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As usual, William Patry as some very insightful things to say regarding anything going on in the copyright world.
http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2008/03/turn-it-in-and-kiss-it-goodbye.html

He mentions a few of the problems that I have with Turnitin. I don’t like requiring students to turn over their work in that manner, I despise heavily one-sided End User License Agreements, and I don’t like assuming that my students are cheaters- even when we have found some that do cheat… at any rate, it’s one of those situations where I’m not particularly sympathetic to the party I think probably should win in the copyright arena. The judge found that Turnitin’s use was fair, and I think that’s a good thing for copyright and society, even though I think it’s a bad thing for the students. (I’m also not happy with the resulting reinforcement of EULAs.)

A similar situation is in Blizzard’s case against the creators of a bot (automated) program (Glider) in their World of Warcraft game.
http://gamepolitics.com/2008/03/24/blizzard-bot-program-creator-file-new-motions-against-each-other/

Once again, I’m not very sympathetic to the creators of the bot program, but I am very much opposed to Blizzard’s legal arguments. They’re attempting to use the bypassing of their Warden (anti-cheating) software as a violation of their EULA (which it very well could be) and by extension a violation of copyright (as circumventing a technological protection measure… ugh). They’re probably using copyright because that’s where the law has very strong protections and very harsh punishments, which speaks poorly for them and the law, in my opinion… At any rate, while I don’t condone cheating even in games, I am much more troubled by the implications of Blizzard’s actions. (Yes, people debate whether or not the use of the bot is cheating, and I tend to lean towards the idea that it probably is cheating.)

The results of this lawsuit are quite interesting!
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080326-plagiarism-screener-gets-passing-grade-in-copyright-lawsuit.html
The district court in Virginia found that Turnitin’s use was transformative and legal under the fair use doctrine and covered by the End User License Agreement. It also looks at issues of creativity, non-monetary incentives for creativity (ie, grades), and duress.

My blogroll has vanished under mysterious circumstances, so I’ll be updating it again soon.

I just found this interesting… Steven Brust is an established fantasy author, and from what I’ve heard from those who have encountered him a genuinely nice person. I own a number of his books. His was one of the very first author Web sites I found on the Internet in the early days, and he even responded to an email I’d sent. ^_-

Joss Whedon created a really, really excellent sci-fi series called Firefly (as well as the full-length feature film that followed it, Serenity). Brust wrote a Firefly fan novel- because… well, he just had to. He licensed it under a Creative Commons license. The discussion on Boing Boing brings up all kinds of interesting questions about derivative works, acts of sharing, and acts of creation.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/18/steven-brusts-unauth.html

Some colleagues of mine- so far Georgia Harper and Maria Gonzalez- have started a fascinating new blog, free the books, involving getting content to the public and the related copyright adventures. The subjects covered include orphan works, trying to determine what’s in the public domain and what isn’t, and UT’s partnership with Google. A bit part of the impetus behind this project is that last bit there- Google is scanning the Benson Latin American Collection, and trying to figure out what’s in the public domain is going to be a challenge. I’m really looking forward to this one!

Besides the terrible things currently going on in Congress regarding higher education and copyright, something else potentially harmful to libraries has recently occurred.

According to Carol Simpson on the Texas Library Connection mailing list, a group of video producers has recently sued a school district for using inter library loan for their videos. School districts (and regions) commonly form consortia in order to afford media services. Well, apparently while people weren’t paying as close attention to the fine print as they might, the producers allegedly changed licensing terms so that at least one group wasn’t purchasing videos- they were only *licensing* them. I haven’t found the complaint yet, but I’ll post more information when I do. The video producer group supposedly represents some major educational video producers, including PBS and Discovery.

Provider of Free Public Domain Music Shuts Down – http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/21/0559220

The International Music Score Library Project was a community driven, Wiki based site that offered various scores that were in the public domain- in Canada. That’s the key, there- Canada uses Berne-required copyright term, 50 years after the death of the author. Other countries, including the U.S. and several in Europe, have longer copyright terms (life+70). Universal Edition, out of Europe, sent the Library Project a cease and desist, which it is complying with. A person who runs the site also noted that there were four composers who UE demanded be removed that had been dead for more than 70 years– but it’s possible that they were protected by some Austrian copyright law. At any rate, not having the time, energy, or resources to deal with all of the possible consequences, the site was shut down.

