out of touch position and argued that the court should reject fair use in such scenarios.

It would be a complete embarrassment for an Obama administration that has argued that improving our education system is a key policy issue to turn its back on education by having its Justice Department argue against a public university library and students, and in favor of a blatantly self-interested copyright collection agency, funding some foreign publishers, trying to shake down students for extra money to learn. Just the fact that the US Copyright Office is supporting this and asking the Justice Department to make this move is a sign of how screwed up the Copyright Office is today. And it remains unclear why this is even an issue that concerns the Justice Department at all. Since when is access of students at a public university to educational materials an issue that should be of any interest to the Justice Department?

For what it's worth, we've heard that the people in the Justice Department who are considering its position are talking to various government agencies and officials over the next few days to determine what its final position should be. We would hope that the Justice Department, and the wider Obama administration (including the Copyright Office), take into account what happened last year when SOPA was put forth and the government sought to use copyright law to limit the public's rights. It would seem unwise to then take a position that might stir up significant interest, specifically when it involves something as ridiculous as supporting foreign publishers over public university students seeking reasonable fair use access to educational materials, as is clearly supported by the Copyright Act.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

DailyDirt: Educating Adults

Michael Ho — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:00:00 PST

Elite schools aren't getting any cheaper, and college tuition seems to be rising faster than a lot of other goods (though the net price may not be). So what are aspiring university students to do? Here are just a few interesting links on the future of education.

One proposal for college students to try to pay for rising tuition fees is for schools to take a cut of their students' future earnings in lieu of upfront tuition. Indentured servitude 2.0 might kill the classical liberal arts education, but oh well. [url]
Baby boomers might be able to take college-level classes via iPads and chatrooms, but do they really want to? Mobile classes sound useful for students of any age, so why target just the baby boomers? (This exercise left to the reader.) [url]
Sal Khan discusses the future of credentialing -- and how schools might be separated from the role of providing proof of proficiency. The future of microcredentials could offer a way for anyone to obtain proof of expertise in a narrowly-defined domain. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Emory University's Dishonest Data Reminds Us That Ethics Don't Come From A 'Policy'

Mike Masnick — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 03:06:04 PDT

I know that for many universities, where they end up in the various "rankings" lists can make a big difference in terms of the type of students they attract, the money they can bring in and the professors they can get. So it's almost surprising to me to find out that Emory University's admission that it effectively fudged the numbers it sent to US News & World Report (the pre-eminent listmaker of university rankings) was really the first of its kind. The article does note a few other questionable uses of data by some universities -- such as Baylor paying already admitted students to retake the SATs, hoping they'll score higher and boost the rankings -- but Emory went a bit further. It didn't quite make up the numbers, but chose to send in the data for all the students they admitted, rather than the students who enrolled. And, of course, many students with higher GPAs and SAT scores may have been admitted to Emory, but chose to go elsewhere.

Of course, what struck me as extra interesting about this, is that we always hear about universities disciplining students based on an "ethics" code or something like that. So I figured Emory probably had something like that as well... and it did. There's the Emory University Undergraduate Code of Conduct, which includes lines like:

Emory University expects that all students act honorably, demonstrating a keen sense of ethical conduct. The University expects that its students behave respectfully, providing particular consideration for other people and for property. As members of a community, Emory University expects that students act responsibly, being accountable for the safety and wellbeing of themselves and others. University students are expected to be trustworthy, demonstrating honest character upon which others may rely with confidence.

That same policy also forbids "intentional misrepresentation," including "providing false or misleading information to a University official" or "filing a false or misleading report."

I also found that the school has a Code of Business Ethics and Conduct for employees, which includes this tidbit:

Emory University has adopted an overarching Statement of Guiding Ethical Principles that applies to Emory employees and all other members of the Emory Community. Emory employees should strive to adhere to these principles in carrying out their job responsibilities, and in particular any responsibilities they have in connection with Federal Research/Contract Activities.

That pointed me to the Statement of Guiding Ethical Principles (pdf) which, among many other things has lines like the following:

Members of Emory are expected to strive for the highest degree of integrity.

All of this has me wondering about these kinds of "ethics" policies and "honor codes" and the like. So many universities have them, but I'm curious if they actually do any good at all. Most of them say things that are basically common sense, and I have trouble believing anyone actually considers "oh, but the ethics policy!" before violating them. So what is the purpose of such policies? It seems that ethics aren't the kind of thing that you write down in a policy, but that you demonstrate by how you act and what you do.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Canadian Universities Agree To Ridiculous Copyright Agreement That Says Emailing Hyperlinks Is Equal To Photocopying

Mike Masnick — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 06:00:59 PST

In the past, we've written a few times about how Access Copyright, the Canadian collection society that gets revenue from universities for professors photocopying copyrighted works, and how it's been trying to increase rates by 1,300% by claiming that simply "posting a link" counted the same as making a copy. As we noted back in 2010, that's a crazy claim. Lots of universities decided to drop out of Access Copyright's system to avoid such crazy fees. However, not everyone decided to support this move. As a ton of you sent over, the universities of Western Ontario and Toronto have both signed agreements along those lines:

The agreement reached last month with the licensing agency includes provisions defining e-mailing hyperlinks as equivalent to photocopying a document, an annual $27.50 fee for every full-time equivalent student and surveillance of academic staff email.

