The blog has been on hiatus since the holidays, but we plan to meet at the usual time this month (Tuesday, February 26 at 7:30 PM) at the Hong Kong (for directions, see the sidebar at the left).

Although the dinner meeting is supposed to be on the fourth Tuesday of each month, the parent organization copynight.org has selected the fifth Tuesday this month. I only found out about this late last night so I left the notice unchanged and went to the Hong Kong tonight in case anyone showed up.

Well, the Hong Kong was hosting a private party, so we would not have been able to meet there tonight anyway.

Anyhow, see you next Tuesday!

Cambridge CopyNight wishes all a festive holiday season.

There is no meeting this month.

PLoS Biology: When Is Open Access Not Open Access?

Since 2003, when PLoS Biology was launched, there has been a spectacular growth in “open-access” journals. The Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org/), hosted by Lund University Libraries, lists 2,816 open-access journals as this article goes to press (and probably more by the time you read this). Authors also have various “open-access” options within existing subscription journals offered by traditional publishers (e.g., Blackwell, Springer, Oxford University Press, and many others). In return for a fee to the publisher, an author's individual article is made freely available and (sometimes) deposited in PubMed Central (PMC). But, as open access grows in prominence, so too has confusion about what open access means, particularly with regard to unrestricted use of content—which true open access allows. This confusion is being promulgated by journal publishers at the expense of authors and funding agencies wanting to support open access.

Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor Pushes the Envelope Further on the Latest Saul Williams Album Release

Following in the footsteps of Radiohead's overwhelming successful release of "In Rainbows" through direct web distribution, Trent Reznor and Saul Williams are taking a similar approach with the release of "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!" Estimates range from $5-12 million in download revenue that Radiohead has earned so far from their on site distribution efforts. Despite those numbers there is still some skepticism as to how successful lesser known artists will be using similar self distribution methods. The success or failure of "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!" will be a major indicator of how the future of music distribution will play out.

Five Free Feature Films

A lot of people have asked us if BloodSpell is the first Creative Commons feature film, or the first Machinima feature film, or even the first feature film released for free on the Internet. Whilst we like being first as much as the next guy, actually quite a lot of lunatics actually not only make entire feature films for no money, but then release the bloody things on the Internet for free - and we're proud to be amongst them.

If it has DRM, you don't own it (part II):
If You Purchased MLB Game Downloads Before 2006, Your Discs/Files Are Now Useless; MLB Has Stolen Your $$$ And Claims "No Refunds"

Background: Beginning in 2003, MLB offered fans the chance to download full games to their computer at $3.95 each. When you attempted to open the media file -- either on your hard drive or after it was burned to a CD -- it connected with a MLB.com webpage to obtain a license. Once the license had been verified, the game would play.

At some point during 2006, MLB deleted that essential webpage. Since then, none of the videos that fans purchased will play.

(Warning, angry language appears in the blog posts.)

From Ars Technica: Prince to fan sites: No pictures, no artwork, no album covers 4 U

Prince's lawyers have requested that three fan sites remove the offending artwork, images, and even their "own photographs of their Prince-inspired tattoos," according a to a joint statement from the site operators. Houseofquake.com, princefans.com, and prince.org have banded together to fight the cease-and-desist notices and have launched princefansunited.com to make their case to the world.

Ars Technica: Overly-broad copyright law has made USA a "nation of infringers"

How many copyright violations does an average user commit in a single day? John Tehranian, a law professor at the University of Utah, calculates in a new paper that he rings up $12.45 million in liability over the course of an average day. The gap between what the law allows and what social norms permit is so great now that "we are, technically speaking, a nation of infringers."

