I was a guest on HMS-TV tonight, 6:30-7:30 pm CST (Houston’s Public Affairs Public Access Live program), with host David Hutzelman. We discussed IP, SOPA, etc. We tried to find a local intelligent and civil pro-IP libertarian or Objectivist to debate me, but no luck (no surprise: There Are No Good Arguments for IP).

The video is available on YouTube here, and streamed below:

See Mike Masnick’s Techdirt post below about Pinterest and its potential copyright problems. Other services that copyright has damaged or destroyed or is now threatening: Napster;  Wikileaks; 3D-printing; Grooveshark, MegaUpload and other cloud  storage and file sharing services like Dropbox, YouSendit, YouTube, etc.

The Pointless Copyright Freakout Over Pinterest

from the same-old-song dept

I’ve been debating whether or not it’s worth doing this post for a few weeks now, but with so much sudden interest in Pinterest and how it fits in the copyright scheme of things, people keep asking “when,” not “if,” we were going to write about it, so we might as well tackle it. If you don’t know, Pinterest is an insanely popular social network of sorts, built around the concept of “pinning” images you like, creating collections of such images and sharing them with your friends. It’s been the buzz of Silicon Valley for quite some time, and hit the mainstream in a big way a few weeks ago. Lots of commentators like to point out that it’s widely used by women — because that’s apparently noteworthy in contrast to the typical internet buzzy services that get the usual “early adopters” who tend to be more of the male persuasion. Either way, it’s crazy popular. I first heard about it in the context of teenagers sharing “looks” — creating effective collages of images of clothing/style/accessories and sharing them with friends in a “wouldn’t this look nice” kind of way.

But, as Pinterest hit some sort of inflection point right around the Super Bowl (with the help of Facebook integration), a bunch of people started noticing that there were some significant copyright questions involved. After all, the basic way it works is you make use of images you find online and “pin” them into a collection. But if you don’t have the rights to use those images, is it infringement? Some are pretty sure that it violates the law in that it wasn’t clear it would really qualify for fair use — and there were also some questions about how thoroughly it complied with DMCA takedown requests. Either way, the issue began to explode with a ton of articles all discussing the copyright questions.

As this suddenly got so much more attention, Pinterest just rolled out a “nopin” meta tag, which allows website owners to basically block images from a site from being easily “pinned” to a Pinterest collection. Depending on who you listen to, this either answered all the copyright questions or merely represented a “small step” towards dealing with them. For angry photographers, I’d bet they’re going to claim the latter is more accurate, if they’ll even grant that much.

There’s also a separate, but related, issue concerning Pinterest’s terms of service that includes some boilerplate language that pretty much every online service includes and when someone reads them for the first time, they freak out about how Pinterest is claiming too many rights over the uploaded works. This is an exaggeration — and we’ve seen the same thing happen with TwitPic and others, where the terms are there to make sure you’re granting the site an effective license to display the works, and not as some nefarious plan to claim ownership of the works.

Either way, the community that’s been most vocal about Pinterest and how it’s something evil are photographers. While there are plenty of photographers who are quite reasonable on copyright issues, for some reason, it seems like photographers often can be the most extreme on copyright issues, and it’s no different here.

However, it seems like (as the music industry did with Napster, and now the movie industry has done with cyberlockers), they’re getting the wrong message out of what’s happening online: these services are opportunities, not threats. If you want to understand why, I recommend reading (thoroughly) a recent blog post by photographer Trey Ratcliff, who goes into great detail not just about how Pinterest has been really useful for him (including in driving revenue), but that photographers need to stop treating everything as a threat, and start looking at these things as opportunities. Again, you should read the whole thing, but here are a few useful snippets. Ratcliff points out that treating everything as a threat means that you spend all your time trying to angrily shut stuff down, rather than getting your work out there. But there are real advantages to getting your work out there (and he explains why it should be high res, and without watermarks, contrary to the standard way that many photographers do thumbnails with annoying watermarks):

Most people in the world are good people. If they find digital art they want to buy for a print or use in a commercial campaign, they will figure out a way to get you money. 99% of your traffic is truly “window-shoppers.” They will look at your goods, take note, enjoy them and move on. But 1% will want to make a personal or business transaction with you….

