Pinboard (jm)
https://pinboard.in/u:jm/public/
recent bookmarks from jmBoost for artists in AI copyright battle as only 3% back UK active opt-out plan2025-12-16T10:51:06+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/16/boost-for-artists-in-ai-copyright-battle-as-only-3-per-cent-back-uk-active-opt-out-plan
jm95% of the more than 10,000 people who had their say over how music, novels, films and other works should be protected [in the UK] from copyright infringements by tech companies called for copyright to be strengthened and a requirement for licensing in all cases or no change to copyright law.
By contrast, only 3% of people backed the UK government’s initial preferred tech company-friendly option, which was to require artists and copyright holders to actively opt out of having their material fed into data-hungry AI systems.
]]>ai training data copyright law uk uk-politics llmshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:6abe0b9d290c/US Copyright Office says fair use does not cover AI trained on "vast troves of copyrighted works"2025-05-12T21:48:01+00:00
https://the-decoder.com/us-copyright-office-says-fair-use-does-not-cover-ai-trained-on-vast-troves-of-copyrighted-works/
jmcopyright fair-use ai llms training us-politicshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7b63c5e1ee54/This Is How Meta AI Staffers Deemed More Than 7 Million Books to Have No “Economic Value”2025-04-17T10:28:44+00:00
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/meta-ai-lawsuit
jm[Meta's] defense hinges on the argument that the individual books themselves are, essentially, worthless — one expert witness for Meta describes that the influence of a single book in LLM pretraining “adjusted its performance by less than 0.06% on industry standard benchmarks, a meaningless change no different from noise.”
Furthermore, Meta says, that while the company “has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in LLM development,” they see no market in paying authors to license their books because “for there to be a market, there must be something of value to exchange, but none of Plaintiffs works has economic value, individually, as training data.” (An argument essential to fair use, but that also sounds like a scaled up version of a scenario in which the New York Philharmonic board argues against paying individual members of the orchestra because the organization spent a lot of money on the upkeep of David Geffen Hall, and also, a solo bassoon cannot play every part in “The Rite of Spring.”)
as Paul Mainwood notes, this is the Sorites paradox: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/ --
- 1 grain of wheat does not make a heap.
- If 1 grain doesn’t make a heap, then 2 grains don’t.
- If 2 grains don’t make a heap, then 3 grains don’t.
- ...
- If 999,999 grains don’t make a heap, then 1 million grains don’t.
Therefore, 1 million grains don’t make a heap.
]]>ml copyright ip books training llms meta llama pretraining paradoxes sorites-paradoxhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:24f1f9a9162f/EFF gets it wrong on AI2025-03-19T11:17:38+00:00
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/03/californias-ab-412-bill-could-crush-startups-and-cement-big-tech-ai-monopoly
jm
California legislators have begun debating a bill (A.B. 412) that would require AI developers to track and disclose every registered copyrighted work used in AI training. At first glance, this might sound like a reasonable step toward transparency. But it’s an impossible standard that could crush small AI startups and developers while giving big tech firms even more power.
Back in the early 2000s, we wrote SpamAssassin, a machine-learning driven antispam system which was trained on user-submitted data. We tracked the attribution of every item of input used to train that system. We weren't even a startup, we were an open source project.
If we could do it, why can't modern AI systems? And don't say "because the existing large language models didn't do it" -- that's just accepting past shitty behaviour as a fait accompli.
Extremely disappointed in the current state of the EFF if this is what they think.]]>ai llms training copyright eff politics tech startupshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:599ee125077b/Why the British government is so into AI2025-01-14T12:24:09+00:00
https://bsky.app/profile/marshdavies.bsky.social/post/3lfnile2kpc2m
jm
The UK Government believes several things:
1) The AI genie is out of the bottle and cannot be put back in
2) Embracing AI would definitely be good for the British economy
3) Enforcing copyright on AI training would put Britain out of step with rest of the world and subsequently...
4) Enforcing copyright would be ineffective as AI would just be trained elsewhere, cutting out Brit creatives entirely
5) Govt's preferred option is permissive enough to be attractive to AI firms but demands transparency so at least rights holders have some recourse; the alternative is bleaker.
Obviously, I contest all of these beliefs to one degree or another, but this is where the govt is, and it's useful to understand that. The real crux of the debate, as they see it, is how Britain's laws can practically deal with the *global* inevitability of AI. They believe it's untenable to make Britain a legislative pariah state for AI, and that this would not lead to good outcomes for British creatives anyway. This is a point worth considering when replying to the consultation.
However, the govt says it's not going to implement policy before it has a technical solution for rights holders to opt-out and chase down infringements. My view is that this is difficult to the point of being pure fantasy, and either means that the govt is not serious about finding a real, effective technical solution, or this policy will be kicked indefinitely down the road. My dinner partner was optimistic a solution could be achieved within the timespan of a year or two. I just don't buy it.
Government says it has not sided with AI firms over creative industries. However, its understanding of "not taking a side" creates a false equality between massive companies whose business relies on crime and individuals whose livelihoods will be destroyed.
I got the sense that there is no political will whatsoever to seriously challenge firms who offer to spend big in Britain, and that any thought of holding them to account for actual crime is simply considered naive. But we do have a bit of time while govt attempts to confect their magical, easy to use, opt-out solution—time during which one or several of these AI firms might implode, making the true cost more apparent.
]]>uk government ai policy copyright ip britain economy futurehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7e2472a1f794/Court docs allege Meta trained LLM models using pirated book trove2025-01-10T11:41:28+00:00
https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/10/meta_libgen_allegation/
jmThe [court] document claims that Meta decided to download documents from Library Genesis -- aka. “LibGen” -- to train its models. LibGen is the subject of a lawsuit brought by textbook publishers who believe it happily hosts and distributes [pirated] works [....]
The filing from plaintiffs in the Kadrey case claims that documents produced by Meta [...] describe internal debate about accessing LibGen, a little squeamishness about using BitTorrent in the office to do so, and eventual escalation to “MZ” [Mark Zuckerberg himself], who approved use of the contentious resource. [...]
Another filing claims that a Meta document describes how it removed copyright notifications from material downloaded from LibGen, and suggests the company did so because it realized including such text could mean a model’s output would reveal it was trained on copyrighted material.
US District Court Judge Vince Chhabria also noted that in one of the documents Meta wants to seal, an employee wrote the following:
“If there is media coverage suggesting we have used a dataset we know to be pirated, such as LibGen, this may undermine our negotiating position with regulators on these issues.”