Peer-to-peer filesharing continues to be in the news

From numerous sources:

• TechCrunch: Attributor Launches Service to Track Copyright Infringement Across the Web


• Ars Technica: AT&T takes another step towards filtered network with investment in Vobile


• Ars Technica: Comcast hit with class-action lawsuit over traffic blocking


• last100: Vuze petitions FCC to restrict Internet traffic throttling by ISPs


• TorrentFreak: The War Against BitTorrent: Attack of the ISPs


• TorrentFreak: MediaDefender Emails Disprove MPAA Claims


• p2pnet.net: Jammie Thomas: her story in her own words


• p2pnet.net: The Gnu and the RIAA’s worst nightmare

From Ars Technica: Infringus maximus! Rowling gets injunction against Harry Potter Lexicon

J.K. Rowling is suing the publisher of the Harry Potter Lexicon, which began life as a popular Potter blog, and wants a court to rule that she has the sole right to profit from the "descriptions, character details, and plot points" of the Potter tales. Now, a federal judge has issued an injunction against RDR Books to prevent them from completing the typesetting, selling the books, or even marketing it on Amazon.com.

Congress is about to vote on a bill mandating open access to research funded by the National institutes of Health.

Gigi Sohn speaks at the Boston University College of Communication about Six Steps to Digital Copyright Sanity: Reforming a Pre-VCR Law for a YouTube World.

My premise is simple: copyright law has become out of touch with our technological reality to the detriment of creators and the public. Pre-VCR copyright policies must be transformed to embrace our new user generated culture. Today, I will give you my perspective on the current creative marketplace, and prescribe six policy changes to allow it to flourish.

Back in February, Jonathan Lethem wrote a terrific article for Harper's Magazine The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism From the article, speaking about researching a quotation from John Dunne:

My Internet search was initially no more successful than my library search. I had thought that summoning books from the vasty deep was a matter of a few keystrokes, but when I visited the website of the Yale library, I found that most of its books don't yet exist as computer text. As a last-ditch effort I searched the seemingly more obscure phrase “every chapter must be so translated.” The passage I wanted finally came to me, as it turns out, not as part of a scholarly library collection but simply because someone who loves Donne had posted it on his homepage. The lines I sought were from Meditation 17 in "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions", which happens to be the most famous thing Donne ever wrote, containing as it does the line “never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” My search had led me from a movie to a book to a play to a website and back to a book. Then again, those words may be as famous as they are only because Hemingway lifted them for his book title.

I cannot recommend this article highly enough.

VIACOM wants an industry wide Internet filter for copyrighted material:

PC World: Viacom CEO Dismisses Google Antipiracy Plan

Viacom Inc.'s president and CEO took a swipe at Google Inc.'s announcement earlier this week of plans to launch a video-blocking tool aimed at allowing content owners to intercept copyrighted clips as they are uploaded to Google's video site YouTube.

Viacom's Philippe Dauman said at the Web 2.0 Summit here that instead of a proprietary system to block content that may infringe on copyright, there needs to be an industry standard for that type of effort.

The Home Video Prince Doesn't Want You to See

A bouncing YouTube baby has be-bopped his way right into the legal cross-hairs of the pop star Prince, sparking a lawsuit that could test the boundaries of U.S. copyright law.

Holden Lenz, 18 months old, is the pajama-clad star of a 29-second home movie shot by his mother in the family's rural Pennsylvania kitchen and posted last February on the popular video site YouTube.

A three minute news report goes into depth about the issue. (Click on the player icon in the article.)

Ironically, Prince is also on the other side of this issue: Guardian Unlimited: Music industry attacks Sunday newspaper's free Prince CD

The eagerly awaited new album by Prince is being launched as a free CD with a national Sunday newspaper in a move that has drawn widespread criticism from music retailers.

This promotional move has yielded great benefit for Prince in his new tour: LONDON GOES CRAZY FOR PRINCE

London really has gone crazy for Prince as demand for the pop superstar's 21 dates in the capital has set new records.

Tickets to the first seven Prince shows at the O2 Arena sold out in minutes, leading the promoters to immediately add an additional eight nights, breaking the record 14-night residency put on at one arena by Pink Floyd.

The ticket price for the concert includes Prince's latest album on CD.

New York Times: Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web

Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections.

