In further tales of corporations abusing the takedown notice provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Last month, BoingBoing blogger Xeni Jardin blogged about the photoshop disaster that is this Ralph Lauren advertisement, in which a model’s proportions appear to have been altered to give her an impossibly skinny body (”Dude, her head’s bigger than her pelvis”). Naturally, Xeni reproduced the ad in question. This is classic fair use: a reproduction “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting,” etc.
Ralph Lauren’s law firm, Greenberg Traurig, dosn’t see it that way. According to them, this is an “infringing image,” and they sent a DMCA takedown notice to BoingBoing’s ISP, Canada’s Priority Colo. Priority Colo doesn’t automatically act on DMCA takedowns (FYI, Canada is not in the United States).
Instead of responding to Ralph Lauren’s legal threat by suppressing criticism of this rediculous marketing image, BoingBoing decided to mock them.
So, to Ralph Lauren, GreenbergTraurig, and PRL Holdings, Inc: sue and be damned. Copyright law doesn’t give you the right to threaten your critics for pointing out the problems with your offerings. You should know better. And every time you threaten to sue us over stuff like this, we will:
a) Reproduce the original criticism, making damned sure that all our readers get a good, long look at it, and;
b) Publish your spurious legal threat along with copious mockery, so that it becomes highly ranked in search engines where other people you threaten can find it and take heart; and
c) Offer nourishing soup and sandwiches to your models.
At least five state attorneys general have filed briefs raising concerns about Google Inc.’s proposed legal settlement with authors and publishers, adding to a wave of criticism lodged against the high-profile deal as it nears a public hearing.
Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc., among others, have criticized the settlement, as has the head of the U.S. Copyright Office.
“In the view of the Copyright Office, the settlement proposed by the parties would encroach on responsibility for copyright policy that traditionally has been the domain of Congress. The settlement is not merely a compromise of existing claims, or an agreement to compensate past copying and snippet display. Rather, it could affect the exclusive rights of millions of copyright owners, in the United States and abroad, with respect to their abilities to control new products and new markets, for years and years to come. We are greatly concerned by the parties’ end run around legislative process and prerogatives, and we submit that this Committee should be equally concerned.”
“It is our view that the proposed settlement inappropriately creates something similar to a compulsory license for works, unfairly alters the property interests of millions of rights holders of out-of-print works without any Congressional oversight, and has the capacity to create diplomatic stress for the United States.”
Read the entire statement of the U.S. Register of Copyrights here.
Today, I received an email from the Western District of Washington’s e-filing folks. They wanted to give us a heads up on RECAP and where the district stood on the use of the software.
“The court would like to make CM/ECF filers aware of certain security concerns relating to a software application or “plug-in” called RECAP, which was designed by a group from Princeton University to enable the sharing of court documents on the Internet.
Once a user loads RECAP, documents that he or she subsequently accesses via PACER are automatically sent to a public Internet repository.Other RECAP/PACER users are then able to see whether documents are availablefrom the Internet repository.RECAP captures District and Bankruptcy Court documents.
At this time, RECAP does not appear to provide users with access to restricted or sealed documents.Please be aware that RECAP is “open-source” software, which can be freely obtained by anyonewith internet access and modified for benign or malicious purposes, such as facilitating unauthorized access to restricted or sealed documents.
Accordingly, CM/ECF filers are reminded to be diligent about their computer security practices to ensure that documents are not inadvertently shared or compromised.
The court and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts will continue to analyze the implications of RECAP or related software and advise you of any ongoing or further concerns.”
Really? Free access and file sharing of court records for which I typically pay .08 per page? I immediately went to the RECAP website and read what they had to say.
Last week the Center did a round-up of leading technology-focused sites that have covered RECAP. Now, it seems that news of RECAP is spreading beyond the “tech blogosphere,” as more mainstream publications have begun writing about our software. Foreign Policy’s Evgeny Morozov covered RECAP, calling it “smart and subversive.” On Wednesday NextGov, a National Journal publication widely read within the government IT community, ran a thorough write-up of RECAP by Aliya Sternstein. It included some good background on how RECAP fits into the larger debate about judicial transparency.
Finally, Katherine Mangu-Ward has penned a piece for the Wall Street Journal about RECAP. Katherine calls RECAP “a sleek little add-on” with “a stylish and subversive touch.”
I downloaded it on the spot. After all, these are public records. You aren’t paying $0.08 a page to license a copyrighted work (or $0.80 for a copyrighted mp3), the fee is to give you access to the pacer system.
Wait then, am I violating a license to use PACER? A little research turned this up:
The PACER system provides electronic access to case information from federal courts across the United States. The information gathered from the PACER system is a matter of public record and may be reproduced without permission. However, the PACER customer assumes all responsibility for consequences that arise from use of the data.”
Unfortunately, I appear to be the only one using RECAP on cases I’m monitoring, but now others can access the information I’m collecting.
Public Knoweldge recently released a 56-page whitepaper on the topic of copyright filtering, entitled “Forcing the Net Through a Sieve: Why Copyright Filtering is not a Viable Solution for U.S. ISPs”.
In the study, Public Knowledge staff analyze the technological, economic and legal viability of filtering technologies. The study concludes that not only will copyright filtering be ineffective, it will also have far-reaching, adverse effects on free speech and free expression, the Internet economy and the day-to-day operation of networks. What’s more, copyright filtering, if implemented by an Internet Service Provider (ISP), could violate the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and might undermine the ‘safe harbors’ that have shielded ISPs from liability for the actions of their users for the last decade.
Mr. Colting will need to demonstrate that his work falls into the exceptions established under the doctrine of fair use. In the meantime, Mr. Colting may want to look into the similar problems encountered by Alice Randal when she published “The Wind Done Gone” and promptly was sued by the estate of Margaret Mitchell for her “unauthorized parody”. (Just for the record, parodies don’t require authorization.)
Word to the wise–to avoid raising the ire of unexpired copyright holders, focus your commentary and parody on works that have entered the public domain. (See “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.”)
In a full on, beat down of a woman who downloaded 24 songs (street value $23.76), a Minnesota Jury returned a verdict against Ms. Thomas-Rasset for $ 80,000 for each song she willfully downloaded.
Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America, said the RIIA was “pleased that the jury agreed with the evidence and found the defendant liable.” “We appreciate the jury’s service and that they take this as seriously as we do,” she said.
I’m reminded of the Star Trek episode were Wesley Crusher is sentenced to death for crossing a white line and stepping on the grass. Some laws are just stupid.
COPENHAGEN - As a candidate for the European Parliament elections on Sunday, the Swedish Pirate Party has “good chances” of winning one, two or possibly even three mandates, it says, referring to Swedish opinion polls.
The Swedish Pirate Party’s platform has three components: It wants to do away with the patent system, it wants to reform the copyright system and limit protection (“Today’s copyright terms are simply absurd. Nobody needs to make money 70 years after he is dead,” it says), and it wants to protect individual freedom from the “surveillance state.”
While cruising the interwebs for the perfect way to explain copyright myths and realities to a group of high school students, I cam across the following article by Brad Templeton. Thanks for the summary!
Like the code, the video identifies six kinds of unlicensed uses of copyrighted material that may be considered fair, under certain limitations. They are:
Commenting or critiquing of copyrighted material,
Use for illustration or example,
Incidental or accidental capture of copyrighted material,
Memorializing or rescuing of an experience or event,
Use to launch a discussion, and
Recombining to make a new work, such as a mashup or a remix, whose elements depend on relationships between existing works
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