No shit.]]>piracy meta copyright mark-zuckerberg law llama training libgen bookshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:803844c4f893/Ex-Amazon AI exec claims she was asked to ignore IP law2024-04-24T09:14:43+00:00
https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/22/ghaderi_v_amazon/
jmAccording to Ghaderi's account in the complaint, she returned to work after giving birth in January 2023, inheriting a large language model project. Part of her role was flagging violations of Amazon's internal copyright policies and escalating these concerns to the in-house legal team. In March 2023, the filing claims, her team director, Andrey Styskin, challenged Ghaderi to understand why Amazon was not meeting its goals on Alexa search quality.
The filing alleges she met with a representative from the legal department to explain her concerns and the tension they posed with the "direction she had received from upper management, which advised her to violate the direction from legal."
According to the complaint, Styskin rejected Ghaderi's concerns, allegedly telling her to ignore copyright policies to improve the results. Referring to rival AI companies, the filing alleges he said: "Everyone else is doing it."
Move fast and break laws!]]>aws amazon llms alexa maternity-leave parenting parental-leave work dont-be-evil copyright ip aihttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:0b221724b3a8/How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I. - The New York Times2024-04-08T13:06:43+00:00
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/06/technology/tech-giants-harvest-data-artificial-intelligence.html
jmMeta could not match ChatGPT unless it got more data, Mr. Al-Dahle told colleagues. In March and April 2023, some of the company’s business development leaders, engineers and lawyers met nearly daily to tackle the problem. [....]
They also talked about how they had summarized books, essays and other works from the internet without permission and discussed sucking up more, even if that meant facing lawsuits. One lawyer warned of “ethical” concerns around taking intellectual property from artists but was met with silence, according to the recordings.
]]>ai copyright data training openai meta google privacy surveillance data-protection iphttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:72d55c3af228/Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement - The Verge2023-07-10T13:07:37+00:00
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/9/23788741/sarah-silverman-openai-meta-chatgpt-llama-copyright-infringement-chatbots-artificial-intelligence-ai
jmThe suits alleges, among other things, that OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s LLaMA were trained on illegally-acquired datasets containing their works, which they say were acquired from “shadow library” websites like Bibliotik, Library Genesis, Z-Library, and others, noting the books are “available in bulk via torrent systems.”
]]>ai content copyright the-pile eleutherai openai chatgpt llama meta bibliotik bookshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:48e00a3d8ba5/Expert explainer: Allocating accountability in AI supply chains2023-06-29T09:34:57+00:00
https://www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/resource/ai-supply-chains/
jmregulation ai ada-lovelace-institute ian-brown supply-chains data-protection uk law copyrighthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ebd74d82818b/Searching for global copyright laws in all the wrong places: An examination of the legality of OpenAI’s data scraping2023-04-01T20:44:14+00:00
https://medium.com/@nturkewitz_56674/searching-for-global-copyright-laws-in-all-the-wrong-places-an-examination-of-the-legality-of-cec358492285
jmI’m not sure who is advising GitHub, but the suggestion that the unauthorized use of “publicly available data is consistent with global copyright laws” is a fantastical claim, for any number of reasons, and that’s even before addressing the ridiculous notion that machines learn “much as humans have done throughout history.”
]]>openai github copyright microsoft law traininghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5d45eb3ffc9b/LAION contains medical data2023-03-16T10:38:25+00:00
https://the-decoder.com/patient-images-in-laion-datasets-are-only-a-sample-of-a-larger-issue/
jmWhen Lapine used it to scan the LAION database, she found an image of her own face. She was able to trace this image back to photographs taken by a doctor when she was undergoing treatment for a rare genetic condition. The photographs were taken as part of her clinical documentation, and she signed documents that restricted their use to her medical file alone. The doctor involved died in 2018. Somehow, these private medical images ended up online, then in Common Crawl’s archive and LAION’s dataset.
Surely this is a straight-up violation of patient confidentiality laws?! This is appalling.
LAION's FAQs are useless regarding this; as Lapine isn't in the EU, they can't even use GDPR to request its removal, and even if they were, these medical images don't contain enough data to qualify under LAION's rules.]]>ai ml fair-use copyright common-crawl training laion photos medical-data hipaahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:fe32957cde25/copyright-respecting AI model training2023-03-01T10:34:48+00:00
https://creative.ai/@alexjc/109939892914585391
jmWith the criticism of web-scale datasets, it's legitimate to ask the question: "What models are trained with best-in-class Copyright practices?"
Answer: StyleGAN and FFHQ
github.com/NVlabs/ffhq-dataset
100% transparent dataset, clear copyright, opt-in licensing, model respects terms.
]]>copyright legal rights ip ai ml models training stylegan ffhq flickrhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:939077d2fcd0/The scary truth about AI copyright is nobody knows what will happen next - The Verge2022-11-16T15:28:48+00:00
https://www.theverge.com/23444685/generative-ai-copyright-infringement-legal-fair-use-training-data
jmGenerative AI has had a very good year. Corporations like Microsoft, Adobe, and GitHub are integrating the tech into their products; startups are raising hundreds of millions to compete with them; and the software even has cultural clout, with text-to-image AI models spawning countless memes. But listen in on any industry discussion about generative AI, and you’ll hear, in the background, a question whispered by advocates and critics alike in increasingly concerned tones: is any of this actually legal?
]]>ai copyright ml law iphttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:bfb663526b23/RIAA Flags ‘Artificial Intelligence’ Music Mixer as Emerging Copyright Threat2022-10-21T08:44:53+00:00
https://torrentfreak.com/riaa-flags-artificial-intelligence-music-mixer-as-emerging-copyright-threat-221017/
jm“There are online services that, purportedly using artificial intelligence (AI), extract, or rather, copy, the vocals, instrumentals, or some portion of the instrumentals from a sound recording, and/or generate, master or remix a recording to be very similar to or almost as good as reference tracks by selected, well known sound recording artists [...]
To the extent these services, or their partners, are training their AI models using our members’ music, that use is unauthorized and infringes our members’ rights by making unauthorized copies of our members works. In any event, the files these services disseminate are either unauthorized copies or unauthorized derivative works of our members’ music"
]]>ai music riaa ml copyrighthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:09e15edf4e26/AI Data Laundering: How Academic and Nonprofit Researchers Shield Tech Companies from Accountability2022-10-03T16:33:50+00:00
https://waxy.org/2022/09/ai-data-laundering-how-academic-and-nonprofit-researchers-shield-tech-companies-from-accountability/
jmSimon Willison created a Datasette browser to explore WebVid-10M, one of the two datasets used to train the video generation model, and quickly learned that all 10.7 million video clips were scraped from Shutterstock, watermarks and all.
