The heroic EFF is battling the efforts of the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors (SMACNA) to use copyright law to prevent the online publication of its 1985 standard on air-duct leakage, even though the standard is federally-mandated and “an integral part of model codes, such as the International Energy Conservation Code.” As EFF notes:

“The public has a right to meaningful access to the laws that govern their lives,” said Carl Malamud, the president and founder of Public Resource. “Technical standards like the ones in this document have the force of law, and people need to know them in order to comply with regulatory obligations, keep the public safe, and avoid costly penalties. The right of citizens to read and speak the law is fundamental to an informed citizenry in the United States and throughout the world. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, which means we have to be able to read the law.”

To impose laws and regulations on people and then to impose copyright rules that make it harder for people to even be aware of the regulations they are subject is perverse.

Free Speech Battle Over Publication of Federal Law

Wrongheaded Copyright Claim Blocks Online Posting of Important Technical Standards

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a federal judge today to protect the free speech rights of an online archive of laws and legal standards after a wrongheaded copyright claim forced the removal of a document detailing important technical standards required by the federal government and several states.

EFF and co-counsel David Halperin represent Public.Resource.Org, Inc., a non-profit organization that improves the public’s access to laws and codes that affect their lives. As part of its work, Public Resource acquires and makes available public safety documents such as fire safety codes, food safety standards, and other regulations that have been incorporated into U.S. and international laws. But last month, the association of Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors (SMACNA) claimed an online post of a federally-mandated 1985 standard on air-duct leakage violated its copyright and demanded the post be removed. The standards are a crucial element of U.S. federal energy conservation efforts and an integral part of model codes, such as the International Energy Conservation Code. After a threat of legal action from SMACNA, Public Resource took down the document until a court could affirm its right to publish the information.

“The public has a right to meaningful access to the laws that govern their lives,” said Carl Malamud, the president and founder of Public Resource. “Technical standards like the ones in this document have the force of law, and people need to know them in order to comply with regulatory obligations, keep the public safe, and avoid costly penalties. The right of citizens to read and speak the law is fundamental to an informed citizenry in the United States and throughout the world. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, which means we have to be able to read the law.”

In a petition for declaratory and injunctive relief filed today, EFF and Public Resource asked the court to rule that posting the standards does not infringe any copyright.

“Building codes and other technical specifications touch our lives every day, and Public Resource is helping to make it easier for us to access and understand how they affect us,” said EFF Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry. “We’re asking the judge today to let Public Resource continue its important work in increasing the public’s access to the laws and regulations that govern us.”

For the full petition:
https://www.eff.org/node/73298

From boingboing; for more on Khanna see Heroic and Radical Republican Study Committee Copyright Reform Proposal Retracted under Pressure from MPAA and RIAA:

Taking on real reform in a post-SOPA world – let’s start with cellphone unlocking

Derek Khanna at 11:30 am Fri, Feb 22

Yale Law Fellow, columnist and policy expert Derek Khanna authored the controversial House Republican Study Committee memo “Three Myths about Copyright Law.” The memo was widely lauded through the tech community. He has spoken at the Consumer Electronics Show as a technology expert and will be speaking at Freedom to Connect and the Conservative Political Action Conference. Derek was referred to as a “rising star” in the party by David Brooks in the New York Times. Mr. Khanna continues to be a major thought leader on technology issues and disruptive innovation.

When I wrote the copyright report for the House Republican Study Committee, I had no idea the outpouring of support I would receive from the digital generation that I belong to. I wrote it solely to start a conversation amongst our Congressional Members, but instead I have seen it engage thousands of average people. The report was published on November 16, 2012. Two weeks later, on December 7, 2012, I was informed that I would not be retained as a staffer.

Despite the personal consequences, I am not giving up. I’m just getting started, and I’m not scared by a temporary setback. I’m emboldened by it. And I don’t think I’m the only one, or that I’m one of a few.

The conversation that the copyright report started is inspirational, in the face of a political establishment (on both sides of the aisle) which often refuses to acknowledge that we are paying attention. It is up to us, the public, to be engaged. If we are not satisfied with our policy-makers and the policies that they enact, we can change the policies by challenging them.

