Copyright Talk

The House Small Business Committee heard it’s invited testimony yesterday on the issue of how to set royalty rates for internet radio broadcasters. Video of each panel member’s testimony can be viewed here.

The committee is fact finding right now on this topic, getting information and different perspectives. In theory, this will lead to a more considered and balanced approach to setting policy than merely listening to those who make the effort - or have the money - to go to Congress on their own initiative.

The issues in this debate really are somewhat complicated, but only if you focus on the specifics mechanics of how the technology works. If you view “radio” as “radio” no matter how it technically reaches it’s listeners, then the matter becomes much simpler. That’s not to say that the way royalties for traditional radio frequency broadcasters makes perfect sense, but by treating all “radio” the same you at least eliminate the issues created by imposing different requirements on different technologies and thereby creating competition issues to be weighed as well as the royalty issues.

Haven’t seen any hard numbers yet, but anecdotally it appears that an impressive number of people did take the time to make a call to their congressional reps on Tuesday concerning the internet radio debate. This debate is increasingly being framed as a weighing of reasonable compensation for artists against the obliteration of an industry. Not sure if that’s an accurate picture to use in the debate, but that’s what it is becoming. The interesting thing is that many of the artists are in favor of preserving the industry no matter what the direct cost to them. Obviously, different folks are figuring costs/benefits in very different ways.

Today, Thursday, the House Small Business Committee is hearing testimony from an invited panel of guests on the Copyright Royalty Board rate ruling. The panel members include a couple of artists, a couple of internet radio operators, a couple of small record labels, and the American Federation of Musicians. I’ve looked but have not found a site where this meeting will be broadcast live, but I’ll keep looking and post it here if I find one. The meeting begins at 10:00 am Eastern time.

I talk a lot about music in this blog because the technology that allows file sharing and downloading of music - which is a big buck business - is fueling so much debate on our copyright laws. But music, of course, is only one of many types of copyrightable works. Photographers struggle with many of the same issues, and professional photographers are faced with a whole array of additional issues since the nature of their work results often results in the copying of other works as images in the photos.

Attorney Carolyn E. Wright specializes in legal issues, including copyright, related to photography, and writes a blog of her own dedicated to these issues. Written specifically for photographers, PhotoAttorney should be on the reading list of anyone who does photography.

Among the many things teachers need to know is copyright. It used to be they needed to know about copyright so that they would not infringe anyone’s copyright when assembling material to use in the classroom. But now teachers have to teach copyright to their students as part of the usual and longstanding plagiarism discussions.

The Library of Congress has many tools available just for teachers, including lesson plans, and also including the animated video lesson found here.

I’m not sure this video can be used a standalone, and judging from my own two middle school students, I’m not sure it will appeal to many of the kids in the age group it is aimed at, but it’s probably a good starting point for teachers who are struggling to understand the basics themselves.

Tomorrow, Tuesday June 26, many web radiocasters will fall silent, in protest of the music royalty rate hikes that they claim will put many out of business entirely and drastically chnage the way those that remain offer services. Cecily Mak on FindLaw has a great article recapping the whole issue.

The silence is not just in protest, but also in support of changes being considered by Congress that would bring the royalty rates to a level similar to those imposed on the satellite radio industry, which is considerably lower than the new internet rates going into effect in less than a month.

The problem with the silence is that very few decision makers will notice on their own. And I have little faith that the people who listen to internet radio will talk about the silence loudly enough and to the right people for it to have an impact.

I hope they prove me wrong.

The Copyright Clearance Center, which I’ve talked about before, has put together a deal that will allow Universities to purchase blanket licenses for use of material from a group of publishers. Businesswire has more info. This is just an initial press release, so details are still to be discovered, but it’s a great idea. Kudos for the CCC for making this happen.

ASCAP and BMI offer blanket licenses for clubs, restaurants, events, and other commercial establishments to play music from their catalogues. This model may work well for written works in some contexts, and I think the university context is a good one. I would not want to see blanket licenses become the norm for other contexts, however, as I think written works are, on the whole, too different from music and the way it is used.

Intellectuals must love this time in history. Craftsmen, on the other hand, no doubt hate it.

A fairly significant copyright case from the 11th circuit came out last week, commonly referred to as “Greenburg II.” The legal analysis and significance is somewhat technical, and if you are interested you’re welcome to read an analysis at Law.com. From a slightly larger perspective, I think this case points up beautifully the difficulty we are having applying our thinking to new forms of technology. The case involved a basic question over whether the National Geographic Society had the right, under it’s existing copyright permissions, to reproduce its magazines on CD-ROM without having to seek new permissions from the photographers represented in the magazines. The question itself is simple, and the answer is simple if the reproduction had been in book form. But by putting the magazines on CD-ROM, and requiring software to manipulate the contents, many argue that the type of reproduction is technically different from a book form reproduction and therefore requires its own, separate analysis.

