In the News

["Jack Boeve" <JBoeve@xxxxxxxx>]

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Blog: Copyright Vampires Delete Guitar 'Shred' Videos from YouTube. By Eliot
Van Buskirk, Wired Blogs, February 5, 2008.
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/02/copyright-vampi.html

In what has to be the lamest copyright-related takedown in the history of
YouTube, someone or something has removed those excellent parody videos that
paired video footage of famous guitarists "shredding" with expertly-done
amateurish guitar buffoonery.

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Digital copyright vs consumers' desires. By the Yomiuri Shimbun, Daily Yomiuri
Online, February 5, 2008.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/editorial/20080205TDY04305.htm

A new problem has emerged in connection with the transition from analog to
digital format in terrestrial television broadcasting. Video recording and
copying of terrestrial digital broadcasts is strictly limited, but a new
device designed to circumvent this restriction has become available.

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Blog: Microsoft Canada copyright reform distortion. By Michael Geist, P2P Net,
February 4, 2008.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/14867

The Hill Times this week includes an astonishingly misleading and factually
incorrect article on Canadian copyright written by Microsoft. The most
egregious error comes in the following paragraph which attempts to demonstrate
why Microsoft thinks reform is needed.

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Blog: Political Remixing & Cultural Copyright. Posted by Alan Wexelblat,
Corante, February 4, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/2626vs

If you've been around politics since the last US Presidential election you
might remember some of the popular parodies such as JibJab's "This Land Is My
Land". I haven't seen a comparably memorable parody yet this season, but I
have seen "The Yes We Can Song".

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Blog: Technical Protection Measures (TPMs) and Educational Use of the
Internet. By Russell McOrmond, IT World Canada, February 4, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/2cy5da

One of the most common themes you will see in the Copyright debate is
different people using the same terminology to mean entirely different things,
and never really noticing that they aren't talking about the same thing as
they argue. It is coming up on 7 years that I've dedicated to trying to make
sense of this, which is why I'm writing so much about copyright....While I
have hinted at language problems around the term "technical protection
measures" or TPMs, I will talk about this confusion in the context of a debate
you may be less familiar with: Educational use of the Internet.

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Blog: CondeNet Goes Beyond Being A Copyright Cop; Approaches Infringement As A
Business Opportunty. By Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch, February 4, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/2vuoe6

Digital media fingerprinting technologies are quickly becoming part of every
media company's arsenal when it comes to combating copyright infringement on
the Web. So far, most media companies have used the technology primarily as an
enforcement tool, in conjunction with their subpeona machines. But CondiNet,
the online arm of Condi Nast magazines, is looking for ways to use digital
fingerprinting technology beyond merely arming their copyright lawyers.

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Valuing the Mahatma's words. By Puneet Nicholas Yadav, Daily News and
Analysis, February 4, 2008.
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1149013

Sixty years after his death, the Mahatma's philosophies and works continue to
evoke interest and spell big business too. So much so that there's a
'copyright exhibition' of works on and by Gandhi at the Annual World Book Fair
in the Capital.

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Richard M. Stallman: Freedom -- or Copyright? Richard Stallman, Santa Cruz
Sentinel, February 3, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/2and2p

Copyright was established in the age of the printing press as an industrial
regulation on the business of writing and publishing. Its purpose was to
encourage the publication of a diversity of written works. Its means was to
require the author's permission to publish recent writings. Ordinary readers
received the benefit of increased writing, with little reason to complain:
copyright restricted only publication, not the things a reader could do. Well
and good -- back then.

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Copyright and creation. By Greg Stepanich, Palm Beach Post, February 3, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/yr7ver

Here's a dispatch from Cannes, courtesy of London's Independent newspaper, in
which the proper monetizing of musical content was the subject of a keynote
address by the U2 manager Paul McGuinness. McGuinness argues that it's the
Internet service providers and the makers of devices such as the iPod that
should be coughing up some more cash to the creators: "Our talented clients
deserve better than the shoddy and careless way they've been treated in the
digital age."

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Churches should be able to air Super Bowl-US senator. By Reuters, Guardian
Unlimited, February 3, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/2gbdej

Federal copyright law should be changed so U.S. churches as well as bars can
show American football's Super Bowl on big screen televisions, a senior
senator said on Sunday shortly before the championship game.

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NFL Pulls Plug On Big-Screen Church Parties For Super Bowl. By Jacqueline L.
Salmon, Washington Post, February 1, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/27s5s5

For years, as many as 200 members of Immanuel Bible Church and their friends
have gathered in the church's fellowship hall to watch the Super Bowl on its
six-foot screen. The party featured hard hitting on the TV, plenty of food --
and prayer. But this year, Immanuel's Super Bowl party is no more....Immanuel
is among a number of churches in the Washington area and elsewhere that have
been forced to use a new playbook to satisfy the NFL, which said that airing
games at churches on large-screen TV sets violates the NFL copyright.

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Bollywood classics have run out of copyright life. By Akshaya Mukul, Times of
India, February 1, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/yoc42w

Did you know that films like Mela, Anmol Ghadi, Neecha Nagar, Shaheed and many
Hindi classics of 1940s and 1930s have already lost the copyright tenure and
are in public domain....Considering that the copyright life of films, much
like written works, is 60 years, Bollywood bigwigs like Yash Raj Chopra and
business chambers like FICCI have demanded that this be increased, like in the
US, to 95 years from the date a film is made.

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RapidShare responsible for copyright violations of users, court says.  By
Wolfgang Gruener, TG Daily, January 31, 2008.
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/35870/118/

German content licensing authority GEMA says it has "achieved and important
victory" against RapidShare, which allows users to save and share files. A
district ruled in favor of GEMA and confirmed that RapidShare has to take
responsibility for copyright violations taking place on its servers. A
shutdown of RapidShare is a possibility, but there appears to be a lengthy
legal battle on the road ahead.

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No Laughing Matter: Can You Copyright A Joke? By Mike Masnick, Techdirt,
January 31, 2008.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080130/020249125.shtml

Last year there was a bit of a fuss when comedian Joe Rogan accused Carlos
Mencia of stealing jokes. Amusingly, Mencia responded to the claims of
plagiarism by using a copyright infringement claim to get Rogan's video of the
accusation taken down. However, in a more detailed discussion of the issue, we
pointed out how silly it is to claim a copyright on a joke.

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European Court issues new file sharing directives. By Tim Smalley,
bit-tech.net, January 31, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/246bh3

The European Court of Justice decided earlier this week that EU law does not
force the disclosure of file sharer's details in copyright infringement cases.
In the ruling, the court was essentially asked to balance the consumer's right
to privacy against the industry's right to protect its intellectual property.
The court sided with the Internet user - something that could be seen as a
massive victory for the file sharing community in Europe.



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(C)ollectanea Blog. Collected perspectives on copyright.
http://chaucer.umuc.edu/blogcip/collectanea/
Center for Intellectual Property, UMUC