Public Knowledge. Don’t Trust the Media to Get Copyright Right: Scrabulous Coverage Scores Few Points. Jan. 22, 2008. Often, we have taken the press to task for its frequently errant and one-sided coverage of intellectual property issues. When IP was a backwater issue, poor (and sometimes inaccurate) coverage was a problem, but was not evident. Now IP often warrants front-page, above-the-fold coverage, and the mistakes not only are evident, they are harmful. A news organization’s primary professional objective is to get it right. Writing flowery prose like Selena Roberts is optional. Talking loud and saying little like Stephen A. is optional. Whining while cashing checks like Mr. Tony is optional.

Getting it right, on the other hand, is mandatory.

Marc Fisher got it wrong in a big way last month, likely because he relied on second-hand reporting and did not do the requisite amount of fact- and document checking. Now, as PK points out, several media outlets seem to have gotten the Scrabulous/Facebook story wrong, attributing to an alleged copyright infringement problem what really is an alleged trademark infringement problem. Not only is this unacceptable, it is grossly unprofessional. If the news media can’t get it right, above all else, it’s useless.

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

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“One way to look at plaintiff’s difficulties here is as further evidence of the disproportionate difficulties African-Americans have had in getting the benefits of IP protection.” — Rebecca Tushnet.

43(B)log. Strikeout: Baseball Player’s Claim Against Cards Fails. Jan. 5, 2008. Georgetown law professor Tushnet (no, the junior Tushnet) ends her analysis of a lawsuit against the Topps trading card company with this interesting comment. The lawsuit (which was based on right of publicity, trademark and related claims) was brought by the daughter of legendary Negro Leaguer James “Cool Papa” Bell, alleging that the trading card company did not have permission to print Bell’s likeness on a trading cards released earlier this decade. Tushnet’s summary says Bell granted to the Baseball Hall of Fame permission to use his name and likeness on various products. (Bell was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974.) Tushnet’s comment raises interesting issues about IP protection and race.

Stories are legion about the extent to which creative, technical, or scientific achievements by African-Americans have been appropriated without initial or residual compensation. And strains of complaint often make it into the lyrics of contemporary music. (Even Jay-Z once said in “H.O.V.A.” “I’m overcharging labels for what they did to the Cold Crush.”) We would be very interested in seeing any articles, reports, books, or scholarly work that addresses this phenomenon and estimates the lost value therefrom.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 29, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings, where it was a Quote of the Week selection.)

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Robert McMillan. Network Solutions Stands by Name Policy. PC World. Jan. 10, 2008. In what it says is an attempt to prevent the fraudulent practice of domain tasting, Network Solutions commits a gross policy violation by registering the domain names itself if the searcher does not purchase that domain. This action is particularly objectionable because the company long has marketed itself as a registrar whose legitimacy should be unquestioned given its connection to the American government and its status as a pioneering domain name registrar. (In the early nineties, Network Solutions was the company the National Science Foundation chose to develop the country’s current domain name registration service, was for a time the sole registrar of .com, .net, and .org domains.)

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 15, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

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AdRants. Ford Slaps Brand Enthusiasts, Returns Love With Legal Punch. Jan. 14, 2007. Ford, which desperately needs some love from the public, shoots itself in the foot by threatening legal action over the use of its logo in a calendar sold by a Mustang owners club. Our first reaction was “how dumb can you be?” Upon reconsideration, though, American trademark law may have required Ford to take some level of action because of potential dilution issues. The issue has been resolved now, but one has to think this issue could have been handled in a manner that would not have left Ford looking like a bully. Just because there’s a legal issue doesn’t mean the law needs to be used like a club.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 15, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

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This edition of CopyCense Clippings may well have been subtitled “State of the Music Nation.” This week, we have lots of features and commentary on music, from The Clash’s manager talking about the downfall of Big Music, to Jay-Z’s contemporary musical and executive version of big pimpin’. In between, we point you to stories on where your politicians fall on technology issues (just in time for midterm elections); Gannett’s attempt to flip the newsroom script; JPEG patent activity; and continuing coverage of the recently concluded Internet Governance Forum.