[….]

StuckInCustoms.com has healthy traffic that grows every year thanks to good old-fashioned word-of-mouth. We don’t advertise or buy links or any of that stuff. So I depend on the Internet and nice people like you to link back to the site and tell your friends that you find something unique and cool.

Last month, we had 714,143 Pageviews and 234,107 unique visitors. 15% of this traffic came from Pinterest. Amazing! If Pinterest didn’t exist (a reality some photographers would prefer), then our traffic would be 15% less. Choosing to switch-off innovation is a fool’s errand, especially in today’s world. It reminds me of the scene in Anthem where the council of candle-makers becomes rather upset at the invention of the light bulb.

[….]

Someone on Pinterest can make a board called “Feeling a bit blue,” and they can fill it with cool-colored melancholy photos. Isn’t this just another way of making a poem? If I built up this pinboard and sent it to a friend, it’s nothing but a visual poem in a new medium. It’s just as powerful, and, in many ways, more accessible.

Pinterest is simply another way (a newer, evolving way, mind you) for humans to communicate with one another. It is increasingly the job of digital artists to inspire, share and bring more beauty and communication into the world.

There really is a lot more there, and it’s worth reading the whole thing. Also, Ratcliff appears to be an absolutely awesome photographer, so I recommend checking out his work too.

Either way, his point is a strong one, and it’s really no different than what many people have made to reactionary folks in other parts of the content industry. You can spend all your time trying to kill innovation or stop people from doing what they want to do… or you can bask in the wonderment that people want to do stuff, encourage them to do so, and make it easier for them to help spread your works… all the while making it easy for them to support you. Ratcliff seems to be a perfect example of our discussion on the benefits of being open, human and awesome.

And, in the end, that’s the key point. Whether or not Pinterest is a copyright landmine is kind of besides the point. It’s a really fascinating innovation that is having massive (unprecedented) success in terms of users. Clearly, it’s tapped into a market by providing something that a very large number of people absolutely love. When that happens, there are always opportunities, and smart photographers should be focused on finding and embracing those opportunities.

As can be seen here. (h/t Skip Oliva)
022212 West

This reminds somewhat of the practice of lawyers sending cease-and-desist letters and then claiming copyright in them to stop them from being posted, as noted here:

• http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071005/174623.shtml: “In an apparent attempt to avoid the Streisand Effect, lawyers sending threat letters sometimes claim that the recipient would violate the firm’s copyright by posting it online. This post is about Public Citizen’s response to one dumb threat letter and its decision to post the letter online despite the copyright claim.” It’s funny how popular it has become for lawyers to claim it’s illegal to post or even show anyone their cease-and-desist letters. Remember: just because a lawyer says so, it doesn’t mean it’s true. You can see Public Citizen’s response to the letter (pdf), which lays out a variety of reasons why the cease and desist is ridiculous (it’s yet another attempt to force criticism offline) and ends with a fantastic response to the claim that the original C&D is covered by copyright and cannot be posted online without additional charges: http://www.citizen.org/documents/directbuycd.pdf: sometimes such letters conclude: “Please be aware that this letter is copyrighted by our law firm, and you are not authorized to republish this in any manner. Use of this letter in a posting, in full or in part, will subject you to further legal causes of action.”
• Court Says You Can Copyright A Cease-And-Desist Letter, Techdirt (Jan. 25, 2008)

From Infojustice.org:

Trans-Pacific Partnership Proposes Copyright Suppression of Price Competition

February 21, 2012 By John Mitchell 4 Comments

Dissatisfied with the exclusive right to set the price at which copies of their works are first sold, copyright holders have been trying, for over 150 years, to bolster the resale prices at which copies of their works are re-sold, in order to protect them from the normal pressures of free market price competition. Since they no longer own the copies, they have tried extending the reach of their exclusive right to “distribute” copies to encompass copies they no longer own. For just as long, the courts and Congress have rebuffed those efforts. Today, however, the United States Trade Representative is negotiating with foreign countries to obligate Congress and the courts to give them that power, even as their latest in a series of efforts to extend the existing distribution right is pending before the Supreme Court.

