Duke's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
from the so-many-to-choose-from dept
So, another week and another batch of interesting, if familiar-sounding stories. We have an Australian media executive demanding greater enforcement and new laws to protect artists (or more likely, his paycheck) from "digital bandits". While there is nothing much new here, his examples of authors who would not have survived without rigorous copyright - Shakespeare and Dickens - highlight the copyright enforcement industry's willingness to completely ignore facts, and to show how connecting with fans can be a far better plan than simply complaining about pirates. Then we have an article from the CEO of something called the "First Amendment Center" seeing a fan introducing his friends to an artist purely as a lost revenue stream, perpetuating the myth that the music industry is seeing "major economic consequences" due to the digital revolution, and using the timing of laws being passed and a healthy dose of revisionism to support his position. On the other side of the debate, we have a blog post thoroughly dismissing the popular "just go without" argument to complaints that major publishers fail to provide their content through a service at a price consumers are willing to pay (if they make it available at all).
Moving away from debates and arguments, we also have the stories of those who are boldly battling "evil" pirates all over the world. In the US, the authorities have seized a few more domain names allegedly involved in copyright infringement; apparently this is a "top priority" for the FBI (it worked so well the last time). On to Germany where one copyright-trolling porn company has skipped the pesky letter-writing stage and is trying to shame people into settling by publishing their names. Onto the UK where more details of the SurfTheChannel prosecution have emerged showing the extreme (and possibly illegal) steps private copyright enforcement groups are willing to take to secure convictions. It is cases such as this that remind me why I am slowly turning into a lawyer.
Then we have the usual stories of government hypocrisy. We have the Russian authorities arresting one of their senior political opponents for answering press statements (AFP reported that he has been acquitted of "holding an unsanctioned protest", but still faces up to five years in prison for allegedly biting a police officer), while criticizing the UK government for failing to respect diplomatic principles over Ecuador granting Julian Assange asylum. The UK and other governments had already attacked Russia for the original trial of the Pussy Riot group, conveniently forgetting that such actions would probably be just as illegal in their own countries. Meanwhile Ecuador is boldly showing how much respect it has for freedom of expression and political asylum by trying to extradite a blogger who was involved in exposing corruption in Belarus. One of the many great things about an open and unrestricted Internet is that it enables us to get news sources from different countries, making it easier to dig beneath government statements and see what is actually going on.
And finally, the week would not be complete without a healthy dose of ineffective anti-terrorism operations. There is the NSA quietly gathering up vast quantities of data, apparently under the impression that having the data is the important part, not whether they can make any sense from it. Over in New York, we have details of the NYPD's own "elite intelligence agency" whose "Demographics Unit" has been infiltrating and monitoring Muslims for over a decade, turning up an impressive zero leads. Finally, we have a story showing how the FBI (when it is not too busy seizing domain names) is protecting us all from all the evil terrorist plots it has been creating. Except in this case, the FBI was not even able to get the plot started, leading to the "suspects" warning the FBI about its own "inside man". I am unsure whether we should be comforted by the lack of support for terrorist acts, or worried by the FBI's apparent incompetence. It is almost as if religious profiling and mass surveillance do not work - or perhaps there are not quite as many terrorists out there as we have been led to believe.
Ending on a happier note, this week Techdirt celebrated its fifteenth birthday, making me feel rather young and something of a newcomer here. Given the vast changes in the technology world over those fifteen years one has to wonder what developments Techdirt will be covering over the next fifteen.
Re: Hard to pin down
Under the EPC rules, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to patent a cooking recipe.
Provided, of course, it was sufficiently novel/inventive, and of industrial application.
Re: The only real question is whether you're against Google too.
Of course; although there are the questions of who we trust more, and the fact that Google isn't planning to spend billions of government money giving itself new legal powers which would allow it to compel anyone to help it spy on people using any method of communication, and provide the data it gets to a wide array of organisations...
