Pinboard (guardiantech)

Supreme Court asked to make it clear that APIs are not copyrightable >> Techdirt

guardiantech — 2014-10-19T17:31:01+00:00

Mike Masnick:

of course, CAFC [Court of Appeals for the Federal Court, which ruled that APIs are copyrightable] is not the final stop in the line (even if some patent trolls wish it were). As was fully expected, Google has now asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal on the case. Google's petition is a good read highlighting the "disarray" in the various different circuits about whether or not copyright law applies to APIs. The law itself (Section 102(b)) is pretty explicit: "In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." Many of us clearly think that APIs fit under this as a system or method of operation. But, others disagree.

These are the embers of Oracle's lawsuit against Google claiming that Android infringed both patent and copyright. The patent side fizzled; now Oracle needs a result on API copyrightability. If it gets it, the case would come back to life.

Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven vs. Spirit's Taurus: a reckoning? >> Businessweek

guardiantech — 2014-05-16T15:28:57+00:00

For live audiences, Stairway’s power starts with its introductory notes. “Can you think of another song, any song, for which, when its first chord is played, an entire audience of 20,000 rise spontaneously to their feet, not just to cheer or clap hands, but in acknowledgment of an event that is crucial for all of them?” Observer critic Tony Palmer wrote in a 1975 profile. Dave Lewis writes in Led Zeppelin: The Complete Guide to Their Music that “Stairway has a pastoral opening cadence that is classical in feel and which has ensured its immortality.” But what if those opening notes weren’t actually written by Jimmy Page or any member of Led Zeppelin? What if the foundation of the band’s immortality had been lifted from another song by a relatively forgotten California band? You’d need to rewrite the history of rock ’n’ roll.

Be sure to play the MIDI-based game in the link as well as reading the story.

My song got played on Pandora 1 million times and all I got was $16.89, less than what I make from a single T-shirt sale! >> The Trichordist

guardiantech — 2013-06-25T12:23:55+00:00

David Lowery (in annoyed mood):

Here’s an idea. Why doesn’t Pandora get off the couch and get an actual business model instead of asking for a handout from congress and artists? For instance: Right now Pandora plays one minute of commercials an hour on their free service. Here’s an idea! Play two minutes of commercials and double your revenue! (Sirius XM plays 13 minutes and charges a subscription).

Doubling the number of ads might not quite double the revenue, but it has to be a good idea. (Thanks @ClarkeViper for the link.)

Prenda seeded its own porn files via BitTorrent, new affidavit argues >> Ars Technica

guardiantech — 2013-06-05T22:32:42+00:00

Remember the California judge who blasted a group of plaintiffs for claiming defendants had been downloading porn on the flimsy evidence of an IP address? They seem to be active again. We start with a defender..

Graham Syfert is a local Florida lawyer who has been defending people caught up in Prenda purported copyright suits. Last we heard from the defense attorney, he appeared to have settled some cases with the porn trolling outfit. Nearly two weeks ago, Syfert told Ars that he was still involved in two more Florida Prenda-related cases: Sunlust Pictures v. Nguyen, and First Time Videos v. Oppold.
The latter case was initially filed back in July 2012 against a Florida man named Paul Oppold. Oppold was accused of downloading an unauthorized copy of a First Time Videos (FTV) pornographic film which was being represented by Prenda.

Prenda Law is apparently the subject of a US Attorney's investigation.

The European Court of Human Rights rejects an appeal of The Pirate Bay Verdict... >> Digital Music News

guardiantech — 2013-03-27T20:27:38+00:00

Helienne Lindvall:

Because the court recognized that copyright was protected under both the Swedish copyright law and the European Convention on Human Rights, the court ruled that the Convention required balancing the human rights of artists over any other rights of the defendants. This ruling is yet another blow to the Pirate Party’s raison d'être.