When Mark Twain tried to prevent dealers in his books from offering discounts to retailers, he lost. Clemens v. Estes, 22 Fed. 899 (C.C.D. Mass. 1885). When the publisher of The Castaway tried to use its copyright to prevent Macy’s from reselling the books for less than a dollar, it lost. Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, 210 U.S. 339 (1908). The following year, Congress said “it would be most unwise to permit the copyright proprietor to exercise any control whatever over the article which is the subject of copyright after said proprietor has made the first sale.” H.R. Rep. No. 2222, 60th Cong., 2d Sess., at 28-29 (1909), and wrote that principle into law. Going beyond the judicially created “first sale” doctrine, Congress decreed that anyone in lawful possession of a copy was free to distribute it without the copyright owner’s permission, and established the copy/copyright dichotomy that ownership of “copyrights” is distinct from ownership of “copies,” such that ownership of one has no bearing on ownership of the other. (Section 41, Copyright Act of 1909.)  After courts wrestled with that a bit, and determined that Congress probably did not mean for it to apply, literally, to someone in lawful possession of a pirated copy, or to someone holding a copy in trust for someone else (see, e.g., Platt & Munk Co. v. Republic Graphics, Inc., 315 F.2d 847 (2d Cir. 1963)), the Copyright Act of 1976 clarified the statute, placing the copy/copyright dichotomy into the new Section 202, and explaining, in Section 109, that the “owner” of a copy, “lawfully made under this title,” is entitled to redistribute it without the consent of the copyright holder.

Read more>>

Related posts:

• Leveraging IP;
• Supreme Court lets ban on “gray market” imports stand
• McElroy: Ominous Copyright Ruling Stands

Update: see Copyright Continues to Crumble; Ebooks Libertated from DRM; Gatekeepers Quake; Even Harvard Can’t Afford Subscriptions To Academic Journals; Pushes For Open Access.

• Article

Mathematician Ingrid Daubechies is among nearly 6,000 scholars boycotting Elsevier journals. Image courtesy of Ingrid Daubechies, Duke.

Related Stories

• Mathematicians organize boycott of a publisher
• Kevin Smith on Why Boycott Elsevier?

Durham, NC – One of Duke’s most prominent scientists has joined a protest against a leading academic publisher, adding her name to a growing list on campus and at universities elsewhere.

Mathematician Ingrid Daubechies says she will no longer publish, referee or do editorial work for the Amsterdam-based academic publisher Elsevier. She joins biologists Laryssa Baldridge and Eric Butter, mathematician Mark Iwen, economist E. R. Weintraub and other Duke faculty members in publicly boycotting the publisher.

They and nearly 6,000 other scholars around the world seek to draw attention to what they consider Elsevier’s unfair business model and restrictions on the free exchange of information.

Read more>>

As I noted in Lithuanian Minister of Justice Condemns ACTA and Calls for Re-evaluation of IP, a friend of mine, Remigijus Šimašius, the  Minister of Justice for Lithuania and an Austro-libertarian (he authored a chapter in the book I edited, Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe), had previously criticized ACTA. Now he has two more posts on this topic:

• Apie ACTA – kodėl sprogimas būtent šiandien? (On ACTA. Why did it all explode now? — Google translate)
• Apie ACTA – kodėl sprogimas būtent šiandien? (Antroji dalis) (On ACTA. Why did it all explode now? Part Two — Google translate)

At my request, he sent me an English translation of his posts, which I append below. The language is not perfect since it was a quick translation, and the argumentation is  directed more to Lithuanian than to a US or international audience, but this is an important piece.

On ACTA. Why did it all explode now?
By Remigijus Simasius
(Translated from Lithuanian by Adomas Sliuzinskas and Eimantas Vaiciunas)

Part I

When Lithuania was reached by waves of global discussions and protests regarding ACTA, many found themselves asking “Why is it now, that this massive agitation is happening, and why is this document causing it?”

These questions become even more important when it turns out that this document doesn’t bring anything new to the current situation: most of the provisions have already been active in Lithuania and the most threatening ones use words can, not must.