From the intellectual’s viewpoint, this is great fun and mentally stimulating. From the craftsman’s viewpoint (i.e., the magazine company) this is a headache of the first degree, as they don’t care how the little mice behind the scenes get the books pages in front of the people who want to look at it, they simply want to know what they have to do in order to release this CD-ROM.

I would venture to say that the average consumer, other than being dazzled by the ability to store so much great info in so little a space, also doesn’t care a thing about the mechanical/’technical difference between a book and a CD-ROM, they simply want to know how much the cool thing costs.

I know sometimes things that look like ducks can’t be allowed to continue doing so, but for the most part, if most people think it’s a duck, why not just let it go?

Viacom and Google are locked in legal battle over who has the legal responsibility to prevent copyright violations on YouTube. There’s a great, concise little explanation of this and links to the companies own explanations of what they are fighting about by Mike Rowland on the Future of Communities. Read it here.

One comment by Rowland caught my attention. He says “Your local cable access station cannot let you sign up for free air time and then show an episode of the Colbert Report you recorded at home, why should the internet be any different? ”

And all of a sudden it hit me why we’re having a problem. Rowland is right that the cable company clearly has the legal obligation to prevent the airing of copyrighted material without permission, and the reason it’s that way, rather than waiting for the owner to complain, is that the cable company has a limited amount of airtime, along with people who actually see and feel each segment aired, and as such they are in a much better position to police what happens on their airwaves than are the owners of content. Content owners would have to watch 24/7 on hundreds of cable companies in order to find a possible violation that may or may not even be occurring. It doesn’t make sense.

However, the same model doesn’t make sense on a technology like YouTube, because it is designed to be run without the hands and eyes on support of actual people. Computers, the internet, digital technology - these all make possible a sort of self-running community that the owners do not have to support with large numbers of personnel. This makes possible the free access for hundreds of thousands of people.

But the model still doesn’t make sense for the content owners, either. It’s not realistic for them to view everything that goes up on the web on the chance some of it is their stuff.

The scale has changed so dramatically, and the automation has become so complete, that we no longer have any existing model that makes sense. Maybe the video recognition software being tested by Google is in fact the model of the future.

Do we want free and easy access to lots and lots of stuff, or do we want human people involved in our lives? That may be the policy decision we are facing.

The organization SaveNetRadio kicked off their lobbying visits to Congress with a concert on the lawn of the Senate last night. Grass roots lobbying has frequently used music as a way of drawing attention and unifying participants. In this case, music is central to the cause itself, so it’s only fitting that Congress was treated to a sample. Members of the coalition will spend today meeting with congressional members, looking for support for legislation that would lower the royalty rates currently assessed against internet radio stations.

If you have an opinion, one way or the other, today would be an excellent day to contact your congressman and seantor and let them know.

The SaveNetRadio press release is here.

The internet radio bill as introduced in the House.

An alternate view of the debate.

What we need to know to get along in society changes periodically. I’m reading a book my daughter recommended about two twelve year old girls that switch places a hundred years apart. The present day girl that goes back to 1891 is dismayed to learn that in 1891 she’s only at a third grade history level - because she doesn’t know the names of all the presidents!

Present day students have a need to learn a fair amount about copyright law, because for the first we have the ability to copy and mass distribute almost everything that exists. Twenty years ago there was little need for the average person to know more than the basic concept of copyright, because you couldn’t copy very much and even if you did, you could only share it with a few people.

Now, even very young kids need to understand what they can do with material on the internet, the same way they need to understand that you can’t just walk out of a store without paying for what you want.

This site is devoted to tools for teachers to help teach copyright concepts in the classroom. I haven’t reviewed all the material, but it seems to be a good resource and at the very least, a starting place for teachers looking for ideas on teaching copyright in the classroom.

Wendy Davis has some good comments on the ATT&T anti-piracy intitative I wrote about yesterday. Check it out here.

The College of William and Mary student newspaper is reporting that the RIAA is seeking the names of college internet network users who it alleges have illegally downloaded copyrighted music. They are apparently only one of 19 college campuses targeted by the RIAA in an ongoing campaign against illegal music downloads on campuses. The RIAA press release is here.

And here’s Google’s own words explaining the YouTube video checking software they are developing. It also includes a pretty good, basic explanation of how things work right now.