The Open Content Alliance offers an alternative: Building a digital archive of global content for universal access

Announcing the Open Content Alliance

From time to time we've invited guest bloggers to write on the Yahoo! Search blog. Today we welcome Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. We asked Brewster if he'd like to introduce the Open Content Alliance.

Boston Library Consortium Partners with Open Content Alliance to Provide Public Access to Digitized Books

Boston, MA - The Boston Library Consortium, Inc. (BLC) announced today that it will partner with the Open Content Alliance to build a freely accessible library of digital materials from all 19 member institutions. The BLC is the first large-scale consortium to embark on such a self-funded digitization project with the Open Content Alliance. The BLC's digitization efforts will be based in a new scanning center, the Northeast Regional Scanning Center, unveiled today at the Boston Public Library.

The issue of Network Neutrality has suffered from confusing arguments in part due to incompatible definitions of what neutrality is. Some people point to the original philosophy of the Internet as being purely a mechanism for connecting end points (for example, your computer as one endpoint of a connection and Google as the other). Others see neutrality as freedom from regulation.

Those in this second camp are accused by the others of wanting to control what you the end-user can see on the Internet, by giving preferential treatment to sites which pay them extra fees for access to their audience (that's you, their customers). They argue that Google for example should have to pay extra to get access to you, even though Google is already paying for their own access to the net. And also possibly by preventing access entirely to those who don't pay (because perhaps they can't afford to). When accused they want an example where this has happened and perhaps until now it hasn't.

Nicole sends in a link to Consumer groups want Comcast fined for thwarting the Bible

A number of consumer groups are petitioning the FCC to fine Comcast $195,000 for every customer affected by their BitTorrent-throttling practices.

Comcast has been denying accusations that they are systematically interfering with BitTorrent connections until recently, when the Associated Press uncovered evidence to the contrary, which was confirmed independently by the EFF):

TorrentFreak: Comcast Throttles BitTorrent Traffic, Seeding Impossible

C|NET: Comcast denies monkeying with BitTorrent traffic

C|NET: Is Comcast's BitTorrent filtering violating the law?

Ars Technica: Evidence mounts that Comcast is targeting BitTorrent traffic

AP Tests Comcast's File-Sharing Filter

EFF: Comcast is also Jamming Gnutella (and Lotus Notes?)

The next meeting of Cambridge/Boston CopyNight will be at 7:30 PM on Tuesday, November 27, 2007.

We meet at the Hong Kong restaurant in Harvard Square (see "Meeting Place" for details).

The Boston Public Library is screening the 14 part series "Eyes on the Prize", a documentary about the American civil rights movement (thanks for the link, Nicole):
Mondays, November 5, 2007 through January 7, 2008 at 6 p.m.

Eyes on the Prize is a fourteen-part documentary series about the American Civil Rights Movement that was created and produced by the Boston-based documentary filmmaker, Henry Hampton (1940-1998) of Blackside, Inc. Hampton was a major figure in Boston, serving on the boards of the Children’s Defense Fund and Boston’s Museum of African American History as Chairman. Hampton founded Blackside, Inc. in 1968 to produce independent film and television productions including Malcolm X, The Great Depression, and I’ll Make Me a World. Eyes on the Prize is his most acclaimed production, winning a Peabody Award and Emmy for Writing as well as being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary and an Emmy in Editing. The series uses extensive archival footage to present an in-depth account of the most important American social justice movement of the 20th century.

The particular significance of this to copyright is that the series will probably never be available on DVD due to the expense of copyright clearance.

Vonage Targeted by AT&T Patent Suit

Internet telephone company Vonage Holdings Corp. disclosed Friday that it's the target of yet another patent lawsuit from a telephone company, in this case AT&T Inc. That makes AT&T the third major phone company to sue Vonage, which until recently was a leader in selling phone service that rides the customer's broadband connection.

Can a band plagiarize itself?

Music Fan Drops Dime on Nickelback Song Similarity

Can a band plagiarize itself? One listener in Canada has implied as much by taking two songs by the band Nickelback and superimposing them over one another to emphasize the similarity.