Protests of February 11th might seem even stranger because protesters consisted of well educated youth, modern intellectuals and the bulk of protesters having read the document is a rare thing. Don’t they care about authors and inventors?

In haste, many start to marginalize these protests, equate them to the leftist Occupy Wall Street and similar movements, whose members don’t discern what’s theirs and what’s not, who don’t respect others’ work and property, in a word—pirates.

Protesters haven’t really decided on what are they basing their own statements against ACTA. Is it the threat of distinct provisions to the freedom of the internet or to freedom as a whole? Or is ACTA reflecting deeper problems and it is only an illustration of how we’re going the wrong way with protection of intellectual property?

Having been concerned with the topic of intellectual property for some time now, I have a few observations about the source of this sudden explosion.

First, ACTA have been kept secret for a long time and discussed only with the chosen ones. That is until Wikileaks leaked it. Making it public just a few months ago didn’t help much, as it looked more like a formality than a beginning of a real discussion.

Already taking part in conspiracy theories, ACTA lead many to believe that something is wrong, or that they’re plainly being fooled.

Second, ACTA succeeded attempts to push SOPA and PIPA in United States of America. These acts had designs of more radical steps in globally protecting author rights and patents.

I’m going to remind you that, being concerned with these acts, internet community mobilized so immensely, even Google actively campaigned against it, with numerous websites, Wikipedia among them, having a black-out strike for a day.

On one hand, rejection of SOPA and PIPA created a victorious spirit among opponents of these initiatives, and gaining a victory often motivates for another battle. On the other hand, many saw ACTA as the real Trojan horse, whereas SOPA and PIPA must have been only a smokescreen.

Third, ACTA is not a single, but another step in protecting intellectual property with new measures. Biggest measures do not necessarily overfill a cup—it overflows exactly when it has more than it can contain. In this case, ACTA may have been the last few drops that had to overflow and exhaust all patience.

The thing is, we have been hearing stories about protection of intellectual property crossing the line for over a decade. One time we hear about some scouts enjoying a wild-fire, playing a guitar, singing some pop songs and then having been punished for not having bought a licence for them. Another story tells us how a researcher has to ask copyright-holders for a permission to quote for a scientific article. Another tells us about photographer getting punished for publishing his own photos on the internet. And then digital cameras and phones are taxed to “compensate” authors.

To sum up, “You don’t hold the hearts of a people by suing their children”, as professor Lawrence Lessig once wrote.

So far I’ve briefly discussed the emotional and circumstantial causes, that lead to a global commotion on ACTA. But there are still causes that are systematic. Find out more about them in the next part of this article.

On ACTA. Why did it all explode now?—Part II

In the first part of this article I asked why ACTA caused such a public explosion. Obviously, there were more and bigger steps towards it. For example, Lithuanian law, “compensating” authors with money gathered by taxing mobile phones and cameras, coming in force in a few weeks time. I have written about correlating causes and last few steps toward exhaustion of patience and promised to dive deeper.

Be warned though, everything is more complex down there. This short article won’t fit all the arguments, counterarguments and answers. I am just explaining my view on other causes of the big bang. So…

Fourth, more and more people start to think that intellectual property (further – IP) protection laws are not to protect artists and inventors, but to finance big copyright industry. It is very convenient to manipulate authors and inventors, and it is done with great success. But certitude in the fact that authors, as well as progress, are benefiting from current situation in the system starts trembling, once one sees what part of these “compensations” reach authors, or the revenues of law firms specializing in IP laws. The same happens when big corporations are seen on a shopping spree for patents, not because of scientific advances or innovations, but to secure assets, or just for the sake of suing competitors. The same when departments of patent analyzing lawyers overgrow research departments in research centers. [continue reading…]

Last year I delivered the talk “Intellectual Property and Economic Development” at Mises University 2011. And it’s free online. Now some site “Tunesbaby,” the “Hit Video Network,” has a version of it up on its site, surrounded by annoying ads and distractions. I’m outraged that they stole my work! Outraged….! This is … hurting me…. somehow!

Wait a sec. No it’s not. Godspeed, Tunesbaby. Thanks for helping to promote my ideas.

