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Date: Saturday, April 21, 2012
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Too Much Copyright: This Generation's Prohibition (Copyright)
by Mike Masnick from the dept on Friday, April 20th, 2012 @ 7:39PM
The folks over at ReasonTV have put together a great episode about the state of copyright law today. Hosted by Zach Weissmueller, the video includes three guests. Professor Tom Bell, who is well known for his useful depiction of the insanity of copyright extension via the Mickey Mouse curve, Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh, and the MPAA's Ben Sheffner.
There's a nice animation of the Mickey Mouse curve which is even more powerful than the standard image version: Sheffner trots out the usual lines about property rights and how we're going to see less content going forward, which Bell rightly scoffs. The video then uses our Sky Is Rising report to highlight how silly Sheffner's claims are. Sheffner also has the unenviable task (because it's a despicable position to take) of claiming that site blocking is a perfectly reasonable solution. Go censorship!
It's also nice to see ReasonTV highlight the ridiculousness of copyright laws today by refusing to use any material covered by copyright to demonstrate certain points. So, rather than show Mickey Mouse, they show three revolving balls, and ask you to imagine how they might come together to form a mouse-like shape. Is this an exaggeration of the restrictions in place today? Sure. They have a perfectly valid fair use claim to showing Mickey Mouse -- but they're being safe in an era where people are getting sued for the same sorts of things all the time. And, in an era where the MPAA argues, with a straight face, that blocking entire sites is a reasonable remedy, you can understand why they'd rather be safe than sorry.
The whole thing is worth watching, but the key point really comes at the end from Ben Huh, and it's a point that we've been raising for years:
This disconnect between the public's view of copyright and fair use and what should and should not be prosecuted vs. the copyright maximist's view of the law is our generation's prohibition. The law no longer reflects what the society believes to be true. And I think that if they continue to go down that route, they're going to see even bigger backlash.
This is such a key point, and one we've raised over and over again. The disrespect for copyright law today is not because people are uneducated or immoral. It's because copyright law just doesn't make any sense at all. It's so disconnected from reality and societal norms, that people can't respect it. The fact that the industry's response to this is to push to make the laws even more ridiculous and push them further away from people's natural tendencies, is only going to serve the opposite purpose of the maximalists' intentions. They are driving an entire generation into thinking that the whole of copyright law is entirely pointless.
38 Comments
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The Difference Between Nuanced Discussion And The Evil Underbelly Of The Internet Is Apparently A Fine Line Indeed (Culture)
by Mike Masnick from the may-depend-on-where-you-stand dept on Friday, April 20th, 2012 @ 6:34PM
We recently posted what I thought was an interesting essay by musician Erin McKeown on her reaction to seeing someone copy a song of hers, and have that other song become a "hit." We thought it was an interesting and nuanced exploration of some of the challenges of being a musician and thinking about copyright -- from both an emotional and logical perspective -- and thought it would make for an interesting discussion. And, in fact, it did make for an interesting discussion. With well over 100 comments, representing a variety of different viewpoints, there was a pretty deep dive into the myriad responses the piece brought out. Like pretty much any online discussion, some of the comments were more polite than others. But, when viewed on the whole, it struck me that the conversation was much more polit e than most online discussions around copyright. In fact, what was interesting was that because the discussion was quite nuanced, most of our usual haters didn't take part. So we didn't have, for example, anyone calling me a slimy lying sociopath or a disgusting human being.
Some of the comments were pointed in their disagreement with Erin, but almost immediately others came in to defend her, and the overall discussion was quite interesting in my mind. And, yet, a bevy of the standard Techdirt critics took to Twitter to claim that Erin's article was proof positive that Techdirt was pure evil, hated artists and was the disgusting underbelly of the internet (a very close paraphrase of actual statements). I'm not going to link to any of these, because I don't mean to call out those people specifically. Similarly, there was a thread on a music site that was entitled "why does Techdirt hate musicians?" I suddenly had people tweeting at me, personally, about how I was somehow destroying music and why did I not want artists to get paid.
I honestly can't figure out why this was the response. First of all, we've regularly been attacked because (we're told) we never, ever post an article where we show sympathy for artists' difficult plight these days. So here was an article, from a musician, explaining her plight -- and we get attacked for that?!? Furthermore, I'm long since past the time when I could read all the comments on the site, but I do read a pretty large number of them, and the amount of hate and vitriol that has come from Techdirt haters (see above, for two very recent examples) is way, way, way, way beyond anything seen in that particular thread.
In fact, the further you read into the comments the more you realize it's a detailed and nuanced discussion on many important issues. People don't agree, but no one's calling each other a slimy lying sociopath or a disgusting human being. Yet, because a few commenters (not even the majority, as far as I can tell) disagree with Erin, all of Techdirt hates musicians? There were a few tweets and statements elsewhere saying that Techdirt hates it when artists make money. Of course, that's ridiculous. We regularly celebrate artists earning money -- sometimes lots of money. What we get nervous amount is when artists start making use of laws in ways that may actually do them more harm than good in the long term, by attacking their fans as if they were criminals, or when they seek to abuse laws that take away fundamental rights of others.
But, really, what was most amazing to me was how quick some of these people were to jump on the entire Techdirt community, because a few comments disagreed with one musician's opinion. They ignored everyone who came to her defense. They ignored the fact that we posted the story in the first place. They ignored all the people on other stories who attack Techdirt supporters in often extremely personal ways (I've been threatened with physical harm as well as seen multiple comments I won't repeat about my family). But most people -- myself included -- see those kinds of comments as part of the price you pay for having an open discussion. Some people are going to disagree and some will use different levels of speech, some more polite than others. To tar and feather everyone on the site because someone on it disagrees with your personal views is to suggest that every community online is a problem.