In addition to the Shutterstock clips, Meta also used 10 million video clips from this 100M video dataset from Microsoft Research Asia. It’s not mentioned on their GitHub, but if you dig into the paper, you learn that every clip came from over 3 million YouTube videos.
So, in addition to a massive chunk of Shutterstock’s video collection, Meta is also using millions of YouTube videos collected by Microsoft to make its text-to-video AI.
]]>ai data ethics fair-use copyright ip traininghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:e5688ab18c6a/Fantastic false positive from Google Drive's copyright infringement scanning system2022-01-25T10:14:09+00:00
https://twitter.com/emilyldolson/status/1485434187968614411
jmgoogle fail funny false-positives copyright bugs loneliest-number google-drivehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d729183c85b2/OpenStreetMap looks to relocate to EU due to Brexit limitations2021-06-30T10:24:23+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/30/openstreetmap-looks-to-relocate-to-eu-due-to-brexit-limitations
jmOne “important reason”, Rischard said, was the failure of the UK and EU to agree on mutual recognition of database rights. While both have an agreement to recognise copyright protections, that only covers work which is creative in nature.
Maps, as a simple factual representation of the world, are not covered by copyright in the same way, but until Brexit were covered by an EU-wide agreement that protected databases where there had been “a substantial investment in obtaining, verifying or presenting the data”. But since Brexit, any database made on or after 1 January 2021 in the UK will not be protected in the EU, and vice versa.
Other concerns Rischard listed include the increasing complexity and cost of “banking, finance and using PayPal in the UK”, the inability for the organisation to secure charitable status, and the loss of .eu domains.
The increased importance of the EU in matters of tech regulation also played a role: “We could more effectively lobby the EU [and] EU governments and have more of an impact, especially in countries where there is no local chapter,” Rischard wrote.]]>mapping brexit uk osm openstreetmap eu copyright databases iphttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c66761c45e4c/F5 getting a copyright shakedown over NGINX?2019-12-12T15:26:33+00:00
https://twitter.com/AntNesterov/status/1205118781049192448
jmnginx copyright open-source rambler f5https://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c61457480c99/Horace Goes Copyright Striking / Boing Boing2019-11-19T13:58:25+00:00
https://boingboing.net/2019/11/18/horace-goes-copyright-striking.html
jm
As of November 14, [Octav1us'] social media channels are deactivated, reportedly to avoid the continuing abuse she receives from anonymous users. For a young woman appropriating the obscure personas of 8-bit British game history, hostility comes in forms both legal and personal. But the message is always the same: stay off the slopes.
]]>horace skiing copyright ip subvert youtube history 80shttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:65888655187e/Why Is AI Art Copyright So Complicated?2019-03-27T22:16:32+00:00
https://www.artnome.com/news/2019/3/27/why-is-ai-art-copyright-so-complicated
jmClaims that AI is creating art on its own and that machines are somehow entitled to copyright for this art are simply naive or overblown, and they cloud real concerns about authorship disputes between humans. The introduction of machine learning as an art tool is ironically increasing human involvement, not decreasing it. Specifically, the number of people who can potentially be credited as coauthors of an artwork has skyrocketed. This is because machine learning tools are typically built on a stack of software solutions, each layer having been designed by individual persons or groups of people, all of whom are potential candidates for authorial credit.
]]>ai art machine-learning ml copyright authors ganhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:67dc733f429b/"The first AI portrait in Christie’s" was mostly output from someone else's open-source code2018-10-26T13:04:54+00:00
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/23/18013190/ai-art-portrait-auction-christies-belamy-obvious-robbie-barrat-gans
jmThe print was created by Obvious, a trio of 25-year-old French students whose goal is to “explain and democratize” AI through art. Over the past year, they’ve made a series of portraits depicting members of the fictional Belamy family, amplifying their work through attention-grabbing press releases. But insiders say the code used to generate these prints is mostly the work of another artist and programmer: 19-year-old Robbie Barrat, a recent high school graduate who shared his algorithms online via an open-source license.
The members of Obvious don’t deny that they borrowed substantially from Barrat’s code, but until recently, they didn’t publicize that fact either. This has created unease for some members of the AI art community, which is open and collaborative and taking its first steps into mainstream attention.[...]
Jason Bailey, a digital art blogger who runs the site Artnome, says that what Obvious has done is far from unusual. “It’s almost weekly in digital art that someone takes some open code and tweaks it and sells it,” he tells The Verge. But the prominence of this auction and the fact that Obvious, not Barrat, has received the attendant prestige and attention does complicate the matter. “There’s a lot of stuff you can do that’s legal, but that makes you sort of a jerk,” adds Bailey. “If I was Robbie, I’d be pretty miffed, and Obvious said they owe him a great deal of credit.”
Barrat says he holds no grudges at all and is mostly annoyed that the auction might give outsiders the wrong impression about AI art. “I’m more concerned about the fact that actual artists using AI are being deprived of the spotlight,” he says. “It’s a very bad first impression for the field to have.”
]]>ai art graphics history open-source ownership copyright obvious robbie-barrat digitalhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ad6651156b48/Google spent $60 million on building Content ID2018-09-13T10:12:35+00:00
https://www.theverge.com/2016/7/13/12165194/youtube-content-id-2-billion-paid
jmGoogle’s new report takes aim at this claim. It asserts that Content ID is a highly effective solution, with over 98 percent of copyright management on YouTube happening through Content ID, and just 2 percent coming from humans filing copyright removal notices. Google also says the music industry opts to monetize more than 95 percent of its copyright claims, meaning they leave the videos up on the service. It claims a whopping half of the music industry's YouTube revenue comes from fan content — covers, remixes, dance versions, etc. — claimed via Content ID. The report also puts a hard figure on how much Google has spent so far on Content ID: $60 million.
]]>filtering copyright eu article-13 copyfight content-id google web ugchttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d8ce4f90612d/This Music Theory Professor Just Showed How Stupid and Broken Copyright Filters Are - Motherboard2018-08-30T14:20:48+00:00
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwkbad/this-music-theory-professor-just-showed-how-stupid-and-broken-copyright-filters-are
jmKaiser then decided to test Google’s system more fully. He opened a new YouTube account named Labeltest, and began sharing additional examples of copyright-free music.
