From shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in Sat Feb 1 15:57:17 2003 From: shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?=) Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 10:27:17 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Re: Conference Notice - 6th February 2003 (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030201102717.29839.qmail@web8007.mail.in.yahoo.com> To all those in the UK -this is a brilliant opportunity to watch the gurus of internet law/politics thrash it out. regards-shamnad From: "Tania Boyt" To: "Law-Post Graduates" Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 15:51:34 -0000 Organization: Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford University Subject: [LPg] Conference Notice - 6th February 2003 POLITICS OF CODE - SHAPING THE FUTURE OF THE NEXT INTERNET Conference at the University of Oxford, 6th February 2003 The Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy at the Cnetre for Socio Legal Studie and the Oxford Internet Institute are convening a conference "Politics of Code - Shaping the Future of the Next Internet" to be held in Oxford on February 6th 2003. Speakers will include: Prof. Larry Lessig, Stanford University Diane Cabell, Harvard University Esther Dyson, founding chair of ICANN. To register and find more information please go to, www.codepolitics.info Any questions contact: christian.ahlert at csls.ox.ac.uk Christian.Ahlert at wolfson.oxford.ac.uk Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy Oxford University Shamnad Basheer wrote: Catch all the cricket action. Download Yahoo! Score tracker -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030201/bbb09b1b/attachment.html From tripta at sarai.net Sat Feb 1 16:22:30 2003 From: tripta at sarai.net (tripta) Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 16:22:30 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] trademarks/royalty Message-ID: <200302011622.30436.tripta@sarai.net> This write up from the site http://mobilix.org/mobilix_asterix.html which details the proceedings of the Obelix vs. mobilix case. As Obelix is the trademark of Les Éditions Albert René, a legal action has been undertaken by them against the company mobilix to withdraw the name as they are quite `similar'. This raises important questions regarding the scope of the trademarks and their infringements. Have a look at the responses to the same on the slashdot site. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/31/1419240&tid=123 Just off the mark, yesterday at T.G.I.F one of the pamphlets narrating it's anecdotal history stated how wearing `Buttons' was a trend initiated by the waiters and waitress at T.G.I.F and that to ensure the popularity of the same the company has been kind enough not to charge a royalty on the same, i.e, wearing `buttons'. Would anyone please elaborate on the same? The mechanism of charging royalty and the penalty for same. What if TGIF charged royalty? what would that mean? cheers tripta ______________________________________________________________________ Trademark Trouble: Obelix versus MobiliX The Charge In June 2001 I have got an informal request from the German legal representative of Les Éditions Albert René (Paris) holder of the trademarks "Asterix" and "Obelix" , to unregister the name MobiliX, otherwise they would take legal action. Together with my lawyer I have tried to find an arrangement, to satisfy both parts. Also I have announced this case to the Free Software Foundation - FSF and in public to the Free Software Community. Many people have written to Les Éditions Albert René (Paris) the holder of the trademarks. Other people have provided a list of projects with similar names ending on "iX" (see below). This list has grown quite big (more than 500 entries), therefore it's not continued anymore. The site MobiliX is dedicated to Mobile UniX systems. It leads you to a lot of useful hands-on information about installing and running Linux and BSD on laptops, PDAs and other mobile computer devices. MobiliX is an acronym of the words "mobile" and "UniX". To avoid any legal trouble with this name Werner Heuser has registered the name at the German trademark register in the year 2001. It is a common practice to build new names for Unix related topics from a word naming the topic and adding the letters "iX" at the end. For some examples see the list below. The German computer magazine iX is even named by these letters. The name Unix itself is a registered trademark of The Open Group . Often this suffix is used to name other IT products, too. Also the name Mobilix is already registered for a German manufacturer of children furniture (but in another trademark class). In Denmark the name Mobilix is used by a telecommunication company. I don't intend to make any references to Asterix and Obelix on my web pages. As far as I know *) any of the male Gaul characters of the Asterix and Obelix stories has a name ending on "ix". Therefore almost every UniX project using this name scheme could get severe trouble. *) My parents didn't allow me to read comic books. Maybe instead of I became addicted to Linux ;-) The First Instance in Court Both Names are NOT Similar The proceeding without court didn't succeed. In November 2001 Werner Heuser owner of MobiliX has been legally charged to withdraw the trademark, to pay a compensation and more. The charge is up to app. 250.000 USD or six months prison. All fees for the lawyers and the court through three legal instances are up to 60.000 USD. I have decided to take another lawyer Jaschinski, Biere & Brexl - JBB , which is a wellknown lawyer-society for legal problems of Free Software. The response I (PDF, 22 pages, German, 21.1.2002) of my lawyers Jaschinski, Biere & Brexl - JBB is available online. We also offered the lawyers of Obelix to publish their documents here. But they didn't agree. In the hearing from 12th June 2002 the court Landgericht Muenchen I (Az: 21 O 17363/01) has appreciated the arguments of Les Éditions Albert René (Paris) but finally it has rejected them. The hearing was attended by members of the Linux community, members of the press and wellknown lawyers (e.g. Guenter Freiherr von Gravenreuth ). In the written verdict the court writes: "The big popularity of the comic-character 'Obelix" doesn't imply, that this word can be seen as a well known trademark." Also it doesn't seem possible to mistake both trademarks for each other. "A similarity in the writing or meaning of the words 'Obelix' and 'MobiliX' can be excluded, ..". A might be similarity in the sound of the words is without any importance, because "if a word is used with a wellknown meaning, any similarity in the sound doesn't cause it to be mistaken for another one, [..] a chance to mix the words caused by a smililar sound, might be accepted, if only the suffix 'ix' or the syllable 'lix' brings a connection to the charging trademark into mind. Such an extended coverage can't be accepted by the court chamber, because the suffix 'ix' is used not only for the naming of comic-characters, but for computersystems also, as in 'Unix'." The written verdict (PDF, 18 pages, German) is available online. Appelation Court Both Names are VERY Similar On 12 August 2002 the plaintiff has appealed against the court decision. The laywers of Werner Heuser Jaschinski Biere Brexl (JBB) gave permission to make their defense plea against the appelation (PDF, 18 pages, German) available online. The court has released the written verdict a January 27th 2003. Contrary to the first court, the chamber says that Obelix and MobiliX are very similar. On 21 November 2002 the appelation court in Munich (Germany) had the first proceeding. The written verdict was released at January 27th 2003. Contrary to the decision of the first court it states that Obelix and MobiliX are very similar. Therefore it's likely that people take one for the other. It doesn't matter that the suffix "ix" is used very often to name computer related products, because the names have to be sufficient apart. © Werner Heuser 1997-2003 * http://mobilix.org/mobilix_asterix.html * last change Fri Jan 31 2003 -- `The moroccans with the carpets seem like saints but they're salesman' From shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in Sat Feb 1 20:49:47 2003 From: shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?=) Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 15:19:47 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Commons-Law] trademarks/royalty In-Reply-To: <200302011622.30436.tripta@sarai.net> Message-ID: <20030201151947.25208.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com> sounds ridiculous to me, Tripta. you cant charge royalty without having some proprietary claim (intellectual property) over the "button". i dont recollect what these look like-but you could possibly run one of the following arguments to claim an IP right over the same: 1. the design of the button is unique and therefore protectable OR amounts to an artistic work meriting copyright protection. 2. waiters wearing these buttons add to the "trade-dress" element of TGIF-something on the lines of the Taco-cabana case (a little far-fetched, no doubt-but which IP argument in todays context isnt??). I'm sure IP lawyers would be able to come up with countless other arguments once they put their head to it. assuming that such a claim is valid in law, then other waiters cannot wear these buttons without paying royalty... regards-Shamnad tripta wrote:This write up from the site http://mobilix.org/mobilix_asterix.html which details the proceedings of the Obelix vs. mobilix case. As Obelix is the trademark of Les Éditions Albert René, a legal action has been undertaken by them against the company mobilix to withdraw the name as they are quite `similar'. This raises important questions regarding the scope of the trademarks and their infringements. Have a look at the responses to the same on the slashdot site. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/31/1419240&tid=123 Just off the mark, yesterday at T.G.I.F one of the pamphlets narrating it's anecdotal history stated how wearing `Buttons' was a trend initiated by the waiters and waitress at T.G.I.F and that to ensure the popularity of the same the company has been kind enough not to charge a royalty on the same, i.e, wearing `buttons'. Would anyone please elaborate on the same? The mechanism of charging royalty and the penalty for same. What if TGIF charged royalty? what would that mean? cheers tripta ______________________________________________________________________ Catch all the cricket action. Download Yahoo! Score tracker -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030201/4021e4b3/attachment.html From sudhir75 at hotmail.com Mon Feb 3 00:48:25 2003 From: sudhir75 at hotmail.com (sudhir krishnaswamy) Date: Sun, 02 Feb 2003 19:18:25 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Thinking biotechnology and IP Message-ID: hi all the article that jeebesh posted on IP and Genetics was a fantastic read. interesting john sulston tends towards a defensive strategy of using public disclosure to prevent such information being transformed into proprietary information as he has given up on other moral or legal strategies! this resonates with a strand of the debate on traditional knowledge protection though the concerns might be different in the two cases sudhir _________________________________________________________________ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail From jaynakothari at hotmail.com Sun Feb 2 23:22:35 2003 From: jaynakothari at hotmail.com (jayna kothari) Date: Sun, 02 Feb 2003 23:22:35 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] CTEA judgment Message-ID: for all those who have been following the Eldred v. Ashcroft case, here's a funny interview with Mickey Mouse .... quite interesting and lots of good links as well, http://www.reason.com/links/links011703.shtml have also copied it here... cheers Jayna January 17, 2003 Mickey Mouse Clubbed Disney's cartoon rodent speaks out on the Eldred decision. By Jesse Walker Earlier this week, the Supreme Court ruled that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998�so named in honor of the late Rep. Bono, and not because it extended his copyright terms�was constitutional. Prior to the Bono Act, an individually owned work was protected for the creator's life plus 50 more years; corporate-owned copyrights lasted a flat 75 years. The law extended both timespans by two decades, prompting a legal challenge from Eric Eldred, a bibliophile in New Hampshire who wanted to put digitized editions of old books online. When the Court ruled against Eldred, the Disney Corporation issued a collective sigh of relief. Before the Bono Act passed, Mickey Mouse was set to enter the public domain in 2004, with his best-known animated pals following shortly afterward. One reason Disney put its weight behind the 1998 legislation was to keep Mickey and the gang on the plantation; Eldred's backers subsequently adopted Free the Mouse as an unofficial slogan. Mickey's own reaction to the decision was less enthusiastic. Telling his keepers that he was going on an "ice run for the boss," the mouse made his way to a dive bar a few miles outside Disneyland, where he gave reason an exclusive interview. Q: How does it feel to have your sentence extended by two decades? A: How do you think it feels? For almost 70 years, I've only been allowed to do what the Disney people say I can do. Sometimes someone comes up with a new idea, and I think to myself, "Great! Here's a chance to stretch myself!" But of course they won't let me leave the reservation. If I do, they send out their lawyers to bring me home. In 1971, for instance, Dan O'Neill got me a part in something called Air Pirates Funnies. It was great: I got to have sex, I got to use drugs, I got to explore the whole underground comix scene. It was liberating. Well, of course Disney complained. They said�this is a direct quote�that O'Neill's parody was tarnishing my "image of innocent delight." After two issues of the comic book, they issued a summons and took us all to court for trademark violation and copyright infringement. Q: And they never published another issue? A: Of course not. I don't think you realize how tight the clamps on me are. If I so much as flicker on a TV screen in the background of a documentary, Disney can tell the filmmakers, "Either scramble that image or pay us for permission to use it." And the courts will allow it. Q: Some might say that it's perfectly legitimate for Disney to own you�not just now, but in perpetuity. After all, they created you. A: Created me? [An enormous cartoon spit-take follows.] Did you like that? It's my Daffy Duck imitation. Q: Very nice. I didn't know you were familiar with the Warner Brothers characters. A: Poor bastards. They're gonna be locked up even longer than I am. I guess if Chuck Jones were still around to direct their cartoons, they might not mind it on their plantation. Instead, they have to do those stupid commercials with Michael Jordan. Anyway. Yeah, Walt Disney created me, but he didn't create me out of nothing. Look at my skin. Look at my face. Look at this glove. I'm straight out of the