By Cathleen Flahardy

February 21, 2012

Paramount Pictures Corp. has filed suit against the estate of Mario Puzo, author of the popular 1960s novel “The Godfather.”

With its suit, the film company hopes to block the publication of new sequel novels to “The Godfather.” Paramount claims it purchased the copyright to the original novel in 1969 and in its Feb. 17 complaint said it is trying to “protect the integrity and reputation of The Godfather trilogy.”

Read more>>

Related posts:

• Copyright Censorship versus Free Speech and Human Rights; Excessive Fines and the Eighth Amendment
• Reason: Copyright Should Last Half A Century
• Libraries: Prepare to burn foreign books, courtesy copyright law
• Atlas Hefts: The Sequel!;
• COICA: More Copyright-Backed Censorship on the Way?;
• The Patent, Copyright, Trademark, and Trade Secret Horror Files;
• Do Libraries Need Permission To Lend Out Ebooks?;
• Supreme Court lets ban on “gray market” imports stand

Update: See more posts on Internet freedom.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom

Top-down, international regulation is antithetical to the Net, which has flourished under its current governance model.

By ROBERT M. MCDOWELLOn Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year’s end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish “international control over the Internet” through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices.

If successful, these new regulatory proposals would upend the Internet’s flourishing regime, which has been in place since 1988. That year, delegates from 114 countries gathered in Australia to agree to a treaty that set the stage for dramatic liberalization of international telecommunications. This insulated the Internet from economic and technical regulation and quickly became the greatest deregulatory success story of all time.

Read more>>

Related posts:

• Masnick on the Horrible PROTECT IP Act: The Coming IPolice State
• Patent vs. Copyright: Which is Worse?
• The Ominous PROTECT IP Act and the End of Internet Freedom

It is really true that for those who believe in IP, there is no non-arbitrary way to define the term, and that term must necessarily be decided by the state, which also must necessarily enforce it. One workaround to this problem: make copyright eternal. This is the proposal of Adrian Hon, writing for the Telegraph. And catch the great George Bernard Shaw quote in here.

On Tuesday 14th, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) posted a message on RnBXclusive.com, stating: “If you have downloaded music using this website you may have committed a criminal offence which carries a maximum penalty of up to 10 years imprisonment and an unlimited fine under UK law.”

SOCA’s threat is a stirring defence of what we hold dear in this country – the right of a creator to benefit from their intellectual property, whether it be a song, book, film, or game. Without this assurance of compensation, we might not see any new creative works being produced at all, and so it’s for this reason that we’ve continually lengthened copyright terms from 14-28 years as set out by the Statue of Anne in 1710 to “lifetime plus 70 years” today.

Yet now, as we’ve instituted decade-long jail terms and unlimited fines for copyright infringers, it’s time to take the next step in extending copyright terms even further.

Imagine you’re a new parent at 30 years old and you’ve just published a bestselling new novel. Under the current system, if you lived to 70 years old and your descendants all had children at the age of 30, the copyright in your book – and thus the proceeds – would provide for your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.

But what, I ask, about your great-great-great-grandchildren? What do they get? How can our laws be so heartless as to deny them the benefit of your hard work in the name of some do-gooding concept as the “public good”, simply because they were born a mere century and a half after the book was written? After all, when you wrote your book, it sprung from your mind fully-formed, without requiring any inspiration from other creative works – you owe nothing at all to the public. And what would the public do with your book, even if they had it? Most likely, they’d just make it worse.

No, it’s clear that our current copyright law is inadequate and unfair. We must move to Eternal Copyright – a system where copyright never expires, and a world in which we no longer snatch food out of the mouths of our creators’ descendants. With eternal copyright, the knowledge that our great-great-great-grandchildren and beyond will benefit financially from our efforts will no doubt spur us on to achieve greater creative heights than ever seen before.

However, to make it entirely fair, Eternal Copyright should be retroactively applied so that current generations may benefit from their ancestors’ works rather than allowing strangers to rip your inheritance off. Indeed, by what right do Disney and the BBC get to adapt Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, and Sherlock without paying the descendants of Lewis Carroll, the Brothers Grimm, and Arthur Conan Doyle?