“I quickly received Content ID notifications for copyright-free music by Bartok, Schubert, Puccini, and Wagner,” Kaiser said. “Again and again, YouTube told me that I was violating the copyright of these long-dead composers, despite all of my uploads existing in the public domain.”
Google’s Content ID is the result of more than $100 million in investment funds and countless development hours. Yet Kaiser found the system was largely incapable of differentiating between copyrighted music and content in the public domain. And the appeals process that Google has erected to tackle these false claims wasn’t any better.
]]>content-id copyright copyright-filtering youtube fail google public-domain ip music filtering bartok schubert wagner puccinihttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:dee06ff1aaab/Horslips respond angrily to xenophobic #irexit use of their hit "Dearg Doom"2018-02-07T11:49:02+00:00
https://www.facebook.com/horslips/posts/10157252180580031
jmSome of you may have spotted that the saddos in the Eirexit conference had the feckin' temerity to use Dearg Doom as a soundtrack and to show the image of the album cover on the big screen.
Needless to say, they didn't ask us.
If they had, we'd have pointed out that we wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire -which they're unlikely to be, anytime soon. Five hundred damp, self regarding eejits being patronised by the Crazy Frog lookalike Nigel Farage ... isn't going to set the heather blazing in the near future.
Horslips stood for a hopeful, outward looking, inclusive vision of Ireland with plenty of drink and a Blue Range Rover.
This lot stand for a diminished, fearful, xenophobic state. Little Irelanders.
Checking out whether we can do them for copyright infringement.
We'll keep you posted.Feel free to share.
legends.
]]>horslips music 1970s irexit facebook copyrighthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3b952dbb169e/Playboy is suing Boing Boing - but linking is not copyright infringement2018-01-30T22:16:41+00:00
https://boingboing.net/2018/01/18/playboy-is-suing-boing-boing.html
jmPlayboy’s lawsuit is based on an imaginary (and dangerous) version of US copyright law that bears no connection to any US statute or precedent. Playboy -- once legendary champions for the First Amendment -- now advances a fringe copyright theory: that it is illegal to link to things other people have posted on the web, on pain of millions in damages -- the kinds of sums that would put us (and every other small publisher in America) out of business.
]]>intellectual-property copyright playboy boing-boing centerfolds porn history linking webhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:33ab0aeab9ae/The copyright implications of a publicly curated online archive of Oireachtas debates2017-10-02T11:46:42+00:00
http://www.cearta.ie/2017/10/the-copyright-implications-of-a-publicly-curated-online-archive-of-oireachtas-debates/
jmvia:aileen copyright oireachtas debates ireland parliament archival historyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:36ec9219a06d/To Cite or to Steal? When a Scholarly Project Turns Up in a Gallery2017-05-20T20:21:01+00:00
https://hyperallergic.com/308436/to-cite-or-to-steal-when-a-scholarly-project-turns-up-in-a-gallery/
jmWhat I was seeing was an announcement for a show by Jason Shulman at Cob Gallery called Photographs of Films. The press and interviews collected on the gallery’s website lauded a conceptual beauty and rigor in his work, but the only thing I could see was a rip-off. “Email for price list.” These images were unmistakably similar to the distinctive work I had been producing for years, and it was not long before friends started writing to let me know.
]]>copyright art aggregation averaging images movies rip-offs jason-shulman jason-salavon kevin-l-fergusonhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:18ec7c7b40ca/GitHub's new Balanced Employee IP Agreement (BEIPA) lets workers keep the IP when they use company resources for personal projects — Quartz2017-03-21T14:24:54+00:00
https://qz.com/937038/github-now-lets-its-workers-keep-the-ip-when-they-use-company-resources-for-personal-projects/?s=1
jmIf it’s on company time, it’s the company’s dime. That’s the usual rule in the tech industry—that if employees use company resources to work on projects unrelated to their jobs, their employer can claim ownership of any intellectual property (IP) they create.
But GitHub is throwing that out the window. Today the code-sharing platform announced a new policy, the Balanced Employee IP Agreement (BEIPA). This allows its employees to use company equipment to work on personal projects in their free time, which can occur during work hours, without fear of being sued for the IP. As long as the work isn’t related to GitHub’s own “existing or prospective” products and services, the employee owns it.
]]>github law tech jobs work day-job side-projects hacking ip copyrighthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:59c1f2763a9b/“I Want to Know What Code Is Running Inside My Body” — Backchannel2016-08-09T11:33:04+00:00
https://backchannel.com/i-want-to-know-what-code-is-running-inside-my-body-ff9a159da34b#.427697nb9
jmSandler wants to be able to explore the code running her device for programming flaws and vulnerability to hacking, but she can’t. “Because I don’t have access to the source code, I have no power to do anything about it,” she says. In her eyes, it’s a particularly obvious example of a problem that now cuts across much of modern life: proprietary software has become crucial to daily survival, and yet is often locked away from public exploration and discussion by copyright.
]]>copyright safety health pacemakers law proprietary-software life medicine implantshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b655e4fb096a/Photographer Files $1 Billion Suit Against Getty for Licensing Her Public Domain Images2016-07-28T19:49:21+00:00
http://hyperallergic.com/314079/photographer-files-1-billion-suit-against-getty-for-licensing-her-public-domain-images/
jmSince each violation of copyright in this case allows the plaintiff to seek damages up to $25,000, the statutory damages for Getty’s 18,755 violations amount to $468,875,000. But because the company was found to have violated the same copyright law within the past three years — in 2013, Daniel Morel was awarded $1.2 million in a suit against Getty, after the agency pulled his photos from Twitter and distributed them without permission to several major publications — Highsmith can elect to seek three times that amount: hence the $1 billion suit.
“The economic damage that Ms. Highsmith has suffered includes, without limitation, any and all revenue received by the Defendants based on purported licenses sold for the Highsmith Photos. These funds represent money that Ms. Highsmith could have received had she attempted to monetize her photos through the Defendants,” the complaint states. “The injury to Ms. Highsmith’s reputation has been … severe,” it continues. “There is at least one example of a recipient of a threatening letter for use of a Highsmith Photo researching the issue and determining that Ms. Highsmith had made her photos freely available and free to use through the Library website. … Therefore, anyone who sees the Highsmith Photos and knows or learns of her gift to the Library could easily believe her to be a hypocrite.”
