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Copyright

Copyfighting

More goodness today via BoingBoing:

A diary entry on DailyKos by RadicalRuss nails the hypocrisy of the Grokster case in comparing it to the gun industry.

This is a must read.

From the story:

Got that? If a company makes a product that is inappropriately used to illegally copy a movie, that company is liable. If a company makes a product that is inappropriately used to illegally kill a human, that company is not liable. What’s the common logic holding these disparate concepts together? Massive corporate special interest money. Welcome to your government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations, where a pirated copy of “Hollywood Homicide”* is bigger threat than an actual Hollywood homicide.

RIAA Uses More Power They Don't Have

Via BoingBoing:

The RIAA has ordered a take down notice to RPG Films. RPG films is a machinima site that takes animation made from video game / video game engines to make short movies and films. Some of them included music video’s – which is where the RIAA had a problem.

How is this not fair use? There is no MP3 to download . Only the most sophisticated computer user could figure out how to seperate the audio from the video, and even then the quality would be awful – with a video file you’re trying to compress it down as far as you can to save your users’ bandwidth.

If anything, this probably helps promote more music you’ve never heard, that will spark you to find out who to make it and go buy it.

The RIAA just doesn’t get it.

Everybody Loves Ludwig

Via Slashdot, comes a story at the Guardian that the BBC’s free downloads of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s symphonies have become the most popular songs ever legally downloaded.

Amazing:

Final figures from the BBC show that the complete Beethoven symphonies on its website were downloaded 1.4m times, with individual works downloaded between 89,000 and 220,000 times. The works were each available for a week, in two tranches, in June.

What does this teach? Free music works. And Classical has proved it – the music industry is amazed by it. And scared:

Not everyone was so positive. Some from the recording industry expressed concerns that the BBC was setting itself up as unfair competition in the recording market.

Mr Cosgrove said: “I would be worried if the BBC repeated the experiment. We would take an extremely dim view if it happened repeatedly.” But, he added: “It’s caused quite a bit of controversy – but it has also provided us with an amazing piece of free market research. I don’t think anyone had any idea in their wildest dreams that there would be this level of response. Yes, the downloads were free – but if charged at a commercial rate that would have been a huge amount of revenue.”

You know what music industry? Screw you. This music is in the public domain, and you haven’t served your market for offering classical music downloads as the article says. Once again, your arrogance has failed you.

Kudo’s to the BBC – They put on the concert, broadcast, and distributed it. And consumers listened and downloaded and the BBC gained customers.

And I was one of them, I downlaoded it.

William Gibson gets it

William Gibson is another one who gets the remix culture.

In an article on Wired, Gibson writes of some of his early influences, including William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, one of the first authors to use sampling in literature.

Later, attempting to understand this impact, I discovered that Burroughs had incorporated snippets of other writers’ texts into his work, an action I knew my teachers would have called plagiarism. Some of these borrowings had been lifted from American science fiction of the ’40s and ’50s, adding a secondary shock of recognition for me.

By then I knew that this “cut-up method,” as Burroughs called it, was central to whatever it was he thought he was doing, and that he quite literally believed it to be akin to magic. When he wrote about his process, the hairs on my neck stood up, so palpable was the excitement. Experiments with audiotape inspired him in a similar vein: “God’s little toy,” his friend Brion Gysin called their reel-to-reel machine.

It will be interesting to see if Mr. Gibson follows up on what he says he believes here, and introduces any type of Creative Commons licenses on his books or how it affects him going forward.

Trent Reznor gets it

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails gets it. It being the remix culture.

Mr. Reznor has released the second single, Only to be remixed. The Hand That Feeds was the first single released, in Garage Band format only at the time.

This time around, it’s been released in 4 different file formats, including Acid Express and Garage Band so Windows users have a shot at remixing this time. I have a copy of the former around somewhere, and the latter on my Mini. I might try my hand at it this time.

It’s very cool of NIN to give back to the community. I downloaded a few of the remixes for The Hand That Feeds last time, and some were pretty good.

