From the You’re Kidding, Right? department: BBC sends legal threat over fan’s Dr Who knitting patterns.
Not competing reproduction of knitting patterns, mind you. The creation of and sharing (for free) of knittings patterns. For those Dr Who fans who desire to knit their favorite characters.
I mean, this begs the question of who’s the more sadly obsessed eccentric here. Have these lawyers stopped to actually think for a moment about what they are doing?
Further information at the aptly named Death by Copyright blog.
AAM Denver’s done and I’m looking forward to a 48-hour nap without the AC running all night. Among various committee and board meetings, I managed to do two presentations. I had the pleasure of presenting a session with two women each with a fantastic sense of humour: Holly Witchey and Diane Andolsek. The session was titled Are the inmates running the Asylum? and as Perian succinctly pointed out, the short answer is yes.
In reviewing my presentations, I now realize that I seem to have an obsession about including quotes in them, and my blog. I remember reading a quote about how useless you are if you repeatedly use other people’s quotes to get a point across. Well, tough shit:
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
- George Bernard Shaw
Even though the “inmates” presentation was meant as a respite to the regular type of session (I never said the others were dull), there was much truth in the technology-in-museums-humour that we found.
First, please take a moment to check the current stats on IMA’s dashboard. Please memorize, there’ll be a test later…
The self-proclaimed(?) World’s Smallest Museum has a website. The website is very 1990s with blinking text, ticker tape scrolling text, saturated colours, and other abuses we all did for our first website. But they have a website. It has everything you would expect the World’s Largest Museum website to have: Directions, Visitor Guide, Virtual Tour, Collection, Online Store, Contact Us, About Us, FAQs and a curious “wanted” page about Osama Bin Laden… I have no idea either. The website is rated “safe for kids” by SafeSurf (any of us bother with that?) and it even has some engaging Visitor Photos pages. Nope, neither do we…
So, its not how big you are, its how many online visits you get. You can be as big as you want online and what percentage of the surfing population cares whether your website abuses fonts and colours? How many of them even notice? A case in point was the woman at the business center in the conference center. I prepared a MUSE Award Nikipedia entry as part of my MUSE Award introduction and had to print it out. (Congratulations to all the winners by the way). It includes a Photoshopped picture of me as Nick Nolte during his high-profile arrest in Malibu. The woman, who was awfully nice, asked me how old I was when the picture was taken. I explained, but she was convinced it really was me. I thought every one else in the world could spot those fake photos in movies of the hero “photographed” with real celebrities or politicians… apparently not.
Speaking of the World’s Largest Museum, “5,000 years of history… 5 years with the same website homepage”:
Just because you’re a large museum, doesn’t always mean you can “do stuff”. Sometimes, the fact that you are a large museum means you find it incredibly difficult to do stuff. More people means more opinions, it can mean less clarity of who’s in control and less clarity of who’s responsible. When there’s no clarity of responsibility, literally anyone who has an opinion can derail a project. Being “scrappy” and having one or two people who have to do a project “soup to nuts”, is sometimes the only way to do things. Also, just because you’re a large museum sometimes doesn’t mean you have any new media staff. Before anyone complains, notice I said sometimes…
Still on the subject of large and small museums, a parody using Apple’s “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” advert to highlight the advanced thinking of small museums (driven by necessity) on the use of available technologies and services:
Now, some more advanced thinking of libraries over museums on the use of available technologies and services:
If you wouldn’t mind, could you check again, just in case - thanks.
Google were also in the news at the session. News Headlines!:
Microsoft buys Yahoo! Google retaliates by buying the state of Washington
As were Mozilla:
Mozilla Employees Actually Set Fox on Fire!
And some of our favorite hardware suppliers:
HP/Compaq and Dell Merge: “Hell.”
I got to see a couple of presentations, the best of which by far was one on user-generated content. Jane Burton from the Tate showed of some of the delivered and experimental projects that they have using user-generated content, but the star was Shelley Bernstein from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The self-proclaimed “Scrappy” Manager of Information Systems who is doing all this on a shoestring but had great success in shaming the rest of into getting our arse in gear. Why is it that the best presentations start with an announcement to the audience that they should lower their expectations for what comes next. Bravo Shelley.
