copy this blog

Several stories from the last few days have been fairly grim.

Reading Harry Potter before release date illegal illustrates a view that some content industries love- that you shouldn’t even be able to read something without the author’s permission. This story is from Canada, and I’m not familiar enough with Canadian law to determine whether that viewpoint is accurate or not, but I certainly don’t think it’s accurate in the US. Michael Geist has a few things to say about the situation (July 12-13) and its attacks on the freedom to read, freedom of expression, and personal property. In the US, there’s also the doctrine of first sale…

In Australia, a man has been found guilty of hyperlinking. Combine that with proposed amendments to Canadian law that would make search engine activity illegal and a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, and you’ve got a good picture of how law and policy can affect the Internet as we know it.

OK, there’s a good chance that you’re not familiar with White Wolf, a game publisher. They publish a few fairly popular RPGs and license their material for video games and such as well. Now they’ve reportedly made a pretty dumb decision, discussed on BoingBoing, related to- ta da, what makes this on-topic- LICENSING. They’re charging licensing fees in the forms of Camarilla membership (sort of a fan club) to people who are “infringing” on their work (this includes people who cover costs in a LARP or similar situations- and all the people involved in that game). This “license” also has new rules associated with the running of the game, including not allowing players under 18. The BoingBoing post links to their forum thread with these new requirements.

Now, White Wolf has done a couple of silly things before- their lawsuit against the producers of the Underworld movie was a bad idea for several reasons- but this truly takes the cake. I hope they don’t continue this behavior. I’d love to support them with purchasing their products on occasions- I enjoyed the Vampire: Bloodlines PC Game- but I can’t in good conscience support their ridiculousness. 😛

One of the best Grokster discussions is on SCOTUS.

It’s making the blog rounds now, that Grokster has been overturned 9-0. People are still and will be arguing whether or not the decision is a bad thing. Here’s a Copyfight link on the Grokster decision. Time to read the decision in its entirety in my copious spare time and update the 312 copyright module.
Edit: I said overturned- returned to the lower court is more accurate.

I’ve been slow in updating the blog recently- we’re buying a house! So I’ve been excited and busy. Also, things at work are getting very hectic. Quinn has been in overdrive as a result of the IMLS grant, but as a result we’ve got some great things coming up in the areas of digital preservation and conservation, more on that next month when we start setting up the digitization lab.

The UT Telecampus IOL presentation went well, I think. Three of us (Sam, Quinn, and I) were there live, and Kayla and Patrick came in over iChat (next time, perhaps, Skype). I only got to briefly address the privacy, records, and copyright issues that come with moving a course to the digital realm, because I had to spend some time addressing our encounters with student copying and plagiarism. I had a couple of questions on the subject after the presentation. Thursday I’m giving another very small local presentation on the subject- I hope to add something about how I looked at the developing electronic rules of evidence (one of the reasons I remembered to add the blog in the last entry) and the concepts of authenticity, reliability, and accuracy.

Added a new site to the blog list- Sound Evidence, a site about electronic discovery and similar issues. Definitely an important subject when considering the law and electronic resources, records, computer security, and so on.

The end of semester, a busy time.
A brief description of how we work on finding copying/plagiarism in INF 312
We’ll be presenting at a UT System conference in early June; stay tuned.

“… because the rules promulgated by the Flag Order regulate demodulator products after the transmission of a DTV broadcast is complete, these regulations exceed the scope of authority Congress delegated to the FCC. And because the Commission can only issue regulations on subjects over which it has been delegated authority by Congress, the rules adopted by the Flag Order are invalid at the threshold jurisdictional inquiry.”

American Library Association v. FCC, No. 04-1037b, D.C. Court of Appeals, May 6, 2005
http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200505/04-1037b.pdf

I’m using Google Alerts to get articles about copyright and other subjects, and the things I see disturb me.
The boy scouts of Hong Kong are getting an IP badge. I wonder what they’re taught about IP? The industries pushed the concept. I’d like to see what they’re learning.
It disturbs me that there’s so much FUD associated with copyright. Search for “Sharing isn’t Caring,” a phrase I got from Google Alerts, on a search engine. You’ll get an eyeful, and an eyeful that is in many respects, wrong. We’ve got Christianity Today lamenting the fact that only 20 percent of their readers (from a poll) believe that all ripping/burning is illegal while 34% believe that personal copying is okay. That’s sad. Audio Home Recording Act, anyone? The Rio case? etc. etc.?

I’m doing an informal survey about the skills the people should have before info school and skills they should have by the time they leave info school. If you’re interested and have the time, the url is
http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~support/survey/