minstrel show tradition�which makes this whole "ownership" business stick in my craw even more. I'm also Buster Keaton. Q: Sorry? A: My first cartoon short, Steamboat Willie, was a direct parody of Keaton's movie Steamboat Bill, Jr. On the very first page of the script, it says, "Orchestra starts playing opening verses of Steamboat Bill." I remember what Eldred's lawyer Lawrence Lessig said when he read that: "Try doing a cartoon take-off of one of Disney, Inc.'s latest films with an opening that copies the music." So yeah, they created me. But they don't want to let other people build on me when they make their own creations, the way they did when I was born. And now I'm locked up for another stinking 20 years! Do you have any idea what it's like to have to greet kids at Disneyland every single day, always smiling, never slipping off for a cigarette? Q: So what comes next? A: If the courts won't help us, we can always go back to Congress and try to repeal the Bono Act outright. Doesn't seem likely to happen, but I suppose we should try it. Beyond that, all I can think of is civil disobedience. Disney says I'm its property, and that any unauthorized use of me is infringement, theft, plagiarism. I say, Don't mourn, plagiarize! Work me into every creative act that you can, and damn the legal consequences! You know, like you're doing right now. Q: Come again? A: This interview. It's an unauthorized use of Mickey Mouse, a copyrighted character owned by the Disney Corporation. Q: This is a parody, Mickey. It's protected by the Fair Use doctrine. A: So was Air Pirates Funnies, and they still dragged them into court. And it's only gotten worse since then. It's so easy to create and distribute things digitally these days, so the big entertainment combines are in a panic, sending out cease-and-desist letters left and right. Doesn't matter if it's an open-and-shut case of Fair Use�the cost of a court case is disincentive enough. Q: Hey. This isn't really Mickey Mouse, people. His name is�uh, I think it's Bruce. A: Sometimes they make a threat, and sometimes they let something slide. You never know what they're gonna go after. But don't let that stop you! Civil disobedience requires courage. Q: He's not even a mouse. He's some sort of marsupial. A: [Sighs.] You're a sellout, Walker. Q: I've got responsibilities, Mick�um, Bruce. A: God, you disgust me. I'm looking at another 20 years on the inside, and you can't throw one little pebble at the company that's keeping me out of the public domain? At this point, three Disney bounty hunters entered the bar and seized Mickey. An intense struggle reportedly ensued, but our correspondent missed it, opting instead to crawl out the men's room window. Associate Editor Jesse Walker is author of Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America (NYU Press). _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail From sudhir75 at hotmail.com Mon Feb 3 01:13:25 2003 From: sudhir75 at hotmail.com (sudhir krishnaswamy) Date: Sun, 02 Feb 2003 19:43:25 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Thinking biotechnology and IP Message-ID: interestingly - my conversations with geneticists in oxford indicate that they are using/developing open source software for protein modelling experiments and the like sudhir _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 From mukund at nls.ac.in Wed Feb 5 01:50:27 2003 From: mukund at nls.ac.in (mukund at nls.ac.in) Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 01:50:27 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Bappi Lahiri v. Dr. Dre Message-ID: <1565.219.65.244.27.1044390027.squirrel@mail.nls.ac.in> Just thought that someone might be interested.- __________________________________________________ Aah ... finally ! Justice for Mr. Bappi Lahiri. Now only if ALL the poople and inanimate objects he has copied, take HIM to court ! _____________________________________________________ From shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in Wed Feb 5 10:31:00 2003 From: shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?=) Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 05:01:00 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Bappi Lahiri v. Dr. Dre In-Reply-To: <1565.219.65.244.27.1044390027.squirrel@mail.nls.ac.in> Message-ID: <20030205050100.94148.qmail@web8001.mail.in.yahoo.com> thanks for that, mukund. the judges order that he merely has to be credited seems to suggest that there may not be an order of damages. presumably the copyright in this is owned by a recording company (which has to file a suit for damages in its own right) and this suit by bappi may have been based on a sort of moral right claim (i.e. lack of attribution). any idea?? regards-shamnad mukund at nls.ac.in wrote:Just thought that someone might be interested.- __________________________________________________ Aah ... finally ! Justice for Mr. Bappi Lahiri. Now only if ALL the poople and inanimate objects he has copied, take HIM to court ! _____________________________________________________ From sudhir75 at hotmail.com Wed Feb 5 10:54:19 2003 From: sudhir75 at hotmail.com (sudhir krishnaswamy) Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 05:24:19 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Bappi Lahiri v. Dr. Dre Message-ID: Hi all Anyone who's heard the song would have no doubt that Bappi Lahiri has a good case - it's the 'cultural imperialism' line I find intriguing!! Have had a great deal about why patents sustain economic imperialism but never about copyright and cultural imperialism. Wonder how others react to this suggestion? Sudhir _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail From mukund at nls.ac.in Wed Feb 5 11:15:16 2003 From: mukund at nls.ac.in (mukund at nls.ac.in) Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 11:15:16 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Bappi Lahiri v. Dr. Dre - Attribution? In-Reply-To: <20030205050100.94148.qmail@web8001.mail.in.yahoo.com> References: <1565.219.65.244.27.1044390027.squirrel@mail.nls.ac.in> <20030205050100.94148.qmail@web8001.mail.in.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1483.219.65.237.2.1044423916.squirrel@mail.nls.ac.in> I dont think its just about attribution. The order given by the judge was a preliminary order requiring, as an immediate step - attribution on all copies sold henceforth. The trial will begin only in a couple of months - indicating that this is a preliminary pre trial offer - strongly suggesting that there is a very obvious prima facie case (as if we all didnt know that after listening to the songs !). He is looking for damages - some huge amount based on the (very) large number of copies sold ! He might even get it ! Mukund > thanks for that, mukund. > the judges order that he merely has to be credited seems to suggest that > there may not be an order of damages. presumably the copyright in this > is owned by a recording company (which has to file a suit for damages in > its own right) and this suit by bappi may have been based on a sort of > moral right claim (i.e. lack of attribution). any idea?? > regards-shamnad > > > mukund at nls.ac.in wrote:Just thought that someone might be interested.- > > __________________________________________________ > > > Aah ... finally ! Justice for Mr. Bappi Lahiri. > Now only if ALL the poople and inanimate objects he has copied, take HIM > to court ! > > _____________________________________________________ > > From asia.cnn.com > > _____________________________________________________ > > > Indian composer wins hip hop wrangle > Tuesday, February 4, 2003 Posted: 3:30 PM HKT (0730 GMT) > > American hip hop artist/producer Dr. Dre reportedly remixed Lahiri's > song without crediting him > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- A famed Indian composer has won a > court order barring sales of a hip-hop hit he claims borrowed heavily > and without credit from one of his songs in an act of "cultural > imperialism." > > A federal judge in Los Angeles on Monday issued an order prohibiting > further sales of the song "Addictive" by Truth Hurts unless and until > composer Bappi Lahiri is listed on the song's credits, Anthony > Kornarens, an attorney for Lahiri said. > > "The judge took the matter quite seriously and felt as though, from what > I could tell, the defendants had not acted appropriately," Kornarens > said. > > Lahiri first filed in October against hip hop producer Dr. Dre, whose > real name is Andre Young, Aftermath Records, Aftermath parent Interscope > Records and Universal Music Group, the world's largest media company and > a unit of Vivendi Universal > > A spokesman for Universal Music referred calls to Interscope. An > Interscope spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment. Dr. > Dre's attorney, Howard King, was also not immediately available to > comment. > > Kornarens said Universal's attorneys indicated to the court they would > consider an appeal of the injunction. > > Lahiri claims that the producers of "Addictive" lifted four minutes of > the original recording of the song "Thoda Resham Lagta Hai." > > Truth Hurts' album sold about 600,000 copies between its June release > and the time the suit was filed late last year. > > "Addictive" was released as a single and became a top 10 hit. Truth > Hurts, whose real name is Shari Watson, told MTV last year that Dre had > remixed "Addictive," according to an article that appeared on the MTV > Web site. > > "He really took it to another level," she said at the time. "He took > another part of the Indian sample and added it to the beginning and to > the middle." > > Kornarens, who accused the record label of "cultural imperialism," said > the judge set an expedited trial date of June 17 for Lahiri's suit. > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Copyright 2003 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be > published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. > > > http://asia.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/News/02/04/india.composer.reut/index.html > > > _______________________________________________ > commons-law mailing list > commons-law at mail.sarai.net > http://mail.sarai.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/commons-law > Catch all the cricket action. Download Yahoo! Score tracker From shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in Thu Feb 6 03:38:49 2003 From: shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?=) Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 22:08:49 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Bappi Lahiri v. Dr. Dre - Attribution? In-Reply-To: <1483.219.65.237.2.1044423916.squirrel@mail.nls.ac.in> Message-ID: <20030205220849.49336.qmail@web8001.mail.in.yahoo.com> a temporary restraining order in a suit that claims damages would not ordinarily permit further copies to be sold, albeit with attribution. the copyright here, i guess, may belong to a sound recording company, which is/will be suing for damages in its own right (vaguely remember someone mentioning that this may be Saregama). shamnad mukund at nls.ac.in wrote:I dont think its just about attribution. The order given by the judge was a preliminary order requiring, as an immediate step - attribution on all copies sold henceforth. The trial will begin only in a couple of months - indicating that this is a preliminary pre trial offer - strongly suggesting that there is a very obvious prima facie case (as if we all didnt know that after listening to the songs !). He is looking for damages - some huge amount based on the (very) large number of copies sold ! He might even get it ! Mukund > thanks for that, mukund. > the judges order that he merely has to be credited seems to suggest that > there may not be an order of damages. presumably the copyright in this > is owned by a recording company (which has to file a suit for damages in > its own right) and this suit by bappi may have been based on a sort of > moral right claim (i.e. lack of attribution). any idea?? > regards-shamnad > > > mukund at nls.ac.in wrote:Just thought that someone might be interested.- > > __________________________________________________ > > > Aah ... finally ! Justice for Mr. Bappi Lahiri. > Now only if ALL the poople and inanimate objects he has copied, take HIM > to court ! > > _____________________________________________________ > > From asia.cnn.com > > _____________________________________________________ > > > Indian composer wins hip hop wrangle > Tuesday, February 4, 2003 Posted: 3:30 PM HKT (0730 GMT) > > American hip hop artist/producer Dr. Dre reportedly remixed Lahiri's > song without crediting him > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- A famed Indian composer has won a > court order barring sales of a hip-hop hit he claims borrowed heavily > and without credit from one of his songs in an act of "cultural > imperialism." > > A federal judge in Los Angeles on Monday issued an order prohibiting > further sales of the song "Addictive" by Truth Hurts unless and until > composer Bappi Lahiri is listed on the song's credits, Anthony > Kornarens, an attorney for Lahiri said. > > "The judge took the matter quite seriously and felt as though, from what > I could tell, the defendants had not acted appropriately," Kornarens > said. > > Lahiri first filed in October against hip hop producer Dr. Dre, whose > real name is Andre Young, Aftermath Records, Aftermath parent Interscope > Records and Universal Music Group, the world's largest media company and > a unit of Vivendi Universal > > A spokesman for Universal Music referred calls to Interscope. An > Interscope spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment. Dr. > Dre's attorney, Howard King, was also not immediately available to > comment. > > Kornarens said Universal's attorneys indicated to the court they would > consider an appeal of the injunction. > > Lahiri claims that the producers of "Addictive" lifted four minutes of > the original recording of the song "Thoda Resham Lagta Hai." > > Truth Hurts' album sold about 600,000 copies between its June release > and the time the suit was filed late last year. > > "Addictive" was released as a single and became a top 10 hit. Truth > Hurts, whose real name is Shari Watson, told MTV last year that Dre had > remixed "Addictive," according to an article that appeared on the MTV > Web site. > > "He really took it to another level," she said at the time. "He took > another part of the Indian sample and added it to the beginning and to > the middle." > > Kornarens, who accused the record label of "cultural imperialism," said > the judge set an expedited trial date of June 17 for Lahiri's suit. > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Copyright 2003 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be > published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. > > > http://asia.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/News/02/04/india.composer.reut/index.html > > > _______________________________________________ > commons-law mailing list > commons-law at mail.sarai.net > http://mail.sarai.