The Pirate Bay reports anti-piracy outfit to the police >> TorrentFreak

guardiantech — 2013-02-19T06:47:06+00:00

The Pirate Bay has asked the Economic Crime unit of the Finnish police to investigate the alleged criminal actions of anti-piracy group CIAPC. Last week the group copied The Pirate Bay’s design, violating the site’s usage policy. In their complaint TPB cite a similar case where the owner of a parody site was prosecuted recently. “We will not stand by and watch copyright enforcing organizations disrespect copyright,” TPB comments.

Doesn't doing this make The Pirate Bay a copyright enforcing organisation, though?

Links and Law: Axioms of Web architecture >> W3C

guardiantech — 2013-01-01T22:04:43+00:00

Tim Berners-Lee, April 1997:

Myth: "A normal link is an incitement to copy the linked document in a way which infringes copyright".
This is a serious misunderstanding. The ability to refer to a document (or a person or any thing else) is in general a fundamental right of free speech to the same extent that speech is free. Making the reference with a hypertext link is more efficient but changes nothing else.

2012: The year Irish newspapers tried to destroy the web >> Dublin Solicitors Ireland

guardiantech — 2013-01-01T22:03:42+00:00

The [Irish] Newspaper Industry (all these newspapers) had its agent write out demanding money. They wrote to Women’s Aid, (amongst others) who became our clients when they received letters, emails and phone calls asserting that they needed to buy a licence because they had linked to articles in newspapers carrying positive stories about their fundraising efforts.
These are the prices for linking they were supplied with:

Your eyes will pop at the amounts.

Apple pays Swiss rail $21m over clock dispute: report >>AFP

guardiantech — 2012-11-12T16:02:06+00:00

The company agreed in October to pay the lump sum so it could continue using SBB's Swiss-designed station clock face on its iPads and iPhones, the Tages-Anzeiger daily reported on its website, quoting several unnamed sources.

At 200m iOS 6 devices, that's about 10 cents per infringement.

Eight ‘music pirates’ to face copyright tribunal, one to defend in person >> TorrentFreak

guardiantech — 2012-10-09T20:17:53+00:00

New Zealand rightsholders have come under fire for failing to fully utilize the so-called “three strikes” mechanism after they sent out less than 3,000 notices to alleged pirates in a year. However, it’s now been revealed that eight individuals are now just one step away from the most serious punishments available, just six shy of the French total after they sent out a massive 1.1m warnings.

Honeytrap reveals mass monitoring of downloaders >> New Scientist

guardiantech — 2012-09-05T21:21:05+00:00

Anyone who has downloaded pirated music, video or ebooks using a BitTorrent client has probably had their IP address logged by copyright-enforcement authorities within 3 hours of doing so. So say computer scientists who placed a fake pirate server online - and very quickly found monitoring systems checking out who was taking what from the servers.

Oooh.

How YouTube will escape Google's new pirate penalty >> Search Engine Land

guardiantech — 2012-08-11T20:24:34+00:00

Google has announced that it will soon penalize sites that are repeatedly accused of copyright infringement. But one site in particular doesn’t need to worry: Google’s own YouTube. It has a unique immunity against the forthcoming penalty. Not just that Google owns it.

Honest, it's an iPhandroid.. oh all right >> eBay

guardiantech — 2012-07-24T16:46:47+00:00

From the spec:

3.5'' Dual SIM GPS Android 4.0 Smartphone 3G W007 4GB

How can you not love a dual-SIM Android 4 smartphone that is an exact copy of an iPhone casing that comes from Wendy's Phone Shop? The really fascinating question though is: what sort of connector does it have on the bottom? There aren't any pictures. (Thanks @alexredcloud for the link.)

Court may order Google to censor ‘torrent,’ ‘RapidShare’ and ‘Megaupload’ >> TorrentFreak

guardiantech — 2012-07-18T21:02:12+00:00

Google has suffered a setback in its case against the music industry group SNEP. Last week the French Supreme Court ruled that Google can be required to censor the search terms ‘Torrent’, ‘RapidShare’ and ‘Megaupload’ from its Instant and Autocomplete services. The court argued that Google indirectly facilitates copyright infringement by failing to filter these terms. The case is now going to the Appeals Court for a final decision.

SNEP argued that when people put music artists' names into its search box, piracy-related keywords then pop up in the autocomplete. It lost in two lower courts, but won in this one.

