The Mandelbear's Musings

This wonderful little video came in by way of Google+ this morning, and I figured I'd share it: Copying Is Not Theft - YouTube

It comes from QuestionCopyright.org | A Clearinghouse For New Ideas About Copyright. Here's another: Credit is Due (The Attribution Song) | QuestionCopyright.org. Just because copying isn't theft, it doesn't mean that it isn't sometimes wrong. Credit is always due, and sometimes payment is, too. (Though I personally believe that the term of a copyright should be exactly the same as that of a patent, namely 20 years.)

And All Creative Work Is Derivative isn't really a song, but it's a brilliant piece of choreography. Using statues.

You can find the whole collection of ""Minute Memes" here at QuestionCopyright.org.

As many have, I've been eager to understand the terms of the settlement in the AAP/Authors Guild v. Google case (Google Summary, Actual Settlement). After spending some time studying it, here are my thoughts. (4TR: I was not part of any of these settlement negotiations so all this was news to me).

IMHO, this is a good deal that could be the basis for something really fantastic. The Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers have settled for terms that will assure greater access to these materials than would have been the case had Google prevailed. Under the agreement, 20% of any work not opting out will be available freely; full access can be purchased for a fee. That secures more access for this class of out-of-print but presumptively-under-copyright works than Google was initially proposing. And as this constitutes up to 75% of the books in the libraries to be scanned, that is hugely important and good. That's good news for Google, and the AAP/Authors Guild, and the public. (My favorable views about the AAP at least are not, of course, reciprocated.)

It is also good news that the settlement does not presume to answer the question about what "fair use" would have allowed. The AAP/AG are clear that they still don't agree with Google's views about "fair use." But this agreement gives the public (and authors) more than what "fair use" would have permitted. That leaves "fair use" as it is, and gives the spread of knowledge more that it would have had.

The ongoing ridiculous situation brewing between bloggers and the Associated Press has now taken a turn towards the enjoyably hilarious. We had already mentioned the fact that, despite the AP's complaints that bloggers quoting less than 100 words were violating fair use, the AP had a long history of quoting more than 100 words from bloggers -- and not even linking back to the original blog. Now, in a bit of ultimate irony, the AP's own article about this brouhaha quoted (without linking) twenty-two words from TechCrunch. That's 18 words more than the supposed four word "limit" the AP has suggested. With an ironic chance that wide, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington couldn't resist, and asked his lawyer to send a DMCA takedown notice to the Associated Press, along with a bill for $12.50 (directly off the AP's own pricing schedule). He admits that it's ridiculous, but that's what his actions are designed to present. By law, the AP should be required to takedown the content before filing a response -- though, since it's filing the response to itself, then perhaps it won't need to takedown the content. Either way, this helps illustrate the insanity of the entire situation.

A couple of days ago, one of my CD customers asked me to confirm that it was OK for him to have put one of my tracks on a mix CD that he'd sent to 20 friends for Christmas. I assured him that it was perfectly OK, and told him, "fair use is free advertising." And besides, it's not even fair use, but explicitly authorized under the Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license , extracts of which are actually printed inside the jewel case.

It has come to my attention that the RIAA is now trying to claim that ripping songs from a CD and putting them on your hard drive is "unauthorized copying" and strongly imply that it's illegal. Here's another article. filkertom mentions it in this post -- he apparently got a similar query in email from a fan. He replied, in part,

I think the RIAA is full of shit on this. It's yet another avenue they're trying to close, another way they're treating customers like criminals.

My position is very simple: If you got the music from me (or an authorized dealer, e.g., Bill & Gretchen, Juanita, CD Baby, one of the digital distro sites that carry a few albums) legally, for your own use, you can do what you want.

I ask that you do not copy them and pass 'em around to people [...]. I insist that you do not copy them and sell them to people. I do not allow you to pass off my work as yours, or to sample it without permission for profit.

I go a little farther, because 20 friends with a copy of High Barratry on a mix CD are 20 more people who have my name and can easily figure out where they can buy my CD.

It's particularly appropriate that the song in question is about SCO, another company that had the brilliant idea of suing their customers when their business model started failing because of competition from free goods on the Internet. They're currently in Chapter 11, and their stock is now worth about a dime a share, on a good day. It's an open question whether they'll make it to 2009.

Computerworld's IT Blogwatch posting yesterday points to a prediction that the RIAA won't make it to 2009, either. BoingBoing points out that, like SCO (which used to be a Linux distributer called Caldera), the RIAA has changed its tune about the legality of fair-use copies. In any case, SCO and the RIAA appear to be headed down the same road, in matching handbaskets.