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/commons-law > Catch all the cricket action. Download Yahoo! Score tracker _______________________________________________ commons-law mailing list commons-law at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/commons-law Catch all the cricket action. Download Yahoo! Score tracker -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030205/5be87a54/attachment.html From sudhir75 at hotmail.com Fri Feb 7 22:57:10 2003 From: sudhir75 at hotmail.com (Sudhir Krishnaswamy) Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 17:27:10 -0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Politics of Code Report Message-ID: Hi all What follows is a report on the one day conference in Oxford called the Politics of Code. The report does not try to summarise the various presentations as they have been/will be put on the web by the organizers at http://pcmlp.socleg.ox.ac.uk/code/ Instead we will try and present the core of the presentations and our impressions of the conference. Politics of Code 6th February 2003, Oxford ---------------------------------------- Agenda ---------------------------------------- SESSION ONE - HOW CODE GOVERNS Oxford Union - Debating Chamber Keynote Speech "The Internet at a Crossroads" - 9:30 a.m. Prof. Lawrence Lessig, Stanford University A generation ago, in internet time, one spoke of an internet defined by code as freedom. Today the changes brought about in the code and law has changed the internet from one of freedom to one of control and sadly we have done very little about it. When one looks at the early Supreme Court cases on Cable Technology we notice a court that understands the architecture of cable TV as being merely one of transfer and not copying. However, every act on the internet is an act of copying and courts applying copyright have to understand that. Secondly when we look at application software like the Adobe E - book Reader and notice the nature of restrictions that such a book places on how many extracts of the book may be copied or whether it may be read aloud. This is more absurd when the book is in the public domain like Aristotle's Politics or a text like Middlemarch. Another instance of this type of protections is with the Sony robotic pet dog - AIBO. When a user decided to tweak the code to allow Aibo to learn jazz Sony threatened to sue for violation of anti-circumvention protections under the DMCA. See http://aibopet.com What we in both these cases is a layering of different layers of protection around content - a layer of law, then code and then law again. The cumulative effect of these protections is to extend copyright protection to a greater scope term and reach than ever before in the history of copyright. Scope - the actions prohibited Term - the duration of protection Reach - while copyright previously regulated the acts of a small group of publishers now it regulates users of content When this is coupled with the increasing concentration of control over entertainment, news and information by large multinational corporations we are threatened with the increasing homogenization of our cultures. So if we value the idea of free culture as claim to have done over the last few centuries we must respond fully to this challenge. PANEL ONE: Reflections on the Speech o Prof. Lawrence Lessig, Stanford University o Peter Davies, Oxford Internet Institute o Christian de Larinaga, Internet Society, UK Followed by a Q&A session The panel discussion surrounding the talk was too dispersed and pursued no common theme. One interesting point was about the history of regulation of communication channels by government. While in the past government regulated control over these channels through the grant of licenses, the regulation of the internet is moving towards disabling the nature of the communication channel - end to end principles etc. Coffee Break - 10.45 a.m. PARALLEL PANELS: From Open Cyberspace to the Internet of Control? - 11:15 a.m Presentations and discussions on technologies that can change the Internet - Ipv6 and Digital Rights Management DRM Panel - McMillan Room Oxford Union Chair: Christian Ahlert, Oxford University, UK o What is Digital Rights Management and why do we need it? Jens-Henrik Jeppessen, Intel o The Trouble with Digital Rights Management? Ian Brown, FIPR, UK o Digital Rights - Peter Davies, Oxford University DEV GANGJEE WILL POST SHORTLY ON THIS SESSION IPV6 Panel - Debating Chamber Oxford Union Chair: Christian de Larinaga, Ipv6 Task Force o The Future Internet and Ipv6 - Axel Clauberg, Cisco o Legal and technical privacy risks in the next generation Internet - Alberto Escudero Pascual, Royal Institute of Technology The IPv6 panel had two speakers. The first of these speakers presented the audience with the business case for the shift from IPv4 to the IPv6 protocol. As we were not business representatives of institutions the talk made little sense to us. However, he did flag the important issues of privacy and disruption of the end to end principle that may arise with the new protocol. The second speaker, Alberto Escudero, was far more informative and critical of the new protocol and the risks and benefits that may arise by adopting the protocol. He raised three important privacy risks: 1.. the use of global unique identifiers in IP addresses may make available more information about you than you would choose 2.. seamless mobility in the internet may also mean the loss of location privacy 3.. the analysis of traffic data with telephones, mobiles and the internet reveal qualitatively different information. While with telephones we may call the information traffic data with the latter two modes of communication we can't make the distinction between traffic and content In conclusion he argued that the IPv6 protocol, date retention and disclosure policies should be revisited with a view to widen the scope of consultation on privacy issues before we commission these protocols. Alberto's contact is aep at imit.kth.se and he would welcome any queries in this regard. SESSION 2: HOW WE SHOULD GOVERN CODE 1:30 p.m. for 1:45 p.m. Chair: Andrew Graham, Master of Balliol College Keynote Speech "The Future of Internet Governance" - 2:00 p.m. Esther Dyson, founding chairman of ICANN Esther Dyson, presented a defensive view about the history of ICANN and it's current reform policy with a view to make it more democratic and representative while maintaining it's effectiveness. The details of the reform programme are available on the ICANN website - www.icann.org Much of the discussion focused on the US government control over ICANN, it's US centred policy making and the dominance of US citizens on the governing body of ICANN. Despite the proposal to reform ICANN many members of the audience suggested that it may be a better option to develop a new international institution, under the auspices of the UN, to replace the ICANN altogether Followed by a Q&A session PANEL: Lessons learned - The Future of ICANN - 2:30 p.m. o Chair: Bill Dutton o Hans Kraijenbrink, ICANN Director o The Reform of ICANN - The European Commissions View- Richard Delmas, European Commission, Brussels o The Reform of ICANN - The ITU's View - Richard Hill, International Telecommunication Union, Geneva o Will globalized regulation of intellectual propertz stifle online debate? - Diane Cabell, Berkman Center, Harvard University This session just about hung together. Han Kraijenbrink continued where Esther Dyson left off, informing us about the reform initiatives underway in ICANN. Richard Delmas, representing the EC, raised some interesting issues about the challenges before ICANN. He organized these into the 3T's of the internet Topology - the architecture of the web is asymmetrical with the root servers predominantly in the US and this was a technical problem that had to be resolved Toponymy - the power to nominate names should be widely dispersed and not centralized as it is today Taxonomy - where the different services of the Internet should be opened out to all parties to make it more inclusive - eg language Richard Hill of the ITU presented what he saw to be an alternative mode of organizing internet space to ICANN. The International Telecommunications Union, is an inter-governmental institution with 189 member countries which regulates telecommunications. The ITU works through a consensus mode and is a voluntary standard setting body. Moreover by adopting practices where the minimum number of decisions are taken at the international level they allow regional concerns to dominate the key decisions in the telecom arena. Dianne Cabell presented a confusing study by the Berkman Centre on the nature of participation in the decision making procedures at ICANN. She rolled out a wide range of figures and graphs which by her own admission showed no clear trends and left most of us as confused as when she started. Tea break - 3:30pm Speech - 4:00pm Liberty by Design: the Public Interest in Code - Alan Davidson , Center for Democracy and Technology, USA Alan Davidson outlined the efforts of his organization to intervene in the complex institutional landscape in which internet and technology standard setting takes place. He referred to two instances of such intervention: RFID tags and OPES standards. The technical information can be found at their website www.cdt.org - the thrust of his presentation was that with early intervention there can be an infusion of values of democracy and openness into the technical protocols that make up the internet. PANEL: Code, Governments, the Public and Internet Governance - 4:30 p.m. o Chair: Damian Tambini, Oxford University, UK o The Role of Governments in Internet Governance - Raymund Werle, Max Planck Institute, Germany o The W3C and the Standardization of Control - Lee Salter, University of Leeds, UK o Open Standards - Why Openess is more important than Regulation - Harald Alvestrand, Cisco and Chairman of IETF, Norway o Code Governance - How to Govern Through Code - Prof. Bernd Lutterbeck and Kei Ishii, Technical University of Berlin Raymund Werle, from the Max Planck Institute, presented a complex theoretical account of how regulation may be organized on the internet. To be frank, it was difficult to grasp the theoretical contours of the debate with which I am rather unfamiliar. Guess those who are familiar would like to follow his papers which will be available later. Lee Salter presented a short paper on the decision making process at the World Wide Web consortium under the 'benign dictatorship' of Tim Berners-Lee. He studied carefully the debates around the adoption of patented standards into the W3C protocols and the micropayments into browsers. Both of these were ultimately rejected but raises the prospect that in the future we must work to infuse a wider range of value consideration into these decisions than profit. Viewed from the perspective of media policy, values of democracy and wider participation should drive the setting of these standards. It was not altogether clear what Prof Bern Lutterbeck was arguing for and so I guess you will have to wait for the paper on the website. By contrast, Harald Alvestrand's argument could be collapsed into a pithy statement: Open and voluntary standard setting promotes the best standards. His presentation sought to demonstrate why such standards promote widespread use and thereby allow for the creation and generation of wealth on the internet. This may not equally apply to proprietary or mandatory standard setting processes. End of conference 5:30 p.m. Larry Lessig, concluded the conference with a short two minute speech. He recalled that James Boyle in his famous book, Shamans, Software and Spleens proposed that we must develop a new form of 'environmentalism' around technology law and the information society. It was this work among others that has promoted the development and diffusion of the debate in different geographical locations and disciplines. The hope to change the future of the internet lies in the continuation and strengthening of the debate. Evening Reception at the Ashmolean Museum ---------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030207/36a1c541/attachment.html From saif42 at hotmail.com Sat Feb 8 17:09:40 2003 From: saif42 at hotmail.com (Dev Gangjee) Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 11:39:40 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Politics of Code Report - DRM Panel Message-ID: Hi all To continue outlining the core of the presentations, I'm outlining the Digital Rights Management (DRM) Panel discussions. If one could thematically divide the conference presentations into (1) The regulation of the Network itself and (2) the regulation of content available on it, these discussions would belong to the second category. 1. The presentation entitled 'What is Digital Rights Management and why do we need it?' by Jens-Henrik Jeppessen of Intel was not particularly inspiring although the discussion that followed was far more interesting. Understandably enough, it seemed to be a pre-prepared corporate presentation of Intel's take on DRMs, based on a White Paper and full of contradictory, wooly statements like 'respecting copyright' while 'preserving the public domain'. I felt the need to supplement my understanding of 'What is DRM' by doings a little digging on my own, which may be summarized as :- (a) The ability to make perfect electronic copies of digital files and effortlessly distribute those copies in a networked environment is an acknowledged threat to the content exploitation industry. (b) DRM is an attempt to use encryption software to protect copyrighted electronic information by preventing its widespread distribution (as opposed to limiting access to information through such means as firewalls or password protected directories.) Examples of using such technology to protect rights (primarily IPRs such as Copyright) can be found in products such as the Windows Media Player, which tries to ensure delivery of content in a secure format or, as Sudhir already mentioned, the Lessig 'Adobe ebook' example. The basic premise behind DRM is that the rights-holder should determine how their rights are enforced. Yet that is precisely where the debate begins as the natural tendency is to retain as much control as possible and interpret one's own commercial rights broadly. With regard to the Intel presentation, Shamnad asked a fairly pertinent question regarding Intel's stake in all this. The tone of the presentation was a fairly noble and moral one, which tried to project Intel as idealistically comitted to less restrictions on content etc, yet Shamnad pointed out that it would be more expensive for Intel to incorporate DRM technology and its balance sheet would be adversely affected so there was a real commercial interest behind Intel's cautious position on DRMs. This again highlighted the diverse and often conflicting commercial interests involved, who often end up at cross purposes with each other - strategically very important for those lobbying against strong commercial rights in content. 2. A healthy dose of scepticism was introduced by Ian Ross' presentation 'Is is not Digital Restriction Management?'