Articles of the Week

Andrew Orlowski. Big Labels Are F*cked, and DRM Is Dead — Peter Jenner. The Register. Nov. 3, 2006. The former manager for Pink Floyd and The Clash speaks bluntly about the state (and future) of Big Music. Compare Jenner’s assessment with our own assessment (below) of how Jay-Z is planning to keep his career in tact.

Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache. Technology Voter Guide. News.com. Nov. 2, 2006. Just in time for midterm elections, McCullagh and Broache provide a voter’s guide to Congressional records on technology issues, everything from DMCA and computer restrictions to H1-B visas. Unfortunately, the guide does not track Congressional response to the Net Neutrality debate, but for good reasons. This is yeoman work by two of the nation’s best technology reporters.

Ars Technica. Understanding the WIPO Broadcast Treaty. Oct. 30, 2006. Ars is always one of our favorite sources, and this history of the WIPO broadcast treaty shows why we love it so.

The Patry Copyright Blog. Surf Music, Hip-Hop, Race and Copyright. Oct. 29, 2006. Patry pulls us down memory lane by extending the New York Times’ coverage of the reissue of “Apache,” one of hip hop’s most beloved break beats.

Quotes of the Week

“There is not as much sympathy for … the entertainment business from Congress as there would be if it was more of a traditional business that was impacted. If the paper tomorrow said that Boeing had just announced that a whole series of major engineering drawings on a military plane, a B-1 bomber replacement, had been taken and they were on a Norwegian Web site, the whole place would go crazy. The fact that music’s being stolen and movies are being stolen doesn’t draw that kind of attention. It’s the same issue.” - Bob Wright, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, NBC Universal.

– Reuters. Lawmakers Short on Sympathy for Piracy: NBC Chief. Oct. 26, 2006. So let’s get this straight: Bob Wright is whining that the so-called “war” on so-called “piracy” is not as important a Congressional priority as American men and women fighting and dying overseas. No matter what your position concerning the various “wars” American military personnel are involved in around the globe, we wretch whenever a Big Content executive equates the downfall of their industries with the gravity of armed conflict, and we are continually disgusted at Big Content’s hubris.

“I tour between albums. That’s 18,000 people last night, there may be 50,000 tomorrow. … Then when you get to a level of doing shows, the other rush is trying to beat the other show. You really just start trying to make epic joint after epic joint after epic joint. Once you hit arenas, it ain’t the same. … It costs a lot to make that show look effortless. You get to a point where, if you getting a $100,000, you put $10,000 into a show. Whatever you got to do to make the show look great. … In order to put on a good show you gotta spend. You get the LCD screens that are so bright and look like water. You gotta get the best sound and light guys. You gotta treat it like the rock guys treat it. It’s part of your craft. You gotta treat it like the studio, making the album. I got into the mindset that every aspect of my show has got to be the best. You gotta stay on par with your peers in the game. You don’t wanna go to a show and they’re just blowing you off the stage. That ain’t good for your career either. It’s all part of being a performer.” - Jay-Z, musician.

– XXLMag.com. Jay-Z: Countdown to Kingdom Come. Oct. 30, 2006. Forget the “CEO of Hip Hop,” which is what H-P calls him. Can we officially crown Jay-Z the King of Pop? His new album, Kingdom Come, is due to be released Nov. 21 and arguably is the biggest album release of the last five years. During a time when CD sales are declining, Jay-Z’s numbers may not suffer at all: it is conceivable that Kingdom Come could open with 750,000 units sold in the first week. (Remember, this is an artist whose album The Blueprint debuted at the top of the charts, selling more than 420,000 units in its first week even though it was released on Sept. 11, 2001.)

