The Mind Trap

Australian Copyright Laws Unworkable -- Google

TelecomAsia: Google is opposing Australia's new copyright laws...
"Given the vast size of the Internet, it is impossible for a search engine to contact personally each owner of a web page to determine whether the owner desires its web page to be searched, indexed or cached," an official of Google was quoted as saying.

"If such advanced permission was required, the Internet would promptly grind to a halt," Google's senior counsel and head of public policy Andrew McLaughlin told the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee."

Should Music Downloads Be Free?

BBC: The Association of Independent Music -- which represents independent music labels in the UK -- has proposed that consumers pay a compulsory fee to ISPs to pay for music they stream over the internet, and will be able to get any song they want. They will have to pay for a permanent version on a CD, though. An ingenious solution, although it fails on several fronts including that people who don't listen to music will be paying for it anyway and that the distribution system favours big bands and labels over indies and unsigned bands.
It's not a done deal, of course..."ISPs had been contacted, he added, but "they don't reply much". Possibly because the music industry -- finally admitting that suing customers is a bad idea -- are looking for ways to sue ISPs for copyright infringing activity on their networks.

Is It Wrong To Infringe A Thief's Copyright?

NY Times: I'm sure everyone is familiar with the story of one mans campaign to get back the lost/stolen Sidekick of his friend by posting the name and images of the girl using it on the web as part of a "name and shame" campaign.
The page is here.
The part to do with copyright is that the girl who had the Sidekick, Sasha Gomez, took pictures of herself and other things and sent them to people, apparently unaware that the original owner had set the account to back up everything on the web server -- so when the original owner bought a new device and logged in there were the photos and e-mail address and so on of the new "owner". After Sasha refused to give it back the images were posted on the web...I'm dead-set certain her permission as copyright owner wasn't obtained to do this, so it's technically a case of copyright infringement. It's possible it comes under the protection of "fair comment" or something, I'm not that up to speed with copyright law in the US. So I guess the two questions are: "Is it copyright infringement?" and "Who cares?"

Sweeping Changes To Australian Copyright Laws

SMH: The Australian Federal Cabinet has (finally) agreed to make "sweeping changes to the copyright laws", the effect of which will be to allow format shifting of digital media. That is, it will finally be legal for Australians to copy their CDs to a PC or iPod, to name the most common use of format shifting. Actually, recording TV shows onto video cassettes to watch later is probably the most common practice that is illegal. It's about bloody time this happened -- it's ridiculous that it's taken this long for the laws to be changed. "What's the difference if the law was never enforced?" I ask rhetorically so I can supply my own answer...because if it's illegal to copy music from a legally purchased CD to a computer or cassette tape the obvious conclusion is that the copyright law is completely idiotic. And if that's the case most people think there's no reason to follow it at all, and so don't see a problem with file-sharing. If nobody follows the law because it's unreasonable then it's a given they'll get up in arms when someone tries to enforce it.
Another good change that is planned: "Schools, universities, libraries and other cultural institutions will in the future be free to use copyright material for non-commercial purposes."
There are also provisions for giving more powers to police to fight copyright infringement (online piracy) and higher penalties...which may be enough of a sweetener for the music labels (I looking at you, ARIA) to not lobby against the laws as they go through parliament.

It seems the Brits aren't so lucky...the UK National Consumer Council has deemed the nations copyright laws as unfit for society, citing a study which showed that most people were actually unaware of the law.
"Ominously for music companies, almost 60 per cent of respondents said it was "perfectly legal" to copy the contents of music CDs onto other systems, such as a computer or an MP3 player (or mobile phone)...Although just over 20 per cent admitted they didn't know if copying CDs was illegal for personal use in their own homes, the lowest number of respondents – just 18 per cent- knew it was against the law."
I didn't realise the British were in the same situation as Australians, but it should be changed.