. He argued that the trouble with DRM could be categorized under : (a) Technical Issues on the difficulty of establishing robust DRMs - both immediate (e.g. the 'secure digital music initiative' died a natural death and CD-protection which prevents music CDs from playing on computers can be circumvented with 'high tech' tools like a permanent black marker!) and more long term (e.g. the fundamental reality of 'break once, play anywhere' - it requires just one person to crack the code; decentralized file sharing etc) (b) Suspect Legislative fixes Such as the WIPO Internet treaties, The US DMCA, the EU Copyright Directive - many of these new instruments ban 'circumvention technologies' - the worry is that there will be attempts like the stalled SSSCA and CBDTPA Bills in the US which will sneak in DRM standards as legislation (once again code becomes law which reinforces it) (c) Existing and future problems For e.g. using DRM to stifle competition in the market by crippling competitors, preventing substitutable products being made by using DRMs to enforce accessory controls and possibly leading to software 'monocultures' where for privately determined standards limit interoperatability. Finally the emphasis was on how such technologies dangerously rewrite the Copyright bargain between author/owner interest and the general public interest. 3. Peter Davies very kindly said nothing of much relevance at all, thus saving me additional typing :) He did comment upon a point raised by another speaker on the blanket use of levies/taxes on hardware that facilitated copying, (e.g. CR-RW's, recordable CDs etc) as a means of recouping some of the lost corporate revenues. Hope that completes Sudhir's overview. Warm Regards Dev _________________________________________________________________ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail From shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in Sat Feb 8 19:30:39 2003 From: shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?=) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 14:00:39 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Politics of Code Report - DRM Panel In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030208140039.42599.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com> thanks very much, sudhir and dev, for that wonderful encapsulation. just came across this wonderful quote (pearl of wisdom, rather): "What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law." --Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, responding to a question about whether MPAA-backed bills such as the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act(CBDTPA) threaten consumers' fair use rights. convenient definition of "law", wouldnt you say??? ..."law" is what jack valenti, michael eisner and the like define it to be. shamnad Dev Gangjee wrote:Hi all To continue outlining the core of the presentations, I'm outlining the Digital Rights Management (DRM) Panel discussions. If one could thematically divide the conference presentations into (1) The regulation of the Network itself and (2) the regulation of content available on it, these discussions would belong to the second category. 1. The presentation entitled 'What is Digital Rights Management and why do we need it?' by Jens-Henrik Jeppessen of Intel was not particularly inspiring although the discussion that followed was far more interesting. Understandably enough, it seemed to be a pre-prepared corporate presentation of Intel's take on DRMs, based on a White Paper and full of contradictory, wooly statements like 'respecting copyright' while 'preserving the public domain'. I felt the need to supplement my understanding of 'What is DRM' by doings a little digging on my own, which may be summarized as :- (a) The ability to make perfect electronic copies of digital files and effortlessly distribute those copies in a networked environment is an acknowledged threat to the content exploitation industry. (b) DRM is an attempt to use encryption software to protect copyrighted electronic information by preventing its widespread distribution (as opposed to limiting access to information through such means as firewalls or password protected directories.) Examples of using such technology to protect rights (primarily IPRs such as Copyright) can be found in products such as the Windows Media Player, which tries to ensure delivery of content in a secure format or, as Sudhir already mentioned, the Lessig 'Adobe ebook' example. The basic premise behind DRM is that the rights-holder should determine how their rights are enforced. Yet that is precisely where the debate begins as the natural tendency is to retain as much control as possible and interpret one's own commercial rights broadly. With regard to the Intel presentation, Shamnad asked a fairly pertinent question regarding Intel's stake in all this. The tone of the presentation was a fairly noble and moral one, which tried to project Intel as idealistically comitted to less restrictions on content etc, yet Shamnad pointed out that it would be more expensive for Intel to incorporate DRM technology and its balance sheet would be adversely affected so there was a real commercial interest behind Intel's cautious position on DRMs. This again highlighted the diverse and often conflicting commercial interests involved, who often end up at cross purposes with each other - strategically very important for those lobbying against strong commercial rights in content. 2. A healthy dose of scepticism was introduced by Ian Ross' presentation 'Is is not Digital Restriction Management?'. He argued that the trouble with DRM could be categorized under : (a) Technical Issues on the difficulty of establishing robust DRMs - both immediate (e.g. the 'secure digital music initiative' died a natural death and CD-protection which prevents music CDs from playing on computers can be circumvented with 'high tech' tools like a permanent black marker!) and more long term (e.g. the fundamental reality of 'break once, play anywhere' - it requires just one person to crack the code; decentralized file sharing etc) (b) Suspect Legislative fixes Such as the WIPO Internet treaties, The US DMCA, the EU Copyright Directive - many of these new instruments ban 'circumvention technologies' - the worry is that there will be attempts like the stalled SSSCA and CBDTPA Bills in the US which will sneak in DRM standards as legislation (once again code becomes law which reinforces it) (c) Existing and future problems For e.g. using DRM to stifle competition in the market by crippling competitors, preventing substitutable products being made by using DRMs to enforce accessory controls and possibly leading to software 'monocultures' where for privately determined standards limit interoperatability. Finally the emphasis was on how such technologies dangerously rewrite the Copyright bargain between author/owner interest and the general public interest. 3. Peter Davies very kindly said nothing of much relevance at all, thus saving me additional typing :) He did comment upon a point raised by another speaker on the blanket use of levies/taxes on hardware that facilitated copying, (e.g. CR-RW's, recordable CDs etc) as a means of recouping some of the lost corporate revenues. Hope that completes Sudhir's overview. Warm Regards Dev _________________________________________________________________ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail _______________________________________________ commons-law mailing list commons-law at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/commons-law Catch all the cricket action. Download Yahoo! Score tracker -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030208/1ab3a21a/attachment.html From shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in Sat Feb 8 19:38:13 2003 From: shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?=) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 14:08:13 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Commons-Law] politics of code: a good shot at dyson In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030208140813.1321.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/29225.html -a good shot at how desperately esther dyson tried to distance herself from icann-while at the same time-subtly defending it-since "there was no other way one could do things". frankly, dyson was very very disappointing at the conference-expected a lot more from that name. shamnad Catch all the cricket action. Download Yahoo! Score tracker -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030208/1a7242f3/attachment.html From tripta at sarai.net Wed Feb 12 18:08:30 2003 From: tripta at sarai.net (tripta) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 18:08:30 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] music information commons Message-ID: <200302121808.30814.tripta@sarai.net> from http://musicbrainz.org/papers/mb_nonprofit.html MusicBrainz Non-Profit White Paper by Robert Kaye rob at musicbrainz.org February 2003 1. Introduction MusicBrainz aims to create a music information commons where the community creates and maintains a public database of information about music. This music metadata will enable non-ambiguous communication about music, and will allow the Internet community to discover new music without any of the bias introduced by marketing departments of the recording industry. The MusicBrainz project has been around since the fall of 1998 (previously the CD Index), and is now gathering more support from the community and partnering companies. In order to give MusicBrainz some legal muscle and to ensure the future availability of the dataset, it is proposed that MB be incorporated in California as a non-profit corporation. However, creating and running a non-profit corporation costs money, and with limited resources, MusicBrainz will depend on donations from the community and industry sponsors to elevate it to the next step. 2. MusicBrainz Today The first version of MusicBrainz, which nears completion during the first quarter of 2003, focuses on creating an open database of basic music metadata which can be used for identifying audio CDs and digital audio tracks (MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, WAV, etc.). MusicBrainz is comprised of three separate components which all work together to enable users to semi-automatically identify music and apply clean metadata tags to their music collection: MB Web site: The MusicBrainz web site allows anyone on the net to search, browse, and maintain the community metadatabase. The web site users (moderators) can add new metadata to the site, edit or correct existing metadata, and delete incorrect metadata via the web-based moderation system. MB web service/client library: All of the MusicBrainz data is available to the public via the RDF-based web service. A web service client can search for and request information about any artist, album or track in the database. A client library released under the LGPL is available for developers who would like to support MusicBrainz in their application. This client library abstracts out the details of interacting with the MusicBrainz web service, and allows a client developer to add metadata lookup to their applications in a short period of time. MB Tagger: This 32 bit Windows application (similar applications with support for other platforms are also in development) takes an end-user's collection of MP3, WAV and Ogg/Vorbis files, generates an acoustic fingerprint (TRM Id) for each track and, using the fingerprint, looks up the track metadata. If the main server does not have the metadata available, the application guides the user through the process of entering the missing information into MusicBrainz so that future users may benefit from the new metadata. After the proper metadata has been downloaded/entered, new metadata tags are written to the user's audio files. The basic metadata includes a list of artists and artist aliases (e.g. alter-ego names, alternate band names and common abbreviations) and for each artist a list of albums and the tracks for each album. MusicBrainz assigns each artist, album and track a unique identifier, which can be used to refer to a particular artist/album/track without having to deal with the semantics of correct spelling and conflicting names in the database. These identifiers provide the Internet community with a means to establish a meaningful computer-based dialog about music. This unambiguous dialog is enabled by an RDF based web service interface and presents the first baby steps towards the "Semantic Web", where computers can carry on a meaningful discussion without involving human beings. The RDF used in the web service uses portions of the Dublin Core and is documented on the MusicBrainz site. MusicBrainz encourages others to use the RDF in other future music applications to enable a host of new applications and features that are not possible today. For instance, it is not possible today to exchange a playlist with a friend, since your friend may not have the same files that you do; even if your friend does, the files may be located in a different location on the hard drive. Using MusicBrainz, a user can create a playlist that consists solely of MusicBrainz track identifiers, and then send that playlist to their friend. Their friend will be able to feed the playlist to their MusicBrainz-enabled audio player and then have the player match up the available tracks. If some of the tracks are not available in the collection, the player could go out to music sites such as EMusic.com, MusicNet or Pressplay to download the missing tracks. The MusicBrainz identifiers allow future audio applications to carry on unambiguous conversations about music and to enable a whole new set of features for music enjoyment and music discovery. The MusicBrainz dataset has been created and maintained by its user base of over 2000 volunteers. Since its inception as the CD Index in the fall of 1998, and the consequent renaming to MusicBrainz in the fall of 2000, the database has seen more than 160,000 additions and changes (moderations) to the database. Even without any promotion of the site, and all of the software just now emerging from a beta state, the dataset is growing and improving in quality. To see the latest statistics on MusicBrainz, please visit: http://musicbrainz.org/stats.html. MusicBrainz's human moderation approach encourages participation in the data maintenance process and thus yields higher quality data, since many eyes will spot even the smallest mistakes. Active moderation, concise technology for identifying music and a carefully designed database allows MusicBrainz to collect data with greater accuracy than services like GraceNote. The GraceNote service suffers from an overwhelming number of errors and duplicate entries in their database, and without a focus to reduce duplicates and to correct errors in the database, they cannot compete with MusicBrainz in the long run. Furthermore, GraceNote charges serious amounts of money for severely restricted access to its data. FreeDB, the free alternative to GraceNote, has not created any new technology to advance the state of the project. FreeDB's goal is to provide a service that is free and backward compatible to the old GraceNote/CDDB service. This gives MusicBrainz the advantage to create the first well-edited, highly structured and comprehensive music encyclopedia on the net. Once the TRM (acoustic fingerprint) and audio CD based music identification portions of MusicBrainz have been completed, the service is poised for a significant increase in the number of users contributing to and using MusicBrainz. This will provide a powerful alternative resource for non-commercial music developers and a very low cost alternative for commercial music services and channels. 