But more than anything else, Jay-Z seems to understand the music business better than most of his so-called executive peers. It’s not just that he has a keen eye for promotion. (Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Danica Patrick appearing in the first video for your newest single? Priceless.) Jay-Z understood about five years ago that the key to remaining relevant in the music business would center on being able to excel at performing live. The manifestation of this understanding was his collaboration with The Roots for MTV Unplugged. Since then, Jay-Z has become the biggest act in music because he has learned how to do a great live show.

Remember Dick Wolf’s quote about no one ever getting rich again in entertainment? (QoTW, Clippings v. 0.92) We think he meant that no one will get rich using the old model of studio-based production and centralized distribution. In music’s old business model, it was conceivable that a person could get rich strictly by staying in the studio, producing good songs, funneling them through the record companies and radio, and (by the 1990s) looking good on video.

But given the way computers and digital media have changed the way people create, and the disruptive way the Internet has changed distribution, this is now longer the case. Keep a single confidential? That will never happen again. An unreleased record? Virtually impossible. Create a new sound and a new beat? There’s a 12-year old kid in a bedroom right now that has been up all night tweaking Reason, producing beats you can’t begin to conceptualize.

But a great live performance is the one thing that digital media cannot replicate or replace. Even if digital media captures a great performance, ultimately the recorded event just makes you regret you weren’t there to see it unfold in person. We recall Bonnie Raitt once saying that the reason she makes albums is so she can have 12 new songs to perform when she goes out on the road. Jay-Z started understanding this five years ago. And like the former King of Pop, Michael Jackson, Jay-Z will stay on top as long as he can continue to put on an incomparable show. Hands up and wave.

Clippings

• Jeff Howe. Gannett to Crowdsource News. Wired News. Nov. 3, 2006. As one of the nation’s largest newspaper chains, Gannett decides to leverage its audience to make news more local. This is an interesting development coming from the creator of McPaper, but a bold — perhaps critically necessary — step toward improving journalism and helping newspapers survive.
• Ron Grover. HBO’s Bold Broadband Plans. BusinessWeekOnline.com. Nov. 2, 2006. Ever wonder why no one has seen episodes (or even tidbits) of The Wire on iTunes? Because the cable operators would go bananas. While we love that show, most of us cannot stomach paying more than $50 per month for that alone. We suspect that as the iPod generation matures, they’ll conclude the same thing, thereby jeopardizing HBO’s currently stable business model.
• SiliconValley.com (via The Associated Press). World Internet Conference Ends With Promise and Concerns. Nov. 2, 2006. This is the post-game report for the Internet Governance Forum, which recently concluded near Athens. (For the pre-game report, look to Ars Technica’s well-written summary, and still another strong article, which could serve as the halftime report.) Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this event is how it will affect the domain name system and ICANN’s continued control over it.
• Matt Slagle. Forgent Settles JPEG Patent Case. Forbes.com (via The Associated Press). Nov. 2, 2006. One of the secrets about the digital world is that one of its major image formats (.JPEG) is not an open standard, but subject to a proprietary compression technology that is protected by U.S. Patent. No. 4,698,672. The patent’s owner, Forgent Technologies, quietly has been collecting millions of dollars in licensing revenue on this patent for several years. (Wired News has a 2002 story that explains the patent’s history.) This is one of the few cases that has made it into the public. What we cannot understand is why large technology companies have not supported an attempt to invalidate the patent, as they had in the NTP-Research In Motion matter.
• 27BStroke6. EFF Sues Sex Shamer, Says He Shut Down Critic With Fake Copyright Notices. Nov. 1, 2006. So the Electronic Frontier Foundation finds it essential to sue a person who is falsely filing Section 512 takedown notices. On the other hand, to our best knowledge, the organization has not gotten involved in helping defendants in Big Music file sharing lawsuits seek sanctions when the record lobby files sketchy complaints, or drops lawsuits with prejudice after conceding it hasn’t done the proper legwork before filing the claim. Release big sigh of exasperation here.
• Knowledge@Wharton. What’s Next for Netflix? Nov. 1, 2006. Conventional wisdom predicted Netflix would be dead three years ago. Instead, it has beaten Wal-Mart (Netflix swallowed its video business earlier this year), staved off Blockbuster, and recently beat Wall Street analyst estimates. Why? One reason is its distribution network is outstanding. Another reason, oddly, is that it hasn’t entered the video download business. Why get involved in the mess? Instead, let others hash out the hard part, then apply your distribution expertise to the final solution.
• BBC News. Copying Own CDs “Should Be Legal.” Nov. 1, 2006. This report (.pdf) is the first step toward a legislative allowance for home copying. Big Content is likely to invoke its strongest response for ensuring this issue is never even discussed in the United States.
• SiliconValley.com. ICANN Warns Mistake on Non-English Web Addresses Could Permanently Break Internet.” Nov. 1, 2006. Non-U.S. companies have been clamoring for a domain naming system that allows naming conventions beyond Latin-based characters. “Permanently break the Internet” seems awful dire. One would think that the collective intelligence within the organization would be able to keep that from every happening.
• Paul McDougall. How To Avoid The Patent Trap. InformationWeek. Oct. 30, 2006. Deeper perspective about the IBM-Amazon.com patent tiff, and its meaning within the broader context of U.S. patent reform. Also, see K. Matthew Dames’ analysis of IBM’s patent reform announcement in Information Today.
• BBC News. 50 Cent Copyright Claim Dismissed. Oct. 29, 2006. The infamous Fiddy can keep all his money.
• Grant Gross. Supreme Court To Review Microsoft Patent Case. PC World (via IDG News Service). Oct. 27, 2006. When titans collide: AT&T and Microsoft, in the U.S. Supreme Court, clashing swords over whether Microsoft is liable for patent infringement after it distributed an AT&T-patented technology on overseas copies of the Windows operating system. As we’ve asked several times before, can a Court that has shown itself to be quite out of touch with technology reasonably decide a technology case? We think not.
• CBC News. CDs Are Dead: Recording Company CEO. Oct. 27, 2006. It was a good run, fellas. You got another two decades of record revenue and profits effectively reselling the same material. Now it’s time to earn that fat paycheck.
• Creative Commons. CC Values. Oct. 25, 2006. Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig discusses the “sharing economy.”