Webcasting 'Excluded From WIPO Broadcasting Treaty'

ZDNet UK: The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) will no longer include webcasting in its broadcasting treaty, which is good news. The reason is explained by Cory Doctorow, the former European affairs coordinator for the EFF on his blog:
"This [treaty] would allow a webcaster (anyone who sends you audiovisual material over the Internet) to have a 50 year monopoly over what you do with the material you receive from him -- even if he's sending you Creative Commons-licensed work, GPL'ed Flash animations, or stuff that's in the public domain. It would also make it illegal to break any DRM used in connection with webcasting,"

Should Schools Pay Copyright For Web Access?

Australian IT: The Australian Copyright Agency is looking to charge schools extra to access digital content (on the web, internet etc)...it currently charges $10 per student per year for photocopying. The justification? Best left in the words of the agency:
"At the hearing there was one activity in particular under debate known as “tell students to view” - where teachers instruct their students to view and use digital material...For example, a student may visit a website under their teacher's instruction and as a result they might then print, save or download a copyright-protected article or research paper."
That's true...except that the schools already pay a blanket fee to cover materials their students access whether or not the students actually photocopy anything. There is no difference in terms of usage of photocopying a story from a newspaper or printing it off the online version. And if the sites didn't want the articles printed they wouldn't make printer-friendly versions, would they?
This is clearly an attempt to extort more money on a dodgy premise.
On a related note, it's a prime example of the recent Free Trade Agreement between Australia and the US, where Australia agreed to get all the bad parts of US intellectual property law and none of the good parts, like Fair Use. John Howard sucks, and we all know who he sucks...

"Time For Traditional Copyright Is Past"

MobileMonday: Finnish professor Jukka Kemppinen, (at the Helsinki Institute of Information Technology) claims that specialists from a wide variety of fields must solve the issues surrounding copyright. "The steel and concrete structure of copyrights is totally out of date. They cannot be applied in a reasonable way in business. There is a burning need to develop legislation...Copyrights and patent rights should increase the economic efficiency information business. Right now their impact is opposite. Complex regulations increase costs."

Sony BMG Declares War On Ringtone ‘Theft’

MocoNews: There's a courtcase underway in South Africa over whether ringtones created by cover bands can be called "realtones" or whether they have to use some other name, like "covertones". The labels keep saying it's causing confusion in the marketplace and hurting consumers, but I haven't seen any evidence anywhere of any consumer actually complaining, just the labels. The problem is that the labels were upset that they didn't get a piece of the monophonic and polyphonic ringtone market but jumped with glee when they realised they'd get a piece of the "real tone" action, only to find that companies were selling sound alikes at a fraction of the price...because they didn't have to pay the labels.

Free Speech At Risk Online

Silicon.com: A recent study (by a couple of free expression advocates) has found that "fair use" is in danger of being outlawed.

Fair use is a longstanding principle of copyright law. Its aim is to allow people to copy or quote copyright works without the permission of their authors, provided that they do so, in the words of the statute, "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research". The law lays out a four-pronged approach for determining - if legal challenges against the work's use occur - whether the use was, in fact, "fair".

But beyond that, "nobody really knows what it is, because in fact there is no precise, easy definition", said Marjorie Heins, co-ordinator of the Brennan Center's Free Expression Policy Project and a co-author of the report, which was titled, Will Fair Use Survive?

Of course, this doesn't mention the fact that fair use changes from country to country, further complicating things...

Sony May Be Hoist By Own Copyright Petard

The Inquirer: Here's an interesting comment on Sony's alleged infringement of copyright with its DRM technology...
"So, what is a company to do? It sets a precedent of a few thousand dollars per 'wrong', and now it has millions of Lexan disks of wrong on the books, and an auditable paper trail. This, if you use their own numbers could add up to billions of dollars owed to the Lame crew and the others alleged to have their virtual toes stepped on."
Of course, Sony will never pay the same penalty it demands of people who infringe its own copyright...