‘Future of Ideas’ By Lessig Available for Download

Actions speak louder than words…Lawrence Lessig has finally made his book ‘The Future of Ideas’ available for download under a Creative Commons License.

Link to download book 

Steal This Film 2 London Premiere

RedPlanet is organizing the London premiere of the copyright documentary ‘Steal This Film’ at the plush Rex Cinema + Bar this Friday January 18th.

Link to movie site (available for download)

Link to event page

MPAA and RIAA: You Cannot Infringe Copyright But We Can!

It is striking, to say the least, when the two organizations at the forefront of copyright litigation are involved with copyright infringement themselves.

With regards to the MPAA, a copy of the movie ‘This Film Is Not Yet Rated’ was sent to the MPAA for review purposes.  This movie looks at the ratings system of the MPAA and criticizes it as an alternative form of censorship.  The director of the film specifically prohibited copies of the dvd from being made in an email.  Nonetheless the MPAA proceeded to make unauthorized DVD copies.

With regards to the RIAA, Edgar Bronfman (chairman of Universal which runs several important music labels) has admitted in an interview that his own children have used file-sharing networks to illegally download music.  When your dad is Edgar Bronfman and you neither lack money or access to music, and use peer networks nonetheless, it reflects the degree to which file-sharing has become a legitimate social norm for discovering music.

Egypt to ‘Copyright’ Antiquities

Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities is apparently trying to copyright the pyramids as architectural works. This move comes two days after an Egyptian newspaper pointed to the huge disparity between the annual number of tourists in Las Vegas (35 million )which has a pyramid replica and Luxor (6 million) which is the site of the actual pyramids. William Patry has an interesting post digging a bit deeper into these nebulous copyright claims which have been announced matter-of-factly.

Link to article

Antigua Copyright Piracy as Result of WTO Ruling

William Patry explains the story behind a recent WTO ruling.  Essentially, Antigua has been awarded $21 million in set-offs on a gambling-related issue.  It has chosen to pirate copyrighted content in that amount.

Link to post 

Gowers Review of Intellectual Property

The Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, which is a report commissioned by the United Kingdom government, is now available in its entirety online.

Link to site

Sony Rootkit Incident and Digital Rights Management

Deirdre Mulligan and Aaron Perzanowski have recently published a paper that examines the Sony Rootkit Incident (in which Sony include spyware on its music cds which automatically installed itself when inserted in a computer).

Abstract of the paper:

Late in 2005, Sony BMG released millions of Compact Discs containing digital rights management technologies that threatened the security of its customers’ computers and the integrity of the information infrastructure more broadly. This Article aims to identify the market, technological, and legal factors that appear to have led a presumably rational actor toward a strategy that in retrospect appears obviously and fundamentally misguided.

The Article first addresses the market-based rationales that likely influenced Sony BMG’s deployment of these DRM systems and reveals that even the most charitable interpretation of Sony BMG’s internal strategizing demonstrates a failure to adequately value security and privacy. After taking stock of the then-existing technological environment that both encouraged and enabled the distribution of these protection measures, the Article examines law, the third vector of influence on Sony BMG’s decision to release flawed protection measures into the wild, and argues that existing doctrine in the fields of contract, intellectual property, and consumer protection law fails to adequately counter the technological and market forces that allowed a self-interested actor to inflict these harms on the public.

The Article concludes with two recommendations aimed at reducing the likelihood of companies deploying protection measures with known security vulnerabilities in the consumer marketplace. First, Congress should alter the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by creating permanent exemptions from its anti-circumvention and antitrafficking provisions that enable security research and the dissemination of tools to remove harmful protection measures. Second, the Federal Trade Commission should leverage insights from the field of human computer interaction security (HCI-Sec) to develop a stronger framework for user control over the security and privacy aspects of computers.

Link to download paper 

MPAA Spyware Violates Copyright!

The irony is worthy of a Shakespeare play!  The MPAA distributes a piece of software that spies on the internet activities of university students.  However, the software is released under a GPL license which requires divulging the source code.  Despite several requests, the MPAA has refused to divulge the source code and therefore violates the terms of the license.

Link to post 

Canada Government on Verge of Introducing DMCA

A bill that is virtuall identical to the US DMCA (if not worse in parts) risks being introduced in parliament by the Canadian government and Industry Minister.  Michael Geist, of the University of Ottawa, has a list of things you can do to prevent it from becoming law.

Link to post 

Gap Between Laws and Norms

John Tehranian, of the University of Utah, has published a paper on the (wide) gap between the laws and public norms regarding copyright infringement.

Link to pdf