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Given that The Sun gave Theresa May a full-page article supporting it when it was announced, I think we can say he is in favour of it.
Strangely enough most of the tabloids seem to support this mass-gathering and storage of personal details on everyone, including celebrities... I can't imagine why.
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You're missing the point if you think this is about stopping people from viewing porn in public places.
It's about appeasing people, making them feel safer, and making them think the Government is DoingSomething™.
It's not about "protecting children" (otherwise they'd be implementing that recent recommendation in the UK that children be taught about porn in school, as part of sex ed, from a young age), it's about making parents and the religious right feel that their children are being protected.
It's also being done on an entirely voluntary basis (as with the nationwide child-abuse-image filtering). Probably because doing it through law would be illegal.
(untitled comment)
There's a lot of FUD going around about this, and it's nice to see someone actually looking into what is really happening.
You can see a draft of the text of the law here (clause 79, which inserts a few new sections into the CDPA). My understanding is that this won't be giving ordinary people new powers, but will allow certain "authorised bodies" (probably collecting societies) to licence orphan works, collect the money, and save it until a copyright owner comes forward.
It seems the photographers are complaining that this is all about big US companies (iirc Google), but my impression is that it was museums and archives originally behind this, but then the collecting societies got involved, so they'll end up being the only real winners (as they may get to keep all those licence fees).
Personally, the orphan works provisions don't worry me that much - not as much as the extended collective licensing (new section 116B), which may allow certain existing collecting societies to licence and collect on *any* works (orphan or not) provided they are within the normal scope of the collecting society. This would be opt-out, but with no requirements that a reasonable royalty rate be gathered, or that any of the money has to be paid to the actual copyright owner if they complain.
Re: Definitions
It should pretty much scupper any claim for damages, though, unless there were some sort of statutory level for them - but only a crazy country would have something like that...
Re: Did you read this?
You don't "copyright" something; copyright is automatic - you own the copyright in it. As for your suggestion that money is owed;
(a) by posting the comment, you gave an implied, worldwide, royalty-free licence to anyone to copy it for their own personal use, connected with browsing this site (possibly a broad one, that would have to be argued before a court);
(b) additionally or alternatively, viewing the comment is not an infringement in the copyright as it falls within the exceptions of fair dealing for criticism and review, and/or private study;
(c) additionally or alternatively, the comment lacks sufficient originality to be protected as a literary work, and thus is not covered by copyright,
(d) finally, even if a claim for copyright infringement were to be successful, any damages awarded (based either on a "reasonable royalty rate" or "actual loss suffered") would be negligible, and below the de minimis threshold.
So there...
[Also, please be aware that dishonestly making a false representation ("you owe me money") intending to make a profit by it (or cause a loss) is a criminal offence in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, under s2 Fraud Act 2006.]
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And it was the collecting society for UK newspapers behind this (the kind of people who want Google to pay them for indexing their websites etc.).
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The difference is that the "arrogant" thing is English law thing (and may be overturned by the English court of appeal anyway), whereas this case turns on a point of EU law. As such, the authority for ruling on it is the CJEU. In fact, if there is an unclear point of EU law in a ruling, the highest appeal court *has* to refer it to them. Although the CJEU only answers the questions referred to it, rather than making a ruling on the underlying case.
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Which is presumably why this patent troll has been requiring confidentiality agreements before disclosing any material information (as have similar trolls). By keeping it quiet they make it much harder to gain publicity and band together to fight them off.
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It doesn't make much sense. The main argument is that broadcasters provide a service (compiling, producing and distributing their broadcast) and are sometimes paid for doing so by those receiving the service. If there is no broadcast copyright then anyone who received the service would be free to re-broadcast it (subject to any contract) for free.
So cable and satellite broadcasters not wanting to lose their little monopolies; in Europe (where this originated, I think), it's mainly over sports events etc., where broadcasters make significant sums (and pay out significant amounts) for exclusive broadcast rights, which become almost worthless when there's no broadcast copyright.