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To quote Worm (Edward Norton) in the 1998 film Rounders, “Wow!! Lot of action. Lot … of … action.” There was so much material for this week’s Clippings that we’ve decided to analyze our Article of the Week separately.

This week’s edition features lots of good material concerning Big Music and its broken business model; thoughts about lawsuits; thoughts about digitization; and not one, but (count ‘em) two Quotes of the Week.

Article of the Week

Julia Angwin, et al. Record Labels Turn Piracy Into a Marketing Opportunity. post-gazette.com.(via The Wall Street Journal). Oct. 18, 2006. We will analyze this article later this week as a separate CommuniK. post.

Quotes of the Week

“If we can have a legal YouTube, we can have a legal P2P service.” — Bob Lefsetz, editor and publisher, The Lefsetz Letter.

The Lefsetz Letter. YouTube Deals. Oct. 9, 2006. There is virtually nothing else we can add. But even more important than this quote is Lefsetz’s industry analysis (which is consistent with ours): “piracy” is not Big Music’s biggest problem; its broken business model is. That broken business model has virtually nothing to do with “piracy,” and Big Music executives should take full responsibility for their failure to recognize their business is broken. (They also should concede their laziness in relying on litigation and Congressional coffer stuffing to halt commercial and technological development while they get their act together.) We all know what happens to a business that can’t cut it anymore in a changed environment: it dies. And some of those deaths can be sad, as the closing of CBGB illustrates. But life moves on. If Big Music cannot get its act together in a new environment, let it perish as other industries unable to adapt have perished. This is, after all, the flip side of capitalism: adapt or die.

“The [entertainment] business has changed so massively. … You will never have the market forces again that, how do I put this, that allow people to get rich.” — Dick Wolf, creator and executive producer, Law & Order.