Mark Twain's plans to compete with copyright "pirates" (in 1906)

Mark Twain was a brilliant author, philosopher, and humorist, but he was also a man made quite nervous by copyright. Copyright didn't bother him in principle, of course. It benefited him greatly as one of the leading writers of his day. What bothered him about copyright was the fact that it would eventually expire, leaving his heirs without a way to make an easy buck. Twain didn't want perpetual copyright, only something that would cover his children's lives. He noted on more than one occasion that the grandkids should fend for themselves, but for Twain and his daughters, he sought to combat "the pirates."

A recent decision by US Court of Appeals goes against business method patents: Court Hits Patent Holders

The decision, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, suggests that business-method patents will now be considered invalid unless the invention has a practical application and can be linked to a particular technology, such as a computer. The court said that "mental processes -- or processes of human thinking -- standing alone aren't patentable even if they have practical application."

In related news: Amazon One-click patent rejected by Patent Office

The Royal Canadian Mint is demanding payment for the use of the term "one cent" in a promotional campaign. The situation is complex, so read on: Success of Toronto's "One Cent of the GST NOW!" education campaign brings request for payment from the federal government

The Royal Canadian Mint, a corporation of the federal government, has now demanded that the City of Toronto pay $47,680 for the public education campaign. Included in this amount is a request for $10,000 for the use of the words "one cent" in the campaign website address (www.onecentnow.ca) and the campaign email address (onecentnow@toronto.ca), and an additional $10,000 for the use of the words "one cent" in the campaign phone number (416-ONE CENT). The remaining $27,680 has been assessed against the City for the use of the image of the Canadian penny in printed materials such as pins and posters. (The Mint has come to this amount by taking the total number of materials printed divided by the approximate population of Toronto, and then using a percentage of that number to arrive at a dollar figure.)

IBM withdraws patent claim Bob Sutor's Open Blog

Here’s why we are withdrawing it — IBM adopted a new policy a year ago to sharply reduce business method patent filings and instead stress significant technical content in its patents.

The dispute over alleged patent infringement by Linux continues:

Linux group calls Microsoft's bluff

The head of the Open Invention Network (OIN) has dismissed Microsoft's claims that Linux violates over 200 of its patents.

OIN chief executive Jerry Rosenthal said that Microsoft's assertions are simply an attempt to undermine the open source movement.

Rosenthal added that it is time for Microsoft to reveal the patents that are supposedly being infringed, or to drop the claims.

Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth, speaking about Steve Ballmer

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has once more claimed that Linux and open source violates Microsoft's intellectual property and patents. Canonical's CEO Mark Shuttleworth thinks Ballmer has it all wrong.

Ballmer made his claims about Linux patent liability back in November 2004, and his claims were disputed at the time:Microsoft reignites its war on Linux
Here is what Ballmer actually said:

Number two, on licensing costs I would say two things. First of all, I don't know that it's clear to anybody what the licensing costs are for open source. Today, people say, well, isn't it just free, but we don't know in the long run. Open source software does not today respect the intellectual property rights of any intellectual property holder. There was a report out this summer by an open source group that highlighted that Linux violates over 228 patents. Some day, for all countries that are entering WTO (World Trade Organization), somebody will come and look for money to pay for the patent rights for that intellectual property. So the licensing costs are less clear than people think today.

This casts aspersion upon Linux without providing any evidence and by itself might be dismissed as FUD except that in May 2007, the charge was repeated by Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith: Microsoft takes on the free world (Fortune magazine)

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez sat down with Fortune recently to map out their strategy for getting FOSS users to pay royalties. Revealing the precise figure for the first time, they state that FOSS infringes on no fewer than 235 Microsoft patents.

Can posting links be charged as "contributory copyright infringement"?

Major Pirate Website Shut Down

One of the world's most-used pirate film websites has been closed after providing links to illegal versions of major Hollywood hits and TV shows.

The first closure of a major UK-based pirate site was also accompanied by raids and an arrest, the anti-piracy group Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) said today.