Is it that difficult to distinguish a nuanced conversations where not everyone agrees with each other... from the "dark underbelly" of the internet?
111 Comments
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Mobile Phones Might Not Interfere With Planes, But They Sure Can Interfere With Pilots (Stupidity)
by Mike Masnick from the okay,-perhaps-pilots-should-be-barred-from-texting dept on Friday, April 20th, 2012 @ 5:33PM
You know how we're not supposed to have our mobile phones on in the air? Right. There may not be very good reasons for that any more from a technology point of view (there used to be concerns about the impact on cell towers, but that can be solved today with picocells on the planes themselves). But, that still doesn't mean that pilots should be texting while they fly. Is it better or worse than texting while driving? In an age where autopilots do most of the work on landing, perhaps it wouldn't seem like a huge deal, but a Jetstar pilot landing a 220-seat Airbus A320 in Singapore had to abort the landing after realizing he forgot to lower the landing gear, because he was too busy responding to text messages. For whatever reason, the pilots shut off the autopilot, but then got distracted with text messages.
Somewhere between 2500 feet and 2000 feet, the captain's mobile phone started beeping with incoming text messages, and the captain twice did not respond to the co-pilot's requests.
The co-pilot looked over and saw the captain "preoccupied with his mobile phone", investigators said. The captain told investigators he was trying to unlock the phone to turn it off, after having forgotten to do so before take-off.
At 1000 feet, the co-pilot scanned the instruments and felt "something was not quite right" but could not spot what it was.
There followed a series of errors, with the pilot and the co-pilot not communicating with each other -- the pilot trying to drop the wheels as the co-pilot prepared to abort the landing -- and then both pilots becoming confused about their actual altitude. Oh, and then there was the fact that the flaps were set incorrectly.
I'm not necessarily one to bemoan the way people get obsessed with text messaging these days, but I generally think that if you're flying a commercial airplane, and taking it in for landing... it shouldn't be that hard to know that it's a good idea to not worry about your phone for five minutes.
10 Comments
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DailyDirt: Bacon A La Mode (Innovation)
by Michael Ho from the urls-we-dig-up dept on Friday, April 20th, 2012 @ 5:00PM
Bacon is an almost universally-loved food item -- it's salty and fatty and meaty all at the same time. So it's not too surprising that people will try to add bacon to almost any dish. Everything is better with bacon... and here are some examples that test that assertion.
The makers of Baconnaise and Bacon Baby Formula have created a bacon-themed coffin for sale. For about $3,000 plus shipping, you too, could be preserved in a casket that looks like bacon. [url]
Bacon-scented hand sanitizer is a great way to pickup stray dogs. Or to get your hand bitten... [url]
Burger King has introduced a bacon sundae to its menu. It's not available at every location yet -- only a few hip places around Nashville, Tennessee. [url]
Jack in the Box has a bacon milkshake that packs 773 calories into 16 ounces of bacon-flavored refreshment. No actual bacon was harmed to create this milkshake, just bacon-flavored syrup. [url]
To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]
By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.
5 Comments
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Meltwater Response To Associated Press Lawsuit: AP Is Misusing Copyright Law (Copyright)
by Mike Masnick from the indeed,-they-are dept on Friday, April 20th, 2012 @ 3:57PM
We were somewhat surprised by the Associated Press' decision to sue news search engine Meltwater, because we couldn't see how the AP -- even with its absurdist interpretation of copyright law -- had any case. Meltwater works with companies to help them track news about themselves. While it's similar to a clipping service, it doesn't actually "clip" the news. Instead, just like Google News or other news search engines, it provides a headline, a snippet and a link to the full story. In other words, if the AP's argument gains traction, the AP may have effectively outlawed search engines. That's ridiculous. Among the AP's silly claims in the lawsuit (and there are many), is one that says because users can cut and paste AP stories from their original websites and "save" them in a Meltwater archive, Melt water is guilty of violating copyright law. Under that argument, so is any email program or word processing program.
Either way, Meltwater has hit back with a response (embedded below) that pushes back on all of these points, explains pretty clearly how it doesn't actually infringe... and also claims that the AP's arguments amount to "copyright misuse":
Plaintiff's claims are barred in whole or in part by the doctrine of copyright misuse. Through this Complaint and through other means, Plaintiff seeks to misuse its limited copyright monopoly to extend its control over the Internet search market more generally, thereby improperly expanding the protections afforded by U.S. copyright law. Among other things, AP has misused its copyright monopoly by demanding that third parties take licenses for search results, which do not require a license under U.S. copyright law, and AP has also formed a consortium (called NewsRight) with the purpose of further misusing its copyright monopoly to extract licensing fees that exceed what the law allows.
Meltwater also brings up multiple other defenses, including a bunch of defenses highlighting how the AP failed to bring its lawsuit in a timely manner. They also point out that since the AP posts these articles freely on the web, there's an implied license that you can link to it and point people to the content.
There is, of course, also the AP's attempt to bring back the bogus "hot news" doctrine, which some companies like the AP have been trying to revive after it was considered a completely dead concept. So far, the courts aren't buying these hot news claims, and hopefully they get rejected here as well. Meltwater attacks the hot news claims head on with two interesting arguments. First, it claims that Section 230 protects it from any hot news claim. That's an interesting argument, though I'm not sure it really applies here. Separately, however, they argue (correctly, in my view) that hot news doesn't exist any more, effectively, because it's really a form of a copyright claim, and all state copyright claims (hot news is a state law issue) are preempted by federal copyright law. It would be nice to have a cour
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German Nobel literature laureate Gunter Grass poses for a photo at his house in the northern German town of Behlendorf on April 5, 2012. (AFP PHOTO/MARCUS BRANDT) 
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