3. MusicBrainz Tomorrow The basic metadata framework that the first generation of MusicBrainz puts into place will enable more comprehensive and subjective metadata to be added to the community metadatabase. A few possible additions include: Reviews/biographies/ratings: Unlike the rest of the existing MusicBrainz dataset, artist/album reviews/ratings and artist biographies and are not factual metadata, and thus they will require a different approach in collecting and maintaining. However, this subjective metadata may present the most significant revenue source for MusicBrainz. (see below for details) Music Discovery: The advanced music classification from above will allow MusicBrainz users to browse the available genres and discover new music as they find genres that describe their own musical tastes. Combining the music classification with user-contributed information about their own musical collections will enable MusicBrainz to offer collaborative filtering services to its users. Advanced Music Classification: Today's music classification systems leave a lot to be desired, since music classification is a highly subjective task, and few subjective systems have been developed to date. However, MusicBrainz can harness the power of many users to create a representative classification system that will evolve over time as musical genres evolve. Using data collected from thousands of users will enable MusicBrainz to statistically infer Genre Curves for artists and albums. Detailed Music Information: MusicBrainz will expand to cover more information about music such as artist web pages, official fan web pages, detailed support for classical music (e.g. composer, opus number, orchestra, conductor, etc.), and any other relevant pieces of information that will make MusicBrainz into a comprehensive music encyclopedia. Music Genealogy: MusicBrainz may keep track of which artists/performers/engineers contributed to a piece of music, and when these contributions took place. Combining this contribution data with data on how artists influenced each other will create a genealogy of modern music. Imagine being able to track Britney Spears back to Beethoven! These are just a few of the possible future directions of MusicBrainz. The actual directions will be heavily influenced by the MusicBrainz partners/sponsors to create a mutually beneficial relationship between MusicBrainz and its partners and sponsors. 4. MusicBrainz Licenses MusicBrainz is devoted to using the right licenses for the right job and thus the GPL (GNU's General Public License) is used for the server software and the LGPL (GNU's Lesser General Public License) for the client library. The use of the LGPL allows even closed source applications to use the client library to access the MusicBrainz server. The overall goal is to remove as many obstacles to accessing the MusicBrainz dataset as possible and to foster the inclusion of MusicBrainz technology in third party applications. To support this goal, MusicBrainz makes the dataset available to the public by placing portions of the dataset into the Public Domain and releasing other portions under Creative Commons' Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License 1.0: Core data: The core data is comprised of the artist, artist alias, album, and track information, as well as the CD Index identifiers, and TRM identifiers. All of this data is released into the Public Domain. Derived data: The derived data consists of artist, album and track text indexes, as well as moderation and voting information, which is released under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License from the Creative Commons. Subjective data: In the future MusicBrainz will collect artist biographies, album reviews, music ratings, and other non-factual data and also release them under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. To some people the use of the Public Domain for the core data may come as a surprise. However, the United States Supreme Court decided that facts are not copyrightable and all of our core data is essentially comprised of facts. This limitation, combined with the desire to have commercial enterprises use the MusicBrainz core data to extend the reach of this data, makes the Public Domain a perfect choice. 5. MusicBrainz and Commercial Enterprises Even though MusicBrainz is an open source and open data project, MusicBrainz actively encourages companies to participate in the MusicBrainz community. The availability of the core dataset in the Public Domain encourages companies to work with and link to the MusicBrainz dataset without having to navigate a complex maze of license requirements. MusicBrainz is not hostile towards commercial (for-profit) corporations! On the contrary -- MusicBrainz will only reach its full potential if commercial corporations use the dataset and encourage their customers to participate in the MusicBrainz community. Any and all corporations around the globe are encouraged to use the MusicBrainz core dataset to establish meaningful and non-ambiguous conversations about music. The derived and subjective data components in MusicBrainz are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License, which prohibits the use of the data in a commercial setting. However, MusicBrainz will make commercial licenses to the data available to companies that wish to use the data in a commercial setting. The income from these license agreements will provide MusicBrainz with the needed revenue to ensure that the dataset continues to evolve and remains available to the public. However, many companies are skeptical about using open source software because there is no one to call (or hold responsible) should the software fail. Open data projects like MusicBrainz are in a similar position -- what if the data is wrong? Or not in the database at all? The answer to this lies in the MusicBrainz community -- the community is comprised of individual contributors who work hard to enter and correct the data in the system. The MusicBrainz server software also enforces a peer review system, under which users must review and approve changes made by other users. The peer review system combined with the motivation, expertise and pride of its contributors will ensure that the data in MusicBrainz will be comprehensive and reasonably correct. Only reasonably correct? No one can guarantee that all the data in a database is correct. Not even the commercial companies that provide metadata services can give this assurance. The MusicBrainz community will respond to problems found in the database and fix mistakes faster than any commercial company with paid contributors can, since the MusicBrainz community is global and is never closed for business. Furthermore, the community is more supportive of MusicBrainz than of other commercial services due to its open nature. Another area corporations are skeptical about is the issue of service reliability. The MusicBrainz servers have always lived in professional colocation facilities with excellent connections to the Internet, and even though there has not been a legal corporation watching over the servers for the first four years of its life, MusicBrainz has had only a handful of minor service interruptions. In the future, MusicBrainz plans to create a network of mirror servers that will mirror the dataset across the globe. Any corporations that would like to work with MusicBrainz, but would prefer to handle their own servers for reliability and added load balancing, will be welcome to operate their own MusicBrainz mirror server. This option leaves all the service reliability concerns in the hands of the corporation. 6. MusicBrainz Non-Profit Corporation In order to ensure that the MusicBrainz dataset will continue to exist and continue to be available to the public, a tax-exempt non-profit corporation (503.c.3) should be created. This non-profit should adopt a set of bylaws which will state that MusicBrainz will make all metadata created by the MusicBrainz community available to anyone who wishes to download the data. The MusicBrainz corporation should consider itself the guardian of the MusicBrainz dataset and its community, and should take the necessary actions to ensure that MusicBrainz can continue its mission. The MusicBrainz non-profit should strive to become self sufficient over the course of 2-3 years. To achieve this independence, it should pursue the following possible revenue streams: Contributions from the community: Users of the MusicBrainz Tagger will greatly benefit from the project by having the tagger automatically clean up the metadata present in a user's collection. For-profit companies charge for this service, and MusicBrainz should ask users for a $10 contribution for the service of cleaning up the metadata. Google style ad-words program: As MusicBrainz gains more users, it will be possible to offer an ad-words program similar to the one pioneered by Google. Third parties will be able to purchase small and unobtrusive advertisements that will be shown on artist/album pages. License artist/album reviews and biographies: When MusicBrainz provides the infrastructure to collect and manage album/artist reviews and biographies, it will ask the authors of these works to assign the copyright to MusicBrainz. These reviews and biographies will then be made available to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. Furthermore, as this collection of reviews and biographies becomes comprehensive, MusicBrainz will offer a commercial license to this content for use in commercial applications and web sites. Provide MusicBrainz dataset services: As corporations switch away from proprietary music metadata services, MusicBrainz will gain a larger user base. However, since MusicBrainz is community funded it will be unable to provide the bandwidth for millions of users to access the dataset. Large commercial customers will be encouraged to setup their own MusicBrainz mirror servers to handle the load of their own customers. However, some commercial customers will not want to deal with this in-house and would rather contract out these hosting and integration services. MusicBrainz will be available for hire to carry out the hosting and integration of the dataset on behalf of corporations. In the same spirit, if commercial customers would like to have a dedicated support staff for addressing problems with the service or data, MusicBrainz will also be able to provide these services. The above revenue streams will take some time to develop, but over time MusicBrainz will strive to grow its revenue and become self sufficient. Should MusicBrainz find itself in a position of having excess revenue (where a for-profit company would pay a dividend), it will offer grants or awards to open source/open data/music projects and their developers. MusicBrainz has never had anything to hide, and all of its business has been visible to the public. The finances are transparent and all discussions are carried out in a public forum. With this approach, MusicBrainz will attempt to create a new kind of non-profit corporation that can continue to hold the trust of its community. Conclusion Community feedback about the MusicBrainz project has been overwhelmingly positive; now is the right time to take MusicBrainz to the next level and create a non-profit corporation. If you believe that MusicBrainz has the power to make a difference, please consider contributing money to MusicBrainz. While we are looking for sponsors to contribute larger donations, we welcome any donations. Anything helps to move the project forward and keep it alive. -- `The moroccans with the carpets seem like saints but they're salesman' From sudhir75 at hotmail.com Mon Feb 17 17:52:49 2003 From: sudhir75 at hotmail.com (Sudhir Krishnaswamy) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 12:22:49 -0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] on open source software policy Message-ID: hi all what follows is a recent south african government policy to promote the use of open source software. good reading for those interested in promoting such policies in India South Africa considers open source http://news.com.com/2100-1001-983315.html?tag=fd_top By Paul Festa Staff Writer, CNET News.com February 5, 2003, 3:50 PM PT update Joining a growing trend, a South African government council recommended an official policy that promotes the use of open-source software--but stops short of jettisoning proprietary applications. The recommended policy for Africa's wealthiest nation expresses a preference for open-source applications when proprietary alternatives don't offer a compelling advantage. Other nations have taken more extreme positions, mandating the use of open-source software unless no other practical alternatives exist. "The primary criteria for selecting software solutions will remain the improvement of efficiency, effectiveness and economy of service delivery by (the) government to its citizens," reads the policy, which was drafted last month and published Monday in a final version. "OSS (open- source software) offers significant indirect advantages. Where the direct advantages and disadvantages of OSS and PS (proprietary software) are equally strong, and where circumstances in the specific situation do not render it inappropriate, opting for OSS will be preferable." The policy is the work of Government Information Technology Officers Council (GITOC) working group on Open Source in Government. The working group, composed primarily of government agency representatives, holds the primary responsibility for formulating the government's open source policy, said one of its members. The recommended policy would pledge the government to promote "fair and impartial treatment" of open-source software in procurement, create "opportunities for trial use," and take advantage of "the opportunities presented by the OSS movement to promote access to information for citizens." Behind the comparatively moderate policy lie serious grievances with the way the proprietary software development and marketing model has treated South Africa and countries like it. By and large, South Africa imports its proprietary software and finds itself with comparatively little influence on how that software develops. The government expects that open-source software, by contrast, will provide more flexibility. "In the case of many open-source solutions, it may still be a case that the original development was not done specifically with the South African environment in mind, but in this paradigm we are in a position to take action...further by adapting/extending it to our unique needs," said Sibusiso Sibisi, chief executive of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. CSIR is a South African science and