A 26-year-old man from Cheltenham was arrested on Thursday in connection with offences relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the internet, Fact said.

Since the site is now down, it is impossible to say what they were doing. One allegation is that they embedded material in their Web pages which could give the viewer the idea that the content was actually posted on www.tv-links.co.uk rather than being linked to.

The BBC continues to wallow in the tarpit of DRM:

BBC U-turn: Full iPlayer service may never be available to Mac and Linux Users

Although the BBC has said it will offer streaming services for Mac and Linux, this does not provide an equivalent experience to the service provided for Window users of iPlayer. Because of DRM, the BBC is caught in a fundamental contradiction. In June 2007, Ashley Highfield, director of Future Media and Technology at the BBC, said:

“I am fundamentally committed to universality, to getting the BBC iPlayer to everyone in the UK who pays their licence fee.”

but now in October he says:

“We need to look long and hard at whether we build a download service for Mac and Linux. It comes down to cost per person and reach at the end of the day.”

This article doesn't discuss copyrights, but provides some background about "electronic paper", one of the technologies which figures in the eventual success of e-books:

The Future of Electronic Paper

The RIAA continues to target university students for file sharing:

George Washington Univ. students next to feel RIAA's wrath (thanks for the link, Nicole).

What is interesting about this case is the procedure the Judge has implemented:

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (best known for her role in the Microsoft antitrust trial) granted the RIAA's request to serve the university with an immediate subpoena.

She required that George Washington University to tell its students--or faculty or staff if they're the ones behind the IP addresses in question--about the existence of the subpoenas in five business days.

She also gave the school and any of the John Does 25 days to respond with a legal motion opposing the subpoena. The RIAA had suggested only 15 days.

Radiohead was in the news earlier this month because they have released an electronic version of their new album "In Rainbows" asking for people who download it to pay what they think it's worth: Review in Rolling Stone The album can also be purchased as a boxed set with two CDs and a vinyl disc.

Other groups are following Radiohead's lead (thanks for the link, Nicole):

Let Their Music Go Free

And there is other related news:

iTunes DRM-free tracks drop in price back to 99 cents

Led Zeppelin to Make its Songs Available Digitally

Nine Inch Nails Totally Free Agent

Today, October 15, is Blog Action Day

On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.

While copyright may seem at first not to be an issue relating to the environment, consider this: every year the book publishing industry consumes an enormous number of trees to produce books (see the Green Press Initiative Web site). While recycling may go a long way to reduce this, think of the barriers presented by current copyright practice, including Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and a plethora of incompatible formats, impeding the acceptance of electronic books as an alternative to paper. Then imagine a world of the future in which these barriers are greatly reduced.

Genetic Algorithm Produces Non-Patented Design

Perhaps the most cunning use of an evolutionary algorithm, though, is by Dr Koza himself. His team at Stanford developed a Wi-Fi antenna for a client who did not want to pay a patent-licence fee to Cisco Systems. The team fed the algorithm as much data as they could from the Cisco patent and told the software to design around it. It succeeded in doing so. The result is a design that does not infringe Cisco’s patent—and is more efficient to boot. A century and a half after Darwin suggested natural selection as the mechanism of evolution, engineers have proved him right once again.

Embrace digital or die, EMI told

Guy Hands, the financier whose private equity group, Terra Firma, bought EMI in August, told staff in a confidential e-mail last week that the industry had been too slow to embrace the digital revolution. Hands' letter was in response to the decision by Radiohead, one of the biggest bands nurtured by EMI but now out of contract with the label, to release their latest album via the internet and at a price decided by fans.

More on the Radiohead album

Supporting a rock band used to be an act of rebellion. In the face of today's mounting music piracy, it has become an act of conscience. Radiohead, the contrarian giants of British rock, last week released their seventh album on an unsuspecting public with the challenge of paying as little or as much as they chose. In Rainbows is available on the internet only, and the only compulsory charge is a 45p credit card handling fee.

