Copyright
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Viacom Sues YouTube
YouTube uses its users to steal from the work of honest artists toiling to create original content, says Viacom as it finally sues YouTube for “massive intentional copyright infringement”: YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others’ creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google. Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws. In fact, YouTube’s strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps… >>>
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Esprit De Apple Corps
More corporate copyright capers. The Royal Courts of Justice in London swung to the sounds of the latest popular beat combos on the opening day of Apple vs. Apple, in which the Beatles’ record label is demanding damages from the computer giant for the alleged scrumping of its apple logo. QC Geoffrey “Loudmouth” Vos, resplendent in what excited journalists took to be an Adidas hoodie, chopped from the classic disco of Chic’s Le Freak to the big street hot riddims of Coldplay’s Speed of Sound while waving Hunter S Thompson’s pump-action wordage in the air – the music business is… >>>
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Booted, Suited and Uploading
Viral video enthusiasts using YouTube: potential copyright infringers or corporate shills? YouTube’s DIY video site includes clips “stolen” from big media companies, allege lawyers representing big media companies – the likes of NBC Uni, CBS and ABC. But big media companies, or at least their marketeers, are starting to realise that mashed-up clips represent, forgive the marketing spiel, bottom-up branded content. Loaded with slap-happy credibility because they appear to be generated by users rather than corporations, they create the buzz needed for ratings success – or so says YouTube: There’s been a few examples of marketing departments uploading content directly… >>>
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Comic Copyright Capers
Great new IP & Fair Use comic by Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain: Bound by Law translates law into plain English and abstract ideas into ‘visual metaphors.’ So the comic’s heroine, Akiko, brandishes a laser gun as she fends off a cyclopean ‘Rights Monster’ – all the while learning copyright law basics, including the line between fair use and copyright infringement. – Brandt Goldstein, The Wall Street Journal online >>>
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Patent cupidity
From the Economist’s latest survey of patents and technology: The granting [of] patents “inflames cupidity”, excites fraud, stimulates men to run after schemes that may enable them to levy a tax on the public, begets disputes and quarrels betwixt inventors, provokes endless lawsuits…The principle of the law from which such consequences flow cannot be just. – The Economist, 1851 in The Economist, 2005 >>>
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Harry Potter takes a TRIP
Impatient for the sixth Harry Potter? Why not try Harry Potter and the Trade Related Intellectual Property Agreement (TRIPS)? With demand outstripping supply, Muggles around the world have resorted to publishing their own stories about the teenage wizard. In China, there’s Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon; in Russia, Tanya Grotter and the Magic Double Bass; in Belarus, Porri Gatter and the Stone Philosopher; in India, Harry Potter in Calcutta. Harry’s creator, JK Rowling, isn’t happy about this. Luckily for her, under the WTO’s TRIPS agreement, original authors ‘enjoy the exclusive right of authorizing adaptations, arrangements and other alterations of their works’.… >>>
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A Splice of Mice
Mickey isn’t the only mouse trying to wriggle out of the clutches of the masters of code. – Animation World Network Canada last week refused to grant a patent for a genetically modified mouse. Unlike the US, EU and Japan, Canada denies that Harvard’s scientists invented anything when they manipulated mouse genes. Its Supreme Court says the university doesn’t deserve a patent – at least not until the politicians have had a chance to think the ethics of biotech over. – National Post As with Mickey, business concerns slam into public concerns here. It doesn’t make much business sense for… >>>
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Off Switch For Big Media
It’s the beginning of the end of the big media monopoly, argues Robert X Cringely. The big media corporations may have succeeded in making copying illegal. But even Microsoft is starting to acknowledge that there’s been a total failure in stopping the growth of a culture of copying. Big media’s next step will be to employ hacking techniques against peer-to-peer file sharing systems. Then, as consumer PR hits rock bottom, the corporates will introduce their own pretty peer-to-peer systems. With corporate peer-to-peer – two incompatible ideas – likely to fail, big media will increasingly concentrate on media projects, like blockbuster… >>>
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How To Be A Genius
It’s sharing ideas that leads to innovation. The Romantic idea of the artist as a lonely genius? It’s more like Newton and Oasis and the rest of us jostling for position on the shoulders of giants. According to Malcolm ‘Tipping Point‘ Gladwell, innovation happens when people egg each other on. Group social interaction results in radical ideas. He looks at how Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, how Darwin, Watt and Priestley, how TV comedians Saturday Night Live got together and got down – in John Belushi’s case to coke snorting and everybody’s wife – to produce, in the end, pure genius.… >>>
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Rip, Mix and Desist
Develop an existing idea so that it becomes something new and you’ll be applauded for your creativity and genius. Unless you’re hit with a cease-and-desist letter first. The images and sounds in Illegal Art, currently at New York’s 313 Gallery, broke copyright law and so media corporations and their lawyers dragged the artists responsible to the courtroom. Not a familiar cartoon character by Ashley Holt Highlights include: Brian Boyce’s State of the Union: George W Bush lights up the Teletubbies Wally Wood’s Disneyland Memorial Orgy: Team pushups with Goofy and Minnie and the rest of the Disney gang Ray Belder’s… >>>