Australia goes cold on ACTA >> The Register

guardiantech — 2012-06-28T05:46:48+00:00

Another bit of flesh dropped off the decaying zombie that is ACTA, with the Australian parliamentary Treaties Committee recommending that ratification be deferred - partly because of its near-collapse in Europe.

Acta as a zombie stalking the earth, waiting to be killed? Actually, yes.

PayPal bans BitTorrent-friendly VPN provider >> TorrentFreak

guardiantech — 2012-06-25T16:48:31+00:00

In response to new internet surveillance initiatives there is a growing interest in privacy enhancing services such as VPNs and proxies.
TorGuard is one of the many companies catering to this demand. As the name suggests, TorGuard has several plans specifically targeted at BitTorrent users who prefer to hide their IP-addresses from the rest of the world.
Being a BitTorrent-friendly VPN appeals to a wide audience. However, the company has also learned that it has a downside. Without prior warning or detailed explanation, PayPal decided to ban TorGuard for promoting their services to BitTorrent users.

They were charging for a VPN to connect people to torrents?

Oracle accepts $0 in damages from Google, moves toward appeal >> Ars Technica

guardiantech — 2012-06-21T05:28:44+00:00

Oracle has agreed to accept zero dollars worth of damages from Google, three weeks after losing the major portions of the case in which Oracle accused Google of violating Java patents and copyrights in Android.
After one partial victory on the issue of whether Google infringed copyrights, Oracle lost its argument that Google violated patents. Oracle then lost a ruling that held that the structure of the Java APIs asserted by the company couldn't be copyrighted at all. The rulings left Oracle little room except to appeal, and today in court the two sides agreed to a damages total of "zero." That's only a few billion less than Oracle originally sought.

Wonder if Google wrote it on a cheque with a flourish.

Oracle v Google: No perks for Java >> The Economist

guardiantech — 2012-06-04T22:29:31+00:00

What Judge William Alsup decided about APIs:

"So long as the specific code used to implement a method is different," the judge wrote, "anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function or specification of any methods used [to achieve work-alike functionality]," adding that "where there is only one way to express an idea or function, then everyone is free to do so and no one can monopolise that expression."

Google releases new copyright transparency report >> Electronic Frontier Foundation

guardiantech — 2012-05-24T21:50:11+00:00

Striking is the sheer volume of takedown notices Google receives: in just the last month, it processed over 1.2 million requests for Search alone, from 1,296 copyright owners and 1,087 reporting organizations. That scale allows it to present trends in the data that might not otherwise be apparent. For example, even in the case of notorious "pirate" sites like The Pirate Bay, Google has received takedown notices for less than 5% of their indexable pages.
On the other hand, this report also provides a clearer look into the abuse of copyright tools. Google explains that it's complied with 97% of takedown requests received between July and December of 2011, but also provides examples of obviously invalid copyright requests it's received.

Also covered elsewhere on this site.

Olympic organisers shut down “Space hijackers” protest Twitter account >> Index on Censorship blog

guardiantech — 2012-05-23T20:40:10+00:00

The Space Hijackers had been using an altered version of the 2012 logo on their site and their Twitter page.
The Olympic organisers are notoriously prickly about branding, but also about protest, and laws introduced after London won the right to host this years games could potentially place restrictions on protest for the duration of the Olympics and Paralympics.
It could be argued that the logo in itself was a justifiable reason for the suspension: but you have to seriously ask: is anyone actually going to confuse the Space Hijackers account for an official Olympic account?

We can think of other questions too.

Scholar: regulating Google results would violate First Amendment >> Ars Technica

guardiantech — 2012-05-14T14:31:21+00:00

The new Google-commissioned paper, written by well-known UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh and attorney Donald Falk, argues that such regulations would be preempted by the First Amendment. Google's search engine, they write, "uses sophisticated computerized algorithms, but those algorithms themselves inherently incorporate the search engine company engineers' judgments about what material users are likely to find responsive to these queries."
The authors argue that this selection process is no different, constitutionally speaking, from a newspaper editor selecting wire stories to run, a guidebook deciding which attractions to feature, or a parade organizer choosing which floats to include. The courts have ruled that all of these editorial processes are fully protected by the First Amendment.