Don't Play That Radio at Work

A car repair firm has been taken to court accused of infringing musical copyright because its employees listen to radios at work. The action against the Kwik-Fit Group has been brought by the Performing Rights Society which collects royalties for songwriters and performers.

Target has lost a trademark infringement case in the UK. Thanks for the link, Nicole.

Target, the US discount retailer, will face restrictions on using its distinctive red and white bulls-eye trademark in the UK - and potentially the rest of Europe pending other hearings - after the US retail chain lost its four-year battle to wrest ownership of the logo from Music Choice, a British-based digital music provider.

Don't Post This Cease-and-Desist Letter, or Else

Greg Beck writes "In an apparent attempt to avoid the Streisand Effect, lawyers sending threat letters sometimes claim that the recipient would violate the firm's copyright by posting it online. This post is about Public Citizen's response to one dumb threat letter and its decision to post the letter online despite the copyright claim."

Vonage has settled a patent suit filed against it by Sprint Nextel:

Internet phone company Vonage Holdings Corp. took a step back from the brink Monday, saying it has settled for $80 million a patent suit filed by Sprint Nextel Corp.

Vonage still is defending a patent case filed by Verizon.

The Supreme Court will hear another case having patent implications.

Intel licensed a set of patents from South Korean firm LG, then used some of the licensed patents to create parts of the chipset technology it sold to Taiwanese computer makers like Quanta. LG then sued the computer makers in a US court, claiming that the patent license to Intel specifically did not extend to combining Intel parts with non-Intel parts, and that the computer makers in question each needed to obtain licenses from LG. The Supreme Court has now agreed to take up the issue, which could help to answer the question of how many times a patent holder can cash in as products move through the supply chain.

Can you copyright yoga?

Suketu Mehta writes in the New York Times

The United States government has issued 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories and 2,315 yoga trademarks. There’s big money in those pretzel twists and contortions — $3 billion a year in America alone.

It’s a mystery to most Indians that anybody can make that much money from the teaching of a knowledge that is not supposed to be bought or sold like sausages. Should an Indian, in retaliation, patent the Heimlich maneuver, so that he can collect every time a waiter saves a customer from choking on a fishbone?

The Indian government is not laughing. It has set up a task force that is cataloging traditional knowledge, including ayurvedic remedies and hundreds of yoga poses, to protect them from being pirated and copyrighted by foreign hucksters. The data will be translated from ancient Sanskrit and Tamil texts, stored digitally and available in five international languages, so that patent offices in other countries can see that yoga didn’t originate in a San Francisco commune.

This dovetails with recent stories we have linked to in this blog about "intellectual property" issues in the restaurant industry, the fashion industry, and among stage magicians.

The RIAA won a $222,000 judgement in the file sharing case Capitol vs. Thomas.

Ars Technica summarizes the case with followup reporting:

Judge bars testimony from Capitol Records president

Debate over "making available" jury instruction

Jury finds Thomas liable for infringement

Thomas will appeal

Especially contentious was the issue of what constitutes copyright infringement in a file sharing case: is it enough to make the files available (in the sense that they are indexed for searches by other people) or must the plaintiff show evidence that the files were actually transfered to others? There have been several cases recently where judges have ruled differently on this issue. Reportedly the appeal will focus on this.

Other links:

Commentary from the EFF

Commentary from a writer who cannot afford to defend his copyrights the way the RIAA does.

Commentary by Declan McCullough.

Interview with Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA)

Commentary with lots of links to additional material.

The next meeting of Cambridge/Boston CopyNight will be at 7:30 PM on Tuesday, October 23, 2007.

We meet at the Hong Kong restaurant in Harvard Square (see "Meeting Place" for details).

A group of 20 inventors urges Congress not to pass a bill that would reform the way the U.S. Patent system works.

About 20 inventors and U.S. company executives, visiting Washington, D.C., encouraged Congress to defeat the Patent Reform Act, a version of which passed the House of Representatives earlier this month. The Senate has not yet voted on its version of the bill.