]]>getty alamy images copyright licensing relicensing public-domain carol-highsmithhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:e9a71c242992/Why the Very Silly Oracle v. Google Trial Actually Matters2016-05-26T15:19:01+00:00
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-the-very-silly-oracle-v-google-trial-actually-matters
jmIf it’s illegal to write clean room implementations of APIs, then no one has clean hands. The now-shelved open source project Apache Harmony, like Android, reimplemented Java SE, and tech giant IBM contributed code to that project. Oracle itself built its business off a proprietary implementation of SQL, which was created by IBM. The proposition “Reimplementations of APIs are infringements” creates a recursive rabbit hole of liability that spans across the industry. Even the very 37 Java APIs at issue in this trial contain reimplementations of other APIs. Google witness Joshua Bloch—who, while at Sun Microsystems, wrote many of the Java APIs—testified that specific Java APIs are reimplementations of other APIs from Perl 5 and the C programming language.
]]>apis fair-use copyright ip android java google oracle lawhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:dfc223222b1d/Revealed: How copyright law is being misused to remove material from the internet2016-05-23T12:46:50+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/23/copyright-law-internet-mumsnet?CMP=share_btn_tw
jmIn fact, no copyright infringement had occurred at all. Instead, something weirder had happened. At some point after Narey posted her comments on Mumsnet, someone had copied the entire text of one of her posts and pasted it, verbatim, to a spammy blog titled “Home Improvement Tips and Tricks”. The post, headlined “Buildteam interior designers” was backdated to September 14 2015, three months before Narey had written it, and was signed by a “Douglas Bush” of South Bend, Indiana. The website was registered to someone quite different, though: Muhammed Ashraf, from Faisalabad, Pakistan.
Quite why Douglas Bush or Muhammed Ashraf would be reviewing a builder based in Clapham is not explained in “his” post. BuildTeam says it has no idea why Narey’s review was reposted, but that it had nothing to do with it. “At no material times have we any knowledge of why this false DCMA take down was filed, nor have we contracted any reputation management firms, or any individual or a group to take such action on our behalf. Finally, and in conjunction to the above, we have never spoken with a ‘Douglas Bush,’ or a ‘Muhammed Ashraf.’”
]]>fraud censorship mumsnet dmca takedowns google automation copyrighthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:6965697186a8/Can You Copyright A Recipe?2016-05-17T16:19:42+00:00
http://www.technollama.co.uk/can-you-copyright-a-recipe
jmcopyright recipes bbc ip lawhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:783c20fc9660/“You Can't Copyright Klingon” Means Paramount Is In Trouble2016-05-17T13:13:54+00:00
https://www.inverse.com/article/15234-you-can-t-copyright-klingon-means-paramount-is-in-trouble
jmThe Language Creation Society filed an amicus brief claiming that Klingon is a real language and therefore not subject to copyright. To reiterate: the fandom of Star Trek elevated a language invented in 1984 by Marc Okrand for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock to the point it is taught in colleges and spoken as a living language. So it isn’t Star Trek anymore: it is real. [...] the entire legal brief is impossible to reprint due to limits in our non-Klingon font system, but even the motion includes Klingon-translated passages that accuse Paramount of being “arrogant” and “pathetic”.
]]>klingon star-trek languages paramount ip copyright lawhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7a27da9ba5ac/Apple Stole My Music. No, Seriously.2016-05-05T13:11:24+00:00
https://blog.vellumatlanta.com/2016/05/04/apple-stole-my-music-no-seriously/
jmapple music terrible wav sound copyright streaming apple-music design product failhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:4472dfb3552c/Wikipedia’s Piracy Police Are Ruining the Developing World's Internet Experience | Motherboard2016-05-03T09:45:47+00:00
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/wikipedia-zero-being-surveilled-by-piracy-police
jmThe Wikimedia Foundation told me last month that it has been aware of people using Wikipedia Zero for file sharing for about a year, and says that there are no plans to pull out of any countries because of piracy. But that hasn’t stopped rogue Wiki users from suggesting it anyway, and members of the task force have gotten Wikimedia Bangladesh to plead with the pirates to stop contributing to an “increasingly negative perception of Bangladesh in many different sectors.”
]]>wikipedia wikimedia bangladesh filesharing piracy wikipedia-zero copyrighthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:05a36f7e8369/There’s Something Fishy About The Other Nefertiti2016-03-07T17:18:57+00:00
http://thegreatfredini.com/2016/03/06/theres-something-fishy-about-the-other-nefertiti/
jmThe last possibility and reigning theory is that Ms. Badri and Mr. Nelles elusive hacker partners are literally real hackers who stole a copy of the high resolution scan from the Museum’s servers. A high resolution scan must exist as a high res 3D printed replica is already available for sale online. Museum officials have dismissed the Other Nefertiti model as “of minor quality”, but that’s not what we are seeing in this highly detailed scan. Perhaps the file was obtained from someone involved in printing the reproduction, or it was a scan made of the reproduction? Indeed, the common belief in online 3D Printing community chatter is that the Kinect “story” is a fabrication to hide the fact that the model was actually stolen data from a commercial high quality scan. If the artists were behind a server hack, the legal ramifications for them are much more serious than scanning the object, which has few, if any legal precedents.
]]>art history 3d-printing 3d nefertiti heists copyright data kinecthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:f82abb32f4e1/Canadian Judge Says Asking For A Copy Of A Legally-Obtained But Paywalled Article Is Circumvention | Techdirt2015-11-01T12:16:29+00:00
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151028/10255032658/canadian-judge-says-asking-copy-legally-obtained-paywalled-article-is-circumvention.shtml
jmFor requesting a copy of an article that was legally obtained by a colleague from a paywalled source, Pazsowski found himself hit with around US$10,000-worth of damages. This completely disproportionate punishment for what is at most a minor case of copyright infringement is a perfect demonstration of where the anti-circumvention madness leads.
]]>circumvention tpm copyright paywalls techdirt law canadahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:0a2285229887/What the hell is going on with SoundCloud?2015-08-17T15:01:08+00:00
http://www.factmag.com/2015/08/14/what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-soundcloud/
jmDespite having revenue coming in from ads and subscriptions, SoundCloud still relies on outside investment. While the company received $150 million in a funding round at the end of last year, it pales next to the reported $526 million Spotify gained in June, and if one report is to be believed, SoundCloud is running very low on cash. Furthermore, sources suggest that potential investors are waiting to see what happens with Sony and Universal before ploughing in more money. With the high sums reported to be involved, it’s a stalemate that could potentially break the company whether it decides to pay or not.