• We have the ideas, we have the tools, and we have the organization.

President Obama and the Tea Party show that an energized and engaged citizenry can elect candidates in grassroots movements. And we have seen them stop legislation in its tracks. SOPA’s opposition proved that a united digital movement can stop legislation that is expected to pass despite overwhelming odds, special interest’ cronies, and powerful politicians.

Working on Capitol Hill during SOPA was humbling.

For weeks many of the technology-savvy staffers saw the storm clouds of opposition against SOPA building, but we had no idea how massive or sudden the storm surge would be. Many of us were strongly against what we saw as internet censorship from the beginning, working behind the scenes to try and get our bosses on the right side of the issue. Many of us were brushed aside.

But, on January 18, the effect of the movement was deafening. Voters crashed congressional circuit boards and websites, tweeting and facebooking at Representatives and Senators in record numbers. Most of us had never seen anything like this before, and for many it was an abrupt, sobering reminder of what democracy really is. Members’ sudden, vocal opposition of legislation that they were co-sponsoring was a watershed moment&mdsah;thought I would argue that it was also proof of concept for something even bigger.

SOPA awoke the sleeping giant.

A digital generation is ready to change politics and policies, and they will succeed. They will do this by rallying behind new ideas, coalescing around legislation, and by leading campaigns for passage. The show of force during SOPA was impressive. But getting legislation on the table for consideration requires another level of activism. It’s a challenge that we will soon rise to.

Politics is not exclusive to the intellectual, elected, or rich. Politics starts at kitchen tables, water coolers, gyms, bars, and churches. But how does it manifest itself as real change? Put simply: Idea + Movement + Effort = Legislation

I am confident that we can do this, even the special interests expect us to give up. To them, politics is about vested interests, donations and who has the biggest hired guns. Their cronies are counting on us being overwhelmed. They are banking on us fearing failure, on our failing to try in the first place.

I invite you to join us and continue this fight for future battles.

How do we start?

This fight is going to take a generation. It’s going to take a movement. But let me suggest, for what it’s worth, a few pointers.

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More trademark nonsense. I guess you could also just go to the UN for help. Ahem.

From Westword. For related posts, see:

• Budweiser trademark dispute (see also Chip Wood, A Bully-Boy Beer Brewer, Straight Talk (Oct. 16, 2007))
• 9th Circuit Appeals Court Says Its Ok To Criticize Trademarks After All, Against Monopoly (Sept. 26, 2007)
• Kinsella, Trademarks and Free Speech, Mises Blog (Aug. 8, 2007)
• idem, Beemer must be next… (BMW, Trademarks, and the letter “M”), Mises Blog (Mar. 20, 2007)
• idem, Hypocritical Apple (Trademark), Mises Blog (Jan. 11, 2007)
• ECJ: “Parmesian” Infringes PDO for “Parmigiano Reggiano,” I/P Updates (Feb. 27, 2008)
• Mike Masnick, Engadget Mobile Threatened For Using T-Mobile’s Trademarked Magenta, Techdirt (Mar. 31, 2008)

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Renegade changes the name of Ryeteous IPA after legal threat from Brooklyn’s Sixpoint Brewery

By Jonathan Shikes Thu., Feb. 21 2013 at 9:52 AM

9 Comments

Categories: Beer Man

 

Add Renegade Brewing to the list of Colorado breweries who have had to change the name of one of their beers in response to a legal threat from another beer maker. (This story has been updated below.)

The company’s flagship brew, Ryeteous Rye IPA is now called — wait for it — Redacted Rye India Pale Ale, and a line has been drawn on the label through its previous name.

What a treat; here we have three smart, young libertarian ladies (“Team Brittany”) debating intellectual property in a quite sound and sophisticated way. Good stuff.

See also Anarchast Ep. 58 with Brittany of “Team Brittany”.

From the Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 022.

This is lecture 5 (of 6) of my 2011 Mises Academy course “Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society.” I’ll release the remaining lectures here in the podcast in upcoming days.