Yesterday an LA Times story broke the news that the largest internet provider in the country, AT&T, will begin working with the Hollywood entertainment industry to develop a technology for cracking down on copyright piracy that goes through the AT&T ISP network. The story is here - I apologize this site requires registration, but it is free. If you prefer to stay away from registration sites, you can read an article about the article here.

AT&T does not legally have to do this. It is protected under the DMCA ISP safe harbor provisions. But observers note that AT&T is moving into the provision of media to its customers, and it may be beneficial from a business standpoint for AT&T to cozy up to Hollywood.

That said, we could also assume that ATT&T just wants to be a good citizen and help curb illegal activity in all its forms. The problem is that customers right now are extremely concerned about privacy, and unless AT&T can eventually assure folks that no infringement on our usual privacy rights will be made, this move is unlikely to win any applause from the people who actually use AT&T’s services.

And I am not clear from the sketchy information available at this early stage on WHO is actually paying for this gargantuan undertaking? If AT&T is paying, how are they going to justify to their board the huge expenditure of funds to do something they have no legal obligation to do and which their customers would probably rather they not do?

Verizon, a rival but much smaller ISP company, has positioned itself as a fierce protector of the privacy rights of its customers - if they can get the capital, now looks like a good time for them to step up and move into the ATT&T dominated markets.

A test of software designed to cut down on unauthorized posting of copyrighted videos to YouTube will begin testing next month.

My very rudimentary understanding of how this will work is that more huge databases will be compiled of videos and their respective copyright authorizations. The software will automatically check uploaded videos to see if they are in the database, and then appropriate action - or no action - depending on the copyright authoriztions in the database.

Since this is just being tested, we haven’t heard anything about the long term plans for the software, but I’m curious as to whether any individual could have their copyrighted videos palced in the database or if this will be reserved for large media corporations which own thousands of copyrights each.

And if this works, I can see eventually placing all of this in the hands of the copyright office, which, after all, already has copies of all registered material. And if all material posted to YouTube was also run through government hands, the governement could compile even more databases of people “of interest” in the “war on terror.”

Large databases scare me, no matter what their ostensible purpose.

The pressure on Universities to police their students file sharing activities is mounting. Now one congressman is suggesting that federal funding be withheld to Universities who don’t do enough to prevent copyright piracy of movies and music among their students. The Universities are only implicated because the provide network access to their students. Other than that, a university is a community of adults – almost all students are over the age of 18 – and the University should not be charged with any greater responsibility to police their campuses than they are for any other illegal activity. What about alcohol use on campus? Most students, particularly dormitory residents, are too young to legally drink or possess alcohol. How about cutting off federal funding to Universities that fail to stop students from bringing alcohol onto campus. It would not be enough to report and prosecute students who are found to have done so. Rather, the University would have to examine the shape of all backpacks and packages coming onto campus, and confiscate anything deemed too large or misshapen until the student could prove it did not contain alcohol. Or how about preventing assault and vandalism by requiring psychological assessments of all entering students, and refusing entry into the program to any person deemed to have disrespect for authority until they have undergone treatment and become docile and willing to blindly follow any directions.

There is so much more good we could do for society if we would just take advantage of all the places where our citizens are bunched up within the control of one centralized authority. Universities, banks, the drivers license bureau, insurance companies, churches, movie theaters, Wal-Mart - the list is really only as short as our imaginations. If we would just crack down more on our populace by restricting access to the neccessities of life then we could wipe out crime altogether, and probably increase the profits of our greatest national treasures at the same time - Big Corporations.

What a wonderful world that would be.

There’s a very interesting column in the Canadian paper Macleans by a relatively small time writer who has sued a major Hollywood player for copyright infringement. She’s not tiny - she has an agent and a publisher and her book was released in at least two countries - but she is an individual, unlike the writer with Hollywood backing she alleges stole her book for a screenplay that was turned into a movie by Universal Studios and stars some very well known folks. Reading her tale of deciding to and then trying to file a lawsuit says less about our copyright laws than it does about the entertainment industry itself. Read her story here.
The central question in her case is going to come down to this: If a story is very close to another story, but different, how close does it need to be to be a legal infringement of the copyright on the first story? And if the story is similar enough to be an infringement, but there’s no proof that the writer of the second work ever knew about or saw the first one, does that matter? In other words, is it infringment if it really was a coincidence, even if it would be infringment if it was clear that the writer had seen the first work?

There are only so many stories to go around, and rarely do we find a truly unique story. What we generally get are old stories told in new ways and with new characters (if you read genre fiction you know that lots of times you barely even get new characters). It may be that this is like pornography - it’s hard to define when close is too close, but we know it when we see it.