Copyright, Police Interactions, Transparency, and Corporate Dependence

When I started this blog when I was in high school, I was quite interested (at least at a superficial level) in issues of technology law, including the abuse of copyright & patent laws. (This is an example of such a post on this blog from 12 years ago, when my maturity & writing skills were far less than they are now.) Since then, my interests have shifted a lot, so I don't follow news stories about technology law abuses as much as I did in high school or college, I certainly don't post about these issues so often, and I'd like to think my reactions on this blog are a bit more carefully considered now than they were 12 years ago. That said, as far as my older interests go, I saw a story on the website Vice, by Dexter Thomas, about how a few police officers in Beverly Hills, California, have been found to have played copyrighted music from their phones loudly when they believe they are being filmed by an ordinary person. Essentially, those particular police officers have depended on zealous copyright enforcement algorithms on social media & video sharing platforms like Instagram & YouTube to ensure that any ordinary person who tries to post a video on such a popular corporate platform will have that video automatically removed due to copyright violations. If the police officer deliberately chooses to interact with the person recording while the song is playing, that means that even if the person recording decides to mute that section of the audio before uploading, the audio from that interaction will be removed one way or another. Additionally, on many sites, if the person uploading such videos ends up doing this multiple times, that person can be blocked temporarily or permanently from uploading videos in the future.

On the one hand, my beliefs about police behavior & copyright law are such that this behavior disappoints me on both fronts (as I believe this is a gross abuse of the spirit of copyright law and of trust in police officers), but on the other hand, I can't help but appreciate the ingenuity of this "solution" to the "problem" of being recorded. Additionally, it is worth noting that the main instance of this happening as described in this story is in a police station, where it can be argued that police departments could rightfully enforce rules against using cell phones; that said, the story also mentions other instances of this happening in outdoor public spaces. In any case, beyond these issues, this story has raised several broader questions in my mind, which I list below, and which I do not intend to be merely rhetorical.

1. Would police officers be fined for broadcasting such music as a "public performance" in an unauthorized way?
2. Should this motivate an alliance between groups aiming to reform police departments & groups aiming to reform copyright laws?
3. Should this motivate greater use of the site Wikileaks or other existing sites, or creation of a similar site, as a well-known not-for-profit repository to document police abuses (instead of relying on for-profit platforms that might zealously enforce copyright laws)?
4. What should be the mechanism for determining which videos of police officers get publicized, in order to ensure that trivial misunderstandings don't get blown out of proportion at the expense of the livelihood of the police officer?

There are certainly many other questions that could be asked about this issue going forward. In any case, it is unfortunate that enforcement of copyright laws is being twisted in this way, but it will be interesting to see how similar cases develop in the future.

Star Wars and George Lucas's Overreach

Recently, George Lucas has made news in the tech world by announcing changes to some of the dialogue in the original Star Wars movies to make the plot and background more complete. The reaction, at least among those who watched the original movies when they were released in the theaters, is that he is needlessly meddling with the movies they love and remember so well just to satisfy his own desires, and it's time that he opened it up (Will Gompertz, BBC News) to the fans to modify and redistribute.
I agree with most of the arguments presented in that post. Basically, the idea is that the artist doesn't have sole control over what happens to a piece of art, and that part of what makes art great is how other people view, use, and build upon it. The artist can't possibly think of every way the piece of art can be used, so it's not right for the artist to simply exclude all unofficial uses; in fact, that is stealing art from the viewers, much more than "piracy" is stealing from the artist. And finally, George Lucas, by essentially writing previous versions of the movies out of official existence, is destroying pieces of art that were valuable in their own right, even if he doesn't think so.
I'd like to add to this that I think there are basically three groups of people with regard to Star Wars fandom: there are those who will regard George Lucas's word as the gospel, those who will regard only the original movies as the gospel, and those who will create their own plot and dialogue patches to satisfy themselves and their friends. So what George Lucas should do is try to continue to sell the revised movies, because those in the first group will come anyway. Leave the movie to the second and third groups, because they will probably not be significant sources of direct revenue, yet they have the right to watch the movies as they see fit. Maybe there will be competition among the official George Lucas revisions, the original unaltered movies, and the fan-made alterations, but that's something that George Lucas will have to deal with, just like any other firm does in a free competitive market.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!