]]>soundcloud music mp3 copyright sony universal spotify funding startupshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:2e2f249a5492/Small claims triumph as aerial photographer routs flagrant infringers2015-04-07T13:28:40+00:00
http://the1709blog.blogspot.ie/2015/04/small-claims-triumph-as-aerial.html
jmcopyright infringement small-claims law uk webb-aviation photography imageshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:cb5c8f41e683/Stairs to nowhere, trap streets, and other Toronto oddities2015-03-19T12:11:58+00:00
http://spacing.ca/toronto/2015/03/18/stairs-nowhere-trap-streets-toronto-oddities/
jmtrap-streets maps ip google via:bldgblog mapping copyright thomassons orphaned-roadshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:95d76e0dd9f0/The US complains that others steal its technology, but America was once a tech pirate itself2014-12-29T12:43:56+00:00
http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-nations-are-stealing-us-technology-america-has-history
jmHamilton used patents to lure immigrants with skills and knowledge to move to the United States. George Parkinson, for example, was awarded a patent in 1791 for a textile spinning machine, which was really just a rip-off of a machine he had used in England. The United States also paid his family's expenses to emigrate and re-locate to the US. [...]
The Brits were not happy about the attempts to steal their intellectual property. Severe penalties were on the books for anyone trying to take machines or designs out of the country, or even to lure skilled workers. It was actually illegal for such skilled workers to leave the country.
]]>china gongkai patents ip copyright history us uk textiles spinninghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:beffcb378e4d/From Gongkai to Open Source2014-12-29T12:35:28+00:00
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297
jmopensource china gongkai tinkering reverse-engineering bunnie-huang open-source mediatek copyright facts fair-use shanzhai patentshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:9c552f35dac4/This Canadian Artist Halted Pipeline Development by Copyrighting His Land as a Work of Art2014-11-10T15:42:24+00:00
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/this-canadian-artist-halted-pipeline-development-by-copyrighting-his-land-as-a-work-of-art-983
jmOne of the really important pieces on my land was this white-picket fence. The picket fence is probably 100 yards or less, within 100 yards of where they wanted to build this pipeline. I [plan to] extend it 8 feet every year for the rest of my life and I've been doing that for 25 years. It got me thinking, where does this piece end? Does it end at the actual structure of the fence or the things growing around it, growing through it, that are part of the photography, the documentation of it? I realized at that point that [the fence], and the other sculptures and pieces and incursions and conceptual works, were actually integral to that piece of land and to my practice.
I had not intended for it to be a political piece, it was just a piece, an idea the follow-through of which at some point became poetic, you go, "Wait a minute the fence actually stopped them!" But the fence doesn't actually enclose anything. It's just a straight line. And it's marking something that's actually unmarkable, which is time. And one day it'll be gone, as will I. The land will be changed--but it was just this crazy irony that kicked into play when I was standing there with those oil negotiators.
]]>copyright art pipelines canada politics oil land conceptual-art iphttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8452ebc3e1a6/Belgian and French copyright laws ban photos of EP buildings2014-11-05T16:28:53+00:00
http://euobserver.com/justice/126375
jmAn obscure clause in EU copyright rules means no one can publish photos of public buildings in Belgium, like the Atomium, or France’s Eiffel tower at night without first asking permission from the rights owners.
Ah, copyright.]]>copyright ip stupid belgium france law atomium eiffel-towerhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:f113dae4da28/UK museums lobbying for copyright reform with empty display cases2014-11-03T11:03:37+00:00
http://www.cilip.org.uk/cilip/news/campaign-free-our-history-reform-copyright
jmDisplay cases in the Imperial War Museum, National Library of Scotland and University of Leeds sit empty. They should contain letters from the First World War; from a young girl to her father serving as a soldier and from soldiers to their families back home. Because of current UK copyright laws the original letters cannot be displayed. At the moment the duration of copyright in certain unpublished works is to the end of the year 2039, regardless how old the work is. The Free Our History campaign wants the term of copyright protection in unpublished texts to be reduced to the author’s lifetime plus 70 years.
]]>copyright history uk law museums iphttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5879cc02b9f9/Mike Perham on Twitter: "Sweet, monit just sent a DMCA takedown notice to @github to remove Inspeqtor."2014-10-06T22:10:26+00:00
https://twitter.com/mperham/status/518796150733033472
jmcopyright dmca tildeslash monit inspeqtor github ops oss agplhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:dfe1c710c030/UK piracy police arrest man suspected of running proxy server (Wired UK)2014-08-07T09:31:47+00:00
http://torrentfreak.com/police-arrest-operator-torrent-site-proxies-140806/
jmThe Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit has arrested a 20-year-old man in Nottingham on suspicion of copyright infringement for running a proxy server providing access to other sites subject to legal blocking orders.
Is operating a proxy server illegal? Interesting. Seems unlikely that this will go to court though.
(Via TJ McIntyre)]]>immunicity via:tjmcintyre police uk piracy proxies http pac pipcu copyrighthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7ee5d82fa05a/European Commission Consultation On Copyright Reveals Chasm Between Views Of Public And Publishers | Techdirt2014-08-05T11:18:14+00:00
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140728/05471128034/european-commission-consultation-copyright-reveals-chasm-between-views-public-publishers.shtml
jmThe two charts indicate that current EU copyright is very unbalanced. When one side is completely satisfied with the status quo and the other is very unhappy then this is not a balanced situation. Given that a good compromise should leave everybody equally unhappy, the results of the consultation also show the direction for copyright reform efforts of the new EU Commission: re-balancing copyright requires at least some reform as demanded by end users and institutional users, most importantly a more harmonized and flexible system of exceptions and limitations.
]]>copyright views publishers eu ec europe reform lawhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:e0db363cac2d/UK private copying exception plans face possible legal action2014-07-31T13:13:50+00:00
http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2014/july/private-copying-exception-plans-face-possible-legal-action-following-parliamentary-sign-off/
jmUnder the proposed private copying exception, individuals in the UK would be given a new right to make a copy of copyrighted material they have lawfully and permanently acquired for their private use, provided it was not for commercial ends. Making a private copy of the material in these circumstances would not be an act of copyright infringement, although making a private copy of a computer program would still be prohibited under the plans.
There is no mechanism envisaged in the draft legislation for rights holders to be specifically compensated for the act of private copying. This prompted the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments (JCSI), tasked with scrutinising the proposals, to warn parliamentarians that the rules may be deemed to be in breach of EU copyright laws as a result of the lack of 'fair compensation' mechanism. [...]
