Right before the Man of Steel celebrates its 70th birthday, a federal court judge has ruled (.pdf) that the heirs of Superman co-creator Jerome Siegel could claim an ownership share of the character’s domestic copyright. The ruling vests in Siegel’s heirs ownership in the first Superman comic, Detective Comics’ Action Comics No. 1.

Wikipedia has informative biographies for Siegel and his partner, Joseph Shuster, while William Patry (whose work the opinion cites 14 times) provides additional analysis and insight. The case centered on whether Siegel’s estate successfully had terminated the copyright pursuant to Section 304(c).

Siegel and Shuster sold the rights to the comic 70 years ago for $130 (or $14814.32 in today’s money). In comparison, Warner Bros. collected more than $200 million in domestic box office for the 2006 film Superman Returns. This total excludes ancillary (and lucrative) licensing income from all manner of tchotchkes from T-shirts to lunch boxes.

What immediately struck us was the diligence of Siegel’s estate in pursuing this issue. We compare this to the untidy, legally chaotic, and “deplorable” condition of the James Brown estate, which owes $400,000 in taxes and needs to sell memorabilia to preserve its assets.

Michael Cieply. Ruling Gives Heirs a Share of Superman Copyright. The New York Times. March 29, 2008.

See also:
Joy Howe. James Brown’s Estate To Be Sold. WJBF-TV (Augusta, Ga.) Feb. 29, 2008.

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Educause. A Blueprint for Big Broadband. (.pdf) January 2008. America’s standing in global broadband access and speed continues to plummet, and American consumers continue to pay more per capita for slower and less available broadband. (See data from the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development for more information.) Educause blames America’s position on this country’s lack of a national broadband policy. (Foreign Affairs magazine addressed this issue in late spring 2005.)

Educause commissioned a white paper paper that proposes creating a Universal Broadband Fund (UBF) that will provide “open, big broadband networks of at least 100 Mbps … to every home and business by 2012.” Educause estimates the cost for this effort will approach $100 billion, but the organization proposes a public‐private partnership approach followed in Canada.

Why is this important? Simply, without widely available broadband in the States, all measure of technological innovation gets hampered. Hampered technological development means a slower economy; a slower economy means fewer jobs; fewer jobs means more unemployment; more unemployment means … well, you get the idea.

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Anna Ringstrom. Sweden to Charge Pirate Bay in Copyright Case. Yahoo! News. Jan. 28, 2008. Sweden’s involvement in enforcement efforts on the entertainment industry’s behalf is related directly to the Special 301 process and Sweden’s fear of being placed on a priority list (penalties for which include trade sanctions).

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Yahoo! News (via The Associated Press). MPAA Admits Mistake on Downloading Study. Jan. 23, 2008; Inside Higher Ed. Downloading by Students Overstated. Jan. 23, 2008; Association for Computing Machinery. MPAA’s Data Oops: How Will Congress React? Jan. 23, 2008; News Blog (News.com). Why Did Colleges Stay Mum on MPAA Stats? Jan. 25, 2008. We don’t think this is a mistake, actually. For several years, we have questioned as biased and invalid many of the “studies” the entertainment industry creates that purport to show a correlation between alleged infringement activity from a specific environment (i.e. file sharing networks) or population (i.e. college students). More investigation should be done into the numbers and methodology of these reports, especially since the entertainment industry parades them before Congress as evidence that it needs more restrictive intellectual property rights. If you think there is no connection between these sorts of studies and legislation like the PRO IP bill (H.R. 4279) or the HEA Reauthorization bill, think again.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 29, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

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On Copyright Reform. (.mp3) The Ottawa Citizen sponsors an hour-long debate on copyright reform in Canada. Lots of shouting and interrupting, but may be worthwhile listening if you want to hear frustrated content industry discuss the state of their nation. Check out, however, Michael Geist’s analysis of this session, in which he contends Canadian Recording Industry Association president Graham Henderson and others give tacit support to ISP filtering, which AT&T reportedly is considering.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in Site Check 2.03.)

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Paul Davidson. Google Could Cause a Stir in FCC’s Airwaves Auction. USAToday.com. Jan. 24, 2008. This story, and the coverage at InfoWorld, provide good introductions to the wireless spectrum auction and how it may affect everyday people. The airwaves that the Federal Communication Commission is auctioning are the leftover spectrum that will be made available once television becomes a digital-only proposition in 2009. (In other words, this year is the final year you will be able to use “rabbit ears” to watch television.

Starting in 2009, it’s either digital television or a subscription option, such as cable.) Google has won a petition to ensure “C” block spectrum airwaves are available to any wireless provider a subscriber wants to use. This allows Google to act as a service or application provider even if it does not win the auction. The spectrum auction began Thursday, Jan. 24 with more than 200 bidders — including Google, Verizon, and AT&T — submitting sealed bids. Winning bids could be revealed any time between late February and late March.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 29, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

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BBC News. Net Body Issues Plea for Liberty. Jan. 24, 2008. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN) likely is the most important quasi-government agency about which most Web users know nothing. It is, however, a critically important organization whose core mission — coordinating the Internet’s domain name system — essentially runs the Web. ICANN operates as a private-public partnership with the U.S. government. (ICANN receives oversight from the U.S. Department of Commerce.)

Over the last few years, this arrangement has become more problematic to foreign countries, which claim that an like ICANN should not be so intimately tied to the government of any single country because that gives such a country an unusual amount of influence over what is an international network. As a result, ICANN’s request (.pdf) to separate itself from such close contact with the American government is a significant development.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 29, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

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