Sun Tzu and File Sharing

Yesterday, I was reading articles about eBook software for various OSs when I stumbled on the site Feedbooks which distributes eBooks of public domain works in various formats (including PDF). One of the featured books was Sun Tzu's The Art of War. I've heard several times that this book (handbook, really) is often used now for improving business and management strategies, and producing and selling movies and music is one such business, which file sharing is supposedly destroying. The debate over file sharing is often portrayed in popular media as a war between the poor, starving artists and the greedy freeloaders. In reality, of course, the poor, starving artists are just the RIAA and MPAA (though there are a handful of artists/filmmakers who genuinely resent and want to stop file sharing because they believe it harms there business), while the greedy freeloaders are actually people who would pay for such content if it was easy to buy and use and didn't have so many restrictions on its use (though there are quite a few people who would in fact only listen to music or watch videos for free (without regard to the legal status of said listening/watching)). So what if Sun Tzu was talking about file sharing? I can't analyze every single point made in the original book (I believe this is the Giles translation), but I will list a few that are very relevant to this issue (the citation of point Y in chapter X will be given as "(X.Y)"):

• Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State. (1.1)
• It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected. (1.2)
• According as circumstances are favourable, one should modify one's plans. (1.16)
• Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardour damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue. (2.4)
• Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays. (2.5)
• Sun Tzu said: In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to capture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them. (3.1)
• Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. (3.2)
• The general, unable to control his irritation, will launch his men to the assault like swarming ants, with the result that one-third of his men are slain, while the town still remains untaken. Such are the disastrous effects of a siege. (3.5)
• Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field. (3.6)

Follow the jump to read a more sensible interpretation of this with regard to filesharing. (NOTE: I don't intend to be fair/balanced with this. I'm just interpreting it from what I've read and from my own preexisting opinions. If you don't agree, please feel free to leave a comment with a suggestion/alternative interpretation.)

First Sale Not Applicable to Licensed Software

Wired has a new article saying that an appeals court has ruled that the first sale doctrine of copyright (that says that people can sell or give away copyrighted products once they have purchased it without permission from the original maker) does not apply to licensed copyrighted software. It comes as the company Autodesk has said that a man selling unused copies of AutoCAD that his company purchased many years before was not legally allowed to do so.
What does this mean? I can't sell a copy of Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office to you even if I've never used it (and in this case, I will be giving you the only copy I have as opposed to making another copy and giving that to you). The Wired article also discusses the implications for library books as well. Although the argument against the ruling with reference to its effects on books is valid, I'm not sure how relevant it will remain as eBooks already function as licensed software.
What's scary, though, is that the court has said that if issues come up with regard to books, Congress can modify copyright law appropriately to remedy any dilemmas. Given that the publishing industry has a huge influence on Congress's view of copyrights, I'm sure this can only go downhill.
Also, I fear for the safety of the fair use provision, as now companies can say that fair use constitutes unlicensed use of software (or other products). This doesn't look too good.