This lecture’s topic is “Intellectual Property and Related,” and discusses:

• Overview of types of IP
• Origins of IP
• The nature of property rights, role of scarcity, and the function of the market.
• Pro-IP arguments: utilitarian and deontological
• Defamation
• Free Speech and Property Rights (Rothbard)
• Proposed Reforms
• Imagining a post-IP world

For slides for all six lectures, plus extensive hyperlinked suggested reading material, see this Libertarian Standard post. For a listing of the syllabus and topics covered in each lecture, see this Mises blog post.

For more information, see my Mises Daily article “Introduction to Libertarian Legal Theory,” and Danny Sanchez’s post Study Libertarian Legal Theory Online with Stephan Kinsella.

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From Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 017:

KOL017 | Liberty Beat Interview (Intellectual Property and cetera)

by STEPHAN KINSELLA on FEBRUARY 18, 2013

in INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY,KINSELLA ON LIBERTY PODCAST

Networking technologies

Thomas L. Knapp
It’s never really possible to understand all of a person’s problems or how those problems might play into the decision to take his or her own life, but it’s a good bet that the 35-year prison sentence and $1 million fine hanging over Aaron Swartz’s head played a significant role in his choice.
“How,” John Kerry asked a committee of the US Senate (to which he himself would later be elected) in 1971, “do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
That question was among the first that came to mind last week when I heard that Swartz had hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment.
Swartz was 26 and had already lived a life packed with accomplishments, from co-authoring the RSS standard (the primary tool for syndicating web content) at 14 to founding Infogami, which later merged into the popular Reddit social site, to co-founding the Internet freedom organization Demand Progress.
The threatened prison sentence and fine emanated from his attempt to fulfill a non-profit organization’s own stated mission of “helping the academic community take full advantage of rapidly advancing information and networking technologies”: He downloaded four million scholarly articles from JSTOR via an MIT account with the intention of making them universally available via P2P technology.
For this, he was hounded to his death by US Attorney Carmen Ortiz and Assistant US Attorneys Stephen P. Heymann and Scott L. Garland, even though JSTOR itself declined to pursue civil litigation and has subsequently made millions of those articles publicly available.
I sincerely hope that Swartz will go down in history as the last casualty of the war over “intellectual property” – a 300-year war that, or all practical purposes, ended years ago in triumph for the forces of freedom and a total rout of those who rely, for their fortunes, on the power of the state to extract rent on people’s use of their own minds and bodies.
Since England’s “Statute of Anne” in 1710, the rentiers have been fighting increasingly dubious battles to maintain and profit from the fiction of “intellectual property.”
Even at a time when printing presses were rare and electronic media non-existent, enforcement was impossible. The best they could hope for was to discourage copying by “making an example” of a few of the most prominent scofflaws.
The dawn of the Internet Age was the Appomattox of the “intellectual property” wars. The equipment for copying data and channels for distribution of that data are now cheaply and globally available. They represent a nearly trivial investment in “advanced” nations, and a doable investment even in the “Third World.”
The persecutions and prosecutions of “intellectual property” scofflaws like Jammie Thomas and distribution innovators like Aaron Swartz don’t even rise to the level of rearguard actions or last-ditch measures in this war.
They’re more along the lines of John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln after Lee’s surrender, or the threatened “werewolf” attacks in occupied Germany at the end of World War II. They will not and cannot affect the outcome. They’re just murderous tantrums in lieu of facing reality.
Copyright. Is. Over. And patent is on its last legs. The old media companies’ only chance of survival is to give up their failed state-created monopolies and protection rackets, and figure out how to generate profits through voluntary trade instead.

(Thomas L. Knapp is Senior News Analyst at the Center for a Stateless Society.)

From the EFF:

Obama Calls for Patent Reform to Topple Trolls

In a welcome turn of events, President Barack Obama spoke directly to the patent troll problem and the need for more comprehensive patent reform yesterday in a “Fireside Hangout” — a live question and answer session hosted in a Google+ hangout. The President was responding to a question by the prominent electrical engineer and entrepreneur Limor “Ladyada” Fried, who in 2009 won an EFF Pioneer Award for her work with free software and open-source hardware.

