“The National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC, has admitted copyright infringement and agreed to pay two Edouard Vuillard scholars $37,500 for publishing a catalogue that uses their research without authorisation or acknowledgement.

“Annette Leduc Beaulieu and her husband Brooks Beaulieu filed a copyright infringement suit that year in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, charging unauthorised use of their material in the exhibition catalogue of the Vuillard retrospective co-published by the National Gallery of Art (NGA) and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) in 2003.

“The 520-page catalogue includes essays by Guy Cogeval, the director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and lead curator of the exhibition, as well as by co-curators Kimberly Jones of the National Gallery. Ms. Beaulieu had earlier been contracted by the National Gallery when she was being considered to curate the retrospective. She maintained that research she and her husband submitted was appropriated without their consent for the exhibition catalogue.

“The federal judge sent the case — Beaulieu vs. United States — to mediation and a settlement was reached in March. Under the terms of the agreement, the director of the National Gallery of Art, Earl A. Powell III, sent a letter to the Beaulieus, dated 27 March 2006, acknowledging that portions of their work “were consulted and used.” The letter states: ‘As co-publisher of the exhibition catalogue, the National Gallery sincerely regrets the failure to cite your materials and any harm that this may have caused to your personal or professional reputations.’”

Jason Edward Kaufman. National Gallery Pays Out In Vuillard Plagiarism Suit. The Art Newspaper. May 17, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“For the past 12 months, Australia has been going through a major review of its copyright law, and in particular, its exceptions to copyright infringement, with a view to ‘updating’ this material for the digital environment. I note that we are not the only ones: Canada [is] having an ongoing debate, and the UK [is] having [its] Gower Review.

“The Attorney-General has issued a press release, announcing the results of the review. … In essence, the government has decided not to adopt the US ‘fair use’ system — where a broadly worded defence must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Instead, the government will expand, and amend, existing specific exceptions in Australian law. That makes the amendments complicated, but potentially more certain.”

Weatherall’s Law: IP in the Land of Oz. No Fair Use for Australia — But Some Expanded Exceptions … May 14, 2006.

See also:

The Attorney General (Australia), Philip Ruddock, MP. Major Copyright Reforms Strike Balance. May 14, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“The larger Skype’s user base grows, the less likely it is that telecom operators or regulators will successfully block the VoIP service, said the head of Skype’s European operations, during an interview at the VON Europe conference in Stockholm.

“An experience in Brazil makes a good example. About a year ago, one of the largest telecom operators in Brazil blocked Skype. The reaction from Skype users was so strong that after a week, the operator relented.

“Some operators, particularly the incumbents, may seek to block Skype because Skype’s low-cost voice service can steal market share from them and thus eat into their most significant source of revenue.”

Nancy Gohring. Skype Seeks Bulk to Avoid Blocks. PC Advisor. May 18, 2006.

See also:

Ars Technica. Skype’s Net Neutrality Gamble: We’ll Be So Big, They Can’t Stop Us. May 18, 2006.

Sara Kehaulani Goo. Skype Gives It Away. WashingtonPost.com. May 16, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Countries whose lack of functional copyright law has jeopardized their membership in WIPO have touted open source as the inexpensive alternative that will allow them to comply with copyright while living within their means. Yet free software doesn’t come free — it has strings attached: the strings of copyleft, strings being pulled via a license written with a strong U.S. copyright enforcement landscape in mind.

“The bottom line is that free software lives and dies by the sword of copyright law — and the sword outside the U.S. and Europe is not very sharp. Enforcing free software licenses in the U.S. is hard enough. We all know that noncompliance is rampant in the U.S., though this is due less to defiance or malfeasance than to inattention, poor record keeping, or suspecting that some of the more opaque licenses were actually written by Chinese students who learned English from an official cultural-revolution-era phrasebook.

“So, who will enforce the GPL in India? Or in China? Or in Russia? In lieu of enforcement, do we really expect voluntary compliance in nations where copyright law is a nod and a wink?”

Heather Meeker. Only in America? Copyright Law Key to Global Free Software Model. TechNewsworld. May 16, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

The idea of being able to play your music anywhere, on any device, has become a cliche without quite coming to pass. Viewed from a distance, this looks like one of technology’s greatest failures. If you’re acquainted with Orb, Sling Media, or MP3Tunes — all of which fulfill that promise to some degree — you’ll know how close we are to this goal. But for every breakthrough, it seems, there’s yet another setback.

“Look a little closer, and we see that for the most part it’s not the fault of the basic technology components. The networks are in place, the hard drives are big enough and the processors are fast enough for “audio everywhere”. And all are fairly affordable to a critical mass of the market, although the cost we bear is undoubtedly higher than it was in the analog era.

“Politics and greed are the problems.”

Andrew Orlowski. Digital Music Nirvana Isn’t Impossible, It Just Takes Longer. The Register. May 12, 2006.

See also:

Andrew Orlowski. File swapping MSPs — The Future of Digital Music? The Register. Aug. 26, 2005. (Interesting analysis of the overall costs of playing digital music.)

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.