Righthaven Copyright Suits are like Property Repossession in the Extreme

Why do I say this? (It's from this article (Mike Masnick, TechDirt).) Read on, dear readers.
I have previously written about patent troll company Intellectual Ventures and how they claim to invent new things when all they do (aside from not inventing a single thing) is buy other companies' patents for the sole purpose of suing people who infringe upon those patents. Well, that concept seems to have been extended to Righthaven, which is a copyright troll. All it does is buy newspaper articles' copyrights for the sole purpose of suing people who infringe upon these copyrights, and it, unlike Intellectual Ventures, seems totally honest about its motives — instead of couching its actions in language about how newspapers cannot afford to lose in the fight against copyright infringement and piracy, its CEO essentially says straight up that it's out to make the big bucks by filing as many lawsuits as possible. Furthermore, it's going after people who write content online who copy even small portions (e.g. sentences, small paragraphs) of published articles and give proper attribution (and who link back to the original articles); I think this is a violation of the ideas of fair use and attribution, all for the purpose of making money.
So what's the news here? Well, not only is Righthaven suing the pants off of some websites that republish small parts of articles and attribute and link to them properly, it's even demanding that these sites hand over their domain names. What?
The TechDirt article is probably right (or so I hope) that this is most likely a scare tactic, in that most websites would rather settle the lawsuit out-of-court than fight, lose, and actually give up the domain name, as almost all defendants have settled out of court, while none have actually ceded their domain names. That said, assume for a moment that Righthaven is serious about its demands.
What does this mean? Imagine for a moment that Jill stole a lamp from a store to decorate his house. The analog of what Righthaven is doing is if after Jill returned the lamp to the store (under the force of the law) and served his jail time, the store owner further demanded possession of Jill's entire house and its contents.
No, that isn't quite accurate either. Imagine again that instead of Jill stealing a lamp, Jill borrowed a screwdriver from Dave to fix Bonnie's bicycle, told Dave what she was going to use the screwdriver for and when she would return it, and told Bonnie who the owner of the screwdriver was and when she would return it. Righthaven's actions are like Dave accusing Jill of stealing the screwdriver, taking her to court for it, and demanding repossession of both Jill's house and Bonnie's bicycle.
Is that a good analogy? It's something I thought of at the spur of the moment, so let me know how I can improve on this in the comments. In any case, isn't the whole sage just ridiculous?

FOLLOW-UP: The Film Industry's Next Avatar

This comes from this article (writer Enigmax, Torrent Freak) on filmmaker Enzo Tedeschi's plan to distribute his new movie The Tunnel for free through torrent sites. (Yes, I know the site is called "Torrent Freak", but the article is mostly quotes from Tedeschi himself apart from the introduction about the evils of Hollywood's modus operandi.) People get to buy individual frames of the movie for $1 each — $25 gives one second of the movie (because this movie has a frame rate of 25 FPS), so $1500 gets a full minute of the movie. Along with this, one randomly selected investor gets a 1% cut of the profits (as a sort of investment lottery). Follow the jump for my take.

Steve Jobs and Android + India's Copyright Bill

This article (MG Siegler, TechCrunch) talks about Steve Jobs's position on applications on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad that have to do with sexually explicit images (a.k.a. prXn). He has said that Apple will not allow such applications, so if one wants to do such things, one should buy a device with competitor Google's Android OS to fulfill such desires.
Follow the jump to see my take on this, as well as my take on India's new copyright bill.

The ACTA, Not Counterfeiting, Terrifies Me

It comes from this (Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing) post.
Basically, the ACTA is forcing the DMCA down the throats of all other countries.
Some of you know that around 2002, a professor gave a lecture in Europe on cryptology and current technology and reverse-engineered a particular technology (protected in the US under the DMCA) in order to analyze its cryptological safety (or something like that). When he flew to the US, he was arrested for violating the DMCA, even though what he did was solely to promote learning for his cryptology students. Of course, he would not have been arrested in the country where he gave this lecture.
So what does the ACTA mean? It means that he could have been arrested anywhere had the ACTA been in place at that time. Even though the reverse-engineering was done purely for educational purposes, as reverse-engineering, it was against the law.
What?
The incidence of these stupidly-made arrests will only go up in the future.
What's worse is that while the DMCA at least makes clear its intentions in its names, the ACTA conflates counterfeiting with copyright, patents, and reverse-engineering.
Counterfeiting is a serious problem; many people get sick and die every day from shoddy-quality counterfeit drugs being passed off as the real product.
Reverse-engineering? If the US, UK, and Poland had not reverse-engineered the German Enigma Machine, we may have lost WWII.

See? Authors DO Hate Corporate Copyrights

It's come with Marvel's lawsuit to keep (Associated Press) the copyrights on Spiderman and X-Men from expiring. It has sued the cartoon creator's family.
What?
This just goes to show that companies that keep artistic copyrights near indefinitely aren't doing the public or the artists any favors, in terms of monetary or social benefit. In fact, the artist's family has said so explicitly itself.
Michele Boldrin and David Levine were on to something when they said that when companies like Disney (of which, incidentally, Marvel is a subsidiary) try to maintain their strangleholds on works through copyright, they don't ever give the original artists any benefits, and when it's not a famous work like Mickey Mouse or Spiderman (but is artistically no less stunning), it dies because it can't be released to the public due to the...overbearing copyright restrictions meant to "protect" such works.