True, but misses the point. The FTC's beef is with Google cross-promoting products such as its Google shopping comparison, or maps, or video, in its search results. When Google doesn't have a competitor in a space, the other product appears highly in search results. As soon as Google has a product, the rival vanishes from useful search results. Using the monopoly (search) to demote others in a space is, arguably, abuse of monopoly power. Microsoft's promotion in the 1990s of Internet Explorer on Windows used its engineers' judgements about what material users would find useful in browsing the web, but that didn't stop it being an abuse of monopoly. (Thanks @modelportfolio2003 for the link.)

Oracle-Google verdict signals need for copyright reform >> InfoWorld

guardiantech — 2012-05-08T21:44:24+00:00

It's hard to imagine another, similar case on the scale of Oracle versus Google, so it's remarkable that an almost identical one came to resolution in Europe at almost the same time. SAS Institute sued World Programming for copyright infringement in what seems like a much more clear-cut case than Oracle versus Google. World Programming copied the SAS programming environment with the intent of direct competition, yet the court did not find against World Programming.
Although the case has nuances, the court was clear that although software itself could be copyrighted, its externalities -- the function it performs, the programming interfaces it exposes, and the data structures it uses -- cannot be. This is entirely reasonable. Without such a division, interoperable technology markets would be impossible.

Google calls for mistrial after jury says Android stole from Java >> Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

guardiantech — 2012-05-07T21:00:19+00:00

With this paradoxical partial decision, the jury has left the case very much in the air, and Google has already moved for a mistrial.
On Monday, as the Google-Oracle case entered its fourth week, a jury ruled that Oracle has proven that Google infringed the overall structure, sequence, and organization of copyrighted works of 37 APIs used by the Java platform. In building Android, Google created a new version of the Java platform known as the Dalvik virtual machine, and this mimicked the Java APIs, or application programming interfaces, which are essentially a way for a Java application to talk to the platform.
But the jury was unable to reach a decision on whether Google’s Java clone constituted “fair use.” A fair use decision would let Google off the hook.

ISPs Have to Identify Alleged Pirates, EU Court Rules >> TorrentFreak

guardiantech — 2012-04-20T05:15:25+00:00

A dispute over whether a Swedish ISP can be forced to hand over the details of one its subscribers to an anti-piracy group has just received its long-awaited ruling from the Europe’s highest court. A few moments ago the European Court of Justice announced that there are no EU barriers which prevent the ISP handing over its customers’ private details to copyright holders.

Supporting copyright is not the same as opposing freedom of speech >> guardian.co.uk

guardiantech — 2012-04-19T14:42:25+00:00

(Musician) Helienne Lindvall:

I was told to prepare a five-minute speech, so apart from speaking of the reality musicians are facing, I spent days reading the actual [ACTA] agreement, different points of views on it, as well as looking into the different issues it deals with, to make sure I knew what was being discussed. I'd heard from the Pirate Party as well as some other action groups that it would impede freedom of speech so naturally I was concerned – after all, musicians rely on freedom of expression, as do journalists. I was surprised to find that Acta would do nothing of the sort. In fact, it wouldn't change any existent laws in the EU.
It soon became clear that my preparations were in vain.

Oracle v. Google trial >> FOSS Patents

guardiantech — 2012-04-19T09:07:15+00:00

Amidst his analysis of the first days of the Oracle-Google trial, Florian Müller adds:

As an independent analyst and blogger, I will express only my own opinions, which cannot be attributed to any one of my diversity of clients. I often say things none of them would agree with. That said, as a believer in transparency I would like to inform you that Oracle has very recently become a consulting client of mine. We intend to work together for the long haul on mostly competition-related topics including, for one example, FRAND licensing terms.
We've known each other ever since I vocally opposed Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems (not because of Java), but that's history as I fully respect the European Commission's clearance decision and the subsequent closing of the deal.