As the article notes, it seems incredibly premature for anyone to sign such an agreement, since the Supreme Court is expected to weigh in shortly about Access Copyright's mandate and limits, so there's simply no reason to rush into such a ridiculous deal. But, even worse is the message this kind of agreement sends to students. Accepting the idea that emailing hyperlinks is like making a photocopy is a ridiculous message that only serves to make more young people mock copyright as being a law that makes no sense at all.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Universities Buying Up .xxx Domains To Stop Porn Sites Showing, Once Again, That .xxx Is A Pure Money Grab

Mike Masnick — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 04:12:52 PST

For many years, we've pointed out that the introduction of new top level domains (TLDs) has always been more about the cash grab than anything reasonable. The whole point is to get a bunch of companies to pay up to buy theirdomain.tld, just to prevent others from squatting. And now that .xxx is around, the same thing is happening... even to the point that Universities and colleges are buying up .xxx domains to keep them away from porn sites. Of course, this is a total waste of money, but various schools feel they need to do it. In the end, it seems like these new TLDs come across more as a protection racket than anything else. You feel the need to buy them... or run the risk of someone else "doing something bad" with them.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Big Tech Companies Funding University Research Labs... Only If They Promise To Open Source The Results

Mike Masnick — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:07:00 PDT

The state of universities and intellectual property is pretty messy these days. Thanks to the screwed up Bayh-Dole law, many universities feel (wrongly) compelled to patent the research that they produce. This generally goes against their basic charters of sharing the knowledge that they create. It's also not very profitable. Only a small handful of universities have been able to make money off of patents. Most have lost a ton of money, setting up expensive tech transfer offices that don't return a dime.

However, in an interesting twist (pointed out by Glyn Moody), it appears that a variety of big tech companies, including Intel, HP and IBM, are now funding research centers on the condition that they open source anything that comes out of them.

Think about that for a second. These institutions of learning, who for decades have been built on education and sharing knowledge, want to lock up ideas. And the private companies, who are more commonly associated with trying to lock up proprietary information, are encouraging greater openness and sharing. That, alone, should show you just how screwed up our patent system is today.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Is Policing Plagiarism At A University As Counterproductive As Trying To Stop Copyright Infringement?

Mike Masnick — Thu, 8 Sep 2011 15:05:58 PDT

We've talked in the past about how multiple studies have shown that greater enforcement efforts to stop copyright infringement aren't particularly effective. One of the reasons for this is that they tend to piss off and anger the biggest fans, which has significant ripple effects and unintended consequences. A few months ago, there was an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which I'm finally getting around to writing about, all about one NYU CS professor's experience in trying to catch and deal with cheaters on tests.

The professor, Panagiotis Ipeirotis, wrote a very detailed blog post about what happened, but after it went viral online, and some others expressed concerns that it may have violated the privacy of some students, he took the post down. The Chronicle of Higher Education had a mirror of the post up for a while, but have since taken it down. What was really amazing is that Ipeirotis spends much of the post explaining just how "effective" his efforts to catch cheaters was. He was mainly using the (somewhat controversial) service Turnitin, and certainly found a lot of folks who were clearly copying answers from elsewhere. Reading just the first part of the post would make you think this had all been a huge success and that Ipeirortis was actually singing the praises of such software.

But he's not. The key point was that it absolutely destroyed classroom morale. Rather than coming to class each day eager to learn, students (apparently even those who weren't cheating) just weren't as happy about the overall learning experience in the classroom. And part of that may have come from Ipeirotis, who notes that he spent a ton of time that semester "dealing with" cheaters and his general distrust may have carried over into the classroom. He notes that the whole class was a lot less fun and a lot less focused on actually learning.

That was clear in the classroom and later came through in the evaluations, which were significantly lower than usual -- which also resulted in him getting a smaller raise. While some responded to the blog post by focusing just on the evaluations and the raise, he noted later that the evaluations was a lesser issue compared to the more general one, and in a later post, he noted it was the other issue that was the real problem:

Even if I had received a $1M bonus from NYU for my efforts, the basic problem would still be there: the teaching experience would degenerate into a witch hunt, focusing on cheating, instead of being about learning. And yes, I would still write the same blog post even if I were fully satisfied with my annual evaluation. In fact, the blog post was in my folder of draft posts for a few months now, long before receiving my annual evaluation.

This is a key point that we've been trying to make about enforcement in the copyright world. Even when it seems "effective," the overall environment -- created by suing fans, by trying to lock down technologies, by pursuing new draconian laws and by blaming people for sharing information -- is simply toxic. It's not a positive environment in which new beneficial ideas and solutions come forth readily. It's an angry us-vs.-them world, rather than a "let's learn and solve problems together" world.

And just as we've suggested all sorts of new business models that simply take "infringement" out of the equation, Ipeirotis similarly suggests that professors get around the whole cheating/plagiarism issue not by trying to crack down on cheating, but on creating situations where cheating is impossible or less effective:

He suggested several options. You could require that projects be made public, which would risk embarrassment for someone who wanted to copy from a past semester. You could assign homework where students give class presentations and then are graded by their peers, ratcheting up the social pressure to perform well. And you could create an incentive to do good work by turning homework into a competition, like asking students to build Web sites and rewarding those that get the most clicks.

The simple fact is that some people will always find a way to infringe, just as some people will always find a way to cheat. But plenty of others will not. Plenty of people want to support the content creators they like, just as plenty of people at universities really do want to learn. What many who focus on enforcement and punishment don't realize is that creating an environment that focuses solely on punishing those who infringe or cheat does have serious and significant spillover effects and unintended consequences on the rest of the "market/class." If, instead, you focus on the people who do want to support or who do want to learn, and provide them with a positive environment to do so, it actually ends up creating consequences in the other direction -- often turning around those who wanted to infringe or to cheat, and turning them into good actors as they see what's happening around them.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Court Says College Can Snoop On Students' Email

Mike Masnick — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 05:12:26 PDT

There have been plenty of cases where courts have said that it's okay for an employer to snoop on (employer-provided) employee email accounts. And now there's a case saying basically the same thing for colleges and universities. As long as they provided the email system, there's apparently no violation of anti-snooping or data privacy laws. I definitely understand the reasoning here, though one might argue that the relationship between a student and a university is quite different than an employee and employer. And I could see how students might have a much higher expectation of privacy. Still, do students really use university email addresses any more, or do they have their own primary email accounts that they had before heading off to school?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

More Canadian Universities Opt Out Of Access Copyright's Skyrocketing Tariffs

Tim Cushing — Mon, 1 Aug 2011 15:16:00 PDT

Following up on the University of Calgary's decision to drop Access Copyright after 1,300% rate increase, Michael Geist has compiled a still-growing list of Canadian colleges who have decided to opt-out of Acess Copyright's increasingly expensive service.