Brian Steinberg. ‘Law & Order’ Boss Dick Wolf Ponders the Future of TV Ads (Doink, Doink). post-gazette.com (via The Wall Street Journal). Oct. 18, 2006. Earlier this year, Dick Wolf claimed that his television franchise generated $1 billion in advertising revenue. Even if the actual numbers are only half that estimate, what’s incontrovertible is that Dick Wolf has made a ton of money in the “old school” environment. But what is really interesting is Wolf’s admission that the game has changed so radically during his Law & Order run that the business model he has used to make his money would not work if he were starting today. Further, if you read between the lines, Wolf seems comfortable with having entered the business at the right time with the right concept, having made his money, and seems pleased to move on without regret (and without whining that his formula no longer generates $1 billion in ad revenue). We wonder how many other Big Content executives can say they know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.

CommuniK. Clippings

Wendy Grossman. Preserving A Copy of the Future. The Guardian. Oct. 19, 2006. Wow!! A national library fighting the music industry over term extension. Too bad America’s de facto national library (which runs this nation’s copyright office) hasn’t seen fit to fight similar battles over term extension here. Oh, wait, we forgot: America’s copyright officer in chief waited seven years to concede that America’s last term extension went too far. Thanks for weighing in.

SiliconValley.com (via Associated Press). European Artists Defend Copyright Levies on Gadgets, Blank Discs. Oct. 18, 2006. With approximately $690 billion collected last year (and a levy of 180 euros, approximately $226, for a 60 GB iPod), you had to know any attempt to halt this tax would be very controversial. On the surface, it seems ridiculous, but if most of this money really is going directly to creators (instead of to content companies, which occurs in the American system), is it an overall bad system? We think, though, that if artists are receiving this sort of subsidy, then copyright terms should be very brief, certainly much shorter than the “life plus 70″ term that America has (and European Union countries seem to want to adopt).

Xenia P. Kobylarz. Judge Sanctions Firm for Filing ‘Cookie-Cutter’ Patent Infringement Complaints. Law.com (via The Recorder). Oct. 18, 2006. Second paragraph of this story reads: “A federal judge in the Western District of Washington has sanctioned an attorney and his law firm for sending dozens of ‘fill-in-the-blank’ demand letters and filing cookie-cutter patent infringement complaints on behalf of client Eon-Net, a patent holding company based in the British Virgin Islands.” If you change “patent” to “copyright,” and replace “Eon-Net” with “Big Music,” why wouldn’t the same logic apply to file-sharing lawsuits?

Ars Technica. RIAA Drops File Sharing Case. Oct. 15, 2006. Big Music’s random litigation based on scant evidence is not news. Big Music dropping a case with prejudice after a consumer fights back (again, based on scant evidence) is news. What we’d like to see is a network of law school litigation clinics begin to accept these cases to fight the case at pre-trial and negotiate settlements, if settlements are applicable. The only level Big Music has in many of these cases is the cost of litigation. Those who have been using large amounts music without paying anything should pay through settlement. Others who haven’t done anything should not have to spend one cent on spurious charges in federal court. And in really egregious cases like this one where the evidence is weak, we’d also like to see defendants begin asking for sanctions under FRCP Rule 11.

Thudfactor. Gunfight at the Circle-C Corral. Oct. 15, 2006. If not for Bob Lefsetz’s simple, dead on quote, we would have made this our QoTW: “The rampant violation and disrespect for copyright law demonstrates the extent to which copyright law is broken, and having heavy-hitting violators in the game will hopefully make some strides towards repairing it and making it useful again. Copyright holders have been unable to come to terms with the basic truth of their product: copyrighted works are by definition cultural assets. Performance, music—even computer games—become parts of people’s lives. They generate emotional response, they accrue emotional attachment, and in many cases become integrated into people’s identity. People want to pass along the art and stories that appeal to them; it is a basic social activity that predates written language. You can no more expect people to stop sharing their culture than you could expect people to stop six thousand years of beer drinking because a handful of sanctimonious nutjobs pass Prohibition.”