I have an idea: let's help. If you ever get a letter from the RIAA claiming that making personal copies of my CD, Coffee, Computers, and Song, is "unauthorized" or "illegal", send me a copy. Because I would just love an excuse to sue their ass for product disparagement, slander of title, unfair business practices, barratry, and anything else a clever lawyer can cook up.

Remember last week how the MPAA was pushing a ridiculous toolkit on universities that was officially supposed to help universities track network usage, but also had the side-effect of potentially exposing all sorts of private info? Well, some folks noticed that the toolkit was built on open source technologies, such as Ubuntu Linux, though the MPAA (irony alert) didn't appear to be abiding by the GPL license associated with the software. It didn't take long for an Ubuntu developer to send a takedown notice, forcing the university to remove the toolkit. The developer contacted the MPAA concerning the violations, and found that the group ignored him (shocking, I know, for a group that claims it's such a huge supporter of intellectual property rights). So, he was forced to go to the ISP hosting the content, which finally resulted in the MPAA pulling the software down.

Now, I've heard from a few stockholders saying, "What? Sharing? Free Software? What's up with that! Go make some money!" And so I thought I'd put down, once and for all, why we're committed to sharing, to open source, open standards, and eradicating the digital divide. Ready?

Because we're going to make more money.

How? It's trivially simple. Why do carriers give handsets away for free? Because they make money on the subscription necessary to receive the handset. Why do banks give away free checking, or free credit cards? Because they acquire new customers. Why do Google and Yahoo! give away free search? Because there's a fortune in the end result.

So why on earth would we give our OS away for free?

Because it'll ensure those without the economic wherewithal to pay for it will still consider using it. Companies that suffered from piracy a decade ago now know the lesson well - piracy is a good thing so long as the pirates are folks who could never afford your products. So stop calling them pirates, call them users. Free software has no pirates. As I've said forever, there's value in volume, even if you're not paid for it.

Do I worry about enterprises or corporate customers taking OpenSolaris and not acquiring a subscription to someone's (hopefully our) service contract? No, not in the least. Do you really think a hospital, or an air traffic control authority or a Minister from an African nation would run their institution on unsupported software? No. No way.

Are we guaranteed to get that business? Nope. But we are guaranteed the opportunity will be greater than if we kept Solaris locked up. And I'd rather get 20% of a business that's planetary in scope, than 100% of a business with 17 customers. Like I said, there's value in volume. (And I haven't even touched upon the impact of open sourcing on innovation.)

Musopen is a community driven, online music repository started by a music and economics college student named Aaron Dunn.

This site takes music that is in the public domain, meaning a work that belongs to the community, and has it recorded by individuals and college/community orchestras throughout the United States and stored online so it can be accessed for free through this website. This would do the following:

1. Provide free unlimited access to music in the public domain to anyone with internet access.

2. Allow obscure works, for example some Baroque music, to be recorded for the first time that would otherwise not be recorded because of its small profit potential.

3. Community – being a community driven project, this can create an online music community, perhaps leading to future cooperative projects.

4. Add usefulness to all the untapped talent in our nation’s orchestras. Think of about how many college orchestras perform to diminishing numbers of audiences. Now, every performance adds to the online repertoire, adding another reason to perform and perform well.
5. Create the first organization devoted to giving the public access to musical works which belong to them.

This project exists so that educational institutions and the general public can have free, unlimited access to all kinds of music that have expired copyrights. If there is music that by law now belongs to the general public, let's make sure that it is available to the public.

But you've kind of got to hand it to the world's richest man -- someone known for his fine-tipped views on intellectual property and piracy -- admitting to, then backing out of, then copping to watching pirated video content. Peep this tidbit from Mr. Gates to Mossberg and Kara Swisher in a recent WSJ interview:

Mossberg: Talk about YouTube. What do you think about that? Why aren't you doing something like that?
Gates: If we did YouTube, we'd be in a lot of trouble. First of all, people would say, "How do you make money?" Second, they'd say, what about all that copyright violation taking place up there. It's a neat site. I saw a bunch of old Harlem Globetrotters movies up there the other night, it's great.
Swisher: You watch physics lectures and Harlem Globetrotters?
Gates: This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.
Swisher: But those were stolen, correct?
Gates: Stolen's a strong word. It's copyrighted content that the owner wasn't paid for. So yes.

From Mother Jones we have this list of Intellectual Property Run Amok