As of July 29th, the list looks like this:
1. Columbia Bible College (BC)
2. Royal Roads University (BC)
3. Quest University (BC)
4. University of Calgary (AB)
5. Lethbridge College (AB)
6. University of Alberta (AB)
7. Mount Royal University (AB)
8. Portage College (AB)
9. Athabasca University (AB)
10. NorQuest College (AB)
11. University of Manitoba (MB)
12. University of Saskatchewan (SK)
13. University of Regina (SK)
14. University of Guelph (ON)
15. Queens University (ON)
16. University of Waterloo (ON)
17. University of Windsor (ON)
18. York University (ON)
19. Carleton University (ON)
20. Holland College (PEI)
21. University of PEI (PEI)
22. University of New Brunswick (NB)
23. Memorial University (NL)
24. Mount Saint Vincent University (NS)
25. Acadia University (NS)
26. Dalhousie University (NS)

As Geist points out, this is going to hit Access Copyright hard:

The current list includes 14 of the 25 biggest Canadian universities (as measured by the number of students).

Looks like Access Copyright is going to have to swiftly familiarize itself with an economic truism, one that most politicians seem unable to comprehend: If you tax something (and that's really what this is -- an arbitrary fee that enables Access Copyright to stay solvent enough to ask for more arbitrary fees), you get less of it.

This sort of misguided thinking rarely troubles businesses that provide products and services. These businesses are (usually) at the mercy of the customers who help determine, via "vote by wallet," what they can charge for their products. However, entities like royalty collection services and governments somehow still feel that they can increase their fees in order to increase their total income, despite repeated evidence to the contrary.

Ask New York City how that huge cigarette tax is working out for them. It's increased the per-pack fee so much that smokers are becoming amateur bootleggers. How about you, Chicago? Slapped a nickel-per-bottle tax on bottled water, did you? Enjoy watching all those extra nickels roll right out to the suburbs. How's that "tax the hell out of Amazon" plan coming along, various states? Null set?

Same thing here. By asking for more (much more), Access Copyright is pricing itself right out of the market. At this point its balance sheets are going to need a complete overhaul. This short-sighted plan most likely led to irrational exuberance at the AC offices, but once everyone sobers up (and that list of universities is pretty sobering), they're going to find that a 1,300% fee increase is going to do some particularly ugly things to the bottom line.

Even worse, this tariff is supposed to benefit the many writers, artists, etc. that Access Copyright represents. So, through no fault of their own, these "represented" artists are going to see diminishing returns on their investment in copyright. Whoever came up with the "skyrocketing tariff" plan needs to be removed from their position posthaste. (Unless Access Copyright is taking suggestions from mailroom clerks or that one guy at the end of the bar, in which case no further action is necessary. Or wise.) Sooner or later, the practice of increasing fees to offset dwindling revenue catches up with businesses like these and they end up fading away, trying desperately to multiply by zero.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Obscure(ish) Academic Fair Use Case Has Potential For Wide-Ranging Impact

Nancy Sims — Thu, 9 Jun 2011 16:29:12 PDT

Recently, Tim Geigner had a post about the lawsuit concerning fair use at Georgia State University. Nancy Sims, the Copyright Librarian at University of Minnesota Libraries offered to write up a guest post delving into the deeper issues raised by this lawsuit.

Trial is currently under way in a copyright suit against Georgia State University brought by a number of academic publishers (and funded by an interesting additional party). We won't know the outcome of the trial for a while, and the losing party (whoever it ends up being) will almost certainly appeal the district court's decision, so the case hasn't attracted much attention outside of academic spheres. But it has the potential to set some far-reaching precedents on fair use, and anyone interesting in copyright and tech policy should be following.

The publisher-plaintiffs are suing over the way instructors (and possibly others on campus) share course readings like academic articles and excerpts from academic books. They are objecting both to readings posted on course websites (i.e., uploaded by instructors and accessible only to students registered for a course) and readings shared via "e-reserves" (i.e., shared online through university libraries, usually also with access restricted to students registered for the course). The publishers claim that sharing copies of readings with students is not usually a fair use, that faculty can't really be trusted to make their own calls about what is or is not fair use, and that permissions fees should be paid for most of these uses.

Without going into the details of the draconian injunction the publishers have requested if they prevail, the baseline claim of the lawsuit - that few of these uses are fair uses - is a pretty extreme one. The publisher-plaintiffs are emphasizing that online sharing of readings is equivalent to paper photocopied coursepacks, because lawsuits in the 1990s established that it's not fair use when commercial copy shops sell paper coursepacks for profit. Suddenly the copy shops (which had been providing the coursepacks for just over reproduction costs) had to clear licensing for each article or chapter included. (Fun party trick: to identify which individuals in a room full of academics were students later than 1996; simply ask them whether their coursepacks were affordable, or expensive. Additional fun: watch the expressions on the faces of pre-1996 students when you tell them how much coursepacks currently cost students - as much as $500 per pack!) Incidentally, the Copyright Clearance Center, the ostensibly non-profit organization that facilitates paying for those permissions, although not a party to the Georgia State suit, is underwriting the publisher-plaintiffs' litigation fees.