The Twisted Minds of Media Companies

I call it twisted because you will come to the exact same conclusion.
A lot of online news outlets have been reporting on a proposed WIPO treaty that would allow cross-border sharing of books that are made in formats accessible to blind and other visually-impaired people. This treaty is being opposed by several media lobbies from several companies "on principle"; that is, they oppose it because they believe it fundamentally undermines the "right" principle of always extending copyright terms, limiting the market's options, and taking away as many rights as possible.
This is truly sickening. The media companies and their lobbies have really gotten on the wrong side of the argument here.
The issue is that these companies feel like by allowing cross-border exchange of books and such meant for blind people, copyright restrictions are somehow undermined.
How?
Won't allowing this only increase their market? If Britain had an oversupply of books for the blind and had to burn it (media companies' way) or sell it to blind people in Ireland (proposed treaty's way), wouldn't the latter only increase the market share of the companies?
I think it's truly pathetic to what low levels these companies have fallen. It's just another example of how copyright isn't to protect the original authors (this treaty can only help the authors), it's only to allow the big publishers and such to progressively take more rights away in the name of the "authors".
Since when were these "rights" (which are just rights to take away readers' rights) of "authors" (really just the big publishers) greater than the rights of blind people to read? Wouldn't this sort of action be illegal under the US ADA (1990)?
Good grief. These actions are so maddeningly inane and childish that I don't even know what to say anymore.

But Won't it hurt Librarians?

I remember having a conversation with the school media center specialists about a month ago.
The topic? Copyright law and intellectual property. (I didn't think of posting it until now.)
Basically, our school's librarians are in favor of keeping the current copyright status quo and ardently defend intellectual property.
It makes sense (initially) that one's ideas are property and that taking them is tantamount to stealing - until one reads some history.
Only for the past few years have ideas been treated like physical property. Before, the Founding Fathers, among other scholars and officials, clearly made the distinction between intellectual and physical property. Who's always been trying to destroy that distinction and is pretty much succeeding now? Big media (news, recording, movie, publishing) companies and their lobbies.
So what was the librarian's argument?
Intellectual property is a vital incentive for authors to further produce creative works.
I agreed with this in general, but said that a more reasonable time period would be appreciated (the original 14 years as specified in the Copyright Act of 1790 instead of the current life + 95 years).
She said that my opinion would change if I had a family and made creative works, saying that I would be much more willing to support my family then.
I didn't say this to her, but seriously?
Supporting my family is one thing, but I think that maintaining exclusive rights to works up to 95 years past my lifetime is akin to stealing.
Yes, I'd be stealing money and rights to ideas from a deserving public, giving these to grandchildren and beyond who probably will barely know me and won't create many of their own works due to these protection laws.
Furthermore, I've recently read (online) of countless authors who go so far as to encourage their readers to pirate their books.
Right now, publishing companies are claiming (with little official or corporate resistance) such broad intellectual property rights (especially with ebooks) that libraries are being threatened (because soon they won't be able to open up ebooks for limited-time use by the public due to exclusive rights held by the publishers).
So why are the school librarians supporting a position that is detrimental to their jobs?

As an aside, I also wanted to discuss a dispute that came up in my English class. One of my classmates handed out CDs to every student; these CDs were (identical (to each other)) playlists (by this classmate) of existing copyrighted songs by different artists. My teacher refused one out of fear of a copyright lawsuit. He said that while making 1 or 2 copies for personal use qualifies as fair use, making 30 copies starts to infringe on the copyrights and is almost commercial in nature. My argument was that as long as the enterprise is strictly noncommercial, a CD containing a playlist generated by the creator but containing other copyrighted songs is a derivative work and is protected under fair use regardless of the number of copies distributed (as long as none of them are first-sold). I looked this up online and got vague or irrelevant answers.
Does anyone else have an opinion or piece of evidence one way or the other with respect to this?