20/09/2009
telecomix:
Why does the European Council keep wasting our time and money? (telecoms package) http://bit.ly/CJQfL
Text posted at 21:50
19/09/2009
“ However we have serious reservations about the content and scope of the proposed legislation outlined in the consultation on P2P file-sharing. Processes of monitoring, notification and sanction are not conducive to achieving a vibrant, functional, fair and competitive market for music. As a result we believe that the specific questions asked by the consultation are not only unanswerable but indicate a mindset so far removed from that of the general public and music consumer that it seems an extraordinarily negative document. The very fuzzy estimates for the annual benefits of such legislation (£200 million per year) make clear that such estimates are based firmly upon the premise that a P2P downloaded track equals a lost sale. This “substitutional” argument is, in reality, no more than “lobbyists’ speak”: it has little support from logic and no economist would seek to weave such a number into a metric aimed at quantifying a ‘value gap’ for the industries challenged by P2P. „
Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA) and the Music Producers Guild (MPG) in their Joint Statement on P2P Legislation Featured Artists Coalition :: News
Quote posted at 18:07
17/09/2009
Quote posted at 22:51
16/09/2009
Quote posted at 09:00
15/09/2009
“ It is a maxim of universal application that every man is presumed to know the law, and it would seem inherent that freedom of access to the laws, or the official interpretation of those laws, should be co-extensive with the sweep of the maxim. Knowledge is the only just condition of obedience. „
excerpt from an 1886 opinion, Banks & Bros. v. West Pub. Co., 27 F. 50 (C.C.D. Minn. 1886), quoted by William Patry in The Patry Copyright Blog: Oregon goes wacka wacka huna kuna
Quote posted at 23:12
“ Although the Committee does not claim a copyright in the text of the law itself, the Committee does claim a copyright in the arrangement and subject-matter compilation of Oregon statutory law, the prefatory and explanatory notes, the leadlines and numbering for each statutory section, the tables, index and annotations and such oethers incidents as are the work product of the Committee in the compilation and publication of Oregon law. „
Dexter Johnson, Legislative Counsel, on behalf of the Oregon Legislative Counsel Committee, in the Notice of Copyright Infrigement and demand to cease and desist sent to the site Justia.com
Quote posted at 21:09
10/09/2009
“ European officials fear that if the Google project goes ahead in the US, a yawning transatlantic gap will open up in education and research.
“Oh my God! The Americans are about to create a private workaround of the enormous mess that we regulators have made of national copyright policy! They will fix the unholy legal screwups that leave most of the books of 20th century culture unavailable, yet still under copyright! They will gain access to their cultural heritage — giving them a huge competitive advantage in education. This MUST BE STOPPED!! No one can be allowed to fix this for any other country because then we would be left alone stewing in our own intellectual property stupidity! We must forbid their progress in order to protect our ignorance.
„
James, Boyle. We Must Stop Google Books Because It Will Work ! The Public Domain.
(merci à Marlene pour m’avoir signalé ce billet !)
(via
silex)
Quote posted at 09:00
05/09/2009
“ Where’s the record industry executive who says mea culpa like Jeff Bezos?
Amazon wiped Kindles of George Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm” because they didn’t have the rights. Kind of reminds you of labels, who keep complaining about publishers, all kinds of internal shit that the public can’t understand and doesn’t care about. Can anyone truly explain to a fan why the Beatles are not available on iTunes? With CD sales down 54.7% in the last five years according to the “Wall Street Journal”, does anybody other than Kid Rock believe that making people buy the complete album, preferably on CD, is a way to satiate customers and further your business?