But the "coursepack cases" were all focused on copying at commercial copy shops. None of the currently-contested uses are for-profit. The only market harm is that the publishers are willing to license every use, but the academic community is not taking them up on this offer. (Much of the content shared in course websites has even already been purchased once for campus use as licensed library resources - although most of the licenses are only for access through the publisher website. E-reserve materials are less likely to be materials for which the library already has subscription access - they're more likely to be unique or one-off materials.) While the fair use statute does say that harm to "potential markets" is relevant to a fair use determination, a ruling against fair use at Georgia State would do a lot to establish that any time a copyright holder is willing to sell a license, not taking them up on it is inherently infringement.

It is also helpful for the plaintiffs to focus on coursepacks because in those cases, copy shops were held responsible for the decisions instructors made about what readings to copy for their students. In the Georgia State case, the plaintiffs are arguing not just that most course reading uses are not fair uses, but that the University should be responsible for individual instructors' decisions on fair use. Certainly, individual instructors may make bad decisions about fair use sometimes, but the publishers don't want to deal with the inefficiency and negative PR that would accompany suing individual instructors. Trying to have the institution held liable makes for a very efficient lawsuit, and if the tactic succeeds, will force the institution to develop a single policy on use of course materials - vitiating the flexibility and case-by-case determination that fair use is supposed to provide far more rapidly than suits against individuals would.

However much the plaintiffs would like it to be so, paper coursepacks are not the only relevant comparison. For example "e-reserves" are very similar to more traditional "course reserves", where a physical copy of an item is held "on reserve" at the library and individual students can check it out for short periods of time. Most students check out reserve materials just long enough to photocopy or scan the readings for their own use - and many would accept that those personal copies are legitimate fair uses. Sharing articles on course websites is very similar to an instructor handing out paper copies in class - again, a practice many would consider to be a fair use. Even the existing precedents against some uses of research articles admit that making personal copies of articles for research is often a fair use - "We do not deal with the question of copying by an individual, for personal use in research or otherwise (not for resale), recognizing that under the fair use doctrine or the de minimis doctrine, such a practice by an individual might well not constitute an infringement." (AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION v. TEXACO INC., 60 F.3d 913 (2nd Cir. 1994).)

Finally, the copyright statute explicitly includes "multiple copies for classroom use" as an example of a fair use. Certainly it is possible that some of the e-reserves and course website uses that instructors undertake trespass outside the bounds of fair use. But no institution can police use decisions on the part of all its participants at the level of responsibility this suit seeks to impose without creating policies that wipe out any contextual sensitivity or flexibility in what is supposed to be copyright's "breathing space". Additionally, because copies for classroom use are an archetypical fair use, if the publisher-plaintiffs prevail in this suit, it undermines fair use claims in all of the other areas explicitly listed in the statute (including "criticism, comment, news reporting, [...] scholarship, or research") - much less those not enumerated specifically as examples of fair uses. This obscure academic fair use lawsuit has the potential for broad impact on us all.

Update: Since this post was written, there have been some updates on the case, which you can read about here. It appears that the "nightmare scenario" has been avoided for now...

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

University Of Glasgow Frees Up Research Instead Of Trying To Sell It All

Mike Masnick — Thu, 9 Dec 2010 21:44:00 PST

We've pointed out how badly many universities have fallen for the myth of magical profits from tech transfer efforts. In the last 30 years or so, there's been this massive effort for some universities to try to profit off of "commercializing" their research. What they did was set up expensive "tech transfer" offices that were in charge of taking university research, patenting it, and then trying to find buyers. The theory, then, was that the university would make lots of money and companies would get access to all this great university research. The reality is that this hasn't worked out at all. First of all, that whole theory skipped over the part that prior to locking up all that research, companies already had access to it -- and were able to actually make use of it quickly because they didn't have to go through a crazy and expensive licensing process.

The other problem is that, since these tech transfer offices are focused on making money, and all they have to sell is patents, they started to overvalue the patents themselves, making them prohibitively expensive, which actually decreased the ability to get those ideas out to the commercial sector and to turn that research into big money. And, did we mention how expensive it is to set up and run some of these tech transfer offices? A study from a few years back found that the majority of tech transfer offices lost money, with only a tiny handful (somewhere around a dozen) actually making money.

Oh, and on top of all that, this focus on putting up locks for the sake of charging has actually made basic research much harder as well, since much of it is based on freely sharing ideas -- which is made more difficult when you want to hoard the idea in order to get a patent.

At some point, you would think universities would recognize this. They're losing money, harming their own research and going against their basic principles as institutions for disseminating knowledge. Thankfully, some are finally starting to get the message. James Boyle points us to the news that the University of Glasgow has announced that it will be offering up most of its research under a free license. It is still reserving a few "key" bits of research for fee-based licensing, but it appears the default will now be free, which seems like it should be a good thing in terms of actually commercializing the research out of the university.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

MPAA Reminding Universities They Need To Crack Down On File Sharing -- Leaves Out How It Lied To Get The Law Passed

Mike Masnick — Thu, 9 Dec 2010 04:02:55 PST

Back in 2008, we wrote about how the MPAA convinced Congress to pass legislation to make colleges and universities responsible for reducing copyright infringement on campus or lose federal funding. The law was really a trial run of sorts -- an attempt to see how this could work for making ISPs responsible. Of course, in order to get the law passed, the MPAA flat out lied. It made up numbers, saying that 44% of "losses" from file sharing came from college campuses. This number was so ridiculously wrong that the MPAA later claimed "human error" before saying the number was really 15%. But even that was dubious -- and when the GAO asked the MPAA to support these numbers, the MPAA refused to provide the data. Pretty telling.