Media and Technology debuted a series of 101 technology tutorials at the conference, which we are hoping to provide at subsequent conferences. One of them was how to create a video podcast run by Robin White Owen of MediaCombo. In 75 minutes she managed to teach a group of 60 how to create and upload a video podcast. You can download the handout which gives concise instructions on how to do this with as minimal investment as possible - about $100 for a flip USB video camera and $30 for the pro version of Quicktime. If you’re a 501(c)(3) you can apply here for a flip camera giveaway.
If you plan to start podcasting please heed this warning on the potential dangers of podcasting. (Click “Open” to play in your browser window).
We included a roundup of technology-related haikus, real truths in all of them, like this one on Wikipedia:
Wikipedia
just goes to prove it’s true that
million monkeys type.
Which only goes to confirm this entry on Nikipedia on a brief history of technology in museums
Continuing my obsession with quotes, a couple of choice ones we found (albeit slightly doctored):
The most overlooked advantage to using a museum handheld is that if they foul up there’s no law against wacking them around a little.
– Joe Martin
Websites are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.
– Otto von Bismarck
Bradley’s Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into one of AAM’s Standing Professional Committees – that will do them in.
– Unknown
One more time? I heard something changed… - can you spot it?
There was a recent study on how revealing online names are to your personality - apparently even the thinnest slice of Computer Mediated Communication — the e-mail address — contains valid information about the personality of its owner - see here. Coincidently Dwight Schrute enjoys his real life so much he wanted a second one, everything is the same including his name, except he can fly. Unlike these people - a sample of our favorite blogging names:
BostonPimpDaddy
BloggyMcBlogBlog
MrBlahBlah
JustinCredible
OMG! Ponies!
The session didn’t get to half of the material we found, a lot of it videos of early Internet or computer stuff. Its all here in its full glory for your viewing pleasure in a Jeopardy! style interface - it was a PowerPoint-free session. Some of it may make no sense at all to you, without alcohol, but my personal favorite is Two Women and a Blog under Too Much Time - the blooper real is a classic.
currently sitting in Holly, Nik, and Diane Andolsek’s very serious morning session: Technology in Museums: Are the Inmates Running the Asylum?
Short review: Yes. yes they are.
(more photos from AAM on my Flickr page)
It’s about time. A nice defeat for the RIAA.
From the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation):
“The district court in Atlantic v. Howell today denied the recording
industry’s motion for summary judgment against Mr. and Mrs. Howell,
two lawyer-less defendants caught up in RIAA’s litigation campaign
against file-sharers….”
“In its order, the court delivers the most decisive rejection yet of
the recording industry’s “making available” theory of infringement
(i.e., if someone could have downloaded it from you, you’ve violated
copyright, even if no one ever did). Citing to the recent ruling in
London-Sire v. Doe, the court concludes that “[t]he general rule,
supported by the great weight of authority, is that infringement of
the distribution right requires an actual dissemination of either
copies or phonorecords.” The court goes on to conclude that downloads
by the recording industry’s own investigator, MediaSentry, are not
enough to establish distribution, at least based on the facts of this
case (Mr. Howell maintains that, unbeknownst to him, the Kazaa software
was sharing his entire hard drive). Finally, the court also suggests
that P2P file-sharing may not implicate the distribution right at all,
reasoning that what is really going on is a series of reproductions.”
Interestingly, Mr. Howell maintained that he used Kazaa only to
download porn, and not music. Good thing there’s no such thing as the PIAA (is there?).
One of the interesting, and sometimes frustrating, things about this era of instant communication is how new ideas are adopted and modified within a very short time period. As a result, one good idea is used by twenty different people (or a hundred, or a thousand, or etc.) to create the same product, all with a different angle.
This is true with modern social networking sites (SNS) in particular (by “modern” I am referring to web-based, graphics-driven applications, not Usenet or forums or listservs). The earliest sites, like Friendster, Classmates.com, and Six Degrees, all grew from the capacity of the database-driven web to store and identify connections between individual persons. These sites were able to fulfill a need for like-minded people to meet and explore interests, while storing and displaying user-generated content to generate new subscribers. However, most of the early sites were not able to sustain their memberships and, with the exception of Classmates.com, are either defunct or barely hanging on.
Today, there are two major SNS: MySpace and Facebook. Each of these has a very different look and feel and target audience. MySpace was originally built around the indie music scene and, as a result, has a large population of alternative young folks. Facebook was designed to connect college students together (originally, only Harvard). Thus, its population tends to be more professional and the look and feel is very slick.