technology group that claims credit for 10 percent of all research and development work done on the African continent, and has the only non-government on the GITOC working group. "It is when a country or community is at the mercy of a technology provider, and powerless to determine or shape its own fate, that the situation becomes problematic and an intervention is required," Sibisi added. The government is the largest single buyer of computer technology in South Africa, so its actions are watched closely by both open-source advocates and proprietary software venders, particularly Microsoft. Government policies favoring or mandating the use of open-source software have become one of the most important open-source fires Microsoft has strived to put out over the past few years. Such policies have proliferated in the developing world, where state budgets are particularly limited. But the legislative movement in favor of open source has also made inroads within the United States. Microsoft has lobbied strenuously against the trend. "All customers--including government customers--should make decisions about which type of software to implement based upon a careful analysis of the long-term value that the software provides," said Alex Mercer, a Microsoft spokeswoman. "We agree with this view and do work with industry partners and organizations...to encourage governments to keep their software options open by adhering to policies that do not favor one software development model over another." Mercer cited the United Kingdom's open-source policy, which reads in part, "There is a need to always procure a solution that gives value for money. This may be an OSS solution, or proprietary one, or a mixture of both. Decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis." Microsoft has taken a keen interest in the developing African information technology market, but the open-source movement has already stymied its efforts there. In November, SchoolNet Namibia, an organization providing computing resources to the million- person nation, publicly rejected Microsoft's offer to put the Windows operating system in its schools and decided to keep its existing open-source Linux systems. Microsoft's recent donation to South African schools of more than 30,000 software licenses, by contrast, was better-received. "This was generally welcomed, because the donation did not force any exclusivity and allows open-source solutions to be developed and deployed on the computing infrastructure rollout that might have been accelerated by the Microsoft donation," Sibisi said. "When choices are limited, it becomes problematic." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030217/bce22a0f/attachment.html From Boris.Rotenberg at IUE.it Tue Feb 25 00:56:26 2003 From: Boris.Rotenberg at IUE.it (Rotenberg, Boris) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 20:26:26 +0100 Subject: [Commons-Law] FW: Dissemination of Call for papers - Issue 8 Message-ID: <> Dear All, please find attached the call for papers for the next issue of the IJCLP, Thanks for your attention, ijclp.org Boriska -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Call for papers - Issue 8.doc Type: application/msword Size: 23040 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030224/37eec70f/attachment.doc From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Tue Feb 25 08:54:08 2003 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 19:24:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Fwd: Creation Myths: Does innovation require intellectual property rights? Message-ID: <20030225032408.40738.qmail@web41104.mail.yahoo.com> > http://www.reason.com/0303/fe.dc.creation.shtml > > Reason > > March 2003 > > Creation Myths > Does innovation require intellectual property > rights? > By Douglas Clement > > > > The most forceful performance at last year's Grammy > ceremony was a speech by Michael Greene, then > president of the National Academy of Recording Arts > and Sciences. Speaking not long after the 9/11 > attacks, Greene gravely warned of a worldwide threat > -- "pervasive, out of control, and oh so criminal" > -- and implored his audience to "em-brace this > life-and-death issue." > > Greene was not referring to international terrorism. > "The most insidious virus in our midst," he said > sternly, "is the illegal downloading of music on the > Net." > > Greene's sermon may have been a bit overwrought, but > he's not alone in his fears. During the last decade, > the captains of many industries -- music, movies, > publishing, software, pharmaceuticals -- have railed > against the "piracy" of their profits. Copyright and > patent protections have been breached by new > technologies that quickly copy and distribute their > products to mass markets. And as quickly as a > producer figures a way to encrypt a DVD or software > program to prevent duplication, some hacker in > Seattle, Reykjavik, or Manila figures a way around > it. > > The music industry has tried to squelch the threat, > most conspicuously by suing Napster, the wildly > popular Internet service that matched patrons with > the songs they wanted, allowing them to download > digital music files without charge. Napster lost the > lawsuit and was liquidated, while similar services > survive. > > But the struggle over Napster-like services has > accented a much broader issue: How does an economy > best promote innovation? Do patents and copyrights > nurture or stifle it? Have we gone too far in > protecting intellectual property? > > In a paper that has gained wide attention (and > caught serious flak) for challenging the > conventional wisdom, economists Michele Boldrin and > David K. Levine answer the final question with a > resounding yes. Copyrights, patents, and similar > government-granted rights serve only to reinforce > monopoly control, with its attendant damages of > inefficiently high prices, low quantities, and > stifled future innovation, they write in "Perfectly > Competitive Innovation," a report published by the > Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. More to the > point, they argue, economic theory shows that > perfectly competitive markets are entirely capable > of rewarding (and thereby stimulating) innovation, > making copyrights and patents superfluous and > wasteful. > > Reactions to the paper have been mixed. Robert > Solow, the MIT economist who won a Nobel Prize in > 1987 for his work on growth theory, wrote Boldrin > and Levine a letter calling the paper "an > eye-opener" and making suggestions for further > refinements. Danny Quah of the London School of > Economics calls their analysis "an important and > profound development" that "seeks to overturn nearly > half a century of formal economic thinking on > intellectual property." But UCLA economist Benjamin > Klein finds their work "unrealistic," and Paul > Romer, a Stanford economist whose path-breaking > development of new growth theory is the focus of > much of Boldrin and Levine's critique, considers > their logic flawed and their assumptions > implausible. > > "We're not claiming to have invented anything new, > really," says Boldrin. "We're recognizing something > that we think has been around ever since there has > been innovation. In fact, patents and copyrights are > a very recent distortion." Even so, they're working > against a well-established conventional wisdom that > has sanctioned if not embraced intellectual property > rights, and theirs is a decidedly uphill battle. > > The Conventional Wisdom > > In the 1950s Solow showed that technological change > was a primary source of economic growth, but his > models treated that change as a given determined by > elements beyond pure economic forces. In the 1960s > Kenneth Arrow, Karl Shell, and William Nordhaus > analyzed the relationship between markets and > technological change. They concluded that free > markets might fail to bring about optimal levels of > innovation. > > In a landmark 1962 article, Arrow gave three reasons > why perfect competition might fail to allocate > resources optimally in the case of invention. "We > expect a free enterprise economy to underinvest in > invention and research (as compared with an ideal)," > he wrote, "because it is risky, because the product > can be appropriated only to a limited extent, and > because of increasing returns in use." > > Risk does seem a clear roadblock to investment in > technological change. Will all the hours and dollars > spent on research and development result in a > profitable product? Is the payoff worth the risk? > The uncertainty of success diminishes the desire to > try. Much of Arrow's article examines economic means > of dealing with uncertainty, none of them completely > successful. > > The second problem, what economists call > inappropriability, is the divergence between social > and private benefit -- in this case, the difference > between the benefit society would reap from an > invention and the benefit reaped by the inventor. > Will I try to invent the wheel if all humanity would > benefit immeasurably from my invention but I'd get > only $1,000? Maybe not. Property rights, > well-defined, help address the issue. > > The third obstacle is indivisibility. The problem > here is that the act of invention involves a > substantial upfront expenditure (of time or money) > before a single unit of the song, formula, or book > exists. But thereafter, copies can be made at a > fraction of the cost. Such indivisibilities result > in dramatically increasing returns to scale: If a $1 > million investment in research and development > results in just one unit of an invention, the > prototype, a $2 million expenditure could result in > the prototype plus thousands or millions of > duplicates. > > This is a great problem to have, but perfect > competition doesn't deal well with increasing > returns to scale. With free markets and no barriers > to entry, products are priced at their marginal cost > (that is, the cost of the latest copy), and that > price simply won't cover the huge initial outlay -- > that is, the large indivisibility that is necessary > to create the prototype. Inventors will have no > financial incentive for bringing their inventions to > reality, and society will be denied the benefits. > > Increasing returns therefore seem to argue for some > form of monopoly, and in the late 1970s Joseph > Stiglitz and Avinash Dixit developed a growth model > of monopolistic competition -- that is, limited > competition with increasing returns to scale. It's a > model in which many firms compete in a given market > but none is strictly a price taker. (In other words, > each has some ability to restrict output and raise > prices, like a monopolist.) It's a growth model, in > other words, without perfect competition. The > Dixit-Stiglitz model is widely used today, with the > underlying assumption that economic growth requires > technological change, which implies increasing > returns, which means imperfect competition. > > Stanford's Paul Romer formalized much of this work > in the 1980s and 1990s, in what he called a theory > of endogenous growth. The idea was that > technological change -- innovation -- should be > modeled as part of an economy, not outside it as > Solow had done. The policy implication was that > economic variables, such as interest and tax rates, > as well as subsidies for research and technical > education, could influence the rate of innovation. > (See "Post-Scarcity Prophet," December 2001.) > > Romer refined the ideas of Arrow and others, > developing new terms, integrating the economics of > innovation and extending the Dixit-Stiglitz growth > model into what he called "new growth theory." In a > parallel track, Robert Lucas, a Nobel laureate at > the University of Chicago, elucidated the importance > of human capital to economic growth. And just prior > to all this growth theory work, Paul Krugman, > Elhanan Helpman, and others integrated increasing > returns theory with international trade economics, > creating "new trade theory." Similar theories became > the bedrock of industrial organization economics. > > Central to Romer's theory is the idea of nonrivalry, > a property he considers inherent to invention, > designs, and other forms of intellectual creation. > "A purely nonrival good," he wrote, "has the > property that its use by one firm or person in no > way limits its use by another." A formula, for > example, can be used simultaneously and equally by > 100 people, whereas a wrench cannot. > > Nonrivalrous goods are inherently subject to > increasing returns to scale, says Romer. "Developing > new and better instructions is equivalent to > incurring a fixed cost," he wrote. "Once the cost of > creating a new set of instructions has been > incurred, the instructions can be used over and over > again at no additional cost." But if this is true, > then "it follows directly that an equilibrium with > price taking cannot be supported." In other words, > economic growth -- and the technological innovation > it requires -- aren't possible under perfect > competition; they require some degree of monopoly > power. > > Undermining Convention > > Economists prize economic growth but distrust > monopoly, so accepting the latter to obtain the > former is a Faustian bargain at best. With > "Perfectly Competitive Innovation," Boldrin and > Levine vigorously reject the contract. > > Innovation, they argue, has occurred in the past > without substantial protection of intellectual > property. "Historically, people have been inventing > and writing books and music when copyright did not > exist," notes Boldrin. "Mozart wrote a lot of very > beautiful things without any copyright protection." > (The publishers of music and books, on the other > hand, sometimes did have copyrights in the materials > they bought from their creators.) > > Contemporary examples are also plentiful. The > fashion world -- highly competitive, with designs > largely unprotected -- innovates constantly and > profitably. A Gucci is a Gucci; knock-offs are mere > imitations and worth less than the original, so > Gucci -- for better or worse -- still has an > incentive to create. The financial securities > industry makes millions by developing and selling > complex securities and options without benefit of > intellectual property protection. Competitors are > free to copy a firm's security package, but doing so > takes time. The initial developer's first-mover > advantage secures enough profit to justify > "inventing" the security. > > As for software, Boldrin refers to an MIT working > paper by economists Eric Maskin and James Bessen. > Maskin and Bessen write that "some of the most > innovative industries today -- software, computers > and semiconductors -- have historically had weak > patent protection and have experienced rapid > imitation of their products." > > Moreover, U.S. court decisions in the 1980s that > strengthened patent protection for software led to > less innovation. "Far from unleashing a flurry of > new innovative activity," Maskin and Bessen write, > "these stronger property rights ushered in a period > of stagnant, if not declining, R&D among those > industries and firms that patented most." Industries > that depend