Week IV: Problems of Intellectual Property:
Major Topics:
Major Topics:
- Models and practices of intellectual property protection
- The Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998 and the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (aka "Saving Mickey Mouse for Disney Corp.")
- Constitutional intentions and congressional implementations of intellectual property regimes in the US
- The ambiguity of authorship (original content vs. value-added/derivative works, including marginal cost issues)
- Piracy and open-source issues
- Sharing content, Google Print, and the question of "Fair Use"
- Which stakeholders add value to content?
Assigned Readings:
- An entertaining and accessible explanation of copyright law comes as a mash-up video, "A Fair[y]-Use Tale."
- The best recent summary of major battles in the copyright wars is Robert S. Boynton, "The Tyranny of Copyright," New York Times Magazine, Sun, Jan 25, 2004. (Make sure to read this article).
- According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 has failed.
- In the professional magazine for professional special librarians, Lesley Ellen Harris explains in a nice, readable fasion the legal implications of Google Print, asking the question, "Did Google Boggle It Up?"
- As the University of Michigan is perhaps ground-zero for the Google Print controversy, the university itself has taken some strong positions in defense of the project, especially on "fair-use" grounds. You can access the set of documents here. Please read in particular the Q&A that's on the intro page, as well as a sharp defense of the project by UofM President Mary Sue Coleman, which appeared as an op-ed, "Riches We Must Share…" that appeared in the Washington Post on 2005-10-22.
- "Traditional knowledge," the knowledge residing within "non-western" communities, is now subject to getting hijacked by foreign interests. With the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, the Indian government is using a database to fight back (a 6'39" mp4 video). This from PBS' News Hour, 2007-08-13.
- For a perhaps over-the-top slam at how Big Media is using copyright law to pursure its own narrow interests, here's a biting piece by Dan Gillmor of Silicon Valley's top rag, the one the IT community reads over its coffee, the San Jose Mercury-News; I like the fact that copyright on the article is claimed for 2001, but it wasn't written until 2002!
- The DMCA of 1998 has such stringent provisions that it has made it illegal for a UM grad student in EECS to publicize his dissertation.
Recommended Readings:
- On the Google Book Search (aka "Google Print") project, Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford Law School offered a very astute legal analysis from 2006 at the New York Public Library; this is a 30-minute video, but worth your time.
- If you have time, please read this sharp analysis of Copyright and Digital Media in a Post-Napster™ World, by the Gartner Group™ and Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society. From August, 2003, this is the most pointed and intelligent analysis of this set of issues. We'd require it, but it's a bit long.
- For many of us, the foundational article that opened up the digital intellectual-property debate appeared in Wired, back in 1994, called "The Economy of Ideas," authored by Grateful Dead songwriter, John Perry Barlow.
- A recent UofM Business School's FuturTech conference featured a panel discussion on music downloading; a WMP video of it is available, streamed from the B-School Web site (I couldn't generate a stand-alone copy). Leave yourself time for viewing it, as it's about 1 hour long.
- The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 has been the target of considerable criticism; this piece argues that DMCA acts as a pre-emptive weapon for publishers, allowing them to blackmail users with the threat of costly lawsuits; what is worse, it stifles innovation and the open exchange of ideas in academe.
- In "Copyfraud," Jason Mazzone offers a legal analysis of how spurious copyright claims—as in notices attached to very old content" are simply ways to extract cash from the wary.
- In a Wired article from 2000, "Patently Absurd," Chris Oakes argues that the level of incompetence at the US Patent and Trademark Office is so predictable that businesses can build some predatory business strategies around it.
- "Branding" often involves getting trademarks for common words (think: Apple™), and in this NPR Fresh Air broadcast of September 7, 2004, Geoff Nunberg of Stanford University worries that this practice amounts to "Privatizing English."
- Many people consider the debate between Lawrence Lessig and Jack Valenti, "The Future of Intellectual Property," held at Harvard in October, 2000, to be the best debate on the issue. Note well: this is a RealVideo™ document of about 15 mB, so you have to use a broadband connection, and it's 1'40" long.
- Here's a solid piece on how intellectual property (IP) campaigns by major corporations are stifling agricultural research. (Sorry about the sliced lines on the PDF).
- Jane Ginsburg is probably correct when she bemoans how the issue of authorship (i.e., the role of the actual "creator," as opposed to the intermediaries) tends to get lost in the copyright debates; this from the DePaul Law Review.
- In September of 2004, NPR's Rick Karr offered a three-part series on the music business that was framed in a different way from what we usually hear. The first is on artists seeking patrons on the Web, the second on micropayments as a way to compensate artists, the third on taxing ISPs and tech companies for "abetting" piracy--an approach not unlike that advocated by EFF. These are mp3s, about 900-100K each.
- Not to be immodest, but here's my proposal to end the music wars.
- By way of humor, this is the dilemmas lone artists face in preserving their own creative products. A real riot here: a letter from Groucho Marx to Jack Warner (head of Warner Bros. Studios™) in 1947—seems that Groucho's "A Night in Casablanca" was seen as a trademark infringement on the film, "Casablanca." Not funny but shocking: a Harper's Index™ critique of the DMCA.
- On a positive note (in an otherwise depressing context), here's an announcement for the emergence of Creative Commons, an "open-source" repository for digital content; here's a movie describing what CC is all about. BTW, most of this course's content is CC-licensed.
- Here's a very good history of US copyright law; it doesn't delve into myriad court cases, but it does offer a good thumbnail, especially as it pertains to coordinating US copyright law with international agreements.
- Here's an older piece, but it shows how, even in the new "legal" music-downloading services, artists get virtually nothing (this is true as well for Apple's iTunes Music Store™ as well).
- Here's the manifesto (of sorts), "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," for the open-source movement, by Eric Raymond. It's a classic.
- Here's a piece that frames the issue as techies vs. content-providers, arguing that if the latter (thanks to RIAA™ and MPAA™) have their way, hardware makers will be forced to implement hardware-based digital-rights management systems—as Microsoft seems to be implementing under the rubric of the "trusted computing" platform. AlterNet also has its take on Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley.
- The Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) grants patents, and the PTO is underfunded and swamped.
- We all know that civil society desperately needs a free space, a "commons," where ideas range openly; in a masterful article, David Bollier recommends how (and why) we should be "Reclaiming the Commons," as in Creative Commons.
- The US Copyright Office's Summary of the DMCA. Here's the full report.
- "Fair Use" remains a legal thicket; the US Code defines fair use, and here's how others see fair use, as inflected by court decisions; most of the differences reflect "rights of first purchase." In this mess, librarians at the University of Tennessee have authored a set of indicators for determining what is fair use. Note well that the "Guidelines" (p. 5) endorsed by the piece do not have the force of law. Another effort by librarians to define copyright regimes for digitized content.
- How about a history of patents in the US, by James Gleick?
- A VERY good Web site focusing on IP law.
Can Information be Owned?