Both of these sites can be used for promoting a business or a club or an individual, but you’re going to get a very different audience. For bands, having a website is not enough anymore. According to a local listserv I’m on, promoters are booking bands based on the number of “friends” the band’s MySpace profile has. Likewise, a technologist such as myself earns some benefit by being on Facebook and connecting with other technologists (though I would hope that my future job opportunities is not based upon my Facebook profile!!). I feel much the same pressure to join LinkedIn right now, for the same reason.
Where these sites differ is in the approach. MySpace could just as easily be called MeSpace with its focus on me, me, me, me, and, oh yeah, me. A MySpace profile displays pictures, comments from friends, a blog, embedded music and video, and often the most painful HTML on the planet, individually designed by the profile’s creator to display their individual style. To connect with other users, one has to interact with them through other profiles or subject groups.
Facebook differs in one major way: although the capability to customize one’s profile page is actually far greater in Facebook than in MySpace, users are not permitted to blind and deafen other users with auto-playing audio and flashing fonts. The look and feel of the site is static for all of the users. I know that this seems like a very superficial point, but it’s a telling one when trying to determine which SNS fits your needs and if the psychology of the site’s visitors is compatible with yours.
Personally, I use two other SNS on a regular basis: Livejournal and Tribe. Livejournal is my personal blogging site, and I’ve also subscribed to a number of RSS feeds and Livejournal Communities, which are topical discussion profiles. The downside to Livejournal is that one has their content fed to them in list form, so I must remember to bookmark a post I particularly find of interest (or use Livejournal’s Memory feature). Contrast this practice to that of Tribe, which utilizes a forums methodology where the topics for discussion are listed within a Tribe and it’s relatively easy to refer back to the topics of interest for days at a time. A small orange asterisk notifies the user that there is new activity with in the Tribe and the topics within.
Because Tribe is designed with social interaction and community in mind (its original target audience is the Burning Man community), all activities within the site are centered around the subject Tribes. Compare this practice with MySpace and Livejournal, where interacting with individuals (or showing yourself off) is the name of the game. Facebook tries to incorporate both of these principals, and it’s fun to read about others’ activities, but the site ultimately leaves me cold, since the group communication features are fairly cumbersome and not front and center.
I do want to take a moment to mention Ning, the interface of which follows the topical, community-based methodology, but offers all of the features of the others. What’s different about it is that it is an umbrella site, where individuals can easily create their own SNS within the site, using their options and interface.
For museums looking to join the SNS wave, it appears that the winner right now is Facebook, due to its community of professionals and its clean interface. However, they should not dismiss MySpace out of hand, as MySpacers are often very artistic and interested in museums. It may take a bit more work, however, to speak their language and to get them to participate, but the Documentation Generation will help you promote your museum just by talking about you (and by sharing pictures and video and blogging about the fact that your current exhibition has an awful lot of photographs of people in underwear).
If you can, go to each SNS and take some time to sign yourself up and join a few groups (don’t forget to put up a profile picture! This matters, believe it or not. People won’t take you seriously without one). Learn what language the natives are speaking and try to communicate on their terms. See if the site works for you and your institution and strategize how to best get your information out there. Often, one of the best ways to do this is to get staff to join and participate, since individual interactions will link back to the institution as well as promote it - even without explicit promotion. I can’t even begin to count how often I have met an interesting person online and looked at their profile to see their interests. I’ve joined a number of groups I wouldn’t otherwise have discovered without the active participation of an interested individual.
Other popular sites:
Orkut (Google product, mostly used in South America and Central America)
Bebo (AOL product, Europe)
CyWorld (Asia and Pacific Islands)
Hi5 (South America)
Museums and the Web wrapped up yesterday. I won’t blog about that because I didn’t get to attend the conference but came in for a series of meetings including today’s all day meeting of the STEVE social tagging project team.
We are meeting at the Hilton Bonaventure Montreal, an unusual property, the hotel is actually the top few stories of a sort Brutalist architecture office block. It’s rather like we are staying in a little isolated island at the top of the city because outside the windows, instead of a central light well, is a beautifully landscaped garden, complete with evergreen trees, ponds, and ducks. It’s been grey and rainy for the better part of the two days I’ve been here and today a very light snow is falling.