on sequential product development -- the > initial version is followed by an improved second > version, etc. -- are, they argue, likely to be > stifled by stronger intellectual property regimes. > > "So examples abound," says Boldrin. "That's the > empirical point: Evidence shows that innovators have > enough of an incentive to innovate." But he and > Levine are not, by nature or training, empiricists. > They build mathematical models to describe economic > theory. In the case of intellectual property, they > contend, current theory says innovation won't happen > unless innovators receive monopoly rights, but the > evidence says otherwise. "So what we do is to > develop the theoretical point to explain the > evidence," says Boldrin. > > Rivalry Over Nonrivalry > > A fundamental tenet of current conventional wisdom > is that knowledge-based innovations are subject to > increasing returns because ideas are nonrivalrous. > Boldrin and Levine argue that in an economy this has > no relevance. While pure ideas can be shared without > rivalry in theory, the economic application of ideas > is inherently rivalrous, because ideas "have > economic value only to the extent that they are > embodied into either something or someone." What is > relevant in the economic realm is not an abstract > concept or formula -- no matter how beautiful -- but > its physical embodiment. Calculus is economically > valuable only insofar as engineers and economists > know and apply it. "Only ideas embodied in people, > machines or goods have economic value," they write. > And because of their physical embodiment, "valuable > ideas...are as rivalrous as commodities containing > no ideas at all, if such exist." > > A novel is valuable only to the extent that it is > written down (if then). A song can be sold only if > it is sung, played, or printed by its creator. A > software program -- once written -- might seem > costless, Boldrin and Levine write, but "the > prototype does not sit on thin air. To be used by > others it needs to be copied, which requires > resources of various kinds, including time. To be > usable it needs to reside on some portion of the > memory of your computer....When you are using that > specific copy of the software, other people cannot > simultaneously do the same." > > In each instance, the development of the initial > prototype is far more costly than the production of > all subsequent copies. But because copying takes > time -- a limited commodity -- and materials (paper, > ink, disk space), it is not entirely costless. > "Consider the paradigmatic example of the wheel," > they write. "Once the first wheel was produced, > imitation could take place at a cost orders of > magnitude smaller. But even imitation cannot > generate free goods: to make a new wheel, one needs > to spend some time looking at the first one and > learning how to carve it." > > The first wheel is far more valuable than all > others, of course, but that "does not imply that the > wheel, first or last that it be, is a nonrivalrous > good. It only implies that, for some goods, > replication costs are very small." > > Economic theorists generally have assumed that the > dramatic difference between development and > replication costs can be modeled as a single process > with increasing returns to scale: a huge fixed cost > (the initial investment) followed by costless > duplication. Boldrin and Levine say this > misrepresents reality: There are two distinct > processes with very different technologies. > Development is one production process involving long > hours, gallons of coffee, sweaty genius, and black, > tempestuous moods. At the end of this initial > process, the prototype (with any luck) exists and > the effort and money that produced it are a sunk > cost, an expense in the past. > > Thereafter, a very different production process > governs: Replicators study the original, gather flat > stones, round off corners, bore center holes, and > prune tree limbs into axles. Stone wheels roll off > the antediluvian assembly line. In this second > process, the economics of production are the same as > for any other commodity, usually with constant > returns to scale. > > As Boldrin and Levine develop their mathematical > model, they assume only that, "as in reality," > copying takes time and there is a limit (less than > infinity) on the number of copies that can be > produced per unit of time. These "twin assumptions" > introduce a slim element of rivalry. After it's > created, the prototype can be either consumed or > used for copying in the initial time period. > (Technically, it could be used for both, but not as > easily as if it were used for just one or the > other.) > > While others simply have assumed, with Romer, that > the prototype of an intellectual product is > nonrivalrous, Boldrin and Levine argue that the tiny > cost of replicating it undermines the conventional > model. Production is not subject to increasing > returns, they argue, and competitive markets can > work. "Even a minuscule amount of rivalry," they > write, "can turn standard results upside down." > > Britney Gets Her Due > > Still, the central question is whether innovators > will have enough incentive to go through the > arduous, expensive invention process. Since the > 1400s, when the first patent systems emerged in > Venice, governments have tried to provide incentive > by granting inventors sole rights to their creations > for limited periods. The U.S. Constitution gives > Congress the power "to promote the Progress of > Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited > Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right > to their respective Writings and Discoveries." > > Economists long have recognized that such exclusive > rights give creators monopolies, allowing them to > set prices and quantities that may not be socially > optimal. But conventional thinking says these costs > are the necessary tradeoff for bringing forth > creative genius. Today, the legal realities and > economic conventions have assumed the air of > incontrovertible fact: If inventors can be "ripped > off" -- copied as soon as they create -- why would > they bother? > > In arguing for competitive innovation rather than > the monopolistic variety, Boldrin and Levine > emphasize that they are not saying creators don't > have rights. On the contrary, they stress that > innovators should be given "a well defined right of > first sale." (Or, more technically, "we assume full > appropriability of privately produced commodities.") > And creators should be paid the full market value of > their invention, the first unit of the new product. > That value is "the net discounted value of the > future stream of consumption services" generated by > that first unit, which is an economist's way of > saying it's worth the current value of everything > it's going to earn in the future. > > So if Britney Spears records a new song, she should > be able to sell the initial recording for the sum > total of whatever music distributors think her fans > will pay for copies of the music during the next > century or so. Distributors know her songs are in > demand, and she knows she can command a high price. > As in any other market, the buyer and seller > negotiate a deal. The same rules would hold for a > novelist who writes a book, a software programmer > who generates code, or a physicist who develops a > useful formula. They get to sell the invention in a > competitive market. They're paid whatever the market > will bear, and if the market values copies of their > song, book, code, or formula, the initial prototype > will be precious and they'll be well paid. > > In fact, says Boldrin, "in a competitive market, the > very first few copies are very valuable because > those are the instruments which the imitators -- the > other people who will publish your stuff -- will use > to make copies. They're more capital goods than > consumption goods. So the initial copies will be > sold at a very high price, but then very rapidly > they will go down in price." > > What creators won't get, in Boldrin and Levine's > world, is the right to impose downstream licensing > agreements that prevent customers from reproducing > the product, modifying it, or using it as a stepping > stone to the next innovation. They can't prevent > their customers from competing with them. > > But will the market pay the creator enough? That > depends on the innovator's opportunity costs. If the > price likely to be paid for an invention's first > sale exceeds the opportunity costs of the inventor, > then yes, the inventor will create. If a writer > spends a year on a book, and could have earned > $30,000 during that year doing something else, then > her opportunity cost is $30,000. Only if she guesses > she can sell her book for at least that much is she > likely to sit down and write. > > "What we show in the technical paper is that the > amount [a book publisher] gives me is positive, and > in fact, it can be large," says Boldrin. "Then it's > up to me to figure out if what society is paying me > is enough to compensate for my year of work." > > But what happens as reproduction technologies > im-prove: as printing presses get quicker, or as the > Internet lets teenagers share music files faster and > farther? Won't that drive authors and musicians into > utter poverty? > > In fact, Boldrin and Levine argue, the opposite > should occur. Increasing rates of reproduction will > drop marginal production costs and, therefore, > prices. If demand for the good is elastic -- that > is, if demand rises disproportionately when prices > drop -- then total revenue will increase. > > And since creators with strong rights of first sale > are paid the current value of future revenue, their > pay will climb. "The point we're making is the > invention of things like Napster or electronic > publishing and so on are actually creating more > opportunities for writers, musicians, for people in > general to produce intellectual value, to sell their > stuff and actually make money," says Boldrin. "The > costs I suffer to write down one of my books or > songs have not changed, so overall we actually have > a bigger incentive, not smaller incentive." > > Conventional wisdom admits that monopoly rights > impose short-term costs on an economy. They give an > undue share of the economic pie to those who own > copyrights and patents; they misallocate resources > by allowing innovators to command too high a price; > they allow innovators to produce less than the > socially optimal level of the new invention. But > these costs are all considered reasonable because > innovation creates economic growth: The static costs > are eclipsed by dynamic development. > > Boldrin and Levine say this is a false dilemma. > Monopoly rights are not only unnecessary for > innovation but may stifle it, particularly when an > innovation reduces the cost of expanding production. > "Monopolists as a rule do not like to produce much > output," they write. "Insofar as the benefit of an > innovation is that it reduces the cost of producing > additional units of output but not the cost of > producing at the current level, it is not of great > use to a monopolist." Monopolists, after all, can > set prices and quantities to maximize their profits; > they may have no incentive to find faster > reproduction technologies. > > More broadly, producers are likely to engage in what > economists call "rent-seeking behavior" -- efforts > to protect or expand turf (and profits) by fighting > for government-granted monopoly protection -- and > that behavior is likely to stifle innovation. > Expensive patent races, defensive patenting (in > which firms create a wall of patents to prevent > competitors from coming up with anything remotely > resembling their product), and costly infringement > battles are common functions of corporate law > departments. Such activity chokes off creative > efforts by others, particularly the small and > middle-sized firms that are typically more > innovative. > > The Critics > > Like any radical innovation, Boldrin and Levine's > argument has its critics. "We've been presenting it > in quite a few key places, and I have to admit that > every time there was a riot," says Boldrin. "There > was a riot at Stanford last Thursday. It was a huge > riot at Chicago two weeks ago. I know it was a riot > at Toulouse when David presented it." > > A "riot" among economists might not call for crowd > control, but the paper does evoke strong reactions. > UCLA's Klein says the paper is "unrealistic modeling > with little to do with the real world." In a paper > with Kevin Murphy of the University of Chicago and > Andres Lerner of Economic Analysis LLC, Klein writes > that Boldrin and Levine's model works only under the > "arbitrary demand assumption" that demand for copies > is elastic, so that as price falls over time output > increases more than proportionately and profit > rises. In the case of Napster and the music > industry, this "clearly conflicts with record > company pricing. That is, if Boldrin and Levine were > correct, why are record companies not pricing CDs as > low as possible?" > > Romer has a broader set of objections. As a > co-author and graduate school classmate of Levine's > and a former teacher of Boldrin's at the University > of Rochester, Romer has no desire to brawl with his > respected colleagues. Moreover, he agrees that > property rights for intellectual goods are sometimes > too strong; in some cases, society might benefit > from weaker restrictions. Music file sharing, for > example, might increase social welfare even if it > hurts the current music industry. And he stresses > that alternative mechanisms for bringing forth > innovation -- government support for technology > education, for example -- might well be superior to > copyrights and patents. Nonetheless, Romer does have > serious problems with the new theory. > > First of all, the first-sale rights Boldrin and > Levine would assign to innovators "would truly be an > empty promise." In their model, if a pharmaceutical > firm discovers a new compound, it can sell the first > pills but not restrict their downstream use. A > generic drug manufacturer could then buy one pill, > analyze it, and start stamping out copies. > > "So what Boldrin and Levine call 'no downstream > licensing' is instant generic status for drugs," > Romer complains. And while they argue that the > inventor "can sell a few pills for millions of > dollars," this is unrealistic if everyone who buys a > pill can copy it. "You can make a set of > mathematical assumptions so that this is all > logically consistent," says Romer, "but those > assumptions are wildly at odds with the underlying > facts in the pharmaceutical industry." > > If Boldrin and Levine are unrealistic about > appropriability, they are even more at sea > re-garding rivalry, Romer adds. While it's true that > ideas must be embodied to be economically useful, > it's false to say that there is no distinction > between the idea and its physical instantiation. A > formula must be written down, but the formula is far > more valuable than the piece of paper on which it's > written. In a large market, the formula