"We are disappointed that the private copying exception will be introduced without providing fair compensation for British songwriters, performers and other rights holders within the creative sector. A mechanism for fair compensation is a requirement of European law. In response we are considering our legal options," [UK Music] said.
]]>uk law copyright music copying private-copying personal infringement piracy transcoding backuphttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:85f7992bb622/CJEU in #Svensson says that in general it is OK to hyperlink to protected works without permission2014-02-13T11:10:03+00:00
http://ipkitten.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/breaking-news-cjeu-in-svensson-says.html
jmip svensson cjeu eu law pirate-bay internet web links http copyright linking hyperlinkshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:dae72358b6a0/Internet Censors Came For TorrentFreak & Now I’m Really Mad2014-01-20T14:52:57+00:00
http://torrentfreak.com/internet-censors-came-for-torrentfreak-now-im-really-mad-140105/
jmThere can be little doubt that little by little, piece by piece, big corporations and governments are taking chunks out of the free Internet. Today they pretend that the control is in the hands of the people, but along the way they are prepared to mislead and misdirect, even when their errors are pointed out to them. I’m calling on Sky, Symantec, McAfee and other ISPs about to employ filtering to categorize this site correctly as a news site or blog and to please start listening to people’s legitimate complaints about other innocent sites. It serves nobody’s interests to wrongfully block legitimate information.
]]>censorship isps uk sky torrentfreak piracy copyright filtering blocking symantec filesharinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:80a78770e042/Irish Internet Providers Roll Out KickassTorrents Blockade2014-01-20T14:48:53+00:00
http://torrentfreak.com/irish-internet-providers-roll-out-kickasstorrents-blockade-140119/
jmkat kickasstorrents bittorrent piracy copyright high-court ireland eircom filtering blockinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:2c0ac5818ae5/Creative Commons event in Dublin this Friday2014-01-13T18:08:06+00:00
http://www.creativecommonsireland.org/events/
jmcreative-commons ireland dublin events talks law copyrighthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:cb4734e9ae00/URGENT: Input needed on EU copyright consultation - Boing Boing2014-01-06T14:14:58+00:00
http://boingboing.net/2014/01/05/urgent-input-needed-on-eu-cop.html
jmGo to www.copywrongs.eu and answer the questions which are important to you. You do not have to answer all the questions, only the ones that matter to you. [...] The deadline is 5 February 2014. Until then, we should provide the European Commission with as many responses as possible!
]]>ec eu copyright law europe boing-boing reformhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3ae717e5ce04/Same Old Stories From Sean Sherlock2013-12-07T20:57:48+00:00
http://www.krank.ie/category/opinions/same-stories-sean-sherlock/
jmSherlock’s record is spotty at best when it comes to engagement. Setting aside the 80,680 people who were ignored by the minister, he was hostile and counter productive to debate from the beginning, going so far as to threaten to pull out of a public debate because a campaigner against the ['Irish SOPA'] SI would be in attendance. His habit of blocking people online who publicly ask him tough yet legitimate questions has earned him the nickname “Sherblock”.
]]>sean-sherlock sherblock labour ireland politics blocking filtering internet freedom copyright emi music law piracy debate twitterhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:eec69ef2d6a1/Removing DRM Boosts Music Sales by 10%2013-12-04T11:33:47+00:00
http://torrentfreak.com/what-piracy-removing-drm-boosts-music-sales-by-10-percent-131130/
jmComparing album sales of four major labels before and after the removal of DRM reveals that digital music revenue increases by 10% when restrictions are removed. The effect goes up to 30% for long tail content, while top-selling albums show no significant jump. The findings suggest that dropping technical restrictions can benefit both artists and the major labels.
more details: http://inside.rotman.utoronto.ca/laurinazhang/files/2013/11/laurina_zhang_jmp_nov4.pdf , "Intellectual Property Strategy and the Long Tail: Evidence from the Recorded Music Industry", Laurina Zhang, November 4, 2013
]]>ip copyright drm mp3 music laurina-zhang research long-tail albums rights-management piracyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:09fbb16c59b3/Photographer wins $1.2 million from companies that took pictures off Twitter | Reuters2013-11-25T15:59:36+00:00
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/22/us-media-copyright-twitter-idUSBRE9AL16F20131122
jmThe jury found that Agence France-Presse and Getty Images willfully violated the Copyright Act when they used photos Daniel Morel took in his native Haiti after the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 250,000 people, Morel's lawyer, Joseph Baio, said
]]>copyright twitter facebook social-media via:niall-harbison law getty-images afp daniel-morel haiti photographyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7ce3f3dd932f/Tintin And The Copyright Sharks - Falkvinge on Infopolicy2013-11-19T15:43:34+00:00
http://falkvinge.net/2013/10/24/tintin-and-the-copyright-sharks/
jmtintin moulinsart belgium history herge ip copyright royalties rick-falkvingehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7ceff92e4e5d/Alan Toner on the CRC report2013-11-13T22:22:50+00:00
http://knowfuture.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/modernising-copyright-report-published-in-ireland/
jm
The grand design and originality thus of ‘Modernising Copyright’ thus is the injection of targeted flexibility into the legal framework – this is no mere echo of the Hargreaves Report in the UK, which backed away from Fair Use out of fear at the uncertainty it would necessarily entail. If the Report’s authors have their way, contested uses in Ireland will first be examined to see if they fit the exceptions spelled out in the EUCD, or checked against the innovation exception if they are derivative works/adaptations. Only if they have fallen at those two fences, will the fair use test be their last chance saloon.
]]>alan-toner copyright reform crc ireland fair-usehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:e9c4333a9d73/Modernising (Irish) Copyright Katseries #2: linking & marshalling as exceptions2013-11-06T11:29:31+00:00
http://ipkitten.blogspot.ie/2013/10/modernising-irish-copyright-katseries-2.html
jmipkat ip copyright crc law ireland commentaryhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:551cec779cbb/Link without fear – Copyright in Ireland in a Digital Age2013-10-29T10:34:26+00:00
http://www.mulley.net/2013/10/29/link-without-fear-copyright-in-ireland-in-a-digital-age/comment-page-1/#comment-944704
jm
Ensure the right of free speech is a central element of the new copyright regime, including in the areas of parody and satire;
Legalise legitimate forms of copying by introducing an explicit and broadly defined “Fair Use” policy.