Towards the end of lunch after we had discussed things like lettting visitors write their own metadata for objects, the prescient nature of earlier papers at Museums and the Web, and whether or not Peter Samis is actually a character from The Wire… we wrote a group Haiku based on the fact that the windows in this room are tall and narrow like Japanese screens. So here’s our group Haiku (Andrea, Ray, WIlly, Michael, Bruce, Susan, Peter, and myself):
Snowflakes in April
Curtains conceal the treeline
Ducks say W.T.F.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest 1.2
I’m thinking a lot about Shakespeare these days because, in my other life, I have to give a presentation next month on life and living and love in Shakespeare’s time for a local theater company. I’m a big fan of Shakespeare, I always have been, comes from having a whackjob Southern mother with a degree in English literature–I won’t say I absorbed Shakespeare in my mother’s milk, I will say she was probably reading it when she should have been teaching me useful things like how to put on lipstick, but hey, that’s water under the rickety old bridge.
The thing I like about Shakespeare is he’s got something for everyone no matter what type of mood you are in–and tonight I’m feeling particularly depressed about the world we work in (as cultural heritage information professionals). You don’t need to know why, you just need to know, as a reader, that we bloggers are human (like you we hope) and are subject to the ups and downs. “I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage where every man must play a part, And mine is a sad one.”
”Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.” I’ve been working in museums since I was 20–my first stint at the Fine Arts Museum of the South In Mobile, Alabama–where I did everything from hand copy the blueprints to lecture on holography and lead a Pysanky workshop teaching Mobilians how to decorate Ukranian Easter eggs. I wrote a paragraph, which I just deleted, about what I’ve accomplished in a 27 year career in museums and then I thought…it doesn’t matter if other people know what I’ve accomplished, what matters is, as I said to a colleague last week, when I lay my head down on the pillows last night can I honestly say I made the right decision when a hard decision was required? This above all: to thine own self be true.
I’m heading off to Montreal for a meeting tomorrow. I’m looking forward to seeing colleagues, but more importantly, I’m looking forward to seeing friends. A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.
Copyright Alliance Surveys Pres Candidates’ Commitment to Copyright Laws and Artists’ Rights
A promising headline, but read on.
“The Copyright Alliance is a 44-member-coalition that includes, among others, the RIAA, MPAA, Business Software Alliance, CBS, NBC, News Corp., NFL, MLB, NBA, Microsoft, Sony, Viacom, and Walt Disney, has submitted a questionnaire to all 17 of the candidates vying for the 2008 Presidential nomination of their respective parties.
It tries to impart a sense of dramatic urgency on the candidates by claiming that America’s dominance in the global economy is at stake.”
So, “artists’ rights” doesn’t mean what it sounds like. It means corporate rights.
“For its part, RIAA head Mitch Bainwol says that the future of the American economy will be driven by our minds and not our hands, thus creating the need to protect what our minds create…
I found his statements particularly humorous because the RIAA has never used its hands to create anything, instead living off the backs of artists and consumers it’s been ripping off for decades…
Hopefully all the presidential candidates will focus on national security and healthcare instead.”
Unfortunately, yes. Unless we get their attention first.
From the “What, Are They Serious?” department:
Episode One:
“New RIAA Argument: Throwing A Promo CD In The Garbage = Unauthorized Distribution ”
Full and further analysis at www.techdirt.com/articles/20080207/131317200.shtml
Episode Two:
“Is Selling A CD You Found In The Trash Copyright Infringement?”
Bill Patry’s excellent analysis at: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/04/umg-says-throwing-away-promo-cds-illegal
Moral of the story:
Don’t touch music CDs. Ever. Learn to play the piano and hum.
Finally, an accurate story about piracy.
Perhaps Congress really should establish a government agency to protect us from this threat.
Stong words from Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge:
“Earlier today, we were made aware of a new piece of intellectual property legislation, S. 4108. This bill is a tragedy wrapped in a travesty. It is also a travesty wrapped in a tragedy.
“Under this bill, new government agencies, including a Department of Intellectual Property Security, would be created and given extraordinary powers. Copyright protection would be extended to new types of works and with even longer terms of protection in force. In particular, the fashion industry will say, ‘Bravo’ to this bill. New software schemes would be mandated and new powers would be granted to private industry. Rights of the public would be curtailed drastically indefinitely, forever.
“This bill should be read very carefully. Anyone would have to be a fool to vote for this bill.”