This will make him even more of a hate figure in Groklaw's comment threads, if that is possible. (People there won't admit to having read his blog, won't link to it, but denounce everything he does.) Müller has reckoned from the start that Google has a copyright infringement case to answer. Groklaw reckons Larry Ellison has a tail and smells of sulphur, and that Google walks on water and smells of roses. Either way, it's up to the jury now.

Don't let software patents stop us standing on the shoulders of giants >> Jonathan Zittrain

guardiantech — 2012-04-18T21:05:36+00:00

From the Guardian's Battle for the internet series:

The most enduring front in the battle over code may end up over something even more foundational than an operating system. Up next are software languages and APIs, the raw material from which our digital edifices are built. Arguments continued this week in the case of Oracle v Google, in which Oracle claims that the Sun programming language is itself copyrighted, as are the ways in which software can be written to expect to run in some version of Java. If Oracle wins, projects like GNU will be in danger: simply rewriting Unix from scratch as GNU wouldn't free the Platonic programming language behind Unix of copyright limitations. If a language itself can be copyrighted – and Oracle and Google, in otherwise solemn briefing, engage on whether Game of Thrones's Dothraki or Avatar's Na'vi can be so protected – then anyone speaking or writing in Dothraki or Na'vi would have to answer to those works' creators.

TuneCore: we must boycott Grooveshark. we must pressure their advertisers... >> Digital Music News

guardiantech — 2012-04-13T22:17:02+00:00

This is a battle that appears to be bleeding beyond the major labels. We've seen the markings of a broader artist and industry backlash, and now, there's this. The sharpest attack on Grooveshark is now coming from TuneCore CEO Jeff Price, an artist champion who spends most of this time fighting against the majors. Yet on Friday, Price tore into the company for failing to compensate his artists and blatantly exploiting legal loopholes. In fact, Price is now urging his massive indie and DIY community to boycott the company, and directly contact Grooveshark advertisers to pressure change.

The clock is definitely ticking for Grooveshark.

Google Moves In on Hollywood's Night in Washington >> NYTimes.com

guardiantech — 2012-04-09T19:43:25+00:00

Oh to be fly on the wall at that banquet.

Don't Steal Ideas, It Is Discouraging >> Mike Granados

guardiantech — 2012-03-24T22:18:24+00:00

Plagiarizing someone's idea because you don't like their person is spiteful and spite has been the justifying tone behind a lot of Dustin [Curtis]'s critics. Yes Dustin came off as an arrogant ass and I think he will learn from this experience. But does that really justify ripping of the dude's idea and hard work and then sharing it with the world? Absolutely not. If the community accepts copying and re-distributing ideas because someone doesn't like the person who originally built it, that would be chaos. Anyone could use that as an excuse to reproduce anyone else's work.

The context: Curtis created his own blogging platform, which he showed in a blogpost; someone else created their own copy, arguing that Curtis should have open-sourced it. But you can use this same argument for other intellectual property. Note Granados's extra comment at the end of his post.

Grooveshark blocked in Denmark by copyright warriors >> The Register

guardiantech — 2012-02-24T06:44:11+00:00

A Danish copyright group has won a court order to block music streaming site Grooveshark from the nation's pastry-munching pirates. In a report of questionable accuracy (the plaintiff Rettighedsalliancen is incorrectly described as a "local IFPI") at tech site Comon [Den - Eng]. Hutchison-owned mobile operator 3 must implement the block immediately. Denmark was one of the first to implement DNS-level blocking, first against Pirate Bay more than three years ago. An appeal is expected.

Grooveshark increasingly looks like the MegaUpload of music streaming.

Intellectual Property blog >> The IPKat

guardiantech — 2012-02-24T06:37:40+00:00

A general view on patent and copyright law in the EU (with analyses on topics such as Acta, Bittorrent blocks, and many others). A really interesting find. (Thanks @plasmold for the link.)