Of course, there will be some odd effects. For example, the entire Jewish race will do rather well from their eternal copyright in much of the Bible, and Shakespeare’s next of kin will receive quite the windfall from the royalties in the thousands of performances and adaptations of his plays – money well earned, I think we can all agree.

Naturally, we’ll need a government-controlled bureaucracy to track the use of copyrighted material from all of history and to properly apportion royalties to the billions of beneficiaries in a timely manner. There are some downsides; for example, we can expect countless legal cases to spring up concerning the descent of various famous creators, which will unfortunately gum up our courts for the indefinite future, but it’s a price worth paying in order to put things right.

A bold idea such as Eternal Copyright will inevitably have opponents who wish to stand in the way of progress. Some will claim that because intellectual works are non-rivalrous, unlike tangible goods, meaning that they can be copied without removing the original, we shouldn’t treat copyright as theft at all. They might even quote George Bernard Shaw, who said, “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

Such opponents are condoning criminal activity, plain and simple, and are frankly no better than criminals themselves. Why would anyone want to create new ideas and intellectual works if they can’t benefit from them in perpetuity? Are we to believe that people have motivations other than the purely financial and quantifiable? And are they suggesting we should continue to allow modern “creators” to sully the legacy of legends like Jane Austen and Hans Christian Andersen with their pointless, worthless adaptations, remixes, and reinterpretations of Pride and Prejudice and The Emperor’s New Clothes?

In the interests of full disclosure, I do want to point out a genuine problem with Eternal Copyright, in that it will be difficult to enforce due to the inherently criminal nature of digital technology, which allows information to be copied perfectly and instantly. Absent a complete ban of the technology, which admittedly would be a little draconian, one obvious solution would be to hard-wire digital devices to automatically detect, report, and prevent duplication of copyrighted material. Yes, this might get the libertarians and free-speech crazies out protesting, but a bit of fresh air wouldn’t do them any harm.

Certainly we wouldn’t want to listen to their other suggestions, which would see us broaden the definition of “fair use” and, horrifically, reduce copyright terms back to merely a lifetime or even less. Not only would such an act deprive our great-great-grandchildren of their birthright, but it would surely choke off creativity to the dark ages of the 18th and 19th centuries, a desperately lean time for art in which we had to make do with mere scribblers such as Wordsworth, Swift, Richardson, Defoe, Austen, Bronte, Hardy, Dickens, and Keats.

Do we really want to return to that world? I don’t think so.

As discussed in Mike Masnick’s Techdirt post When We Copy, We Justify It; When Others Copy, We Vilify Them,

We’ve written multiple times about Kirby Ferguson’s excellent Everything is a Remix project that has produced three videos highlighting the problems and history of intellectual property and how copying and derivative works are a core element of culture and invention. He’s now released the fourth and final installment in the series, and it’s a great summary look at the general problems with intellectual property law today.

Everything is a Remix Part 4 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

The key theme is that the theory (treating ideas, inventions, content, etc. as a form of “property” — in the minds of many copyright and patent system supporters) simply doesn’t match up with reality (where almost everything is a derivative work of some sort). What the video does nicely is highlight the hypocrisy of it all. As he notes brilliantly, when we copy (and everyone does copy), we justify it. When others copy, however, suddenly we attack them and vilify them. A perfect recent example of this, by the way, was former NYT executive editor Bill Keller’s bizarre defense of the NYT copying and posting a work covered by someone else’s copyright, just days after his own column came out in support of greater legal enforcement of copyrights.

As he notes, this is psychologically understandable. It’s all about “loss aversion.” People feel a sense that they “own” something which they really do not — and that’s often boosted by the concepts of intellectual property that really spread the idea that you can, in fact, own an idea (and, yes, technically neither copyright nor patents apply directly to “ideas,” but that’s a nuance that most people fail to grasp when they see how content and inventions are considered “owned” under the laws of today).

The video then talks about the continued expansion of copyright laws, and the more nefarious effort to continue to ratchet things up through trade agreements like ACTA and TPP. But he also points out that this is somewhat ironic, since in its early years, the US refused to sign similar trade agreements, and was a “pirate nation” that ignored copyrights from around the globe.