„
Bob Lefsetz in Lefsetz Letter » Blog Archive » Bezos Apologizes
Quote posted at 21:01
04/09/2009
“ New forms of creativity are developing that re-use and re-purpose existing content but in fact this is not new at all. Re-use and re-purposing in culture has a grand tradition from Homer, via Don Quixote to Romeo and Juliet, from Brahms’ Haydn variations to Hendrix’s version of the Star Spangled Banner. In my own field all science and technology is derivative. It builds constantly on the work of others. But the internet makes new forms of re-use possible. New types of value creation are also made possible. Re-use of images, video, and text, as well as ideas and data are enabling the development of new forms of business, new types of innovation in ways that are very challenging to predict. Your proposal will stifle this innovation by creating an environment of fear around re-use and by privileging certain classes and types of content and producer over the generators of new and innovative products. Those who do not care will ignore and circumvent the rules by technical means. And those who are exploring new types of derivative work, new types of innovative content, will be discouraged by the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty created by your policy. „
Cameron Neylon in Science in the open » An open letter to Lord Mandelson
Quote posted at 18:16
01/09/2009
“ The BSA’s decision to publicly throw its weight behind graduated response means that the music, movie, and software industries have now largely agreed on the outlines of a preferred solution to online piracy. Thankfully, full-on Internet content filtering—which was never going to work well—seems to be off the table, with the BSA even going out of its way to disown broad filtering solutions. The group wants action because, as it says, “last year our industry lost over $50 billion (USD) worldwide,” though this includes all sorts of software piracy and counterfeiting, not just online file-sharing. It’s easy to be skeptical of this number—it’s more than the combined worldwide earnings of all motion picture box office receipts ($28 billion) and the major labels’ recorded music sales ($18 billion). „
Nate Anderson in Business Software Alliance wants in on three-strikes action - Ars Technica
Quote posted at 11:02
30/08/2009
Quote posted at 21:48
29/08/2009
“ My friend’s claim seeks to apply a worn out law to a new reality. Books are different to other chattels (possessions) and the law should recognise this. Learned men like us, who have received a new heritage of knowledge through books, have an obligation to spread that knowledge, by copying and distributing those books far and wide. I haven’t used up Finnian’s book by copying it. He still has the original and that original is none the worse for my having copied it. Nor has it decreased in value because I made a transcript of it. The knowledge in books should be available to anybody who wants to read them and has the skills or is worthy to do so; and it is wrong to hide such knowledge away or to attempt to extinguish the divine things that books contain. It is wrong to attempt to prevent me or anyone else from copying it or reading it or making multiple copies to disperse throughout the land. In conclusion I submit that it was permissible for me to copy the book because, although I benefited from the hard work involved in the transcription, I gained no worldly profit from the process, I acted for the good of society in general and neither Finnian nor his book were harmed. „
Colmcille, a.k.a. Saint Columba of Iona, in Ireland in the mid-6th-century AD, quoted in Colmcille and the Battle of the Book: Technology, Law and Access to Knowledge in 6th Century Ireland (PDF) and translated partially in French by SILex in Saint Finnian et le Necronomicon du Copyright
Quote posted at 13:02
“ The original purpose of copyright, created by the Statute of Anne of 1709, was to encourage the creation of artistic works by granting a right to copy for 14 years. Copyright for written works now stands at life plus 70 years, and copyright for sound recordings is 50 years after the recording is made, or 50 years after publication. The EU has extended copyright to 95 years for performers and sound recordings.
The term of copyright has been marching forward but along the way, the purpose of it has been lost, according to Robinson. Instead of encouraging artistic creation, modern copyright has made certain companies cultural gatekeepers, he argues, adding, “copyright is serving the needs of music labels, not the needs of the public, the public domain or even the artists”.
„
Kevin Anderson in The Pirate Party UK and a new frontier for filesharing |
Technology |
The Guardian
Quote posted at 11:02
28/08/2009
“ The distinctive feature of modern American copyright law is its almost limitless bloating—its expansion in both scope and duration. The first Congress to grant copyright gave authors an initial term of fourteen years, which could be renewed for another fourteen if the author still lived. The current term is the life of the author plus seventy years. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that each time Mickey Mouse is about to fall into the public domain, the mouse’s copyright term is extended. „
Jonathan Lethem, in an essay quoted by Mills
Consider - if copyright law had remained as envisioned by its first statute the entire Beatles catalog would now be in the public domain. Any musicain would be able to pull samples from Come Together at will, any movie director would be free to use the entire White Album as the soundtrack to his film, and any up-and-coming band would be able to record a cover of I Want to Hold Your Hand without worrying about royalties or clearing licensing rights, since the song would be just a public domain standard. The purpose of copyright has been transformed from a way to give artists an incentive to produce more works of art to a method of ensuring that particular works of art remain profitable for a specific party in perpetuity.
(via thebronzemedal)
(via libraryland)
(via infoneernet)
(via silex)
Quote posted at 19:05
27/08/2009
“ Individuals accustomed to an ethical system based on the book regard any infringement on their authorial rights or any use of a published text, without appropriate permission, as a moral and legal wrong … In contrast, individuals who have become accustomed to hypertextual exchange tend to regard any impediment to free exchange as a serious wrong. The free development and dissemination of knowledge is more important than always giving precise credit where credit is due. „
Silvio Gaggi, quoted by Lethe in The Blog of Innocence: Where do we stand on Internet Copyright Law?
Quote posted at 15:04
Quoting the Crisis