Angry Nerds: Copyright Theft Is Bad, When It Happens To People We Like >> PandoDaily

guardiantech — 2012-01-31T22:50:32+00:00

Curebits v 37Signals! Paul Carr gets popcorn, then turns thoughtful:

What’s interesting, though, isn’t that some developers plagiarized some stuff from some other developers. What’s interesting is the overwhelmingly hostile response to the theft from the wider tech community. Do a quick search on Twitter for Curebit and behold at the self-righteous rage at the original crime and the extremely grudging acceptance of the inevitable apology. The last time we saw this kind of outpouring of rage amongst tech people was when — uh — the government tried to clamp down on copyright theft.

A bit of a curious case >> Mark's Musings

guardiantech — 2012-01-31T22:49:09+00:00

Mark Goodge on how one should interpret the incident mentioned above.

MegaUpload Indictment in full >> Scribd

guardiantech — 2012-01-20T10:47:23+00:00

All 72 pages. If you found you couldn't get it from the US Department of Justice site for some reason...

Before Solving a Problem, Make Sure You've Got the Right Problem >> Tim O'Reilly on Google+

guardiantech — 2012-01-16T07:18:26+00:00

"In the entire discussion, I've seen no discussion of credible evidence of this economic harm. There's no question in my mind that piracy exists, that people around the world are enjoying creative content without paying for it, and even that some criminals are profiting by redistributing it. But is there actual economic harm?"

Go Daddy Lost 21,054 Domains Yesterday

guardiantech — 2011-12-26T20:57:08+00:00

"According to TheDomains, 21,054 domains were transferred away from Go Daddy on Friday alone. At $6.99 a pop, that would make for a loss of $147,167, not taking future renewals into account. The day before wasn’t a good one for the company either, with 15,000 people taking their domains elsewhere. That means that even though Go Daddy changed its stance, people have had enough." Easier than lobbying politicians, of course, to move a domain. But doesn't really get to the root of the problem.

No Copyright Intended >> Waxy.org

guardiantech — 2011-12-12T07:37:06+00:00

"How pervasive is it? There are about 489,000 YouTube videos that say "no copyright intended" or some variation, and about 664,000 videos have a "copyright disclaimer" citing the fair use provision in Section 107 of the Copyright Act."

New study shows majority of Americans against SOPA; believe extreme copyright enforcement is unreasonable >> Techdirt

guardiantech — 2011-11-15T22:44:26+00:00

"One of the talking points we've been hearing about SOPA from the lobbyists pushing to get it approved is that the majority of Americans are in favor of the bill, because they want to "protect" intellectual property or jobs. This has never made much sense, since SOPA doesn't protect jobs at all. It destroys them, by hindering one of the few parts of our economy that has been creating jobs -- new and small businesses, particularly in the tech community." SOPA = "Stop Online Piracy Act". In the US, of course.

S.978: Commercial Felony Streaming Act - U.S. Congress >> OpenCongress.org

guardiantech — 2011-10-25T11:56:06+00:00

Great website, not sure about the proposed legislation.

Study: patent trolls have cost innovators half a trillion dollars >> Ars Technica

guardiantech — 2011-09-20T21:19:15+00:00

"Of course, losses to defendants are not necessarily losses to society. Patent trolls often claim they are just helping patent holders get the royalties that are owed to them. So if most of that $500bn were winding up in the pockets of inventors, perhaps the system would be working as intended.
"To test this hypothesis, the authors focused on 14 plaintiffs who were publicly traded companies. These firms' lawsuits accounted for $88bn of lost wealth for defendants. Yet the total revenue of these companies was only $7.6bn. This suggests that the original inventors got less than 10% of defendants' lost wealth. And the real number is likely much lower, because some of the $7.6bn came from unrelated lawsuits, and we're willing to bet the patent lawyers took a big cut."

Software patents accounted for about 62% of the lawsuits. Quite where the $80bn-odd went is extremely puzzling.

Labour pledges to reverse section 29A's three strikes... >> Stuff.co.nz

guardiantech — 2011-09-02T08:25:08+00:00

Three strikes filesharing rule comes into play in New Zealand: "The three-strikes regime is not expected to be widely used by rights holders, however, because of the high $25 fee they must pay to internet providers to forward those warnings to internet users and a $200 fee for bringing cases in front of the tribunal."