Supreme Court rules against Grokster

The verdict is in this morning and the Supreme Court has ruled against Grokster in MGM vs. Grokster.

Here’s a couple of key points from the article:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that companies that sell file-sharing software can be held liable for copyright infringement.

(Emphasis mine) – Companies that market and sell P2P software for the sole purpose of infrigmenent is what the court is saying. Software such as bittorrent – which was developed to transfer large files such as movie trailers and linux distributions – wouldn’t be an issue. That, and bittorrent is free.

“One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright … is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device’s lawful uses,” Justice David Souter wrote in the ruling.

The Supreme Court has remanded the case back to the lower court that originally ruled for Grokster.

The good news is that 1984’s Betamax ruling is still law. Devices made, that could infringe, can still be made. What the court has said is don’t create a device and market to the fact that it’s only made to infringe copyright. The bad news is, that burden of proof is now on the manufacturer’s to prove that they didn’t create and/or market to the fact that a device can infringe.

It’s not over yet. I’ll update the post when the EFF gets their opinion up.

Some people just don't get it

Some people just don’t get it, and Jack Valenti is one of them. The former head of the Motion Picture Assoc. of America, his voice is still heard in Hollywood as an advocate against movie piracy.

We all know who this is: in the early 80’s, he’s the one who predicted doom for the movie industry if the VCR was allowed to be legal – and we all know how that turned out for the movie industry – 20 years later 40% of their revenues are from DVD.

In a recent interview Mr. Valenti has many choice quotes of how he still doesn’t get it. Locking content to protect against “piracy” isn’t the answer. Embrace technology, share, and don’t get in the way of innovation and let people use their legally bought content how they want to.

I’d like to ask one question about the DMCA, and its effect on home moviemaking for personal use: Let’s say a homeowner is making an amateur video using video footage of his son playing pee-wee football. To jazz it up, he buys a copy of the movie Rudy and uses the De CSS program to strip it of its copy protection—

[Jack Valenti:]Well, then he’s committing a violation of federal law.

So if he wants to add a few seconds of crowd shots to the final version of the new home video he’s creating—

[Jack Valenti:]He should go to the company that owns the movie and get permission to do it. If you start that, where does it end? How much is a little snippet? Is it 10 seconds? Ten minutes? Thirty minutes? He might want the first 23 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, or all of Gene Kelly’s Singin’ in the Rain. Once people have the power to do a snippet, they could do a whole movie.

So you’re suggesting there is no fair use right to a few seconds?

[Jack Valenti:]There is no fair use to take something that doesn’t belong to you. That’s not fair use. If you’re a professor in a classroom, you show Singin’ in the Rain to your class. You can fast forward it, and there’s no performance fee for that. That’s fair use. Now, fair use is not in the law. People are taking fair use and changing it to unfair use and claiming that it’s fair use.

Broadcast Flag Struck Down

On Fri., May 6th, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled the FCC overstepped it’s bounds when it created the Broadcast Flag.

The EFF has the story, as well as CNet’s News.com.

This is big, very big. It was unexpected, especially a unanimous decision by the Court. Congress needs to legislate, not the FCC.

My favorite quote from the judges:

“You’re out there in the whole world, regulating. Are washing machines next?” asked Judge Harry Edwards. Quipped Judge David Sentelle: “You can’t regulate washing machines. You can’t rule the world.”

Here’s to all the groups that opposed the travesty that was the Broadcast Flag, from the EFF article:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) joined Washington DC-based advocacy group Public Knowledge in fighting the rule in the courts, together with Consumers Union, the Consumer Federation of America, the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, the American Association of Law Libraries, the Medical Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association. The coalition argued that the rule would interfere with the legitimate activities of technology innovators, librarians, archivists, and academics, and that the FCC exceeded its regulatory authority by imposing technological restrictions on what consumers can do with television shows after they receive them.