So, the entire law was passed under totally false pretenses. If Congress had any sense of what's right, it would repeal the law. But, instead, the law went into effect recently, and now the MPAA is sending out letters reminding universities that they need to start acting like copyright cops. Of course, they leave out the fact that they got the law put in place by lying to Congress. Funny how they would omit that. So, kids, the lesson of the day is: it's okay to lie to Congress to force colleges to spend money to protect your obsolete business model, but sharing a movie you really liked with a friend is evil. Makes sense.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Colleges Cracking Down On High Schools Using Their Logos

Mike Masnick — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 02:13:20 PST

We recently had a story of a high school caught with a logo copied from the Dodge Ram logo. Apparently, this idea of high schools copying their logos is hardly an isolated instance. For decades, it's been commonplace for high schools to just copy the logos of various colleges (or, at least use them for very close "inspiration"), but lately colleges have started cracking down on this practice, threatening high schools, or even demanding payment. This is really the latest result of a trend we've noted in the past, where universities and colleges have taken trademarks to a new level after some court rulings suggested exclusive rights in college logos existed. Of course, it seems a bit silly. It's not as if anyone's going to buy a high school t-shirt instead of the college shirt, but it seems like these universities and colleges want to be aggressive with their trademark efforts. At least some appear to have very reasonable licensing programs. Apparently KSU lets anyone use their logo for $1 every two years -- but does put some restrictions on it, such as not letting you sell t-shirts with the inspired logo unless they use a KSU-connected vendor, who gives a percentage to the university.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

University Promises To Report File Sharers To Police, Tells Students They Can Spend 5 Years In Jail

Mike Masnick — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 11:57:45 PST

Remember a few years back when the entertainment industry used totally bogus stats (which they later admitted were bogus) to get Congress to pass new laws requiring universities to become copyright cops? While many universities have been struggling under the economic burdens of this law, apparently one university, Valdosta State University, in Georgia, has embraced the new law with gusto, not only implementing a new system, ~~but promising to turn those caught over to the police~~ (see update below), and warning them that they face five years in jail, as well as fines. Of course, it seems rather doubtful that those caught sharing a file would be guilty of criminal copyright infringement, so I can't imagine the local police will even know what to do with the information it's being given. But it's rather unfortunate that the University has decided to become a tool of entertainment industry propaganda, rather than actually choosing to understand the real issues at stake. Update: The University and the school paper have since both contacted TorrentFreak to let them know that the reporter got the story wrong, misunderstanding a basic copyright warning, leading to the false report -- so that students will not, in fact, be reported to the police.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Colleges Experimenting With Bulk-Buying E-Textbooks... And Forcing Students To Pay Up

Mike Masnick — Thu, 4 Nov 2010 15:24:46 PDT

We've pointed out in the past how the college textbook market is ripe for disruption. You have a market where books are ridiculously overpriced by publishers, knowing that students are often compelled to purchase the product. As book prices have continued to rise, apparently some universities are experimenting with bulk buying licenses to ebook textbooks and simply charging the students a fee. The schools all say they're doing this to reduce textbook fees -- and I'm sure they mean well. But the very fact that many publishers seem to be jumping on this as well suggests that they know damn well, in the end, this will work out well for them. First, it forces all the students to "buy" the books at full price. It wipes out the secondary market (which many students make use of in selling their books back), and even the case of the student who just checks the book out of the library. Also, we've seen in places like Canada how a simple mandatory student fee can start out low, and then suddenly jump massively. It's good that some universities want to lower book fees, and making use of ebooks is a possible solution, but mandatory fees seem ripe for abuse.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

More Evidence Shows That Locking Up University Research With Patents Doesn't Help

Mike Masnick — Fri, 3 Sep 2010 00:58:13 PDT

For many years, we've discussed how the Bayh-Dole Act, which created incentives for universities to patent the (often federally-funded) research results of professors, has been a dismal failure. The failure is based on the same faulty reason for why people think that patent system itself increases innovation -- even in the face of an awful lot of evidence to the contrary. The mistake is in thinking that the key incentives for research is to extract the greatest dollar value in return, and that the key to commercialization is licensing. Neither is true. In academic settings, research is driven by a variety of factors, many of which have little relation to commercial incentives. Second, the key to commercialization tends to be market need, not licensing opportunity.

But, because of this, tons of universities thought they were going to be rich and set up "tech transfer" offices to help license this new found wealth of patents. Reality hasn't been kind. With a small number of exceptions (the big famous universities like Stanford and MIT), nearly every one of these tech transfer offices have lost money for the universities that set them up. In part, this is often because tech transfer offices like to overvalue the patent, and completely undervalue the actual execution necessary. But, more importantly, the research that comes out in this manner often just doesn't have that much commercial potential -- and a big reason for that may actually be the patents themselves.

By locking up the technology with patents, it's decreased incentives for sharing ideas, which is where real growth and real innovation comes from. The end result is -- entirely contrary to the predictions of Bayh-Dole supporters -- that the law has decreased the output of researchers and decreased the value of that output. In other words, it's done the exact opposite of what it's promised -- and yet we still don't hear any talk of repealing such a dangerous law.

There's now some new research on trying to patent and commercialize university research, this time coming out of Canada, and it, too, has found that there's very little evidence of benefit from patenting and trying to license university research. Effectively, it found that the costs and benefits almost even out.

The latest report is based on survey data from 2008 which finds that the total IP income (primarily from licencing) at reporting Canadian universities was $53.2 million. The cost of generating this income? The reporting institutions employed 321 full-time employees in IP management for a cost of $51.1 million. In other words, after these direct costs, the total surplus for all Canadian universities was $2.1 million. The average income per university from IP was only $425,000. Patent applications and patents issued were actually down in the reporting institutions and there were less than two-dozen spin-off companies reported by the universities.