The text of the bill is available here: http://www.publicknowledge.org/pdf/110-s4108-20080401.pdf. With commentary from PK in the margins.
The folks at DePauw University’s Visual Resources Center have been riffing on the popular Windows vs. Mac commercials with their own YouTube videos. The videos tout the help that students can get from a VRC librarian and access to resources such as ArtStor
More videos from DePauw
Thanks again to Ken Hamma for killing yet stingray that threatened my life and career. Photos tomorrow. http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/images/thedeep_ray1.jpg
Phyllis Hecht and Stephanie Stebich are both here. Phyllis is fabulous and one of the organizers of this event and Stephanie, heck Stephanie and I go way back to Cleveland together even though I am still a minor functionary at Cleveland and she is now the very talented and dynamic DIRECTOR of the Tacoma Museum of Art.
Don’t think for a minute that Phyllis and Ken aren’t sitting here egging me on–and Ken and I are going to the Waffle House tomorrow morning. He says not really.
More technology tomorrow, okay some technology tomorrow.
Hi boys and girls. Holly here blogging from the pool bar (closed) at the Helmsley Sandcastle Hotel in Sarasota Florida. I’m here courtesy of IMLS and Florida State University in two days of meeting looking at the future of education for information professionals in archives, librairies, and museums–lots of interesting folk here–deans of library schools, digital curation faculty, museum people, and archivists. We discussed three questions today:
What are the information needs of cultural heritage organizations in the 21st century, both internally (Staff and other professionals) and externally (Public services)? How can new information technologies help meet these needs?
What are the current and potential roles and responsibilities of information professionals employed by cultural heritage organizations? What are the knowledge, skills, and abilities they need to succeed at their jobs (including issues such as intellectual property, information management, digital preservation, etc.)? What value can they add that is not currently being realized?
What kinds of educational programs can help prepare information professionals to meet the needs of cultural heritage organizations, including degree (master’s, certificates of advanced study, etc) and non-degree (continuing education) programs? How are LIS, museum studies, and archival studies programs currently preparing information professionals for careers in cultural heritage organizations, and what potential is there for sharing expertise across programs?
I thought some of you out there might have some answers to these questions so I’m throwing them out here for you to respond to….
In the meantime…who knew that Edison electrocuted elephants. http://www.roadsideamerica.com/pet/topsy.html
Make a cup of coffee, sit down, and read the press release below through to the end. It’s important to understand that the proposed criminal enforcement measures in the latest copyright legislation proposal don’t distintuish between a big-time black-market counterfeiting outfit and …you and me and our institutions.
Do note that this proposed legislation “…establishes the Office of the
United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER), in
the Executive Office of the President, to enhance nationwide and
international coordination of intellectual property enforcement efforts.”
Oh, boy. Does that ring a bell?
And for those who like to play statistics, compare the statistics in the press release
with those in this press release:
“Fair Use Economy Represents One-Sixth of U.S. GDP”. Okay, Fair Use
applies only to copyrights, not trademarks and patents. But it’s a good
opportunity to add that thought to the pile. Do we need more enforcement or
more Fair Use?
Conyers, House Judiciary Members Introduce Bill to Protect Creative and
Intellectual Property Rights
December 05, 2007 Melanie Roussell
(Washington, DC)- In an effort to strengthen laws protecting creative and
intellectual property, leaders of the House Judiciary Committee today
introduced bipartisan legislation to improve federal agency enforcement
efforts and provide more resources to those efforts. House Judiciary
Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Ranking Member Lamar Smith
(R-TX), Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property
Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA), and Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Tom Feeney
(R-FL), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Steve Chabot (R-OH), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Ric
Keller (R-FL), Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and Robert
Wexler (D-FL) introduced the “Prioritizing Resources and Organization for
Intellectual Property (“PRO IP”) Act of 2007″ to combat what they say is an
increasing problem.
“This legislation is an important and necessary step in the fight to
maintain our competitive edge in a global marketplace,” Chairman Conyers
said. “By providing additional resources for enforcement of intellectual
property, we ensure that innovation and creativity will continue to prosper
in our society.”
“Protecting intellectual property, such as trademarks and copyrights, is
critical to the preserving a strong American economy,” stated Ranking Member
Smith. “Counterfeiting and pirating intellectual property costs American
jobs, reduces American prosperity and threatens the existence of American
companies. By protecting intellectual property, this bill preserves American
jobs, encourages innovation and helps build a strong American economy.”