Ensure the extent of copyright ownership is balanced against the public good;
Design a system which is clear to all parties, including end users;
Design an enforcement mechanism which is easy to understand, transparent and accessible to all parties;
Target penalties at those who infringe on copyright rather than on third parties such as intermediaries;
Future-proof the new regime by basing it on applicable principles rather than rules relevant to today’s technology only;
Make it easy for end-users to identify and engage with owners of copyright material.
Here's hoping Sean Sherlock now does what he said he'd do, and acts on these recommendations.]]>copyright law ireland reports fair-use free-speech satire parody copying copyfight ownership ip drm linkinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a38b1ddce0d4/The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish - Rebecca J. Rosen - The Atlantic2013-09-25T09:03:02+00:00
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/the-hole-in-our-collective-memory-how-copyright-made-mid-century-books-vanish/278209/
jmThis is not a gently sloping downward curve. Publishers seem unwilling to sell their books on Amazon for more than a few years after their initial publication. The data suggest that publishing business models make books disappear fairly shortly after their publication and long before they are scheduled to fall into the public domain. Copyright law then deters their reappearance as long as they are owned. On the left side of the graph before 1920, the decline presents a more gentle time-sensitive downward sloping curve.
]]>business books legal copyright law public-domain reading history publishers amazon papershttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b1fead965ff6/Newest YouTube user to fight a takedown is copyright guru Lawrence Lessig2013-08-24T20:19:18+00:00
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/newest-youtube-user-to-fight-a-takedown-is-copyright-guru-lawrence-lessig/
jmIllegitimate or simply unnecessary copyright claims are, unfortunately, commonplace in the Internet era. But if there's one person who's probably not going to back down from a claim of copyright infringement, it's Larry Lessig, one of the foremost writers and thinkers on digital-age copyright. [..] If Liberation Music was thinking they'd have an easy go of it when they demanded that YouTube take down a 2010 lecture of Lessig's entitled "Open," they were mistaken. Lessig has teamed up with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to sue Liberation, claiming that its overly aggressive takedown violates the DMCA and that it should be made to pay damages.
]]>liberation-music eff copyright law larry-lessig fair-usehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:156aa818a21b/How The Copyright Industry Pushed For Internet Surveillance | TorrentFreak2013-07-01T09:37:51+00:00
http://torrentfreak.com/how-the-copyright-industry-pushed-for-internet-surveillance-130630/
jmThe reason for the copyright industry to push for surveillance is simple: any digital communications channel can be used for private conversation, but it can also be used to share culture and knowledge that is under copyright monopoly. In order to tell which communications is which, you must sort all of it – and to do that, you must look at all of it. In other words, if enforcing the copyright monopoly is your priority, you need to kill privacy, and specifically anonymity and secrecy of correspondence.
This was exactly my biggest worry -- a side-effect of effective copyright filtering is the creation of infrastructure for online oppression by the state.]]>copyright privacy state data-protection rick-falkvinge copyfight internet filtering surveillance anonymityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:dc056a81c09b/Record companies to target 20 more pirate sites after court ruling - Independent.ie2013-06-17T10:18:12+00:00
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/record-companies-to-target-20-more-pirate-sites-after-court-ruling-29341201.html
jmUp to 20 internet sites are to be targeted by an organisation representing record companies in a move to stamp out the illegal pirating of music and other copyright material. The Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) said it would be immediately moving against the 20 "worst offenders" to "take out" internet sites involved in the illegal downloading of copyright work.
However, looks like this will involve more court time:
Last night IRMA director general, Dick Doyle said the High Court ruling was only the first step in "taking out many internet sites involved in illegally downloading music. "We will be back in court very shortly to take out five to 10 other sites. We have already selected a total of 20 of the worst offender sites and we will go after the next five in the very near future," he said.
That's not going to be cheap!]]>courts ireland law irma piracy pirate-bay bpi proxies filesharing copyrighthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5ee644f202e4/UK ISPs Secretly Start Blocking Torrent Site Proxies | TorrentFreak2013-06-15T11:58:36+00:00
http://torrentfreak.com/uk-isps-secretly-start-blocking-torrent-site-proxies-130611/
jmThe blocking orders are intended to deter online piracy and were requested by the music industry group BPI on behalf of a variety of major labels. Thus far they’ve managed to block access to The Pirate Bay, Kat.ph, H33T and Fenopy, and preparations are being made to add many others.
The effectiveness of these initial measures has been called into doubt, as they are relatively easy to bypass. For example, in response to the blockades hundreds of proxy sites popped up, allowing subscribers to reach the prohibited sites via a detour.
However, as of this week these proxies are also covered by the same blocklist they aim to circumvent, without a new court ruling.
The High Court orders give music industry group BPI the authority to add sites to the blocklist without oversight. Until now some small changes have been made, mostly in response to The Pirate Bay’s domain hopping endeavors, but with the latest blocklist update a whole new range of websites is being targeted.
]]>bittorrent blocking filesharing copyright bpi piracy pirate-bay proxies fenopy kat.ph h33t filtering ukhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:04f514e86341/Lawsuit Filed To Prove Happy Birthday Is In The Public Domain; Demands Warner Pay Back Millions Of License Fees | Techdirt2013-06-14T09:35:00+00:00
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130613/11165823451/filmmaker-finally-aims-to-get-court-to-admit-that-happy-birthday-is-public-domain.shtml
jmThe issue [...] is that it's just not cost effective for anyone to actually stand up and challenge Warner Music, who has strong financial incentive to pretend the copyright is still valid. Well, apparently, someone is pissed off enough to try. The creatively named Good Morning to You Productions, a documentary film company planning a film about the song Happy Birthday, has now filed a lawsuit concerning the copyright of Happy Birthday and are seeking to force Warner/Chappell to return the millions of dollars it has collected over the years. That's going to make this an interesting case.
]]>music copyright law via:bwalsh public-domain happy-birthday songs warner-music lawsuitshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:eb13bcbea60b/Labour TD ignores tough questions on web case2013-06-12T11:50:55+00:00
http://www.krank.ie/category/internets/labour-td-ignores-tough-questions-on-web-case/
jmI [Tom Murphy] have asked [Sean Sherlock] a question: Does he have any comment about the lawsuit between EMI and UPC (and a raft of other ISPs too btw) which is using his SI to attempt to block PirateBay? A court case he said would not happen. Now, I am blocked from following him on Twitter. This is not how a proper political system works.
]]>politics ireland twitter sean-sherlock tom-murphy boards devore copyrighthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ce7e795c8af1/