could be so > valuable that "the cost of the extra paper is > trivial -- so small that it is a reasonable > approximation to neglect it entirely." If Romer's > approximation is right -- if it truly is reasonable > to neglect that "trivial" cost -- then out goes the > slim element of rivalry on which the Boldrin/Levine > argument rests. > > Romer also objects to the contention that > competition can deal well with sunk costs. And he > suggests that Boldrin and Levine are wrong to object > to copyright restriction of downstream use, since > perfect competition allows sellers and buyers to > enter contracts that impose such restrictions. "What > justification is there," says Romer, "for preventing > consenting adults from writing contracts that limit > subsequent or downstream uses of a good?" > > Boldrin's quick e-mail re-sponse: "We never say > anything like that!! Patents and copyrights are NOT > private contracts; they are monopoly rights given by > governments." > > Romer counters: "The legal system creates an > opportunity for an owner to write contracts that > limit how a valuable good can be used....The > proposal from Boldrin and Levine would deprive a > pharmaceutical company or the owner of a song of the > chance to write this kind of contract with a buyer." > > > According to University of Chicago's Lucas, "There > is no question that Boldrin and Levine have their > theory worked out correctly. The issue is where it > applies and where it doesn't." Their strongest > examples, Lucas argues, are Napster and the music > industry. "If we do not enforce copyrights to music, > will people stop writing and recording songs?" he > asks rhetorically. "Not likely, I agree. If so, then > protection against musical 'piracy' just comes down > to protecting monopoly positions: something > economists usually oppose, and with reason." > > But Lucas cautions that their theory may not apply > everywhere. "What about pharmaceuticals?" he asks, > echoing Romer. "Here millions are spent on > developing new drugs. Why do this if the good ideas > can be quickly copied?" > > Refining the Theory > > Solow suggests that Boldrin and Levine should enrich > their "very nice paper" by testing its robustness. > What happens, for example, if the time interval > between invention and copying is shrunk? And -- > echoing Arrow -- "does anything special happen if > you introduce some uncertainty about the outcome of > an investment in innovation?" > > Boldrin and Levine recognize that work remains to be > done to strengthen their theory. They have begun to > examine the effect of uncertainty on their model, as > Solow suggests, and they say the results still > broadly obtain. The difference is that a large > monopolist may be able to insure himself against > risk, whereas competitors will need to create > securities that allow them to sell away some of the > risk and buy some insurance. > > As for pharmaceutical research and development, > Boldrin and Levine contend that their critics are > misrepresenting the industry's economics. Much of > the high cost of pharmaceutical R&D, Boldrin argues, > is due to the inflated values placed on drug > researchers' time because they are employed by > monopolists. Researchers are paid far less in the > more competitive European drug industry. > > In addition, Levine says, pharmaceuticals aren't > sold into a competitive market: "They are generally > purchased by large organizations such as governments > and HMOs." If inflated drug prices are viewed more > realistically, these economists argue, the > development costs of new drugs would not be nearly > as insurmountable as commonly believed. > > Moreover, copying a drug takes time and money, > providing the innovative drug company with a > substantial first-mover advantage. "It's not obvious > that the other guys can imitate me overnight," says > Boldrin. "The fact that you are the first and know > how to do it better than the other people -- it may > be a huge protection." > > Still, they admit, there are cases of indivisibility > where the initial investment may simply be too large > for a perfectly competitive market. "We have argued > that the competitive mechanism is a viable one, > capable of producing sustained innovation," they > write. "This is not to argue that competition is the > best mechanism in all circumstances." Indivisibility > constraints may keep some socially desirable > innovations from being produced; the situation is > similar to a public goods problem. The authors > suggest that contingent contracts and lotteries > could be used in such cases, but "a theory of > general equilibrium with production indivisibility > remains to be fully worked out." > > Some economists have already begun work on the next > stages. Quah at the London School of Economics has > pushed Boldrin and Levine's model in a number of > directions to test its robustness and applicability. > In one paper, he finds it works well if he tweaks > assumptions about the consumption and production of > the intellectual assets, but it falters if he > changes time constraints. > > In another paper, Quah contends that Boldrin and > Levine's potential solutions to indivisibility > constraints may not actually resolve the problem. > "What is needed," he writes, "is the capability to > continuously adjust the level of an intellectual > asset's instantiation quantity." Roughly translated: > We need the ability to come up with half an idea. > That might be a problem. > > More studies like Quah's will be needed to poke, > prod, refine, refute, and extend Boldrin and > Levine's theory. And empirical work will be needed > to see whether it is indeed a more apt description > of innovation. The theory is part of an intellectual > thicket, and economists who work that thicket tend > to render it impenetrable by adopting different > terms or defining identical terms differently. > > What is clear, though, is that Boldrin and Levine > have mounted a formidable assault on the > conventional wisdom about innovation and the need to > protect intellectual property. That it has met with > opposition or incredulity is to be expected. What > matters are the next steps. > > "The reaction for now is surprise and disbelief," > Boldrin says. "We'll see. In these kinds of things, > the relevance is always if people find the > suggestion interesting enough that it's worth > pushing farther the research. All we have made is a > simple theoretical point." > > > Douglas Clement is a senior writer for The Region, a > magazine published by the Federal Reserve Bank of > Minneapolis. A version of this article appeared in > The Region's September 2002 issue. > > > > > > > -- > ----------------- > R. A. Hettinga > The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation > > 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA > "... however it may deserve respect for its > usefulness and antiquity, > [predicting the end of the world] has not been found > agreeable to > experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of > the Roman Empire' > > # distributed via : no commercial use > without permission > # is a moderated mailing list for net > criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural > politics of the nets > # more info: majordomo at bbs.thing.net and "info > nettime-l" in the msg body > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime at bbs.thing.net __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in Tue Feb 25 15:35:30 2003 From: shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?=) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 10:05:30 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Fwd: [claw-in] Re: [india-gii] you can't say Yahoo!! Message-ID: <20030225100530.43613.qmail@web8007.mail.in.yahoo.com> since this was an interesting debate that flared up on the cyberlaws group, i thought it would be interesting to see how the members of this group would react to this issue. regards-shamnad Note: forwarded message attached. Catch all the cricket action. Download Yahoo! Score tracker -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030225/21caf795/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?= Subject: [claw-in] Re: [india-gii] you can't say Yahoo!! Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 09:42:53 +0000 (GMT) Size: 8100 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030225/21caf795/attachment.mht From jeebesh at sarai.net Thu Feb 27 13:26:03 2003 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 13:26:03 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Free Software as an intangible world cultural heritage Message-ID: <200302271326.03651.jeebesh@sarai.net> http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/mankind/ Classification of Free Software as an intangible world cultural heritage A working group has been set up in January 7th, 2002 by APRIL and FSF Europe, Chapter France. The original idea is from Pierre Jarillon (ABUL president). The objective is to have Free Software classified as an intangible world cultural heritage by the UNESCO. Why? First you must understand it would benefit to the Free Software community, but also to mankind as a whole. Free software is not only about computer science, technique or even licenses. It deals with freedom, equality and fraternity. Freedom to copy, to study, to modify and to redistribute software or documentations. Equality, same rights for every user, without discrimination. Fraternity, because we talk about sharing and mutual help. Moreover Free Software is already part of the mankind heritage, in fact. We are trying to obtain a UNESCO recognition. The previous values are common to the Free Software community and the UNESCO. Now let's see what the community could expect from this recognition. First a strong support, because the UNESCO is a major organisation, with an important aura. It could give a major recognition to Free Software, and a very large diffusion. Sort of planetary promotion. Finally, it would also bring legal protection to Free Software (via the UNESCO legal services), against looming threats. We'll begin by ethic/philosophical arguments. We previously talked about freedom, equality and fraternity values, about our philosophy which is beneficiary for mankind as a whole. We also add the transparency value, which prevails in our community. Finally you should keep in mind only Free Software can be considered as world heritage. "To serve humanity with software, software should be free, because software belongs to human knowledge. Proprietary software does not belong to human knowledge." (Richard M. Stallman, GNU project founder and Free Software Foundation president). Now, the social arguments. It's a question of mutual help and knowledge sharing. To make tools (and even much more than tools) available for everybody. It seems to meet UNESCO values. Free Software allows a situation where nobody limits others freedom. Nobody forbids you to copy, to use, to modify or to redistribute, nobody chains you up. Let's add Free Software allows a quicker development for developing countries (not only them, it's also true for other countries). They also allow protection of cultures and a better ease of use, due to multilingual support. Technical arguments? Free Software has already proved itself (stability, performances, etc). It's also essential in the field of computer security, because it's the only one which gives transparency and verification, in a field where there can be no blind confidence in this or that software editor. Internet would be pretty different from what it is now without Free Software (60% of web servers, large part of email or DNS servers, etc) and the Network would have grown slower without it. Free Software brings continuity: you won't be blocked by an editor disappearance or trapped in the version race ("sorry version N-1 is no more supported and nothing runs with it, and you'll need to change all your hardware to use version N, whose files are not compatible with version N-1"). Finally Free Software is about benefit from work already done, not reinventing the wheel, "sitting on giants'shoulders" (one can see further). What about independence? First, there is independence of governments. Not just voters or citizens to satisfy, no election dates to muddle decisions. Secondly, independence of companies. Not just market shares, consumers or shareholders. Finally, independence of political parties. And no frantic pursuit of profit in contempt of everything else, no obligation to release unfinalized versions. Even if a government, a company or a party develops a free software, user freedoms are protected and everybody can carry on with the project in their own way if necessary. And now, the facts: Free Software is already part of the world heritage, as previously said. And it has numerous supports, from governments, associations, firms, and more and more users. Even the UNESCO has a Free Software portal and leads actions in Latin America. From jeebesh at sarai.net Thu Feb 27 18:48:22 2003 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 18:48:22 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] European Software Patent Horror Gallery Message-ID: <200302271848.22360.jeebesh@sarai.net> http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/pikta/index.en.html European Software Patent Horror Gallery A database of the monopolies on programming problems, which the European Patent Office has granted against the letter and spirit of the existing laws, and about which it is unsufficiently informing the public, delivering only chunks of graphical data hidden behind input masks. The FFII software patent workgroup is trying to single out the software patents, make them better accessible and show their effects on software development. From sudhir75 at hotmail.com Fri Feb 28 03:46:15 2003 From: sudhir75 at hotmail.com (sudhir krishnaswamy) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 22:16:15 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] European Software Patent Horror Gallery Message-ID: Though many of the links on the website are not going through - it has a very interesting link to a paper analysing software patents by richard stallman which is great http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2000-05-26-004-04-OP-LF sudhir _________________________________________________________________ From sudhir75 at hotmail.com Fri Feb 28 04:26:27 2003 From: sudhir75 at hotmail.com (sudhir krishnaswamy) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 22:56:27 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] yahoo tea Message-ID: hi shamnad yahoo tea and yahoo on the web could be registered under different classification categories for the purposes of trademark law.. then yahoo on the web would argue that it is a well known mark and entitled to anti dilution remedies. this poses the now familiar argument of why we should protect marks beyond consumer protection and unfair competition rationale and treat it as property. this is more the case when the term 'yahoo' has had a significant pulbic domain cultural life - a la shammi kapoor - of its own before the trademark claim! sudhir _________________________________________________________________