So, it's another bit of research suggesting this effort to patent university research has not done what it promised to do. So why do politicians still support such laws, when the empirical evidence has long shown that it does not do what those very same politicians promised?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Gov't Reminds Colleges They Need To Start Taking Money From Students And Sending It To The Entertainment Industry

Mike Masnick — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 09:53:07 PDT

You may remember that the entertainment industry was able to get a nice little clause inserted into the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 that required universities to educate students on the evils of file sharing, to try to block file sharing on campus and also to sign up for "legal" alternatives (i.e., charge students more money to filter it directly to the record labels and movie studios). Yes, you read that right. The law requires universities to push their students to use "legal alternatives," even to the point of having the university take "activity fees" from students for that purpose From the Department of Education's website:

34 CFR 668.14(b)(30) also requires that an institution, in consultation with the chief technology officer or other designated officer of the institution, to the extent practicable, offer legal alternatives to illegal downloading or otherwise acquiring copyrighted material, as determined by the institution. An institution must periodically review the legal alternatives for downloading or otherwise acquiring copyrighted material, and make the results of the review available to its students through a Web site or other means.

It was a clear case of the government creating subsidies for the entertainment industry, by taking money away from students and education. It's difficult to see how anyone can defend such a law. Universities that fail to do this face the possibility of losing financial aid for students. Seriously.

We hadn't heard much about this in a while, but Michael Scott points us to the news that the Department of Education has started sending out letters reminding universities and colleges that this part of the law goes into effect in July. The letter itself reminds universities of the various requirements to stay on the entertainment industry's good side. Higher Education Opportunity Act or Subsidize the Entertainment Industry Again Act?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Paywall/Open Debate Applied To University Education As Well

Mike Masnick — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 06:11:00 PDT

DV Henkel-Wallace writes

"The New York Times has a good article about Open Courseware (how universities are putting their material online for anyone to use as they see fit). Unusually, the article has an accurate and pithy summary of how the movement started and evolved. It is still a little incredulous that such a thing can really exist ("On a philosophical level, the idea of making money from something available free might seem questionable."). But it is clear: a little ecosystem is building around this educational material.

What's most interesting, is how the same arguments that have already arisen around the "big data" areas like music, film and news appear in this smaller area as well. When MIT launched OCW, they directly addressed the CwF+RtB issues by pointing out that people attend schools for additional reasons than just the syllabus. But some people still don't get it: a professor from the Tuck School of Business still feels that putting the syllabus out there will let the magic out, claiming that it's "obvious" that an "exclusive experience" is appropriate.

The best quote: "It's pretty hard to imagine how an elite institution like us or like Harvard or Stanford or any of the other top schools would stay in business if they didn't have some aspect of the program that was still relatively complicated and difficult to get to," Mr. Argenti said. And thus they lock some of their content behind a pay wall.

Perhaps they should do a case study of the newspapers and how the pay walls have worked out for them."

DV's summary above is great, but I wanted to highlight one more specific point from the article, which is a quote from James D. Yager, a dean at Johns Hopkins University, who basically presents the other side of the story from Professor Argenti, by actually articulating the difference between the content (infinite) and all of the scarcities that the content makes more valuable:

"We don't offer the course for free, we offer the content for free," Mr. Yager said by telephone in February. "Students take courses because they want interaction with faculty, they want interaction with one another. Those things are not available on O.C.W."

Exactly. That's the point, and it's too bad that a professor at Dartmouth (which is generally a pretty good business school) would so confuse the basic economics of information, and not realize that even if all of the course info is free, there are always aspects that are scarce.

Separately, James Schirmer points us to a related article concerning how some liberal arts schools are using Open Courseware to improve their own programs. It's sort of taking a look at the other side of this overall debate, noting how liberal arts schools can improve their curriculum by having professors use OCW as a resource. Now, the OCW critics will claim that this takes away from the big schools that put content into OCW, but again, that's misunderstanding the market, and assuming a zero-sum game, rather than an ability to expand the overall pie, recognizing that better education programs across the board are a good thing that open up many more opportunities than they take away.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Can Universities Make Sure That Drugs Based On Their Research Are Licensed Reasonably?

Mike Masnick — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:44:39 PST

Joseph Franklin has written about how a group of universities have agreed to some basic principles (pdf) about providing drugs to developing nations at reasonable costs (or even free) in the interest of better global healthcare. However, Franklin wonders how well this will work in practice, and why it should only apply to developing nations, and not domestically as well. It's an interesting question, made more complicated by the fact that many drugs have their research started at universities -- frequently backed by government money -- but are later taken over by pharmaceutical companies who have no interest in such principles. I tend to think that such "principles" are nice to speak about, but are rarely effective in actually creating change. I would think that a much stronger argument is showing the economic benefits in keeping people alive. If you could rid some developing nations of certain diseases, you'd be able to open up vast new markets for other industries. Hell, imagine if you could get companies in other industries (food, clothing, transportation, etc.) to pay for drugs for the poor in developing nations, knowing that keeping them healthy will help those nations build their economy so they can start purchasing the same food, clothing and transportation...

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Update On Choruss: Universities Not Talking, Mysterious 10,000 Students Still Nowhere To Be Found

Mike Masnick — Fri, 6 Nov 2009 14:03:25 PST

We've been pretty big critics of the music tax concept, that was being pushed by Jim Griffin's Choruss along with Warner Music (who had hired Griffin to create this program). Of course, we've only been able to criticize what bits and pieces have leaked out from those who have seen Griffin's presentations. That's because, despite a busy conference schedule, Griffin never seems to publicly describe what Choruss really is. So, every time we hear some new info about Choruss, and explain why it's bad, we get angry emails from Griffin calling me all sorts of insulting names, and insisting that I've mischaracterized Choruss. So, we ask for more details, and we don't get them. Instead, we're given amorphous descriptions about how it's "an experiment." But what is the experiment? Well, it will be lots of things. As soon as we narrow in on an example, however, and explain why it's bad, we're attacked because the plan might not include that particular example. But we haven't yet heard an example that makes sense.