Supreme Court Asking the Right Questions

MGM vs. Grokster hit the Supreme Court Tuesday, and the Justices’ we’re asking the right questions:

MGM and nearly a dozen other entertainment companies argued that peer-to-peer software manufacturers Grokster and StreamCast had built their businesses by distributing “infringing machines.” But counsel for the entertainment industry, Donald B. Verrilli Jr. of the law firm Jenner & Block, scarcely finished his opening statements before the Justices interrupted with pointed questions about how his arguments would impact technological innovation. Justice Antonin Scalia asked how the industry would protect nascent technologies from “out-of-the-box lawsuits,” and Justice Stephen Breyer pushed him to explain why MGM’s argument wouldn’t also apply to the iPod, Xerox machines, and even Gutenberg’s printing press.

(I’m finding myself agreeing with Justice Scalia?? First time for everything).

Lots of folk’s turned out to wait in line to get tickets in to the Supreme Court Monday night. Luis Villa’s blog (a Gnome Developer) has some great pictures up, including demonstrators and waiting in line.

Icculus updated his .plan file over the weekend, ranting about game development, distribution and copyright in response to a blog entry covering the Game Developer’s Conference.

The blog entry on Wonderland is a transcript of a panel with Warren Spector (creator of Thief, System Shock, and Deus Ex), Brenda Laurel, Jason Della Rocca, and Chris Hecker. The panel was IGDA Session: Burning Down The House – Game Developers Rant. (Game Developers get to rant? Uh oh).

Warren Spector put it best (excerpt):

Warren Spector:

First of all I don’t hate you, Will Wright. I just had one of those “I’m not worthy” moments in the elevator. YOU ARE the 800lb gorilla.

[argh what did Will SAY already? alice]

OK. I don’t feel very ranty actually. I tried to bail on this panel. But I have to say something so I want to say how this business is hopelessly broken. Haha. We’re doing pretty much everything wrong. This is at the root of much of what you’re gonna hear today. Games cost too much. They take too long to make. The whole concept of word of mouth, remember that? Holy cow it was nice.

Wal-Mart drives development decisions now. When publishers minimise risk by kow-towing to the retailers, you have a serious problem. When every game has to either be a blockbuster or a student film, we got a real problem. For my end of the game business all of our efforts are going into reaching a mainstream audience who may well even not be interested in what we do! My first game cost me 273,000 dollars. My next one is BLAH millions. How many of you work on games that make money? 4 out of 5 games lose money, according to one pundit who may be lying, admittedly. Can we do any worse if we just trusted the creative folks entirely instead of the publishers?

My point is coming. We’re the only medium that lacks an alternate distribution system. All we have is boxed games sold at retail. This is changing a little. But think about our competition for your entertainment dollar. First run, broadcast, reruns, DVDs.. you name it. hardback, paperback, e-book. Theatre release, pay-per-view, video, DVD. We put our thing on the shelf at Wal-Mart, it sells or it doesn’t, and OMG you just blew 10m dollars. The publishers not respecting developers, this is not the problem. We have a flawed distribution model. There are very few ways of getting a game done these days. Developers.. why should we get a huge return? We’re taking some of the risk, but the $10m, the marketing space, the retail space all belong to someone else. We have winner-take-all business that carries a lot of risk. So .. we have to find alternative sources of funding. Chris Crawford used to rant about how we need patrons.. I don’t care if it’s wealthy patrons, I don’t care what it IS, but it’s critical that we divorce funding from distribution.

We need alternative forms of distribution too. I’m not saying publishers suck, although I do believe that in many cases. [laughter] If the plane went down who would care about the marketing guys? We need another way of getting games out there and in players’ hands. If any of you bought half life 2 at Wal-Mart, please just leave the room. Has everyone bought Bioware’s online modules? JUST BUY THEM, OK, even if you don’t have the original games! We HAVE to get games into gamers’ hands. So I’m not saying publishers are evil.. if we do all this and go direct to our consumers with games funded some OTHER way than EA or whoever.. we’ll keep more of the money.. we have to find someone to pay for it and find a buyer after. We need Sundances. Independent Film Channel. Equivalents of those. Just try to find some way of funding your stuff that doesn’t come from a publisher.