The bipartisan PRO IP bill is supported by both labor unions and industry
groups because of the increasing global economic cost of counterfeiting and
piracy - which is currently between $500 and $600 billion/year in lost sales
and approximately 5% - 7% of global trade. It costs the United States
between $200 and $250 billion/year in lost sales, including 750,000 jobs.
The healthcare industry also faces an increasing problem: the World Health
Organization estimates that the prevalence of counterfeit pharmaceuticals
ranges from less than 1% in developed countries to over 30% in developing
countries, and over 50% of counterfeit pharmaceuticals are obtained from
illicit websites. The Center for Medicine in the Public Interest estimates
that counterfeit drug commerce will grow 13% annually through 2010, nearly
twice the rate of legitimate pharmaceuticals.
“The Subcommittee on Intellectual Property will be holding a hearing next
week on this extremely important issue,” said subcommittee Chairman Berman.
“As a cosponsor, I obviously feel very strongly that we must strengthen
enforcement efforts to fight piracy and counterfeiting. At the hearing, we
will be hearing testimony from both industry experts and from labor and
consumer advocates to make sure that in doing so, we don’t deny appropriate
access to America’s intellectual property.”
“Intellectual property is not just the product of rock stars and movie
stars. It accounts for more than 11 million American jobs and is a driving
force in our economy,” said Rep. Schiff. “American intellectual property is
leading the way all around the world and this bill will help ensure that we
protect this work from being stolen in the black market.”
“Our founding fathers understood the importance of innovation so well that
they specifically provided strong protection for intellectual property in
the Constitution itself,” said Rep. Feeney. “Intellectual property piracy
and counterfeiting undermine the creative spirit that drives our economy and
constitute a threat to consumer health and safety, and this initiative will
provide us with more tools to address this growing problem.”
Specifically, the PRO IP bill does the following:
* Titles I and II strengthen the substantive civil and criminal laws
relating to copyright and trademark infringement.
* Title III of the legislation establishes the Office of the United
States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER), in the
Executive Office of the President, to enhance nationwide and international
coordination of intellectual property enforcement efforts.
* Title IV provides for the appointment of intellectual property
officers to work with foreign countries in their efforts to combat
counterfeiting and piracy.
* Title V of the legislation authorizes the creation of a permanent
Intellectual Property Division within the Department of Justice. The purpose
of the new IP Division is to improve law enforcement coordination. This is
accomplished, in part, by transferring the functions of the existing
Computer Crime and Intellectual Property section (CCIPs) that relate to
intellectual property enforcement to the new IP Division. In addition, Title
V provides DOJ with new resources targeted to improve IP law enforcement,
including local law enforcement grants and additional investigative and
prosecutorial personnel. It also requires that DOJ prepare an annual report
that details its IP enforcement activities.
Here’s the response from Public
Knowledge:
December 5, 2007
Public Knowledge Comment On Copyright Enforcement Bill
Background: House Judiciary Committee John Conyers (D-MI) and Intellectual
Property Subcommittee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) introduced legislation
to change the penalties for copyright violations. The statement is
attributed to Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge.
“We remain concerned that several provisions in this bill could have
harmful, if unintended, consequences that would harm consumers. The bill
rightly targets enforcement of copyright law against commercial infringers,
but some of these same enforcement provisions are likely to hurt ordinary
consumers. Seizing expensive manufacturing equipment used for large-scale
infringement from a commercial pirate may be appropriate. Seizing a family’s
general-purpose computer in a download case, as this bill would allow, is
not appropriate.
“The bill increases penalties for violations while weakening incentives to
register copyrights, which benefit the copyright holder and the public. The
result of this legislation would be to create even more “orphan works.”
“The bill also takes a direction opposite from that taken in recent patent
legislation. The House has passed legislation limiting patent damages
relative to actual harm, a strong policy that will promote competition and
innovation. This bill takes already extraordinary copyright damages and
increases them, expanding the threat of litigation intended to stifle
competition and innovation.
“Increasing penalties is one of the least necessary, and quite possibly
counter-productive, actions the Committee could take, particularly when
current law is adequate to deal with most infringement issues and because
the higher penalties serve only to force faster and larger settlements
potentially from innovators.