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If it works like the existing broadcast copyrights, you would get rights over the *broadcast*, which meant that if someone then re-broadcast your broadcast, they'd have infringed your copyright.
You wouldn't get any rights over the movie itself. The copyright in that would remain with the original copyright owner.
Broadcast Treaty already exists
As mentioned in the IP Watch article, there already is a Broadcast copyright - it's in Article 13 of the 1961 Rome Convention. Some 91 countries already have this right, but it seems the US never signed up.
By my reading, this "updated" treaty is wanted (a) to get the US on board, and (b) because the Rome Convention only applies to "wireless" broadcasts (although the Treaty, as usual, sets a minimum standard and some countries, including the UK, have used a broader definition).
Broadcast copyright has been under scrutiny in the UK and EU recently with a few high-profile cases, some involving the streaming of sports events - where there is no underlying copyright, so a broadcast right is "needed" to prevent "evil pirate sites" from streaming the broadcasts for free online, and some involving sites (mainly one called "TVChatchUp") which re-transmit normal terrestrial broadcasts on the Internet.
Whether or not this right (or the rest of copyright) is needed is another matter, though...
Legal threat "makes sense"
While the situation is rather silly, having read the actual legal threat is seems perfectly accurate (within UK law).
They start by pointing out that the photos were obtained in breach of the Computer Misuse Act, which is probably true. Under the generic unauthorised access offence there isn't really any requirement that the stuff be password protected etc., merely that it is accessed, without authorisation. So, as with the other cases mentioned above, there's a reasonable chance whoever obtained them committed a crime in doing so, and so they are being reported to the police. The law may be a bit silly, but the legal threat makes sense.
While Nutsville may not be committing any crimes (although I'm not sure), the police could be informed of their involvement as part of the above investigation, so nothing wrong there.
The stuff about injunctive relief in the High Court is a separate thing; that's about getting the content removed from the website (possibly through misuse of private information). Yes, the lawyers should have specified what their cause of action would have been, but it isn't rare for a situation to have both civil and criminal elements.
Treating it as a joke and making fun of the solicitors may be popular, but could come back to hurt them later.
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From what I've seen of music industry actions elsewhere, Veoh is their ideal target. They want to get a favourable ruling on this point of law, so will throw everything they can at it - and Veoh no longer exists which (I assume) means that it won't be fighting back.
If they try to go after anyone else, they run the risk that that person will fight back, in which case (a) they could make things worse if they lose badly (i.e. they could legitimise an "evil pirate site"), (b) it will be more expensive, and (c) the court might have to hear the other side's arguments.
Details of the EDM
For anyone interested, the full text of the EDM, along with the two signatories, can be found here (emphasis added):
So just the usual grandstanding. I'm not even sure if that is Twitter's policy, and whether or not they do co-operate when required to by law - there are, of course, criminal offences with not aiding the police where required and impeding their progress etc., but I don't know how broad they are.(untitled comment)
I'm perfectly happy to agree not to keep spouting out rhetorical nonsense focused on eliciting emotional reactions if they will do so as well. I have a feeling I know which one of us will be hit harder...
Re: Re: Re:
No... because most of us don't watch films (or read film scripts) to find out what happens. We watch them for the experience as a whole. Thus even a spoiler isn't the only bit with "value" in it.
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With the ESB quote, you probably don't have enough as there are other major parts the script - while that is the most famous (if usually mis-quoted) line, it isn't the only part that matters. But the idea is that if you copy the bit that has the "value", you are copying a substantial part (or something like that).
But then you have the various limitation and exceptions.
The Meltwater case is an interesting one - it started in the UK a few years ago and led to a really crazy ruling (that merely receiving an email was a prima facie infringement of copyright). The UK Supreme Court heard the case last month, but it doesn't look like they'll have a judgment finished before the Easter break.