Obama acknowledged that the much-touted patent reforms that came in his first term “only went about halfway to where we need to go.” Specifically, he describes patent trolls as “a classic example,” of the problem, and that “they don’t actually produce anything themselves.”

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Not sure what is “welcome” about this. Trolls cause billions of dollars of damage (Patent trolls as mafioso (and that’s a compliment)), but they are just a red herring. The problem is not that they don’t produce anything. And in fact they are not as bad as people who do produce things since they just want to wet their beak. Then they go away happy. Your competitor who has a patent on his product wants to use it to stop you from competing. He doesn’t just want to wet his beak. The problem is good patents, not bad patents.

From Infoworld:

Save Silicon Valley — abolish patents now

Despite attempts at reform, the patent system is such a mess that the only way to save it is to destroy it

By Bill Snyder | InfoWorld 

Remember Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal“? Well, two very serious guys — economists at the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis — have a modest proposal of their own: Abolish the U.S. patent system. But unlike Swift, who sarcastically advocated the consumption of Irish babies, these men are not joking.

“Our preferred policy solution is to abolish patents entirely,” Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine wrote in a recently published paper. That statement, of course, flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that patents foster innovation and improve productivity. Both truisms, they say, are wrong. In fact, patents have a “negative effect on innovation,” they say.

[ Simon Phipps tells it like it is: Why software patents are evil. | Stay ahead of the key tech business news with InfoWorld’s Today’s Headlines: First Look newsletter. | ReadBill Snyder’s Tech’s Bottom Line blog for what the key business trends mean to you. ]

Obviously, this is awfully radical, but it’s worth noting that 18 months after the largest patent reform legislation in decades — the America Invents Act — was signed by President Barack Obama, patent litigation has continued to increase. There are some technical reasons for that, but the bottom line is clear: The act hasn’t made an appreciable difference.

Meanwhile, patent trolls continue their work, accumulating more and more patents they’ll never use for anything constructive and suing anyone who does. Companies like Apple and Samsung waste tens of millions of dollars on ultimately fruitless litigation: Does anyone really think that a rounded corner is an idea that should be covered by a patent? And giants like Google and Microsoft waste billions acquiring a defensive portfolio of patents. With the possible exception of the pharmaceutical industry, no sector of the economy is more embroiled in the patent mess than information technology.

What a waste.

First-mover advantage, not patents, is decisive
What creates success in the market: Getting there first with a great product or a patent? It’s the former, argue Boldrin and Levine. Apple, for example, launched the first iPhone in June 2007, and no serious competitor emerged until the HTC Dream came to market in October 2008. By 2010, 25 million iPhones had been sold, compared to 7 million Android smartphones.

It wasn’t Apple’s patent portfolio that led to its success; it was innovation and the advantage of being first to market. It’s not at all clear, Boldrin and Levine argue, that Apple’s patent portfolio slowed the competition very much.

Richard Posner, the federal judge who presided over the patent fight between Apple and Motorola Mobility, makes a similar argument. “When you are dealing with products that have very short lives, you often don’t need patents because by the time competitors wise up, you’ve moved on,” Posner said in an interview with the New York Times. Indeed, in such industries, patents — which are primarily intended to encourage innovation — have the exact opposite effect and discourage innovation, he added.

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Yes, “we” temporarily killed SOPA. But now that the state has offed one of SOPA’s opponents, Aaron Swartz, maybe they can resume the march to ratchet up IP protections at the behest of Hollywood and the music industry. SOPA is just a drop in the bucket; see my previous post Death by Copyright-IP Fascist Police State Acronym, where I mentioned, inter alia (no offense, engineers) the looming ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) and TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), the latter of which is being pushed by the  entertainment industry “to get SOPA-like laws introduced around the globe.” And just SOPA is just another incarnation or variation of related acts, like the  PRO-IP Act of 2008; the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA); and others like the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN), so the TPP is morphing into the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (see Obama Bid for Europe Trade Pact Stirs Hope on Both Sides). Like NAFTA, which pretended to be a free trade agreement (when you could do this in a paragraph instead of thousands of pages), the TTIP will doubtless attempt to strongarm other countries into ratcheting up patent and copyright protection, as the US has done successfully for over a century now (IP Imperialism).