The movies have this now: the studios don’t fund everything that happens out there. I’m not holding the movie business up as a model of great business practice, but you can get $ from a wide variety of sources. You know what, when the studio system was in place, that didn’t exist. Every creative person was owned by a studio. Cinemas were owned by studios. Content was limited. As soon as the supreme court stepped in and said no you can’t have development, distribution and retailing, everything changed. Now we have Bruckheimer, and Sideways. Sundance. Indies. At the very worst we need publishers to ask more than that one question: is this going to generate max profit. For most games this is NOT THE RIGHT QUESTION. Volkswagen owns rolls Royce, they understand the need for – oh the music’s running, I’m outta here. Thank you.

Brenda Laurel, on the panel (excerpt):

We model male ethos in the games we design: soldier, super athlete, criminal. Anyone who was born with internet and computers are prosocial. Skaters are mainstream. We have two models of alpha maleness: skaters and ballers [I have no idea what this is referring to – A]. … we need heroes, but what kind of heroes are we making? Where’s Malcolm X, or Chavez? There hasn’t been a game about geopolitics that was worth a shit since Hidden Agenda! We should be giving people rehearsals for citizenship and change. I have to tell you, Microsoft is the walking dead. DRM is a wet dream. It’s not gonna work! Cat’s out the bag! When this happens, you have to let the cards fly in the air and fall where they may. GIVE IT UP ABOUT DRM. GIVE IT UP ABOUT OWNERSHIP. Cleave to open source! A NEW ECONOMY IS COMING. As we become further connected we will find new economies emerging. We are the wellspring of popular culture. We have a responsibility.

Icculus links to this, and takes it a step farther in his current .plan (archived here locally without permission)(excerpt):

Spector is probably closest, though: the distribution model benefits the

upper one percent at the cost of innovation, piracy, and well, the artists.

If we can look at this from the music slant, Apple’s iTunes Music Store is a

good start, but a shitty end. Eventually we’re probably going to need, uh,

for lack of a better term, a distributed Steam…online, universal,

incremental transfer of product without a centralized publisher. The problem

with Steam as it currently stands, among other complaints, is that Valve

escapes their oppressive publisher in order to become an oppressive publisher

themselves. Apple’s a little different in that they haven’t escaped the whims

of the publishers at all (which is why every few months you see a Chicken

Little article on Slashdot about iTMS raising their prices by a whole 20

cents…the poor consumers! Poor Apple! Why doesn’t anyone ever say “poor

musicians”?)

When we can all sell online without a central authority, stream the bits right

to the user any time of the day, and be the backup when their hard drive

fails (which would be a nice feature in iTMS that Steam figured out, in case

you’re listening, Apple), then we could ship when we’re ready, do things that

are awesome without 150-man teams and millions of dollars, make more money

within a meritocracy, and not whore ourselves out to Big Publishing. Not to

excuse them, but the fact that the EA Spouse blog exists says more about the

industry as a whole than it says about Electronic Arts. I mean, it’s a safe

bet to say that everyone outside of EA has an chilly familiarity with

those stories anyhow…put another way, when you see one cockroach, it’s a

safe bet there’re hundreds more behind the walls.

There are no benign dictators in publishing. The only sane thing to do is

flush them altogether.

A new era is coming, but the question is when. DRM isn’t the answer – show me one that worked yet. Open Source hasn’t worked in gaming (yet). Steam isn’t working (talk to someone who plays HL2 or CS:Source). Gaming is at a tipping point – the rise of independent creation and independent publishing combined with ubiquitous broadband and peer to peer technologies will create a new industry. Mods to current games, and publishers like Garage Games and things like Steam and Bittorrent are only the beginning as programmers throw off the shackles of Big Media.

I encourage you to read all of the articles in full.