First GPL lawsuit in the U.S. settles out of court

Monsoon Multimedia admitted today that it had violated the GPLv2 (GNU General Public License version 2), and said it will release its modified BusyBox code in full compliance with the license.

What is unusual about this case is that it actually went to a court. Nearly all GPL complaints are resolved without an actual court appearance.

There have been lively discussions this past week on the Harvard Free Culture mailing list about an interesting Creative Commons case where a woman's photo was used in an advertising campiagn without anyone getting a model release (subject "CC Licensing Issue"; see also an extensive discussion on Flickr.) and also one on whether the Harvard Coop can prevent a student from copying ISBN numbers of books for the purpose of comparing prices (multiple threads, subject "This Coop Thing").

RIAA ordered to pay attorneys' fees.

Nicole sent in another link to this story about Atlantic v. Andersen in which the RIAA has been ordered to pay Tanya Andersen's attorneys' fees. The RIAA accused Andersen in January 2005 of copyright violations and dismissed their complaint two and a half years later without ever producing any evidence of Andersen's alleged wrongdoing.

Lance Armstrong Foundation sues Oklahoma pet collar company

Nicole sent in a link to a story about a trademark dispute between the Lance Armstrong Foundation and Animal Charity Collar Group Inc., a manufacturer of pet collars. The Armstrong Foundations sells colored wrist bands under the name LiveStrong as part of its program for cancer research and help for survivors of cancer. The pet collar company sells collars for dogs and cats under the names BarkStrong and PurrStrong.

In a move which might have taken one or two industry pundits by surprise, SCO has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection from its creditors. This automatically puts on hold the trial by Novell for damages due to SCO violating copyrights held by Novell.

SCO, which is headquartered in Linden, Utah, was scheduled to appear in federal District Court in Salt Lake City Monday as a defendant in a trial to determine how much it has to pay Novell in licensing fees for violating Novell’s copyrights for Unix and UnixWare software. U.S. District Court Judge Dale Kimball, who was to preside over the trial, was the same judge who ruled Aug. 10 that Novell, not SCO, owned the copyrights.

In a related story, SCO CEO Darl McBride blames Linux for his company's woes. The mind boggles.

Filmmaker Christopher Knight has prevailed against Viacom by filing a counterclaim notice with YouTube:
VIACOM SITUATION UPDATE: YouTube has restored my clip

Knight goes on to say:

Very special thanks to Fred von Lohmann and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for their terrific assistance in this matter! Folks, I cannot begin to describe how impressed I have become with the Electronic Frontier Foundation because of this. Theirs has been the kind of service that is so rare to witness nowadays that when you do see it, it practically comes as a shock. There's no telling how much grief and headache that Fred and his crew have prevented not just for me, but for a lot of other people also. And if you find that you are capable of doing so, I would really like to suggest making a contribution to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This is one organization that really does merit a tremendous amount of respect for the work that it does.

The Recording Industry of America is in the news again. Judge Rudi M. Brewster dismissed the RIAA's case on the grounds that the plaintiff has failed to state a case upon which relief can be granted.

Last week the Computer and Communication Industry Association issued a report saying that more than 4.5 trillion dollars of annual revenue in the US economy is due to exceptions to copyright law, such as Fair Use:
Fair Use Economy Represents One-Sixth of U.S. GDP

The Fair Use exception to U.S. copyright law, as codified in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 states, “The fair use of a copyrighted work … is not an infringement of copyright.” Fair use permits a range of activities that are critical to many high technology businesses such as search engines and software developmers. As the study indicates, however, fair use and related exceptions to copyright are crucial to non-technology industries as well, such as insurance, legal services, and newspaper publishers. The dependence of industries outside the high-tech field illustrates the crucial need for balanced copyright law.

The study itself is available for download from the CCIA Web site.

