In the News

["Jack Boeve" <JBoeve@xxxxxxxx>]

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RECENT ITEM FROM THE CIP COLLECTANEA BLOG:

OCLC's Copyright Evidence Registry makes its debut. By Georgia Harper, Collectanea, August 30, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/6domzb

Last spring, Bill Carney of the OCLC joined us as a panelist at the Center for Intellectual Property's Annual Symposium to talk about an endeavor that was, at the time, still in development. Well, his Copyright Evidence Registry [OCLC] launched last week! The effort promises a big step forward for those struggling to come up with ways to identify works for whom owners cannot be identified or located -- orphan works.

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IN OTHER NEWS:
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Copyright Office, EFF wrestle with Kafkaesque royalty issue. By Nate Anderson, Ars Technica, August 29, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/6sy2y8

If you've followed the travails of the digital music market, even casually, you've probably picked up at least a passing sense that the whole process of licensing music copyrights can be... complicated. But you probably thought that, like many jobs, it's all quite routine if that's what you do for a living. Sadly, it's not, as illustrated by an ongoing, seven-year bureaucratic proceeding of the kind that might seem familiar to Kafka.

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Blog: Predictable positions from subset of stakeholders at Brussels telecommunication/copyright event. By Russell McOrmond, IT World Canada, August 29, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/5ljfke

Michael Geist has posted an article “The Battle Over Internet Filtering” where he discusses a seminar in Brussels on the “telecoms package” currently before the European Parliament. He listed out some of the views of the stakeholders on issues like DRM, “three strikes and you’re out” policies (”graduated response”), “technical mandates”, ISP filtering/blocking of infringing content, and stronger cross-border enforcement initiatives (ACTA).

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Blog: Veoh copyright win could set precedent. By Judith Townend, Journalism.co.uk, August 29, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/6ydocm

The news that video-sharing site Veoh have won their copyright case could set a precedent for similar sites, according to a host of bloggers today. In a legal analysis by the Electric Frontier Foundation, Fred von Lohmann writes: “the ruling should be required reading for the executives of every ‘Web 2.0′ business that relies on ‘user-generated content.”

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Blog: YouTube's filters help copyright owners profit from pirated videos. By Greg Sandoval, CNet News, August 27, 2008.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10027509-93.html

Instead of just pulling down pirated clips, copyright owners are choosing to use YouTube's copyright filters to generate advertising revenue, Google said Wednesday. Late last year, Google introduced a copyright identification system called Video ID, which tracks unauthorized videos. It enables a copyright owner to either block the clip, leave it up, or enable YouTube to sell ads against the material.

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Blog: A way to assign copyright globally. By Dana Blankenhorn, ZDNet, August 27, 2008.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=2827

Open source is a global movement in a world without a global law. While a U.S. court has ruled open source licenses are copyright, assuring that in other courts remains a challenge.

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EU pays for, then ignores study on copyright extension. By Nate Anderson, Ars Technica, August 27, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/6fwuvs

The European Union wants to add 45 years to the current 50-year copyright on musical recordings, arguing that aging performers can't afford to be cut off from sources of income just when they need them the most. In defense of this plan, Commissioner Charlie McCreevy's proposal said that no external expertise on the matter was required and, furthermore, that the (music-industry-provided) data he already had said the plan was a good one. Now, a prominent European academic is furious that his work-which the European Commission requested and paid for-has been totally ignored by the very Commission that signed off on the piece and published it.

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Blog: Bill C-61 grants new “copyright” related rights to non-copyright related rights-holders? By Russell McOrmond, IT World Canada, August 26, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/6ze7qn

Many people remark about how similar Bill C-61 is to the USA’s DMCA. While Industry Minister Jim Prentice claims that things like the time and device shifting are “made in Canada”, these types of changes were unnecessary in the USA with their many decades old living Fair Use regime. This living Fair Use regime makes US law already far more balanced than Canadian law. If we want to do things right we should drop those excessively limited provisions from the bill, and instead adopt a living Fair Use regime similar to the one in the USA.

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Blog: Democrat VP nominee Joe Biden’s copyright views get probed. Music Ally, August 26, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/63bdfu

The US Democrats have kicked off their convention in Denver, just after presidential candidate Barack Obama announced that his VP running mate would be Joe Biden. CNET has been doing some digging into Biden’s voting record when it comes to technology and copyright, and points out that he’s a “staunch ally” of Hollywood and the major record labels when it comes to copyright law - in contrast to the expectation that Obama himself will liberalise US copyright laws if he gets into power.

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What We Need Is A Digital Bill Of Rights. By Erick Schonfeld, Washington Post/Tech Crunch, August 25, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/68aqfd

As the Democrats and Republicans gather at their national conventions, it is time to really think about a comprehensive national technology policy for the Internet Age. Many laws and policies governing the Internet and digital property are inadequate attempts to transplant rules from a different era.

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Turns Out Disney Might Not Own The Copyright On Early Mickey Mouse Cartoons. By Mike Masnick, TechDirt, August 25, 2008.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080822/1750312073.shtml

Remember the recent story we had where some researchers noted that, despite the conventional wisdom (and claims from Time Warner), it appeared that Time Warner probably did not own the copyright on Happy Birthday? Of course, the company still collects millions for it, because people assume they do, but the historical evidence suggests that this is really incorrect. Now it turns out that the same thing may be true for Disney's copyright on Mickey Mouse. This is rather noteworthy considering both the history of Mickey Mouse, as well as how much effort Disney has always put towards copyright extension just as the supposed copyright on Mickey Mouse was about to expire.

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Blog: Copyright Monkeywrench: The 70,200-Song Mash-Up. By Eliot Van Buskirk, Wired Blogs Network, August 22, 2008.
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/08/copyright-monke.html

Johannes Kreidler hopes to question the concept of music copyright with a 33-second song called "Product Placements" that includes no fewer than 70,200 samples -- each of which must be cleared in order for the song (listen below) to be legally released. This will entail delivering 70,200 forms to German copyright authorities, which Kreidler intends to do on September 12 as a sort of performance art project to address copyright issues.

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