Antony Bruno. Digital Rights in Question As Business Model. WashingtonPost.com (via Reuters). Oct. 15, 2006. We find it rather amazing that in a few short years, now even the mainstream press is openly questioning DRM as a business solution. (Of course, these questions are all the more relevant now that Microsoft has released its Zune music player with yet another DRM scheme that is incompatible with all others.) This article, though, goes even further in that it calls for Big Music to make available .mp3 files with no DRM restrictions at all. The hardcore liberal sect of the copyright crowd has been trumpeting this view for several years, but as recently as two years ago, this suggestion never would have been published in a major newspaper. (Note: While this article is provided through the Reuters news wire, Bruno actually writes for Billboard, the leading music industry publication, which makes the article’s tone all the more extraordinary.) Compare this with the chief technology officer of the MPAA, who posits that piracy is the consumer’s answer to not having standardized DRM. Some commentators, like those on ZDNet’s Hardware 2.0 blog, look to these comments as a sign of progress. We see it another way: that a chief technology officer of any organization would actually state such drivel on the record is virtually incomprehensible. But it’s a Big Content executive speaking; drivel is to be expected.

John Battelle’s Searchblog. A Brief Interview with EFF’s Fred von Lohmann on YouTube, Copyright, Google, and More. Oct. 10, 2006. We’re still unearthing good, residual GooTube coverage that we missed due to sheer volume. This article includes a good, straightforward explanation of the DMCA ISP safe harbor provisions that are codified in Section 512. What becomes apparent in reading this article is Von Lohmann understands the core technologies and plausible uses that are at the heart of so many current copyright battles. We firmly believe that if you do not understand the technology and its current and prospective uses, there is virtually no way you can run a technology business. Further, there is no way you can write laws that affect the technology. Clearly, Big Content and Congress consistently have failed to learn these fundamental lessons.

BitPlayer. Tower Records, iTunes and Napster. Oct. 11, 2006. The L.A. Times‘ entertainment blog discusses the demise of Tower Records, which went into liquidation last week. (The Times’ Ann Powers also lends her pen to the store’s closing.) Most interesting is this last paragraph: “It’s a shame the labels, artists and music publishers have failed to make everything available for sale, and that they (and Apple) have resisted the idea of cheap, bulk sales of older material. The urge to dive deep into an artist’s work is what separates a casual listener — the kind who’s satisfied by the selection at Wal-Mart and Best Buy — from a real music fan. The latter were the Tower Records shoppers of yore, and they are the lifeblood of the industry today. They need to be indulged.” Can we get an “Amen”?