Griffin had agreed (as part of an angry email) to answer questions from the Techdirt community, and we obliged by sending him a long list of questions. Griffin had some personal issues to deal with over the summer, which was totally understandable, but we still haven't heard any answers. I'm beginning to wonder if we ever will.

But the biggest question I had was if he could explain who the "tens of thousands" of students were who Griffin told a conference in June would be using Choruss this fall semester. It seemed odd to find out that so many students had signed up for something when we still weren't being told what it was. As the fall semester started, we asked to hear from students who were using Choruss, and got silence -- which seemed odd. Apparently, it's because those tens of thousands of students hadn't signed up for the fall.

However, as a bunch of you have sent in, now the claim is that six college campuses will be testing Choruss this spring semester, but Griffin won't say who they are and the campuses won't admit to participating. They claim that they're afraid of backlash from folks like us -- but that makes me wonder. If the concept is so good, why not stand up and defend yourself for being a part of the program? If you can't defend the reasons for testing the program, it makes me wonder why you're doing it in the first place.

The article at the Chronicle of Higher Education provides a few new details that don't sound particularly appealing. Rather than (as some had suggested earlier, but since Griffin never made it clear, we just don't know if this was ever true) a system that would let students share files freely under some sort of blanket license, it sounds like "yet another limited music service." It will allow unlimited downloads, but you have to use the Choruss service (again, perhaps the article is wrong, but that's what it says). Similar services have been tried on various campuses and failed, so we're curious to hear what's so special about Choruss that will be different.

It still seems like Choruss is trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. We're seeing more and more smart musicians put in place business models that work. They work in a way that lets fans choose to send money to the artists they want to support directly, without a big middleman. Choruss appears (from all we've heard) to be an attempt to set up a big middleman that will take big chunks of money and then use some magical process to figure out how to dole it out. But why do we need that overhead? The market is figuring stuff out. It doesn't need another middleman.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Dear RIAA: It's Not 'Working Together As A Team' When It's Under Threat Of Regulation

Mike Masnick — Thu, 5 Nov 2009 09:12:00 PST

I've been trying not to respond to every RIAA blog post these days, but it's hard to let certain things go when they so rarely make any sense. For example, RIAA President Cary Sherman recently talked up the new regulations that force colleges and universities to "take proactive steps" to stop file sharing. He goes on to make it sound like universities decided to do this in the spirit of "teamwork" with the RIAA, rather than because they risked serious financial consequences under the law for not complying. He also leaves out the fact that tons of colleges and universities are pissed off and complaining about how much time, effort and money they're wasting on this just because Sherman and his friends still don't seem able to embrace modern music business models. Colleges and universities have enough to worry about without the government forcing them to act as the RIAA's police force. If it were truly about teamwork, Cary, you wouldn't have had to spend so much time getting Congress to pass a law to force them to do this.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

University Offers New Grade For Cheating Students: FD

Mike Masnick — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:48:00 PDT

There's certainly a lot of concern at universities these days about how some students may be using modern technology to cheat in some manner or another, but does that ability to cheat require a change to the grading system? Apparently Simon Fraser University believes so. It's instituting a special new failing grade for students caught cheating: FD. They say it will only be used in cases of repeat offenders caught doing things considered to be egregious cheating -- and that it will only stay on the transcript for two years. It's an interesting idea, but is it really all that different than a typical failing grade? Will students act differently because the potential of a temporary FD grade instead of an F? And if it's a case of a repeat offender taking part in egregious cheating, why not just kick them out and refuse to give them a degree?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Universities Struggling To Deal With Law Requiring Them To Fight File Sharing

Mike Masnick — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:23:00 PDT

For years, Hollywood pushed Congress to pass laws that would hold colleges and universities responsible for cracking down on unauthorized file sharing that happened on campus. The threat was that if universities didn't stop file sharing, Congress could withold federal financial aid funds from students. That's quite a big stick. What justified it? Well, the MPAA put out a report claiming that 44% of "losses" from file sharing came from college campuses. Of course, the number (like so many out of entertainment industry lobbyists) was entirely made up. In fact, it was so ridiculous that even the MPAA came out and publicly admitted the numbers were bogus and apologized!

You would think, after that, Congress would think twice about passing a law that was written based on such bogus numbers. Think again. Congress had no problem rushing it through and getting it signed by the President.

So now what's happening? Well, universities and colleges are wasting a ton of time, money and effort to try to comply (found via Michael Scott, who notes, "what a waste of resources."). The article talks about how universities feel punished for something that isn't even a problem:

"We have not received one complaint about one student. Yet now we have to go out and incur the cost to solve a problem that we didn't really have.... Tying actually capital and operating dollars to it in this economy to solve a problem we don't really have at our scale has been an issue."

Thanks, Hollywood and all those politicians who approved this. Now you're taking away important resources from our educational institutions for a problem that isn't even a problem.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Jim Griffin Explains Choruss; We're Still Left Wondering Why It's Needed

Mike Masnick — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:17:00 PDT

Last week, we had a bit of a back and forth with Jim Griffin, who's trying to build Choruss, a recording industry-backed service to have certain gatekeepers (universities initially, then ISPs, then...?) act as gatekeepers, who would effectively pay a per user fee, which they'd likely pass on to users, to allow those users to file share (sorta -- as the record labels would still likely try to shut down file sharing networks and still push for "three strikes" laws). I got to see Griffin present his "vision" for Choruss at the Leadership Music Digital Summit and spent some time chatting with him after (no punches were thrown -- it was quite friendly). That said, having heard from him directly, I'll say I'm still quite skeptical and somewhat worried about where Choruss is heading, and many others I spoke to in attendance felt the same way.