The video doesn’t just cover copyrights, but digs into patents as well — with specific attention paid to broad software patents that do little to contribute any knowledge to the world, but instead take broad concepts and seek to lock them up for the purpose of suing and trying to extract settlements from those actually creating and innovating.

From there he breaks out the original purpose of both copyrights and patents under the US system. In both cases, they were about benefiting the public: to encourage learning or to promote the progress of “useful” arts (inventions). But when the laws fail to do that, then we should see the system as broken and seek to remedy it.

All in all, Ferguson’s series is a great introduction to many of the issues we cover around here. I don’t fully agree with everything in all of the videos — and the latest one has a slight undertone suggesting that capitalism and markets in and of themselves are bad (which I think is conflating a few different issues). But overall the videos are fantastic — and in terms of production quality, it seems like each one in the series is better than the previous one. He keeps maturing as a video maker, which is cool to see. Ferguson is now moving on to a new project, called This is Not a Conspiracy Theory, for which he’s raising funds on Kickstarter, so check it out.

Related posts:

• TUAW on SOPA and PIPA: What they are and why we’re against them;
• New Video On How PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet;
• Your Start-Up Isn’t Unique, But That Doesn’t Matter;
• Everything is a Remix–Part 3
• Microsoft Co-Founder on Software “Borrowing”;
• Everything is a Remix;
• Nina Paley’s All Creative Work Is Derivative
  
• Masnick: Time To Remix Copyright Law: The Hip Hop Case Study

Sad. How anyone can think this is anything but anti-competitive is beyond me. This is not the free market. From

Apple Secures Win Against Motorola Over ‘Slide-to-Unlock’ Patent

• By Chloe Albanesius
• February 16, 2012 11:44am EST

Apple won another patent victory against Motorola today regarding Cupertino’s “slide-to-unlock” technology.

Judge Dr. Peter Guntz of the Munich I Regional Court found that some of Motorola Mobility’s products infringe on Apple’s slide-to-unlock image patent, according to patent blogger Florian Mueller, who attended this morning’s hearing.

The court evaluated three implementations of slide-to-unlock on Motorola devices. Apple won on the first two, which relate to Motorola smartphones, but lost on the third, which is used in the Motorola Xoom tablet.

“That implementation is very similar to what I have on my Samsung Galaxy Note: the user has to make a swiping gesture from the inside of a circle to the outside,” Mueller wrote in a blog post. “It requires a relatively large screen to work somewhat well, but even then it’s not very intuitive.”

What happens next is up to Apple. With today’s ruling, Apple has the right to enforce the injunction and pull the offending Motorola products from store shelves in Germany. But if Motorola wins on appeal, Apple will have to reimburse the company all the money it lost while its products were banned. As a result, Apple will have to decide if it’s worth the gamble.

Read more>>

From Reason Hit & Run:

Two Decades of Attempts to Enforce Copyright

Peter Suderman | February 15, 2012

See also Mike Masnick’s Techdirt post, How Much Is Enough? We’ve Passed 15 ‘Anti-Piracy’ Laws In The Last 30 Years.

Note also that although Lee does good work here surveying the last two decades of attempts to enforce copyright, Lee is not an opponent of patent or copyright. As I noted in $30 Billion Taxfunded Innovation Contracts: The “Progressive-Libertarian” Solution, in an IP debate on Cato, Lee wrote:

I can’t agree with Baker that all copyright and patent monopolies are illegitimate. Copyright and patent protections have existed since the beginning of the republic, and if properly calibrated they can (as the founders put it) promote the progress of science and the useful arts. Like any government intervention in the economy, they need to be carefully constrained. But if they are so limited, they can be a positive force in the American economy.

As I wrote in response: Ah, yes, that’s our job as market liberals–to help the state “properly calibrate” its grants of pattern privilege!

Also, in my post Thick and Thin Libertarians on IP and Open Source, I noted Lee had expressed some somewhat confused views on net neutrality, IP, and thin libertarianism; see also our interesting exchange there in the comments. Here’s hoping that as Lee examines more and more examples and evidence of the IP police state, Lee will finally come around to the position that copyright (and patent) should be abolished,  instead of thinking they should be “properly calibrated.”