Clippings

• Trudi Bellardo Hahn. Impacts of Mass Digitization Projects on Libraries and Information Policy. ASIS&T Bulletin. October/November 2006. After reading this article, please remind us again: why isn’t copyright a mandatory course in library science masters’ programs?
• Pete Wells. New Era of the Recipe Burglar. Food & Wine. November 2006. After the fashion industry whined about needing federal legislation to protect their designs, and after Dianne von Furstenburg’s asinine comments about copyright [QoTW, Sept. 11, 2006], it is only natural that we’d have to tolerate copyright issues spilling over into the kitchen.
• Brad Stone. The End of Free Trade? Newsweek. Oct. 20, 2006. Details YouTube’s “acoustic fingerprinting” technology, which will be used to monitor copyrighted works owned by Big Music.
• Jason Epstein. Books@Google. The New York Review of Books. Oct. 19, 2006. This is a good summary of the current books that discuss Google’s Book Search project. You can read an even more insightful analysis of this trend at if:book, Google and the Future of Print.
• Open Source blog. What Do Apple’s Earnings Say About Open Source? Oct. 19, 2006. Outstanding article about Apple’s cool factor and service overshadowing it’s proprietary operating system and DRM-laden iPod.
• Anthony Ross Sorkin and Stephen Leeds. Music Companies Grab a Share of the YouTube Sale. The New York Times. Oct. 18, 2006. Big Music gets to wet its beak a little. The Mob would call this “tribute.”
• Rebecca Knight. Microsoft In Digital Book Deal. FT.com. Oct. 18, 2006. This announcement is noteworthy because some of our editors, along with Jill Hurst-Wahl over at Digitization 101, have seen the Kirtas machines in action. The top-end machines — which we presume Microsoft will use — are rather expensive, but seem to be advanced enough technologically that they can handle the sort of volume Microsoft’s digitization efforts will endgender.
• Rich Frankel. Copyright to Public Domain: A Battle Cry. Blogcritics.org. Oct. 18, 2006. A Philadelphia lawyer rants about our current copyright system.
• Graeme Philipson. The Coming Digital Showdown. smh.com.au. Oct. 17, 2006. The online version of Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald addresses the problems with copyright in the digital environment this way: “As for the concept of copyright, I have written many times in this column about its inevitable demise. It is an atomic concept in a networked world.”
• Michael Geist. Why YouTube Won’t Be Napster Redux. Toronto Star. Oct. 16, 2006. Geist compares YouTube with Napster, and explains YouTube likely won’t suffer the same denouement.
• Stefanie Olsen. Wikipedia Co-Founder Plans Expert Spinoff. News.com. Oct. 16, 2006. Larry Sanger plans to launch Citizendium as a Wikipedia alternative, one that features “experts.” We want to know how one qualifies to be an “expert.”
• Between the Lines. DMCA Should Scare Us All. Oct. 14, 2006; ZDNet Education. DMCA Threatens Academic Freedom. Oct. 14, 2006. If you’re a regular CopyCense reader, there is nothing new here, but both articles point to a swelling popular discontent with the directions in which copyright law has leaned recently. Maybe Geist’s prediction that copyright will follow environmental issues as one of the next big political issues will actually come true. If so, look to articles such as these as the beginning of this movement.
• PublicEye. Why You’re Not Seeing Video Of Cory Lidle Playing Baseball. Oct. 12, 2006. Even Black Rock cannot use sports footage in its coverage of news stories because of contract terms and cost. This is evidence of a copyright system gone haywire.
• Inside Higher Ed. Opening Up Online Learning. Oct. 9, 2006. Earlier this month at at the Educause meeting, three dozen academic publishers, LMS providers, and other vendors agreed on an open standard that will make it possible to move digital content into and out of widely divergent online education systems without expensive and time consuming reengineering. Anyone who regularly deals with learning management systems realizes Common Cartridge is a welcome development in academia.
• Chris Morris. The Music’s Over for Tower Records. WashingtonPost.com (via Reuters). Oct. 9, 2006. It seems a lot of New York City icons are biting the dust. First we heard about Coliseum Books. Next, it was CBGB. Now, Tower Records finally bites the dust. True, Tower has been teetering on the edge for quite a while, but it’s still a little shocking to us. Goodness, what’s next, The Strand?
• Madisonian.net. Taking Back Educational Fair Use. Oct. 8, 2006. Loyola law professor Brett Frischman posits some interesting points about why academia increasingly is unable to use the fair use defense, but we think his analysis is way too academic. One important omission with Frischman’s preliminary thought is that it does not take into account the presence (predominance?) of the license, and its effect in eliminating exceptions that are available under the Copyright Act. We plan to publish on this rather soon, but suffice it to say now that in a digital environment, copyright is dead, and the license is the law of the land.
• Tank McNamara. Oct. 7, 2006. The popular comic addresses copyright within the sporting context.

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“When the nation’s most prolific patent company says that it is going to change the way in which it does business, folks tend to listen, particularly when so much of this nation’s commerce is tied up in commercialized intellectual property. IBM wants to change the way the patent system works, holding itself out as an exemplar of openness.

“What does IBM’s announcement really mean for an American patent system widely considered to be in mass disarray? It depends on whom you ask. IBM, though, is convinced that its initiative will help improve a patent system thought to be on the brink of collapse.”

K. Matthew Dames. The Patent System on Tilt, IBM Seeks to Change the Game. Information Today NewsBreaks. Oct. 16, 2006.

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