I really didn’t want to do it.  I tried to stop myself.  But unfortunately I am going to have to get into this messy discussion.

Last Tuesday, Christina Mulligan, a visiting fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project, posted a piece titled “Copyright: The Elephant in the Middle of the Glee Club” and cross-posted at Balkinization. (more…)

Copyright, Intellectual Property, Internet, Media, User Generated Content

In a recent piece, Public Knowledge’s Anjali Bhat compared two proposed international solutions to the mounting public concern over the access of the visually impaired and/or disabled to copyrighted works. While it is easy to agree that the visually impaired should have access to copyrighted works in a format from which they can perceive and enjoy them, deciding the best method of accomplishing that goal is actually incredibly complicated. (more…)

Copyright, Intellectual Property, International

Evidently Richard Cotton, NBC-Universal’s Executive Vice President and General Counsel, made a statement at a Chamber of Commerce event calling for ISP’s to be allowed to filter copyrighted content, and compared such filtering to the filtering of computer viruses.  Public Knowledge President Gigi B. Sohn then came out with a statement calling such a goal a “completely unconstitutional and anti-consumer policy.”  I’m not completely convinced.  (more…)

Copyright, FCC, Media

As Viva Moffat notes, there is an interesting debate going on in the blogosphere over the conceptions of intellectual property law generally, copyright specifically, and copyright with regard to the music industry even more specifically.  There are a number of interesting arguments being made, but I will focus on two: (1) that conflating the different IP doctrines indicates a lack of understanding of IP law, and (2) that the purpose of copyright law is either to protect the work of artists or to benefit consumers. (more…)

Copyright, Intellectual Property, Media

NebuAd and companies like it have two purposes: (1) spying on the customers of ISPs, and (2) using that information to add behavioral advertising to the packets coming through the ISPs’ servers. These companies pick up search terms, page views, page and ad clicks, time spent on specific sites, zip codes, browser information and connection speeds; and using this information, they choose an “optimal ad” to display. While commentators and congressmen have struggled to find a means of stopping these companies based on the privacy concerns involved, no arguments have addressed the ruinous liability that ISPs would expose themselves to if they permitted these companies to change the packets coming through their servers.

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Advertising, Copyright, Intellectual Property, Internet

The DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) and DRM (Digital Rights Management) are profoundly changing the nature of IP. Creators of intellectual property have never been able to contain the use of their works. In the middle ages, one could copy a manuscript but technological constraints made it impractical (due to time and expense). It was not until the Guttenberg Press made it fairly effortless to copy and distribute works that the law was forced to create an artificial barrier, called copyright, to prevent certain uses (legal vs. illegal uses). Then the Digital Age hit. Works were copied and distributed globally in seconds. Even encoded computer programs were easily compromised by hackers, who made their “cracks” readily available to lay people. These violations of IP laws went virtually unchecked because existing laws did not reflect current technology and, even when they did, they were difficult to enforce. Enter the DMCA and DRM.

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Copyright, Intellectual Property