Was Aaron Swartz Stealing? >> The Awl

guardiantech — 2011-08-04T17:20:43+00:00

"Once Swartz had been collared, JSTOR declined to pursue charges against him... Indeed JSTOR immediately made a public statement to the effect that they have no beef with Swartz. There are two obvious reasons why the Feds decided to pursue criminal charges anyway. The first is that the Feds were already pissed off at Swartz and were just waiting for a chance to go after him.
"In 2008, Swartz, taking advantage of a free trial of PACER, a government database of court records, cleverly automated a download of nearly 20 million documents. This was in response to the call of information activist Carl Malamud for donations of downloaded PACER documents, which ordinarily cost eight cents per page. Malamud's position is that since the public owns these documents, access to them should be easy and free of charge online. In the event, Swartz hadn't broken any laws, so the Feds were forced to drop their investigation. Perhaps a certain resentment lingered."

Could Quantum Computing Kill Copyright? >> TorrentFreak

guardiantech — 2011-07-31T22:02:35+00:00

"As it stands in US law (and remember, US law rules throughout the world, even if it’s legal, or you’ve not been there in decades) the creator of a picture is the copyright holder. Even if you drop the resolution, or reduce the number of colours to simpler shades, it is still considered by many to be under the original copyright.
"So, what if you could create every possible picture? What if you took a fairly low resolution (say 500×500) and a reasonably low colour mix (say 256 colours) and tried to create every single image? What then would be the state of copyright? It’s the visual equivalent of the infinite monkey theorem.
"If you could do it, then the project would own all the copyrights, to every image not already copyrighted. Furthermore, since it’s an independent creation with no outside reference to draw upon, works and images similar to those already copyrighted are not infringing."

Solution: get a quantum computer to do it. Now worry.

The Rise and Fall of the Independent Developer >> Craig Hockenberry

guardiantech — 2011-07-16T13:08:38+00:00

Hockenberry likes the internet as medium for distribution; "But this expanded distribution is also putting our business at risk: there are people in this new market who claim a right to a part of our hard work. Either by patent or copyright infringement, developers are finding this new cost of litigation to be onerous.

"The scary part is that these infringements can happen with any part of our products or websites: things that you’d never imagine being a violation of someone else’s intellectual property. It feels like coding in a mine field.
"From our experience, it’s entirely possible that all the revenue for a product can be eaten up by legal fees. After years of pouring your heart and soul into that product, it’s devastating. It makes you question why the hell you’re in the business: when you can’t pay salaries from product sales, there’s no point in building it in the first place."

All the revenue? Scary.

US ISP flip-flops: why do they now support "six strikes" plan? >> Ars Technica

guardiantech — 2011-07-15T05:27:44+00:00

"White House arm-twisting had something to do with it. As we reported on Thursday, the White House has been credited with "brokering" the deal. It's not clear what that means, but perhaps administration officials hinted that if ISPs didn't agree to a voluntary graduated response system, the administration would throw its weight behind a legislative solution.
"McFadden wouldn't comment on whether White House inducements were a factor in Verizon's decision. But those meetings at the White House sound a lot like the "multi-stakeholder process" envisioned in an international report signed in Paris last month. That document explicitly contemplates using the threat of intermediary liability as a stick to get ISPs to "voluntarily" sign up for the role of copyright cop."

Just like in the UK, in fact. Except that the UK progressed to law, and even then ISPs don't like it.

What should I do about FunnyJunk.com? >> The Oatmeal

guardiantech — 2011-05-25T22:28:53+00:00

The Oatmeal has discovered pretty much all his content copied to Funnyjunk.com.

"And it's not just FunnyJunk.com, there's a small army of sites out there like this whose business model runs this way. Another one is DamnLOL.com, who managed to rack up 670,000 likes on Facebook by hosting stolen content and covering their website with 'like this on Facebook' buttons. It seems like this 'Host-stolen-content-until-someone-complains-meanwhile-earning-ad-revenue' business model is booming right now. It's basically the new Ebaumsworld."