It’s confusing, I know. But if they’re for it, I’m a’gin it.

Amidst all the flap about Ron Paul trying to take control of ronpaul.com through the ICANN dispute resolution procedures, an interesting argument has surfaced: namely, that Ron Paul’s name is his “intellectual property,” and he is within his (natural, libertarian) rights to control its use.

Most arguments for “intellectual property” center on the act of creation, and the rights of the creator to his work. I don’t see how those can possibly apply here: the name “Ron Paul” was not created by Ron Paul. If anything, his parents are the “authors” of that name; but it must be acknowledged that they conformed to a social convention by giving him the surname “Paul”. At most, they attached “Ronald Ernest,” and neither of these is a particularly unusual name. Not even unusual connected to “Paul” — a glance at the telephone directory reveals over 100 Ron Pauls, and 92 Ernest Pauls.So, we must ask what it means to “own” your name. Can “the” Ron Paul use his name to identify himself? Certainly. No one has interfered with that.Can “the” Ron Paul control the use of his name so that others may not use it? Certainly not! Ron Paul has no right to tell other parents surnamed Paul that they may not name their child “Ron.” And he has no right to sue the other 100+ Ron Pauls in the United States, telling them that they may not use that name.Here in a nutshell is the distinction between “use” and “control,” a distinction which many “intellectual property” advocates tend to blur. Ron Paul owns his name in the sense that he may use it as he sees fit — for his medical practice, for his political campaigns, or even to market the Ron Paul Supercharged Dildo if that is his fancy. And no other Ron Paul has the right to stop him, as embarassing as it might be for them.But Ron Paul does not own his name in the sense that he may exclude others from using it. If, say, Ron Paul in Minnesota decides to enter the sexual-accessories business, Ron Paul the ex-congressman has no right to stop him from using his own name.Trademark law is largely an attempt to force the rules and limitations of tangible property (exclusive use) onto intangible constructs (like a name). And, as Ron Paul has nicely illustrated for us, those rules don’t fit. To the extent that “property” means “control” or “exclusion,” then no, a name cannot be property.

[WendyMcElroy crosspost

Charles Johnson (aka Rad Geek) has a great sally against copyright up at his site (see below). Johnson, like most of the libertarian left (along with the Austrians and anarchos), has been consistently great on IP for a long time now (unlike the minarchists, Randians and utilitarians). E.g. see his “Patents Kill” (I) and “Patents Kill“ (II), and “Libertarians for Protectionism” (1, 2, 3). In this notice he explains that he used to try to use “copyleft” but he now declares that the content on his site is “free content”. He has had enough of trying to issue licenses under the current statist copyright system.

I hear him. I put a CC-BY notice on my own site, and on Libertarian Papers, and on a group blog I participate in, The Libertarian Standard. That means that anyone is free to use the content as long as they give attribution. This is the least restrictive of the CC licenses—I don’t like -ND or -SA or -NC. Why? ND means no derivative works are permitted. Screw that. SA means copyleft or share-alike; it means you can’t use my copyrighted work unless you slap a -SA prohibition on it. This means your article could not be put into an anthology published by a normal publisher, which uses normal copyright terms. Why restrict ideas? Let them include my article as a chapter in their  book if they want. And NC is non-commercial. What is wrong with someone making a profit? And anyway, what is commercial? If I have a site like this one which has some google ads, and I get more traffic from more hits, and I get more hits because I have better (sometimes reposted) content, then I am making a profit from the reproduction of others’ works. Is that “commercial”? I dunno. Who knows? The gubmint courts? Johnson says “you don’t need to ask permission.” I’m afraid this might be wrong. Some people do need to ask permission, because the copyright holder has the right to deny it. Making an informal statement on a website that “you don’t need my permission” doesn’t change this positive legal fact, as far as I can tell. [continue reading…]