One of our topics at last month's meeting was an article which argued that the fashion industry could not thrive in an arena where strong IP protection prevails. A recent paper by Jacob Loshin of the Yale Law School discusses How Magicians Protect Intellectual Property without Law

From the abstract on the Social Sciences Research Network:

Intellectual property scholars have begun to explore the curious dynamics of IP's negative spaces, areas in which IP law offers scant protection for innovators, but where innovation nevertheless seems to thrive. Such negative spaces pose a puzzle for the traditional theory of IP, which holds that IP law is necessary to create incentives for innovation.

This paper presents a study of one such negative space which has so far garnered some curiosity but little sustained attention - the world of performing magicians. This paper argues that idiosyncratic dynamics among magicians make traditional copyright, patent, and trade secret law ill-suited to protecting magicians' most valuable intellectual property. Yet, the paper further argues that the magic community has developed its own set of unique IP norms which effectively operate in law's absence. The paper details the structure of these informal norms that protect the creation, dissemination, and performance of magic tricks. The paper also discusses broader implications for IP theory, suggesting that a norm-based approach may offer a promising explanation for the puzzling persistence of some of IP's negative spaces.

Two and a half years ago, NTP won a 600 million dollar judgement against RIM, makers of the Blackberry communicator, over claims of patent violation. Last week they took aim at most of the wireless telecomm companies:
NTP Brings More Suits

This case is especially problematic because the US Patent and Trademark Office issued a preliminary ruling around the time of the RIM settlement that several of the patents were invalid.

Software Freedom Day is being celebrated by groups world wide this Saturday, September 15.

In Boston, the sponsors are the Free Software Foundation, BinaryFreedom, and Boston Free Culture. Come join us in downtown Boston for an afternoon of talks, activities, and outreach.

The Copyright Alliance returns the volley from the Computer and Communication Industry Association complaint to the FTC from last month:

Patrick Ross article

This misleading statement presents considerable irony, given the fact that CCIA is filing a complaint alleging deceptive language. Fair use, as CCIA must surely know, is not a "consumer right," but rather an affirmative defense. And this is an important difference.

Here is some commentary about the CCIA complaint.

The British goivernment has responded to a petition calling for the BBC to make its iPlayer work on platforms other than Microsoft Windows:

iPlayer e-petition response

In the case of the iPlayer, following the consultation, the Trust noted the strong public demand for the service to be available on a variety of operating systems. The BBC Trust made it a condition of approval for the BBC's on-demand services that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible. They will measure the BBC's progress on this every six months and publish the findings.

House passes patent overhaul bill

ITWorld reports on legislative action by the House

The House passed the Patent Reform Act by a vote of 225-175. The Senate has not yet acted on a similar piece of legislation.

However, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a statement on Thursday saying it opposes the bill. It said that the changes in assessment of damages would "introduce new complications and risks reducing incentives to innovate." The OMB objections raise the possibility that President George Bush could veto the legislation.

Filmmaker Christopher Knight posts in his blog:
Viacom hits me with copyright infringement for posting on YouTube a video that Viacom made by infringing on my own copyright!

It's a tangled story. From the blog:

So Viacom took a video that I had made for non-profit purposes and without trying to acquire my permission, used it in a for-profit broadcast. And then when I made a YouTube clip of what they did with my material, they charged me with copyright infringement and had YouTube pull the clip.

Prior to the September 2 vote by the ISO, I should have posted this link to other articles about OOXML:
An "OOXML is a bad idea" blog entry compendium

However, as things turned out, Microsoft lost its bid. In addition to allegations of ballot stuffing in the USA, Sweden invalidated its vote due to double voting by a committee member:
Sweden's SIS Declares OOXML Vote Invalid - Will Change Vote from Yes to Abstain - Updated

The US committeee INCITS voted in favor:
INCITS confirms: U.S. to vote for Open XML in ISO

The ISO official press release says:
Vote closes on draft ISO/IEC DIS 29500 standard

A ballot on whether to publish the draft standard ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML file formats, as an International Standard by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) has not achieved the required number of votes for approval.

Microsoft is now faced with the task of addressing numerous comments made during the procedures each ISO member followed in its internal balloting, in preparation for a Ballot Resolution Meeting to be held in February 2008. The decision of that meeting is final.