“Instead of following the course of this bill, the Committee should look to
the future, to a more realistic and rational copyright regime that can adapt
pre-VCR copyright laws to a post YouTube world.
“We thank Chairman Conyers and Chairman Berman for including us early in the
process for this bill and look forward to continuing the dialog on these
important issues.”
Public Knowledge is a Washington, D.C.-based public interest group working
to defend citizens’ rights in the emerging digital culture. More information
available is available at: http://www.publicknowledge.org
From an IP Newsletter my spouse gets.
Trademark Dilution Update: A “Louis Vuitton” for You, a “Chewy Vuiton” for Man’s Best Friend
By: Amanda H. Wilcox, Esq.
On November 13, 2007, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held that “Chewy Vuiton” plush dog toys sold by Haute Diggity Dog were successful parodies that did not infringe or dilute the famous LOUIS VUITTON trademarks or trade dress. Louis Vuitton Malletier S.A. v. Haute Diggity Dog, LLC, 507 F.3d 252 (4th Cir. 2007). http://www.hahnloeser.com/references/743.pdf
(Sorry Jim, this got lost in my in-box)
Jim posted a survey on computer-based exhibits a couple of weeks ago and is trying to get as many museum folks to respond as possible. http://www.ideum.com/blog/2008/03/18/introducing-open-exhibits-tell-us-about-exhibits-in-your-museum/
Please help!
Auntie Beeb (the semi-affectionate name for the BBC) has a documentary series called I Wish I’d Thought Of That, which starts off with an interview with Tim Berners-Lee and Weaving the World Wide Web. Sir Tim is to www what James Brown is to Soul, except that the Godfather of Soul didn’t invent Soul. (Sorry, I’m ripping some James Brown vinyl right now with my new USB turntable).
I listen to BBC online a lot, mainly to counter the abuse of the Queen’s English that constantly bombards me in Sunny California - the abuse of the word “like”, my daughters included, is a particular affront.
I like listening to Sir Tim, because he tends to shy away from the media, but also because I have this enormous feeling of sympathy for him - he should be the richest man on the planet given what he did. He’s up there with those two guys who invented the first spreadsheet and forgot to patent it.
Sir Tim is the creator of a very cool map which describes the internet and the web: where it comes from and where its going to. Tributaries from earlier concepts like Ted Nelson’s Xanadu and global identifiers like phone numbers, flow into the World Wide Web lake. Standards and protocols are included and today’s big players are there: Microsoft and Google and also the Tor of Cism in the Wasted Arid Lands which includes areas such as Patent Peaks and Proprietary Pass. Tor of Cism is apparently an anagram of Microsoft, so its mentioned twice. Checkout the Quagmire of ISP Discrimination and the Censorship Swamp, and everything flows into the Sea of Interoperability, so it looks like we’re on the road to nowhere.
Listen to the Queen’s English at I Wish I’d Thought Of That
Study the map at w3.org
The title “Site Design Impact on Robots” conjures up, for me at least, rows of shiny robots browsing the Internet and confronting usability issues on various robotics-related websites. But the point of an interesting article in D-LIB Magazine isn’t that — it’s how site design affects the way search engine robots or crawlers read a site. “An Examination of Search Engine Crawler Behavior at Deep and Wide Websites,” to be precise.
This isn’t my area of expertise, which is probably why I find this kind of article so fascinating. It’s amazing to imagine all this crawling going on out there in Never-Never Land — sorry, in Cyberspace — and the mere idea of wide design versus deep design is one that I’ve never contemplated, but now seems obvious.
The article starts with “Why Crawlers Are Important to Digital Libraries,” so it looks like a must. Enjoy.
“It wouldn’t be an issue if Hollywood’s fascination with monitoring our words and images was confined to fiction.”
In keeping with our intention of highlighting technology advocacy issues during this election year, here is the link to a great post (essay, really) by Art Brodsky, on Public Knowledge — a site that in itself is required reading in an election year, or any year for that matter.
“What the movie industry wants is the ability to look at each packet every person sends across the Internet and try to discern whether that little bit of information carries material the movie industry thinks shouldn’t be carried. In the name of trying to “prevent this illegal activity” the movie industry and its willing partner AT&T will employ technology, deep-packet inspection or other, to see what every Internet user is doing.”
Net Neutrality is a serious issue, and it deserves serious attention. Make yourself a cup of coffee, read the article, and write your Congressman. Or Congresswoman.