There are many issues brought up by this situation. One of the most worrying is that the most restrictive copyright law in the world can potentially become the de facto copyright law of the Internet, particularly for those with few resources.

The site owner has offered to allow an association of music libraries or similar organizations the opportunity to continue the site in some form, if they can- I hope someone takes that challenge.

Oh, they don’t fail for the companies, who are seeking to protect themselves as service providers, give copyright holders greater control over content and access to user information, and create a bigger market for content identification technology- but they fail as a matter of public policy in this strange run-around of the DMCA.

http://www.ugcprinciples.com/

1) The copyright holder is not the arbiter of how the copyrighted work is used.

2) No technological protection measure can determine fair use. Although the guidelines suggest copyright holders “accommodate” fair use, NO AUTOMATIC PROTECTION CAN DO SO (*especially* the “block first” approach advocated by these guidelines)- and neither the copyright holder nor the service provider are necessarily in the best position to determine what is or is not a fair use.

3) The guidelines do not “encourage creativity.” They seem to be implying that requiring people create wholly original creative fosters more creativity than the creation of works based on other works… which is not necessarily true.

4) “Reasonable” only appears in actions between copyright holders and owners, not users.

5) The guidelines fail at “protecting user privacy.” Translation: Respect the law, but give the copyright holders as much information as they can legally get.

I was somewhat hopeful that something interesting would come out of this group on the initial announcement, but the guidelines are more of the same. There were apparently no user/consumer groups involved in the preparation of these principles, and it shows.

I’ve got a post about the rhetoric of fair use at Collectanea, regarding the CCIA complaint about misleading copyright notices and the response from the Copyright Alliance.

I’ll be a guest blogger at Collectanea this month, and my first post gets to be about Golan v. Gonzales. ^_^

Yesterday, I had the chance to volunteer at UT’s Video Games Archives FUNdraiser. It rained, it was muddy, and it was great. ^_^ I’ll write more about the experience, video games and archives, Richard Garriott’s place, and more as soon as I have time to download a few pictures.

On a related note, today is apparently the launch party for Garriott’s new MMO, Tabula Rasa, at his estate. A pair of tickets was auctioned off at the fundraiser for $2100. Once we get the TR NDA release, I’ll have more to say about the game itself. ^_^

Does it work as intended? I guess that all depends on intent and perspective.

We’re pretty sure that AT&T and other companies (the pipes) are using packet content examination to prioritize and/or degrade certain kinds of traffic (ie, a reason they’re against net neutrality), and they mention that they may perform surveillance of the network in their terms of service. We’ve had reports of Time Warner doing similar things here in Austin. Theoretically, beyond being an egregious breach of privacy (with some pretty terrible implications for important legal protections such as privilege), those actions would seem to me that they would lose their DMCA Safe Harbor protections for online service providers, as they are both inspecting content and directing the way the traffic is being handled based on what’s in those packets. I recently mentioned this to an attorney active in the area, and he waived it off- they don’t care. They’re not the ones being sued, and they’re actively working with the content industries (or in some cases they are the content industries).

On the other hand, we have Google/YouTube et al. (the servers), who are being sued, do care about the safe harbors and rely heavily on those protections. Naturally, those protections are actively being worked against by both lobbying efforts and actions in the courts, as content industries jump on lawsuits challenging their safe harbor status.

And then we have an example of where the Safe Harbor “works” but not in a way that’s particularly satisfactory: Wendy Seltzer’s NFL/YouTube posting. She posted it. The NFL sent a cease-and-desist. It got taken down. She counter-notified. It got put back up. Then *the NFL sent another cease-and-desist.* So apparently content owners can apparently just continue sending cease-and-desist forms, leading to a ridiculous cycle of adding and removing content until someone gives up or some other type of harassment or similar lawsuit begins. She counter-notified. It got put back up. *sigh*

So, do the safe harbor protections work as intended? We know that DMCA notifications are being used, sometimes properly and sometimes improperly. So do they protect legitimate interests? Sure. Do they hurt legitimate interests? Sure. Do people have an incentive to comply with the DMCA requirements? You would think so- but the network service providers don’t seem to care. Those safe harbor protections are better than nothing, and vital for some server services- but they don’t adequately protect the public interest in the use of copyrighted material.

The results of the Viacom/Google suit- if not settled- will be telling.

And now, the NFL is using property rights and contracts to severely limit news. Again, legally permissible- but certainly in poor form.