First, Griffin's point is basically this: for the past 150 years or so, any place that "used music to draw a crowd" eventually ended up paying some kind of license for it. It started with restaurants and then moved on to concert halls and radio and movies and television. So, to Griffin, setting up a similar licensing scheme (which he continues to say is voluntary, not compulsory) is simply the next obvious step. He paints himself as a technology supporter -- and I have no doubt that's true. He also points out that "piracy" isn't necessarily the biggest "problem," out there, though he still says it is a problem. He notes that there's a lot more competition for everyone's time and entertainment dollar spend. From his vantage point, the real problem is that all of the different rights holders are sitting around yelling at each other (it's true, it happened on an earlier panel) rather than agreeing to take a dollar and split that dollar. So, while they all fight, that dollar goes somewhere else. So, based on that, the solution is simple: set up a process to get the dollar, and then let everyone fight over that dollar behind the curtain, rather than out front in dealing with consumers directly. I've heard a very similar vision from folks like Fred von Lohmann over at EFF.

While I've been tough on Griffin, I will say that I believe quite strongly that he earnestly believes this is the best solution to the "problems" facing the recording industry. I don't think he's trying to create a pure money grab for the record labels or create what becomes a "music tax." The problem is that that's exactly what such a program is likely to become.

To defend against those claims, Griffin repeatedly says what he said earlier: this is just an experiment! He says that later this year a bunch of universities will launch with Choruss (in fact, he claims that more universities wanted to sign up than they could handle) -- but each may be using a different model. So, one university may require every student to participate. One may be opt-in. One may be opt-out. One may set up their own centralized file sharing server. Even how they measure what files are shared will be a variety of experiments: one may use technology tools. One may simply use self-generated "diaries" (like the old Nielsen/Arbitron systems). Payments may be based on downloads on one system and "plays" on another. The pricing may be different at different universities. Basically, it's just a series of tests, and supposedly we'll all "learn" from it and move on from there. In fact, he's hoping that since these tests will be done at research universities, that professors there will help study the results. So that's why Griffin has been upset about some of the coverage (including ours) that didn't highlight the fact that these are tests that could go in a variety of different directions.

He didn't address any of the questions we raised in that last post, in part because he doesn't have the answers to many of them yet (it's part of what he hopes shakes out from the experiments). However, there are still plenty of reasons to be quite wary of this plan. For all of Griffin's belief that this is the an experiment worth trying, I think it's built on faulty premises and will quickly go down a dangerous road. It's just too tempting to take this concept in exactly the wrong direction.

The faulty premise: that licensing is a way to "handle" the issue (even if he still doesn't want to call this a license). Licenses have always been a way to duct-tape on a temporary solution to a new technology. Adding yet another such license is simply layering on yet another layer when it's simply not needed. Griffin complains that "we cannot tolerate a society where paying for art, culture and knowledge is voluntary," but that's missing the point. It assumes, incorrectly, that paying for the content directly is the only way to make money off of that content. As we've been showing over and over again (and many others at this very event are demonstrating) that's simply not true. There are lots of ways to make money, and many of those are enhanced by having the music be available for free.

Griffin addressed that briefly, suggesting that those other models still work on top of Choruss, whereby Choruss acts as sort of a "basement floor" on top of which those other models can be built. That sounds great, but it sounds to me like a social welfare program, separate from what the market would allow. And once you build such a system, as we've seen over and over again, the folks who control it keep asking for more and more. So even if these are experiments and who knows where the final model will go, given who's backing it, it's not hard to guess: they're going to demand to make it about as close to compulsory as possible. ISPs are going to offer it and will simply add to everyone's bill. The program doesn't work at all if they don't do that -- and that's simply going to piss off a lot of people, just at a time when musicians actually have been showing they can win the trust (and money) from true fans.

Griffin suggests that ISPs won't have to make it mandatory, but will be able to "upsell" people to tiers that include the Choruss ~~tax~~ ~~covenant not to sue~~ ~~license~~ whatever it's called. He uses, as an example, just how difficult AT&T (he didn't name them, but it's clear who he meant) has made it to sign up for naked DSL. He interprets this to mean that the ISPs are good at upselling users. He ignores the fact that AT&T worked hard to hide the option and when that was revealed a rather angry outcry went up among AT&T customers who felt cheated.

When challenged on all this by an audience member -- Dave Allen, member of the UK band Gang of Four, who has now gone on to a second career helping musicians build real business models around their brands -- Griffin used "the cable model" as a way that this all makes sense: i.e., even if you don't like sports, you get ESPN in your basic cable package. Allen smartly shot back the fact that customers hate that and are increasingly looking at alternatives like Hulu and Boxee, that let them get away from such deals. All Griffin could do was insist that such bundling would "come back."

But Allen really got to exactly the heart of the problem with Choruss: it's a plan based on what's best for the existing stakeholders, not the customers. There are plenty of business models out there (and I've been hearing about a bunch more from musicians as I chat to them at this event) that work by creating a true win-win relationship between the musicians and the fans. They're models under which everyone benefits. Choruss doesn't work that way. It seeks to perpetuate the old model, where you have to "get" money out of others in order to "allow" them to do something. It's not about creating win-win models where everyone's happy to take part, making a willing transaction where they feel better off. The examples Griffin gives -- of older licensing models, ISP upsells and cable TV bundling -- are exactly the sorts of things that have always pissed off fans, and it seems likely that Choruss will do the same, no matter how much Griffin hopes to have it avoid that fate.

Instead, there are tons of models that don't involve anyone feeling angry or ripped off -- and those embracing them are finding them to be quite lucrative (in many cases more lucrative than older offerings). Griffin says that Choruss won't interfere with those other models, but that's unlikely (at best). If people feel they're getting ripped off by having to pay a university fee or ISP-fee (tax) for music, they're going to be less willing to participate in these sorts of new business models, already feeling pissed off and that they've "given" already... often under duress. That's not the model on which to build a successful industry.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story